Darling, this is Younes. Yesterday he was my nephew, today he is our son'. Younes' life is changed forever when his poverty-stricken parents surrender him to the care of his more affluent uncle. Re-named Jonas, he grows up in a colourful colonial Algerian town, and forges a unique friendship with a group of boys, an enduring bond that nothing - not even the Algerian Revolt - will shake. He meets Emilie - a beautiful, beguiling girl who captures the hearts of all who see her - and an epic love story is set in motion. Time and again Jonas is forced to to choose between two worlds: Algerian or European; past or present; love or loyalty, and finally decide if he will surrender to fate or take control of his own destiny at last. AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. Views: 48
"Let's face facts: We may be the most boring twelve-year-olds on the planet."Henry Mosley decides that he and his pals Riley and Reed have got to liven things up. They need to go on some earth-shaking adventures and make a name for themselves. Henry is the mastermind; Riley's the cautious researcher who's prepared for anything. And somehow fearful Reed always ends up with the scariest, craziest assignments. Roped into wacky attempts to break world records, reenact scenes from books, solve a hundred-year-old murder, and carry out Henry's other inspired ideas, Riley and Reed follow their fearless leader everywhere: into the wilderness (truly terrifying), inside a bull-riding ring, into a haunted house, off the neighbors' roof, and into a cataclysmic collision with explosive life-forms. Gary Paulsen brings all his trademark humor to this fast-paced novel of fun and disaster.From the Hardcover edition. Views: 48
SUMMARY: Falling for the children's doctor--and his twins!Nurse Dinah Corday has temporarily escaped to the remote calm of White Elk. But a warm welcome is the last thing she receives from the town's pediatric surgeon. Dr. Eric Ramsey couldn't be more standoffish--or more good-looking! Yet Dinah senses hidden depths beneath the widower's cool exterior, and together with his adorable twin daughters, he soon gets under her skin.Dinah is the first woman to catch Eric's eye in more than five years, and his twins love her. But Eric must ask himself if he's ready to let his broken heart be mended.... Views: 48
From Publishers WeeklyBerrier, an award-winning journalist for the Roanoke Times tells the fascinating story of his grandfather Clayton and great-uncle Saford Hall, two Virginia musicians who were playing bluegrass before the term was even coined. The Halls played together until Saford's death in 1999 (he performed his last gig just months before with the help of oxygen), but it was ultimately the draft that cut their promising career short. Before WWII, the band they were part of had played for thousands, released records, and were heard six days a week on regional radio programs; after the war their careers stalled and the brothers took factory jobs to survive. Berrier writes with an appreciation for Appalachia, a colloquial voice ("There were just too many puissant high school boys catting around"), and nostalgia for how things were in his grandfather's time, "the good old days, which you and I will only know through the stories we inherit." But he's not sentimental, noting the darkness inherent in the stories and music, the "unholy communion of desperation, poverty, hunger and violence" in Depression-era Virginia. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistLots of books are written about performers who have made it big in show business. Berrier tells the story of twin brothers, Saford and Clayton Hall, both talented musicians, who did not. Regional celebrities in Roanoke, Virginia, and regulars on the radio in that city, where they played “hillbilly music,” the Hall brothers never quite broke into national prominence. Then the momentum of their career was cut short by World War II, never to be fully regained. Berrier, the grandson of Clayton Hall, uses interviews with family members and his mother’s brief memoir of her father to recount their lives and careers, from a childhood spent in rural poverty to an adolescence in which the twin brothers discovered a talent for music, and an early adulthood in which it looked, for a time, like they were escaping a dirt-poor world where the best job was working at the local furniture factory. Berrier, a reporter at the Roanoke Times, combines a journalist’s love of getting the facts right with the art of a front-porch storyteller. --Jack Helbig Views: 48
Book 3 in the Eclipsis series of Lady Amalie's memoirs Amelia Herzog leaves the seminary of La Sapienza to visit Aranyi, the home of her lover, Dominic-Leandro, Margrave Aranyi. But a rebellion powered by a telepathic weapon threatens to destroy their relationship and their world. Views: 48
Maybe out there in the country she could catch her breath, learn to breathe again...Happily married, and owner of two successful boutiques, Jade longs to begin a family with her husband, Max. But when she discovers that Max has an illegitimate son – who he wants her to help raise – Jade's life is turned upside down.She flees to her childhood home, a rambling Iowa farmhouse, with enough room to breathe. There – while her mother's health grows fragile, and the tug of her first love grows stronger – Jade begins to question everything she thought she knew about family, love, and motherhood.In the wide–open landscape, Jade begins to see a future that doesn't rest on the power of her past, but in the goodness of God's tender mercies. Views: 48
A stunning first novel that is an evocative reimagining of a World War II civilian disasterOn a March night in 1943, on the steps of a London Tube station, 173 people die in a crowd seeking shelter from what seemed to be another air raid. When the devastated neighborhood demands an inquiry, the job falls to magistrate Laurence Dunne. In this beautifully crafted novel, Jessica Francis Kane paints a vivid portrait of London at war. As Dunne investigates, he finds the truth to be precarious, even damaging. When he is forced to reflect on his report several decades later, he must consider whether the course he chose was the right one. The Report is a provocative commentary on the way all tragedies are remembered and endured. Views: 48
"So this is surfing in Britain, I told myself as I grumpily walked up a slope of wet rocks and wispy beach grass, trying to keep a foothold as rain and wind both tried their utmost to send me skidding back down to the freezing beach below."Tom Anderson has always loved surfing – anywhere except the UK. But a chance encounter leads him to a series of adventures on home surf... As he visits the popular haunts and secret gems of British surfing he meets the Christians who pray for waves (and get them), loses a competition to a non-existent surfer, is nearly drowned in the River Severn and has a watery encounter with a pedigree sheep. All this rekindles his love affair with the freezing fun that is surfing the North Atlantic. Views: 48
Novelist, critic and biographer, Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. This collection shows her to be a leading practitioner of the art of the short story, presenting her complete short fiction for the first time in a single volume, spanning four decades, from 1964 to 2000. Several of the stories, like The Dower House at Kellynch, are set in Somerset and Dorset and reflect their author's intimate knowledge of the land and flora there, but their settings also range as far as Elba and Cappadocia. Taken as a whole, the stories reflect the social changes of the past forty years, by showing the English at home and abroad. In 'The Gifts of War', peace-protesting students clash with a mother buying a toy for her son, with tragic consequences. An Englishman on honeymoon has a brief but significant epiphany, finding a shared humanity with a Moroccan crowd in 'Hassan's Tower'. Their protagonists are men and women, husbands and... Views: 48
