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Ledman Pickup

If you were a sentient gadget, what would you do? Travel? See the world? After overhearing one warehouse worker tell another that 'Green Bay is better than San Francisco', a newly conscious handheld device decides to re-route its shipping destination. From there one hell of a wild goose chase is on as its owners race to bring it in before it gets away. (Book Two of the "All Geeked Up" trilogy)If you were a sentient gadget, what would you do? Travel? See the world? After overhearing one warehouse worker tell another that 'Green Bay is better than San Francisco', a newly conscious handheld device decides to re-route its shipping destination. Along the way its talent for personality recording and playback leads a number of unsuspecting human carriers through a host of changes. (Book Two of the "All Geeked Up" trilogy)
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Man to Man

Man to Man
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The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories

It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg\'s pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek for responsible employment.
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The Mystery Boys and the Inca Gold

The whole mysterious affair puzzled Cliff. To have those queer strangers appear suddenly at Aunt Lucy’s with their unusual questions threw him a little off his stride. “No,” he answered the stocky Spaniard with the crafty, shifty eyes, “I did not get a letter from Peru. Who wrote it? Is it from my father? How do you know about it?” While the Spaniard interpreted the answer to his companion Cliff studied them both. If the tall, stalwart man with copper skin and piercing eyes was not an Indian, Cliff had never seen a truthful picture of one. He wore European clothes but he was not at his ease in them. While he listened to the queer language which the Spaniard used he kept his eyes boring Cliff and Cliff saw that his denial was not believed. Copper-skin muttered something and the Spaniard turned again to Cliff. “You not get letter? Mi amigo, my friend, say it mail ‘nine, ten week’ ago.” “I can’t help that,” Cliff declared, “It hasn’t come. Who is it from—my father?” Cliff had not heard from his father in nearly five years: naturally he was anxious about the scholar who studied ancient civilizations and who had gone to Peru to write a book about the Incas.
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Truly, Madly Viking

When a tenth-century Viking's ship blows off course, he finds himself in the twenty-first century and in the arms of a successful and beautiful American psychologist.
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A Matter of Angels

'The Virgin Mary had more lines but I had the better costume.' Nine year old Nyla is cast as an angel in her school play. Well, at least she’s not a sheep. So far… This school production is not pretty. It opens up the cracks in the social and religious divides, and all those dark family secrets. Told with wry humour and compassion. For everyone who's ever been in a school play.'The Virgin Mary had more lines but I had the better costume.'After the Christmas play was announced, I had been dreaming all autumn of the Virgin Mary and the essence of femininity that I knew the role possessed if I could only get it.No longer would I have to pull on pants, hide my hair, swagger around with plastic swords or sit in a chair uttering the mild regrets of middle age. No, for once I would be the centre of delight and attention, with a husband, a donkey and various deferential well-wishers from all walks of life to support my soft and vulnerable womanhood while at the same time getting the lion’s share of lines and scenes.Tender, frail, passive and beautiful, I would be the chosen one. The star. But since I had the wrong religion, this was not to be.'For everyone who has ever been in a school play, or whose daughter is in one right now. At the age of nine, Nyla runs into the hard facts of life. Her school nativity play turns out to be a pretty ugly affair. It opens up the cracks in the social divides, religious discrimination and dark family secrets.Told with wry humour and compassion for the pain of children, unseen by adults, a complex web of history unfolds underneath the rivalries and small disasters of Nyla's school play in which she is cast as an angel. Well, at least she’s not a sheep. So far…‘However, when I saw the costume, I started to love the angel.For the first time in my life, my costume white, like the costume for a princess, it even had little frills and a starchy petticoat.I stared at it and couldn’t believe I was actually going to put this on.Instinctively I looked for my sister but she wasn’t there. This costume was mine.It was shiny and smooth and soft and pliable, except for the bits where the petticoat propped it up. In those places it was grand and majestic.When I tried it on, I could feel the softness all over my skin and I wanted to swoon. Never mind that nobody was there to catch me, for me it was all in the falling.I opened my braids and my hair cascaded over my shoulders and the dress. My hair, of course, was a rich dark brown like the colour of well-polished furniture, as my mother never tired of pointing out. Not that we had a lot of such furniture, but perhaps it was part of my mother’s aspirations, garnered from the romance novels she loved to read when my father wasn’t looking. From photographic evidence I knew that I had actually started life as a blonde, like my mother and sister, and like our Virgin Mary. But now, at the age of nine, my hair had already darkened towards the dark brown that would accompany me throughout adulthood. This process was a process of failure, foreshadowing a dark fate. Luckily my sister had so far retained her honey coloured hair.’
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Courage

After surviving a fire, Courage needs to find a lass with the power of magic to heal his terrible scars. When he runs across Lorissa Burns, he thinks the redhead is the perfect girl for the job. But when her touch fails to heal him, he can't figure it out. Lorissa Burns is a witch, sure enough, even though she doesn't know it. She's even performed magic before, unwittingly. Will her magic be enough to heal the once-beautiful gargoyle? And when danger threatens the two teenagers, will it be enough to save their lives?
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Black Empire

A pioneering work of Afrofuturism and antiracist fiction by the author of Black No More, about a Black scientist who masterminds a worldwide conspiracy to take back the African continent from imperial powersA Penguin Classic“An amazing serial story of Black genius against the world” is how Black Empire was promoted upon its original publication as a serial in The Pittsburgh Courier from 1936 to 1938. It tells the electrifying tale of Dr. Henry Belsidus, a Black scientific genius desperate to free his people from the crushing tyranny of racism. To do so, he concocts a plot to enlist a crew of Black intellectuals to help him take over the world, cultivating a global network to reclaim Africa from imperial powers and punish Europe and America for white supremacy and their crimes against the planet’s Black population.At once a daring, high-stakes science fiction adventure and a strikingly innovative Afrofuturist classic,...
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Death in Zanzibar

Written by celebrated author M. M. Kaye, Death in Zanzibar is a wonderfully evocative mystery ... Dany Ashton is invited to vacation at her stepfather's house in Zanzibar, but even before her airplane takes off there is a stolen passport, a midnight intruder--and murder. In Zanzibar, the family house is Kivulimi, the mysterious "House of Shade," where Dany and the rest of the guests learn that one of them is a desperate killer. The air of freedom and nonchalance that opened the house party fades into growing terror, as the threat of further violence flowers in the scented air of Zanzibar. Richly evocative, Death in Zanzibar will charm long-time fans and introduce new ones to this celebrated writer.
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Vegas Love

*Caught up in a firestorm of tabloid gossip, actress Ashlyn Roberts doesn’t expect to end up in Vegas — or to wake up married to the sexy Cash Crawford.* Hollywood actress, Ashlyn Roberts, just had the worst week of her life. Her ex released a sex tape of them and just when she was convinced her current boyfriend was a keeper for standing by her side, he breaks up with her at a friend's wedding. She's planning to drown her sorrows in booze when she meets a sexy stranger as she's leaving the wedding and they end up in Vegas, married. Cash Crawford is offered a dream job working with his brother as a junior talent agent. He'll put his shiny new law degree to good use and make a bunch of money in the process. His first task is simple: Keep Ashlyn Roberts out of trouble and don't sleep with her. Which might be kind of tough, since they *definitely* consummated their Vegas wedding. Will this one night stand end in the quickie divorce they promised each other? Or will they realize they got lucky in love? The *Love Series* is a series of standalone novels featuring a different sexy Crawford sibling. They can be read by themselves. However, if you do wish to read them all, they are best enjoyed in order.
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Grass in Piccadilly

Once fashionable and plush with flowers, post-war Mayfair has lost its dazzling charm. But that didn't stop Charlotte Nettel and her husband Sir John from swapping life in the quiet northern countryside to convert their roomy Mayfair townhouse into flats.Their tenants come in all shapes and sizes – from pregnant couple Jack and Jenny to German migrants Paula and Heinrich – and they provide a constant stream of both entertainment and anxiety. But it's Charlotte's stepdaughter Penny, a disillusioned young women born into the uneasy interwar world, who proves to be the most difficult and scandalous tenant . . .Flashing between the lives of each tenant Carnegie Medal winning author Noel Streatfeild gives us a kaleidoscopic view of post-war London in her ingenious novel, Grass in Piccadilly. For fans of Muriel Spark's A Far Cry From Kensington.
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