A Poem for Every Spring Day

Within the pages of Allie Esiri's gorgeous collection, A Poem for Every Spring Day, you will find verse that will transport you to vivid spring-time scenes, taking you from the first sighting of blossoms to Easter. The poems are selected from Allie Esiri's bestselling poetry anthologies A Poem for Every Day of the Year and A Poem for Every Night of the Year.Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, this book dazzles with an array of familiar favourites and remarkable new discoveries. These seasonal poems – together with introductory paragraphs – have a link to the date on which they appear.Includes poems by William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, John Donne and Emily Dickinson who sit alongside Ted Hughes, John Agard, Maya Angelou, Wendy Cope, John Cooper Clarke and Carol Ann Duffy. This soul-enhancing book will keep you company for every day of your life.
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Accidental Love

It all starts when Marisa picks up the wrong cell phone. When she returns it to Rene, she feels curiously drawn to him. But Marisa and Rene aren't exactly a match made in heaven. For one thing, Marisa is a chola; she's a lot of girl, and she's not ashamed of it. Skinny Rene gangles like a sackful of elbows and wears a calculator on his belt. In other words, he's a geek. So why can't Marisa stay away from him? Includes a glossary of Spanish words and phrases.
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Mercy on These Teenage Chimps

On his thirteenth birthday, Ronnie woke up feeling like a chimp—all long armed, big eared, and gangly. Now his best friend, Joey, has turned thirteen, too—and after Joey humiliates himself in front of a cute girl, he climbs a tree and refuses to come down. So Ronnie sets out to woo the girl on Joey's behalf. After all, teenage chimps have to stick together.
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Demon Copperhead

"Kingsolver is a writer who can help us understand and navigate the chaos of these times." —Minneapolis Star TribuneFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behavior, a brilliant novel which enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity."Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he...
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The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

The classic Western, now newly repackaged as part of Bantam's Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures program—with never-before-seen material from Louis and his son, Beau L'Amour.It began with gold that had once belonged to Montezuma. Stolen and cached in a church in Mexico, it was recovered by two army officers who fled north for the French settlements. Along the way one stabbed the other to death. The remaining officer was eventually killed by Plains Indians, but he buried the treasure just before he died. Now Ronan Chantry, a handful of trappers, and an Irish girl whose father was killed after telling her a few vague landmarks are searching for the lost treasure. But they are not alone. The girl's uncle, Rafen Falvey, wants it, too. Like Chantry, he is well educated, bold, and determined. Under different circumstances the two men might have been friends. But in all likelihood it wouldn't have made any difference. When it comes to gold, even friendship doesn't keep...
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The Concert

A glimpse into the melting pot of reputations and rumours in the twilight years of communism in Albania, as the morning's orthodoxies become heresies by dinner-time, and everyone must step nimbly to keep out of jail. The fragile nature of political realities in present-day China too, is summed up.From Publishers WeeklySet in the mid-1970s, as the alliance between Albania and Communist China unravels, this subversively inventive satire traces the impact of the zigzagging Albanian party line on the personal lives of a group of friends and associates. These include a jittery Albanian diplomat in Beijing, his jealously insecure wife, an establishment novelist who confronts "the void inside him" and a civil servant who writes an "autocritique" castigating himself for his petty-bourgeois mentality. A Kafkaesque subplot concerns an army officer who's arrested, apparently for refusing to obey an order. Albanian novelist Kadare ( The Palace of Dreams ), who lives in France, sketches a devastating portrait of Mao Zedong as a megalomaniac whose goal is "the brainwashing of the human race." Historical figures like Zhou Enlai and genocidal Cambodian leader Pol Pot appear intermittently in an elliptic narrative spliced with dreams, officers' coerced confessions and short-short stories. China, depicted as a dystopia where simple human relations are stultified and surveillance is a way of life, becomes a mirror image of Albania through Kadare's mordantly ironic vision. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalUnder communism, foreign relations between a smaller country and the huge country that serves as its "host" affect the day-to-day lives of many individuals, especially in the smaller country. An Albanian by birth now living in France, Kadare (The Palace of Dreams, LJ 9/1/93) shows how Albania's relationship with China affects the life of Silva Dibra, a government employee, wife, and mother. The endless succession of her days seem to blend together as Silva worries about her husband, Gjergi, who makes sudden and frequent trips to China, and her brother, Arian, who is in the military. She also thinks constantly about her dead sister, Ana. Through Silva, we learn the thoughts of too many other characters: her husband, daughter, brother, co-workers, endless friends, Chairman Mao, Zhou En-lai, and a stream of other Chinese bureaucrats. There are some good, funny ideas here, and a number of chapters would work effectively as short stories. Strung together, however, they create what is essentially a plotless novel that strains the reader's interest.Olivia Opello, Onondaga Cty. PL, Syracuse, N.Y.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The Silver Skates

As their father is sick, Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel must work to support their family. Despite this life of poverty, they long to take part in the annual ice-skating races on the frozen canal, where the victors win magnificent silver skates. But how can they hope to enter the races – let alone win – when their skates are wooden and home-made?After meeting the famous surgeon Dr Boekman, and hearing that he might be able to cure their father, Hans doesn't hesitate in offering to pay for the necessary operation, although he has been saving up all his money to buy two pairs of swift steel skates. As the big day looms, can the children enter their respective races and win the longed-for prize?"They are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater.""Yes," chimed in half a dozen voices, "a beautiful pair of silver skates – perfectly magnificent – with, oh! such straps and silver bells and buckles!"
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Death Wish

This is the story of Chicago's ruthless and tireless mafia. The intensely real characters, the brutal overlords, their faithful lackeys and their vengeful enemies all collide in acts of loyalty, lust, greed and death. Power hungry Don, Jimmy Collucci, is out to become the kingpin of Chicago's "Honored Society." However his rise to the top can only be thwarted by one man fueled by revenge set out to destroy it, the "Black Warrior" Jessie Taylor. When ambitions collide, guns are drawn and blood is spilled. This is the original mafia story.
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The Afterlife

You'd think a knife in the ribs would be the end of things, but for Chuy, that's when his life at last gets interesting. He finally sees that people love him, faces the consequences of his actions, finds in himself compassion and bravery . . . and even stumbles on what may be true love.A funny, touching, and wholly original story by one of the finest authors writing for young readers today.
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The Love Story of Abner Stone

Edwin Carlile Litsey (1874-1970) was an American author and poet. He grew up and lived near Lebanon, in Marion County, where he worked in the National Bank, first as runner and later as bank officer. He wrote romantic novels and poems such as To John Keats. His works include: The Man From Jericho (1911), A Maid of the Kentucky Hills (1913), Spindrift: Verses and Poems (1915) and The Filled Cup: A Book of Poems for Sarah (1935).
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