Hailey Tarbell is no typical girl. As one of the Banished who arrived from Ireland generations ago, Hailey has the power to heal – and, as she recently learned, to create zombies if she heals someone too late. But now, Hailey is finally getting a chance at a normal life. After realizing the good and bad sides of her power, Hailey has survived the unimaginable to settle with her aunt, Prairie, and her little brother, Chub, in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Finally Hailey has a loving family, nice clothes, and real friends. But her safe little world is blown apart when she tries to contact her secret boyfriend, Kaz – and alerts the incredibly dangerous man who's looking for her to her true whereabouts. Views: 23
Summer, 1996. A sever thunderstorm is heading towards the small town of Blare, Indiana. A community of hopeless dreamers and broken hearted losers. On the edge of dusk the wind and thunder pick up and the coming of night will bring nightmares to the forefront for a failed musician, a rich kid with suicidal dreams and a thirty something female bartender with a broken past. Views: 23
Miranda… I was always the life of the party, the happy one. Until Preston killed my soul. When he came into my life, he destroyed me. I was a shell of my former self, pretending to be fine while wishing I wouldn't wake up the next day. I never dreamed my best friend would come back into my life...and bring Brad Nicholson with her. I never dreamed the homicide detective with the cocky attitude could show me my worth again. He could show me that my life could be amazing every day. Until the day he found out about my past with Preston. Then, I was sure he'd see the real Miranda and ditch me for good. Brad… From a young age, I made a decision. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and from that point on, my work molded me. Everything became routine. Casual. Until Mackenzie walked into my life, bringing her best friend, Miranda, with her. From the first moment I saw Miranda, I knew she could be someone special. I didn’t have time for relationships, but she was different. She was a piece of the puzzle that could be missing. But she was broken, I could see that. And all I wanted to do was turn her into the girl I knew she really was beneath her perfectly placed mask. Views: 23
Mindalby, a small town, a community, a home. But when the mill that supports the local cotton farmers and employs many of the town's residents closes unexpectedly, old tensions are exposed and new rifts develop. Everyone is affected and some react better than others, but one thing is certain: living on the edge of the outback means they have to survive together, or let their town die. When fashion designer Serena Quinlan arrives in Mindalby for the annual cotton festival, she is hoping to do two things: meet local leather worker Paul Carey and check out all the 50–year–old men to see if they might be her father. She doesn't expect the explosive attraction she feels towards Paul, nor the untimely and unwanted arrival of her ex–fiance. When her search for her father leads to unexpected results, Serena will be torn between the past she came searching for and the possibility of a future she never expected. Views: 23
About the AuthorBryce Courtenay, bestselling Australian author, wrote his first book, The Power of One, at the age of fifty-five. This became the largest-selling book by a living Australian author within Australia, with over half a million copies sold locally. Having lived in Sydney for forty years, Bryce is a patriotic Australian, who is passionate about Australia becoming a truly great nation in the 21st century. Committed to the cause of literacy and the importance of motivating young people to read, he is actively involved with literacy programs in primary schools Australia-wide. From AudioFileAn Australian family of drunks and garbage collectors surprises itself and the community with an abundance of grace, intelligence, and courage. Mole Maloney's first-person narrative spans the years from WWII to the Vietnam War. Humphrey Bower, speaking as Mole, delivers every possible nuance and emotion of his character's story, and shows a startling aptitude for other dialects as well. Close family friends and enemies include surviving Polish Jews, an East Indian healer, an Irish Catholic priest, Japanese prison camp soldiers, and many others. All of them, young and old, male and female, spring to vivid life in Bower's versatile voice. Narrative passages and dialogue elicit tears and laughter by turns, without a minute of boredom in the 30-hour production. R.P.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine Views: 23
Join the Sleepover Club: Frankie, Kenny, Felicity, Rosie and Lyndsey, five girls who just want to have fun – but who always end up in mischief! Join the girls as they struggle with their consciences. Should they concentrate on their SAT test revision, or their fab gym routines? Read on and find out… Views: 23
Amazon.com ReviewSet among the sweeping skirts and social upheavals of Edwardian London, Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels is a meditation on change, loss, and recovery. Her central characters are two young girls of the same age, whose family plots are situated side-by-side in a cemetery modeled on Highgate. Lavinia Waterhouse is respectably middle-class, devoted, like her conventional, doting mother, to the right way to do things, although suspiciously well- schooled in subjects like funerary sculpture and the English practices of mourning. Her friend Maude Coleman comes from a slightly more privileged and free-thinking background. In contrast with Lavinia's mother, Maude's mother Kitty Coleman is well-educated by the standards of the day, and it has made her restless and irritable. But neither her reading, nor her gardening, nor her affair with the somber, high-thinking governor of the cemetery is enough for Kitty. She comes alive only when she discovers the women's suffrage movement, and her devotion to the cause takes her away from Maude in every sense.Although the point of view shifts between many characters (with even the Coleman's maid and cook getting their say, sometimes unnecessarily), Falling Angels is essentially the children's story, since it is their lives that are most open to change. The narrative spans exactly the years of Edward VII's reign, from the morning after his mother Queen Victoria's death in January 1901 to his own death in May 1910. Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring) deftly uses the nation's dramatically different mourning for these two monarchs to signal the social transformations of the period. Readers at ease with English history will find Falling Angels an unusually subtle novel, with an emotional range that recalls the best of the Edwardian novelists, E.M. Forster, and his quintessential novel of Edwardian manners, Howard's End. --Regina MarlerFrom Publishers WeeklyNo small part of the appeal of Chevalier's excellent debut, Girl with a Pearl Earring, was its plausibility; readers could readily accept the idea that Vermeer's famous painting might indeed have been created under circumstances similar to Chevalier's imaginative scenario. The same cannot be said about her second novel. While Chevalier again proves adept at evoking a historical era this time, London at the turn of the 19th century she has devised a plot whose contrivances stretch credibility. When Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, both five years of age, meet at their families' adjoining cemetery plots on the day after Queen Victoria's death, the friendship that results between sensitive, serious-minded Maude and narcissistic, melodramatic Livy is not unlikely, despite the difference in social classes. But the continuing presence in their lives of a young gravedigger, Simon Field, is. Far too cheeky for a boy of his age and class, Simon plays an important part in the troubles that will overtake the two families. Other characters are gifted with insights inappropriate to their age or station in life. Yet Chevalier again proves herself an astute observer of a social era, especially in her portrayal of the lingering sentimentality, prejudices and early stirrings of social change of the Victorian age. When Maude's mother, Kitty, becomes obsessively involved with the emerging suffragette movement, the plot gathers momentum. While it's obvious that tragedy is brewing, Chevalier shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop. While not as accomplished a work as Girl, the ironies inherent in the dramatic unfolding of two families' lives ultimately endow this novel with an impressive moral vision. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Oct. 15) Forecast: The popularity of Girl with a Pearl Earring among reading groups and its record as a bestseller will provide a ready audience for Chevalier's new effort. The perennial appeal of books set in post-Victorian England should be another asset. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Views: 23
Xander is shot at while trying to save Buffy's mother from the Sons of Entropy who abduct her so they can trade her for Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Their leader, II Maestro wants to present Buffy to a demon who thirsts for a Slayer's blood. In a bid to save Xander, Cordelia and Willow walk the ghost roads in order to reach the Cauldron of Bran, the Blessed. As the breaches between the two worlds have been opened, the ghost roads have turned into a battlefield where the ghosts are battling the demons from the pit. In the midst of all this chaos, Belphegor arrives in Sunnydale for Buffy. In a crypt, her blood turning to ice in her veins, Buffy hears his ominous threatening. Will Buffy be able to escape and save the others from the horror of the evil that surrounds them? Views: 23
