Mr Gum is a complete horror who hates children, animals, fun and corn on the cob. This book's all about him. And an angry fairy and Jake the dog, and a little girl called Polly and an evil, stinky butcher all covered in guts. There's heroes and sweets and adventures and everything. Views: 15
When Griffin's past collides with his present, will it cost the lives of everyone he loves?Between the threat of a world-ending invasion from the Outside and unwelcome revelations about his own nature, Percival Endicott Whyborne is under a great deal of strain. His husband, Griffin Flaherty, wants to help—but how can he, when Whyborne won't tell him what's wrong?When a man from Griffin's past murders a sorcerer, the situation grows even more dire. Once a simple farmer from Griffin's hometown of Fallow, the assassin now bears a terrifying magical corruption, one whose nature even Whyborne can't explain.To keep Griffin's estranged mother safe, they must travel to a dying town in Kansas. But as drought withers the crops of Fallow, a sinister cult sinks its roots deep into the arid soil. And if the cult's foul harvest isn't stopped in time, Fallow will be only the first city to fall.Fallow is the eighth book in the Whyborne & Griffin series, where magic, mystery, and m/m romance... Views: 15
We first met Tink when he came to live in Crow Cove as a young boy in Eidi. Now hard times have come to the little settlement, and their food supply is dwindling. Tink, with the help of a newcomer to Crow Cove, saves his friends from starvation by learning how to fish-and also learns important lessons about the complexities of human nature, the importance of compassion, and his own valued place in his community. Tink is a strong new addition to the much-acclaimed Children of Crow series. Views: 15
Between 1794 and 1815 the Royal Navy repeatedly crushed her enemies at sea in a period of military dominance that equals any in history. When Napoleon eventually died in exile, the Lords of the Admiralty ordered that the original dispatches from seven major fleet battles - The Glorious First of June (1794), St Vincent (1797), Camperdown (1797), The Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801), Trafalgar (1805) and San Domingo (1806) - should be gathered together and presented to the Nation. These letters, written by Britain's admirals, captains, surgeons and boatswains and sent back home in the midst of conflict, were bound in an immense volume, to be admired as a jewel of British history. Sam Willis, one of Britain's finest naval historians, stumbled upon this collection by chance in the British Library in 2010 and soon found out that only a handful of people knew of its existence. The rediscovery of these first-hand reports, and the vivid commentary they provide, has enabled Willis to... Views: 15
Megan Barrows has retired from a brief career as a ghostbusting psychic and now uses her sixth sense to fill her Seattle antiques store with objects with happy pasts. After once nearly having the soul sucked out of her by a malevolent spirit, she prefers a quiet life. Case Lambert is a real estate prospector who restores old houses, then sells them for profit. He has just bought a dilapidated mansion so amazing that he wants to keep it for himself, but the house appears to be haunted. Seriously haunted. A few inquiries lead him to Megan Barrows. Megan at first refuses to help, but Case is a master of persuasion. Moving into the mansion, they discover that one of the ghosts has a thing for Case -- and there may be even more amorous spirits inside this veritable paranormal vortex. But it soon becomes clear that no one -- dead or alive -- can stop Megan and Case from ending up in each other's arms. . . . Views: 15
Jo is determined to follow her dream of striking gold in the cariboo. Views: 15
Katherine of Valois was born a princess, the daughter of King Charles VI of France, but her father was known to most of the nation as “Charles the Mad” by the time Katherine was old enough to know him. Given to unpredictable fits of insanity, the monarch was not a reliable parent. The young princess lived a secluded, unsteady life with her brothers and sisters, awaiting their father’s sane moments, suffering through his madness, watching their mother take up with their uncle, and wondering what the future would hold. Katherine’s fortunes appeared to be changing when she was married off at age nineteen to King Henry V of England. Within two years, she gave birth to an heir, but her happiness was fleeting—soon after the birth of her son, she lost her husband to an illness acquired in battle. Exiled from court, forbidden to return to France, and no longer allowed access to her child, Katherine’s every action was watched carefully; with Joan of Arc inciting the French to overthrow English rule, the Queen’s loyalty to England was a matter of intense suspicion. A relic of a former age, Katherine had brought her dowry and borne her heir, what use was she to England? The matter was quickly settled, she would live out her remaining years alone, far from the seat of power. But no one, even Katherine herself, could have anticipated that she would fall in love with and secretly marry one of her guardians, Owen Tudor—or that a generation later, their grandson would become the first king of the great Tudor dynasty. Views: 15
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved."I thought Julius Caesar burned down the Great Library," Annja Creed said. She picked her way gingerly across a small lot of churned-up dust with chunks of yellow-brick rubble in it, glad for the durability of her hiking boots. She was sheltered from the already intense morning Mediterranean sun by the floppy straw hat she wore over her yellow T-shirt and khaki cargo pants."He did, Ms. Creed," her handsome young Egyptian archaeologist escort said, turning to smile at her. He had a narrow, dark hawk's face and flashing eyes. His white lab smock hung from wide shoulders and flapped around the backs of his long skinny legs in the sea breeze snaking around the close-set buildings. "Among others.""Call me Annja, please," she said.He laughed. His teeth were as perfect as his English. His trace of accent made young Dr. Ismail al-Maghrabi seem that much more exotic. I love my job, she thought."If you will call me Ismail," he said."Done," she replied with a laugh.Ahead of them stood a ten-foot-high loafshaped translucent plastic bubble. The rumbling of generators forced them to raise their voices as they approached. Some kind of structure had recently been demolished here, hard by the Alexandrian waterfront in the old Greek quarter. Big grimy warehouses and blocks of shops with cracked-stucco fronts crowded together on all sides. Although Alexandria was a major tourist destination the rumble and stink of buses and trucks through the narrow streets suggested little of charm and less of antiquity. Still, Annja's heart thumped in her throat with anticipation."For one thing," al-Maghrabi said, "the library was very extensive indeed. Also parts of it appear to have been scattered across the Greek quarter. As you probably know, in 2004 a team of Egyptian and Polish archaeologists uncovered a series of what appear to be lecture halls a few blocks from here."She nodded. "I read about it on the BBC Web site at the time. A very exciting development.""Most. The library was a most remarkable facility, as much a great university and research center as anything else. Along with the famous book collections, and of course reading rooms and auditoria, it offered dormitories for its visitors, lush gardens, even gymnasia with swimming pools.""Really? I had no idea."He stopped to open the latch to a door in a wooden frame set into the inflated tent. "The envelope is for climate control," he explained, opening the door for her. "Positive air pressure allows us to keep humidity and pollution at bay. Our treasures are probably not exceptionally vulnerable to such influences, considering their condition, but why take chances?"The interior seemed gloomy after the brilliant daylight. Annja paused to let her eyes adjust as he resecured the door. There was little to see but a hole cut into the ground. "You seem to enjoy some pretty enviable resources here, if you don't mind my saying so, Ismail.""Not at all! Our discoveries here have attracted worldwide attention, which in turn helps to secure the resources to develop and conserve them properly. For that I believe we have to thank the Internet—and of course your own television network, which provides a share of our funding.""Yes. I am thrilled they allowed me to come here," Annja said."I'm told the scrolls contain revelations about the lost civilization of Atlantis." Annja couldn't mask the skepticism in her voice."Come with me. I trust you don't mind a certain amount of sliding into holes in the ground?"Annja laughed. "I am a real archaeologist, Ismail. I don't just play one on TV."She didn't actually have to slide. A slanting tunnel about three feet wide and five feet high had been dug down to a subterranean chamber perhaps a dozen feet below ground level. Hunched over, they followed thick yellow electrical cords down the shallow ramp. "As you no doubt know," her guide said, "the library is believed to have been built early in the third century B.C. by Ptolemy II, around the temple to the Muses built by his father, the first Ptolemy.""That's the Mouseion, isn't it?" she said."Origin of our word museum?""Yes. It was also said that Ptolemy III decreed that all travelers arriving in Alexandria had to surrender any books or scrolls in their possession to be copied by official scribes before being returned to them. While we don't know for certain if that is true, the library's collection swiftly grew to be the grandest in the Mediterranean world."They reached a level floor of stone polished slick by many feet over many years. Banks of yellowish floodlights lit a chamber perhaps ten by twenty feet. Three people were crowded inside, two on hands and knees rooting in what appeared to be some kind of lumpy mound. One was bending over a modern table. The air was cool and smelled of soil and mildew.The person at the table straightened and turned toward them, beaming. He was a tall, pot-bellied young man with crew-cut blond hair and an almost invisible goatee on the uppermost of his several chins. "Greetings! You must be Annja Creed."He held out a big hand. Annja knew at once he was a working archaeologist. He looked soft and pale overall, but his hand was callused and cracked like a stonemason's, from digging, lifting and the painstaking work of chipping artifacts from a stony matrix with a dentist's steel pick."This is Dr. Szczepan Pilitowski," Ismail said. He struggled with the first name—it came out sounding close enough to Stepan. "He's our expert in extracting the scrolls safely from the ground.""We all do what we can," Pilitowski said in a cheerful tone. "There is much to be done."The other two, a man and a woman, turned around and picked themselves up from the floor. They wore kneepads, Annja noticed. One was a man, the other a woman. Both were thin and dark, and she took them for Egyptians."This is Ali Mansur and Maria Frodyma," Ismail said. The man just bobbed his head and grinned shyly.The woman stuck out her hand. She wore her black hair in a bun, and had a bright, birdlike air to her. "Please call me Maria," she said in a Polish accent as Annja shook her hand."Annja.""This was a library storeroom," Ismail said."Most of the scrolls were kept in locked cabinets, in chambers such as this. Only the most popular items, or those specifically requested by scholars, were stored in the reading rooms.""So that heap…?" Annja said, nodding toward the rubble mound where Maria and Ali had been working."The remains of a cabinet," Pilitowski said."Damaged by the fire, it collapsed and mostly decomposed, leaving the burned scrolls behind.""How many scrolls did the library possess?" Annja asked. "Or does anyone really know?""Not precisely," Maria said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand. She seemed to show a quick smile to the bulky and jovial Pilitowski, whose own smile broadened briefly. "Some have hypothesized it held as few as forty thousand scrolls. Others suggest the founding Ptolemy set a goal of half a million. On the basis of what we have found, we feel confident conjecturing the former limit is far too low. As to the upper—" She shrugged expressively."This isn't my time period," Annja confessed, believing as she did in professional full disclosure. "But I can certainly see how the recovery of any number of scrolls at all from the ancient world is a terrific thing.""Oh, yes," Maria replied."And here you see three of them," Pilitowski boomed. A vast callused paw swept dramatically toward the table.They looked like three forearm-sized chunks of wood fished out of a campfire, Annja thought. They lay on a sheet of white plastic."These are actual scrolls?""Yes, yes," Pilitowski said. "My friends and I extracted them this morning."Annja felt a thrill. She'd seen older artifacts—she'd seen Egyptian papyri a thousand years older in the British Museum. But there was something about these scrolls, the thrill of something lost for two thousand years and believed to be indecipherable even if found. Yet modern technology was about to restore the contents of these lumps of char to the world."Even if they're just grocery lists," she said a little breathlessly, "this is just so exciting."The others just smiled at her. They knew. "Who really burned the library, anyway?" she asked Ismail. "Was it Julius Caesar?"The others looked to Ismail. Ali was still grinning but had yet to utter a syllable. Annja's first thought had been that he didn't speak English. But that appeared to be the common language on the multinational dig. She began to suspect he was just shy."Caesar was one of the culprits," her guide said."One of them?""And not the first," Maria said. The archaeologists seemed glad of the break. Annja understood that. They loved their work, she could tell, as she loved the work when she was engaged in it. But it could be brutally arduous, and breaks were welcome."The first major fire damage occurred around 88 B.C.," the woman said, "when much of Alexandria burned down during civil disorders. This may have been the greatest destruction. Then during the Roman civil wars in 47 B.C., Julius Caesar chased his rival, Pompey, into the city. When Egyptian forces attacked him, Caesar set fire to the dockyards and the Egyptian fleet. The fire probably spread through trade goods piled on the docks waiting to be loaded on ships. The library lay near the waterfront, like now. Many scrolls were lost in the conflagration. Also it appears Roman soldiers stole many scrolls and sent them to Rome." Views: 15
48 Hours Callista Arman When Maddie Brindisi asks Patrick McIllhenny to help her find the perfect man, he wishes he has the guts to claim her for himself. But Maddie wants tall, dark and forceful, not laid-back, red-haired and underachieving. If the sexy junior attorney ever found out that she's the submissive star of geeky Patrick's D/s dreams, she would laugh him out of town. Then Patrick realizes the club Maddie's selected is part of the D/s scene, and the older man she's set her sights on is a powerful Dom. Maddie has some interesting fantasies of her own, and she's determined to explore them-once she ditches Patrick. Rafael Montevale has claimed forty-eight hours of obedience from a lovely new sub. And yet, her companion doesn't want to let her go. Interesting. Could it be his sub's unassuming young escort has the soul of a Dom? It might be amusing to watch the fiery young woman submit to a man she clearly considers beneath her. Perhaps Rafael will consider taking on a weekend apprentice, just for the pleasure of watching Madeline squirm… Two men. One woman. Forty-eight hours. Views: 15
Amidst the turbulence of revolutionary Hungary, a Scottish governess falls in love with a young, peasant-born radical determined to change the world. In 1847, with Europe on the verge of revolution, Katie Kettles travels to Hungary as governess to the family of Count Istvan Szelenyi. On the journey, she first encounters Lajos Lazar making incendiary speeches from a table-top in Vienna. Though instantly drawn to him, he is not her only distraction from her duties, for Katie has her own vengeful agenda which begins to stutter as she reluctantly becomes involved with the Szelenyis' lives and loves. While Hungary plunges into political upheaval, Katie faces a personal revolution to resolve both her family issues and her passionate relationship with Lajos. Through Katie's eyes, we see the euphoria of a bloodless revolution victorious over an unjust and stagnant regime, and the tragedy of a lost war that was so very nearly won. Views: 15
Confused and angry, Dr. Sarah Wainwright returned to the Georgia island of St. James in search of answers to her husband's mysterious death--in an apparent lovers' tryst with the wife of wealthy industrialist Trent Donner. Anger seemed to be the only edge Sarah had--Trent's control of the island and his protectiveness for his young daughter were enough to drive even this scandal back into the shadows.A man whose life depended on keeping his secrets; a woman whose future depended on learning the truth--could her quest set them free, or would it destroy them all? Views: 15
Two in the Bush is a record of the six-month journey which took Gerald Durrell, his wife Jacquie, and two cameramen through New Zealand, Australia and Malaya. The object was, first, to see what was being done about the conservation of wild life in these countries, and, secondly, to make a series of television films for the BBC. They were introduced to many rare and remarkable animals -- Royal Albatrosses, Tuataras, Duck-Billed Platypuses, Flying Lizards and Long-Nosed Bandicoots, as well as to some equally unusual humans. Anyone who has read The Overloaded Ark, The Bafut Beagles or The Whispering Land will have enjoyed Gerald Durrell's enthusiastic adventuring and his delight in the absurdity of the situations in which he finds himself. His observation of animal -- and human -- behaviour is always informative and often hilarious. 'Delightfully readable and often very funny.' Daily Mail 'An account of Gerald Durrell's tour of New Zealand, Australia and Malaya in search of... Views: 15
