Affiliate Links for "arcadata"- July 2012

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Skin by Mo Hayder from Grove Press is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

In her eerie and hair-raising thriller Skin, Mo Hayder trails her two unforgettable protagonists as they race to staunch a rising tide of blood in a sweltering port town.

When the decomposing body of a young woman is found, the wounds on her wrists suggest an open-and-shut case of suicide. But Jack Caffery is not so sure. Other apparent suicides are cropping up, and they all have a connection to Elf’s Grotto, a nearly bottomless network of flooded quarries just outside the city. Caffery begins to suspect a shadowy and sinister predator, someone—or something— that can disappear into darkness and slip into houses unseen. Working alongside Caffery is rough-and-tough police diver Flea Marley, but while pursuing her investigation, she stumbles upon something far too close to home that no one—not even Caffery—can help her face.

Skin is a penetrating dissection of family, friendships, and the evil that can tear them apart—or bind them together. Devious and disturbing, it introduces one of Hayder’s most horrifying villains yet.

The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is $1.67 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

Marian Evans—who writes under the pen name George Eliot—has come to Venice on her honeymoon. It is 1880 and she is newly married to John Cross, twenty years her junior. She has come to this city of canals and bridges to start again, to forget the death of her longtime partner, George Henry Lewes—with whom she shared twenty five years of happiness and art. In this new marriage, in this intensely romantic place, can she give herself the happy ending that she provided for Middlemarch’s Dorothea Brooke?

A century later, sculptor Caroline Spingold takes us to Venice again. Scarred by her father’s abandonment just after she and her parents spent a summer in the city, Caroline vowed never to return. But now her powerful, wealthy older husband has brought her back against her will, to celebrate their tenth anniversary.

Told in alternating chapters subtly linked by themes of art, love, and the challenges of marriage, The World Before Her tells of two women, their surprising similarities, and the reckoning Venice will force them to make with their desire, their memories, and their very selves.

Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

Maria Jameson is having an affair—a passionate, lifechanging affair. She asks: Is it possible to love two men at once? Must this new romance mean an end to love with her husband?

For answers, she reaches across the centuries to George Sand, the maverick French novelist who took many lovers. Immersing herself in the life of this revolutionary woman, Maria struggles with the choices women make and wonders if women in the nineteenth century might have been more free, in some ways, than their twenty-first-century counterparts.

Here, Rosalind Brackenbury creates a beautiful portrait of the ways in which women are connected across history. Two narratives delicately intertwine—following George through her affair with Frederic Chopin, following Maria through her affair with an Irish professor—and bring us a novel that explores the personal and the historical, the demands of self and the mysteries of the heart. Sharply insightful, Becoming George Sand asks how we make our lives feel vibrant while still acknowledging the gifts of our pasts, and challenges our understanding of love in all its forms—sparkling and new, mature, rekindled, and renewed.

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With No One As Witness (Inspector Lynley) by Elizabeth George from HarperCollins is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

The police never suspected a serial killer was at large until they found the fourth murdered boy — the first white victim — his body draped over a tomb in a London graveyard. Suddenly a series of crimes and a potential public relations disaster have Scotland Yard on the defensive, scrambling to apprehend a maniac while avoiding accusations of racism.

Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley, distracted by concerns for his pregnant wife, has been assigned to the investigation, along with his disgraced partner, Barbara Havers, who’s fighting for her professional future. Winston Nkata — deservedly, if hastily, promoted to detective sergeant — is the black face who will speak to the media. But none of them can imagine the tenacity and ingenuity of the killer they seek . . . and no one is prepared for the savage, shocking instant when everything will change forever.

Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic from Akashic Books is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

Kovic’s powerful and moving New York Times bestselling book, now with a new introduction that sets this classic antiwar story in a contemporary context.

This New York Times bestseller (more than one million copies sold) details the author’s life story (portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oliver Stone film version)—from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country’s most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.

In the Company of Angels: A Novel by Thomas E. Kennedy from Bloomsbury USA is $1.24 (US Kindle)

Product Description:

In the Company of Angels is the powerful story of two damaged souls trying to find their way from darkness toward light.

Imprisoned and tortured for months by Pinochet’s henchmen for teaching political poetry to his students, Bernardo Greene is visited by two angels, who promise him that he will survive to experience beauty and love once again. Months later, at the Torture Rehabilitation Center in Copenhagen, the Chilean exile befriends Michela Ibsen, herself a survivor of domestic abuse. In the long nights of summer, the two of them struggle to heal, to forgive those who have left them damaged, and to trust themselves to love.

Dense with wisdom and humanity, possessed of a timeless, fable-like quality, In the Company of Angels is a riveting read and a testament to the resilience and complexity of the human heart.

The novel marks the first large-scale US publication of a major American author, known internationally but only within literary circles in his homeland.

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Night Waking by Sarah Moss from Granta Books (£0.99) is the Amazon UK Kindle Deal of the Day (July 10) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

On a desolate Hebridean island, historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious seven-year-old and an absent husband. Night Waking is a deeply moving and darkly funny story of islanders, maternal ambivalence and hidden histories.

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series #1) by Laurell K. Hamilton from Penguin Group ($2.99) is the NOOK Daily Find (July 10)

Product Description

In a St. Louis where vampires, werewolves, and magic creatures roam, Anita Blake investigates supernatural crimes with nercomantic powers and hardboiled attitude. Get hooked on the fan-favorite adventures of Laurell K. Hamilton's sexy supernatural investigator today.

* FYI, Amazon has matched this Nook deal: Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series #1) also $2.99

A Summer Secret (The Mysteries of Middlefield Series) by Kathleen Fuller from Thomas Nelson ($1.99) is the NOOK Daily Find for Families (July 10)

Product Description
Growing up in an Amish community is hard work, especially when you're the oldest daughter in a large family. To escape her chores and chaos that is the Mullet household, Mary Beth hides out in an old abandoned barn as often as she can. One day, Mary Beth discovers she's not alone in the old barn, but who could this encroaching stranger possibly be?

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam from ABC News ($1.99) is the Kindle Deal of the Day (July 10) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam's brilliant chronicle of the Korean War provides nuanced portraits of the conflict's major figures within a compelling narrative of the war's political decisions and crucial battles. This account sheds light on a dark corner of American history and honors the men whose heroism it details.

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FYI, There are 40 eBooks from Open Road publishing that are currently down to $3.99 (US Kindle)

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A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket from HarperCollins is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description
Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Imagine tales so terrible that as many as fifty million innocents have been ruined by them – tales so indelibly horrid that the New York Times bestseller list has been unable to rid itself of them for seven years. Now imagine if this scourge suddenly became available in a shameful new edition so sensational, so irresistible, so riddled with lurid new pictures that even a common urchin would wish for it. Who among us would be safe?

Begin at the beginning – evenif it is a bad one – with the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events!

Paranormalcy (Paranormalcy (Quality)) by Kiersten White from HarperTeen is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description
Age Level: 13 and up | Grade Level: 8 and up

Evie’s always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals’ glamours.

But Evie’s about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.

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A Night to Surrender by Tessa Dare from Avon is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Welcome to Spindle Cove, where ladies with delicate constitutions come for the sea air, and men in their prime are . . . nowhere to be found.

Or are they?

Spindle Cove is the destination of choice for certain types of well-bred young ladies: the painfully shy, young wives disenchanted with matrimony, and young girls too enchanted with the wrong men; it is a haven for those who live there.

Victor Bramwell, the new Earl of Rycliff, knows he doesn't belong here. So far as he can tell, there's nothing in this place but spinsters . . .and sheep. But he has no choice, he has orders togather a militia. It's a simple mission, made complicated by the spirited, exquisite Susanna Finch--a woman who is determined to save her personal utopia from the invasion of Bram's makeshift army.

Susanna has no use for aggravating men; Bram has sworn off interfering women. The scene is set for an epic battle; but who can be named the winner when both have so much to lose?

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6 books by Gerald Durrell (£0.99 Each) is the Amazon UK Kindle Deal of the Day (July 11) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

Gerald Durrell's books, both fiction and non-fiction, offer a wry look at life and our relationships with humans and other animals. Today's daily deal offers six of these much-loved books for only £0.99 each.

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton from Bloomsbury USA ($3.99) is the NOOK Daily Find (July 11)

Product Description

Art and science are often considered rival disciplines, but that need not be the case. Here, philosopher Denis Dutton discusses how aesthetic taste is shaped by evolution and, consequently, how appreciation for art is innate. Fascinating analysis and insightful writing make this the must-have book to satisfy your curiousity about the nature of art and the workings of the human mind.

Drowned Wednesday (Keys to the Kingdom Series #3) by Garth Nix from Scholastic ($1.99) is the NOOK Daily Find for Families (July 11)

Product Description
The third spellbinding book in best-selling author Garth Nix's magical Keys to the Kingdom series. After surviving Mister Monday and Grimm Tuesday, Arthur Penhaligon must face his largest opponent yet: Drowned Wednesday, a 126 mile long whale who happens to be the keeper of the third key.

Extended Family by Patrick Kendrick from Thomas & Mercer ($1.99) is the Kindle Deal of the Day (July 11) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

For Fire Marshal Greymon Gift, burn-related murders are nothing new, but a spike of them in his jurisdiction has Gift on alert. When an FBI investigation links the gruesome murders to a deceased doctor, Gift knows the assortment of violent crimes could never have been committed by just one man.

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All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics by James Herriot from Open Road is $7.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Timeless stories from a country veterinarian about the animals and people that shape life in a sleepy English town

Perhaps better than any other writer, James Herriot reveals the ties that bind us to the natural world. Collected here are three of his masterpieces—All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful—which have been winning over animal lovers everywhere for almost fifty years. From his night visits to drafty barns during freezing northern England winters, to the beautiful vitality of rural life in the summertime, to the colorful menagerie of animals—and their owners—that pass through his office, Herriot vividly evokes the daily challenges and joys that come with being a veterinarian.

Witty and heartwarming, these classic books also feature an original introduction from the author’s son, Jim Wight, and bonus archival photos courtesy of the Herriot estate.

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FYI, amazon has matched the Nook deal:

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton also $3.99

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The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers by Lynn Weingarten from HarperTeen is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description
Age Level: 13 and up | Grade Level: 8 and up

If there’s an upside to having your heart broken, it’s this: A broken heart makes you brave.

The first day of sophomore year doesn’t go the way Lucy planned. After a summer apart from her boyfriend, she’s ready to greet him with a special surprise and instead gets a shocking one in return: He’s breaking up with her. Beyond devastated, Lucy has no idea how she’s going to make it through homeroom, let alone the rest of her life.

Enter three stunning girls with the unnatural ability to attract boys and an offer Lucy can’t refuse: They can heal her heart in an instant. And then she’ll be one of them—a member of a sisterhood that is impervious to heartbreak and has access to magic distilled from the tears of brokenhearted boys. But to gain their power, Lucy must get a guy to fall in love with her the old-fashioned way, and then break his heart in the next seven days.

While the sisterhood may need another Heartbreaker, Lucy’s only desire is to get her ex back. But how far is she willing to go, and who is she willing to cross to get what she wants?

The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine from Harper Voyager is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Evildoers beware! Retribution is at hand, thanks to Britain's best-kept secret agents!!

Certainly no strangers to peculiar occurrences, agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are nonetheless stunned to observe a fellow passenger aboard Britain's latest hypersteam train suddenly vanish in a dazzling bolt of lightning. They soon discover this is not the only such disappearance . . . with each case going inexplicably unexamined by the Crown.

The fate of England is once again in the hands of an ingenious archivist paired with a beautiful, fearless lady of adventure. And though their foe be fiendishly clever, so then is Mr. Books . . . and Miss Braun still has a number of useful and unusual devices hidden beneath her petticoats.

Prime Suspect (Jane Tennison) by Lynda La Plante from Harper Paperbacks is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

The moment Jane Tennison takes over Scotland Yard's investigation into the death of sex worker Della Mornay, two grim facts become immediately clear to her. First, that the constabulary's old boy club is determined to hinder, harass, and undermine the new female Detective Chief Inspector at every turn. And second, that their murder victim isn't Della Mornay.

Now the police are a step behind, and a madman is loose on the streets of London. To apprehend the criminal stalking women through the city's shadows, Tennison will have to steel herself against the hostility of her fellow officers and conceal her own mounting obsession with breaking through the glass ceiling of the station house—even as department politics, a crumbling relationship, and a wickedly elusive prime suspect threaten her very existence.

A dark and riveting race against the clock, Prime Suspect is an unforgettable introduction to this bestselling series from Edgar Award-winning author Lynda La Plante.

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Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One by Ian Douglas from HarperCollins is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

The first book in the epic saga of humankind's war of transcendence

There is a milestone in the evolution of every sentient race, a Tech Singularity Event, when the species achieves transcendence through its technological advances. Now the creatures known as humans are near this momentous turning point.

But an armed threat is approaching from deepest space, determined to prevent humankind from crossing over that boundary—by total annihilation if necessary.

To the Sh'daar, the driving technologies of transcendent change are anathema and must be obliterated from the universe—along with those who would employ them. As their great warships destroy everything in their path en route to the Sol system, the human Confederation government falls into dangerous disarray. There is but one hope, and it rests with a rogue Navy Admiral, commander of the kilometer-long star carrier America, as he leads his courageous fighters deep into enemy space towards humankind's greatest conflict—and quite possibly its last.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids by Madeline Levine PhD from HarperCollins is $0.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Madeline Levine has been a practicing psychologist for twenty-five years, but it was only recently that she began to observe a new breed of unhappy teenager. When a bright, personable fifteen-year-old girl, from a loving and financially comfortable family, came into her office with the word empty carved into her left forearm, Levine was startled. This girl and her message seemed to embody a disturbing pattern Levine had been observing. Her teenage patients were bright, socially skilled, and loved by their affluent parents. But behind a veneer of achievement and charm, many of these teens suffered severe emotional problems. What was going on?

Conversations with educators and clinicians across the country as well as meticulous research confirmed Levine's suspicions that something was terribly amiss. Numerous studies show that privileged adolescents are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse -- rates that are higher than those of any other socioeconomic group of young people in this country. The various elements of a perfect storm -- materialism, pressure to achieve, perfectionism, disconnection -- are combining to create a crisis in America's culture of affluence. This culture is as unmanageable for parents -- mothers in particular -- as it is for their children. While many privileged kids project confidence and know how to make a good impression, alarming numbers lack the basic foundation of psychological development: an authentic sense of self. Even parents often miss the signs of significant emotional problems in their "star" children.

In this controversial look at privileged families, Levine offers thoughtful, practical advice as she explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies parenting practices that are toxic to healthy self-development and that have contributed to epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in the most unlikely place -- the affluent family.

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The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford from HarperCollins is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood.

Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement.

Not since Ray Bradbury's classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor's edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction's most fearless and inventive artists.

Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life by James Van Praagh from HarperCollins is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Based on over twenty-five years of spirit communication and thousands of professional readings, world-famous medium James Van Praagh shares with readers the personal regrets, misgivings, remorse, and, most important, the advice of the dead who have chosen him as a medium. These spirits have a great deal to say about what they have learned and discovered on the other side and how we, the living, can benefit from their experiences.

Unfinished Business is filled with shocking and emotional stories of Van Praagh's communication with loved ones who cross over the barrier between the living and the dead to send messages to those whom they have left behind. Through these pro-found true stories, Van Praagh guides us on an adventure into the spirit world. The lessons for the living that he has learned from these experiences range from the dangers of emotional baggage caused by guilt, fear, and regret to the importance of karma, forgiveness, and taking responsibility for our actions. Van Praagh shares with us now the wisdom that, without him, we would only gain after death.

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Citizen Vince (P.S.) by Jess Walter from Harper is $3.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

At 1:59 a.m. in Spokane, Washington—eight days before the 1980 presidential election—Vince Camden pockets his stash of stolen credit cards and drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. Along with a neurotic hooker girlfriend, this is the total sum of Vince's new life. But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes his sordid past is still too close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, he'll negotiate a coast-to-coast maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters—only to find that redemption might exist, of all places, in the voting booth.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson from HarperCollins is $3.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable -- yet strangely inverted -- world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside -- the Extramuros -- for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates -- at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros -- a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose -- as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world -- as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

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Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates from HarperTeen is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description
Age Level: 13 and up | Grade Level: 8 and up

Big Mouth

No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me?

Ugly Girl

All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

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California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker from HarperCollins is $1.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description

The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more—unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has ushered in the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And a terrible crime touches them all in ways they could never have anticipated when the mutilated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.