A master blacksmith's daughter wants to find fame and fortune, but people don't like her learning her father's trade.Luca, a master blacksmith's daughter, is almost as talented with making and wielding swords as her father - but she's tired of other girls making fun of her because she doesn't behave the way a young lady ought to. She decides to use her talents to win herself fame and fortune and show up her detractors - but what she really wants may not be what she thinks.

These nine powerful stories focus on the lives of adult men; some from the present, others from the recent past. Though many could be considered tragedies, there are also moments of justice, courage and humour. Both sexes will appreciate the experiences of these intriguing characters, however; whose collective message is that confronting our weaknesses can often become our greatest strength.Nine Lives is a collection of short stories written over the past decade. The opening story, ‘Not Found Hanging’ concerns a comfortably married man discovering that his ex-lover is terminally ill, and how his repressed guilt over how he deceived her threatens to destroy him too. In ‘Suddenly Autumn’ it is the protagonist who faces serious illness, but his reaction to it is both extreme and surprising. The central character of ‘Chameleon in a Coalmine’ is Hans Asperger, and spotlights his relationship to the activities of medical experimenters under the Nazis. ‘On the Level’ is a short thriller set at a level crossing, where a philanderer’s guilt forces him to make a split second decision about his lover’s husband, with catastrophic results. In ‘If Bricks Should Burn’ a former World War Two airman is haunted by nightmares of his time spent in a Lancaster bomber, whilst struggling to cope with an incurably ill wife in the present. ‘No Laughing Matter’ is a fictional account of the life of one of Britain’s best loved entertainers (but can you guess who?). ‘Imagine Me’ focuses on the relationship between a transvestite and his widowed father, and the novel solution they find to cope with their shared grief. ‘Discharge of Duty’ is the story of a conscientious objector and the privations he suffers as a result of his moral stand - a story with a distinctly black style of humour! Finally, in ‘Strangers at the Door’ an elderly man, who feels persecuted by his neighbours, repeatedly misinterprets the motives of professionals sent to help him, who ironically have his best interests at heart.

From folklore of the Balkans to Vlad the Impaler, and 18-th century vampire hysteria, and on to Bram Stoker, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and finally to Stephenie Meyer, they persist under the cover of the night.August is nine years old, and dreams of becoming a scientist. This is a dream that will never come true, because August is dying. The only dream that's left to him now is that of reaching his tenth birthday, on the last day of the month he was named after. Yet on the eve of that month, August gets two surprise visitors: time-travelling ravens Muninn and Huginn, come out of Norse mythology to bring him the science that he loves. On each of the final days of August, the birds take him back through time to an event in science that happened on that day - the writing of the Einstein-Szilard letter; the discovery of the first Neanderthal grave; helium and Hiroshima and hot air balloons... August comes to understand that these trips into science aren't simple kindnesses. They're ways for him to come to terms with his own death, to make peace with his mortality. And, if Muninn has her way, they'll give him a chance to cheat death after all...

This Book which has 40 differently titled Poems is actually Part 11 of the Book titled – You die; I die – Love Poems ( 1600 pages ) .Poems symbolizing the immortality of love and at times its fickleness. Parekh takes the reader through a paradise naturally embellished with the ingredients of eternal romance and its sporadic failures. As they say life and death are two sides of the coin, similarly with every true anecdote of love there also comes fretful divorce—a thing which has been most sensitively described throughout this great collection of poems for the heart. Written and dipped in each ingredient of his passionate blood, Parekh comes out with startling revelations about the truest of love stories and their failures. Each verse has been delicately intertwined with a boundless aspects of relationships, romance, cheating, betrayal and goes on to prove that Immortal Love towers over every shattered heart. A start to finish with some of the most heart-rendering love poems ever, this makes a great collection for ever true lover breathing and desiring to be loved on earth and beyond. This collection of poems aims at perpetually uniting every heart on this Universe in the spirit of Immortal love and friendship. Because these are the two quintessential ingredients to lead life till its last breath. Irrespective of whatever color, faith or religion, it is only the rainbow of love which can transform the ghastliest monsters and perpetrators of humanity into peaceful lovers. Therefore this book inexhaustibly endeavors to speak and preach the language of love even after its last embossed alphabet.

Jamie Grimm is a middle schooler on a mission: he wants to become the world's greatest standup comedian--even if he doesn't have a lot to laugh about these days. He's new in town and stuck living with his aunt, uncle, and their evil son Stevie, a bully who doesn't let Jamie's wheelchair stop him from messing with Jamie as much as possible. But Jamie doesn't let his situation get him down. When his Uncle Frankie mentions a contest called The Planet's Funniest Kid Comic, Jamie knows he has to enter. But are the judges only rewarding him out of pity because of his wheelchair, like Stevie suggests? Will Jamie ever share the secret of his troubled past instead of hiding behind his comedy act? Following the bestselling success of the hilarious Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life, James Patterson continues to dish out the funnies in another highly-illustrated, heartfelt middle school story. (Includes more than 175 black-and-white illustrations.)

New York Times bestselling author Jude Deveraux uncovers the passions and scandals that take a small town by storm when two cousins switch lives. Ariel and Sara never imagined their high-spirited attempt to step into each other's shoes would cause such upheaval. The lifelong pen pals, who look exactly alike, meet for the first time in their twenties and embark on a daring adventure of changing identities. Southern belle Ariel is determined to win the heart of a man who doesn't know she exists, while Sara yearns to leave behind her hardscrabble existence and taste the good life that fate has denied her. But in pretty Arundel, North Carolina, nothing is as it seems -- including the dangers that are closing in on their new dream lives, as the deepest of fears and darkest of secrets and betrayals come to light.

In the dramatic conclusion to the "New York Times" best seller "Her Mother's Hope," Francine Rivers delivers a rich and deeply moving story about the silent sorrows that can tear a family apart and the grace and forgiveness that can heal even the deepest wounds.Growing up isn't easy for little Carolyn Arundel. With her mother, Hildemara, quarantined to her room with tuberculosis, Carolyn forms a special bond with her oma Marta, who moves in to care for the household. But as tensions between Hildie and Marta escalate, Carolyn believes she is to blame. When Hildie returns to work and Marta leaves, Carolyn and her brother grow up as latchkey kids in a world gripped by the fear of the Cold War.College offers Carolyn the chance to find herself, but a family tragedy shatters her newfound independence. Rather than return home, she cuts all ties and disappears into the heady counterculture of San Francisco. When she reemerges two years later, more lost than ever, she reluctantly turns to her family to help rebuild a life for her and her own daughter, May Flower Dawn. Just like Carolyn, May Flower Dawn develops a closer bond with her grandmother, Hildie, than with her mother, causing yet another rift between generations. But as Dawn struggles to avoid the mistakes of those who went before her, she vows that somehow she will be a bridge between the women in her family rather than the wall that separates them forever. Spanning from the 1950s to present day, "Her Daughter's Dream" is the emotional final chapter of an unforgettable family saga about the sacrifices every mother makes for her daughter--and the very nature of unconditional love.

"And here I was, stuck in the middle of it all..." *   Two savage queens at war. A rebel faction out for blood. An elixir that could end it all.* * As traitors to all parties, Navan and Riley are walking on eggshells. Riley cannot afford to be discovered in Gianne's queendom, while Navan is stuck on Brisha's side. They must stop both queens from discovering the immortality elixir at all costs - but in the midst of a war, even finding each other again is a deadly challenge. Riley had better hope for luck... because she's going to need it.   Return to Vysanthe - BUY NOW! Beware of spoilers in the reviews below that are without spoiler alerts*

Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, about what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them. Moving from northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time.

Twenty years ago, Terry Brooks turned fantasy fiction on its head with The Sword of Shannara, the first fantasy novel to make the mainstream bestseller lists, and the first in an unbroken string of thirteen bestselling books. Now, in Running with the Demon, Brooks does nothing less than revitalize fantasy fiction again, inventing the complex and powerful new mythos of the Word and the Void, good versus evil still, but played out in the theater-in-the-round of the "real world" of our present. On the hottest Fourth of July weekend in decades, two men have come to Hopewell, Illinois, site of a lengthy, bitter steel strike. One is a demon, dark servant of the Void, who will use the anger and frustration of the community to attain a terrible secret goal. The other is John Ross, a Knight of the Word, a man who, while he sleeps, lives in the hell the world will become if he fails to change its course on waking. Ross has been given the ability to see the future. But does he have the power to change it? At stake is the soul of a fourteen-year-old girl mysteriously linked to both men. And the lives of the people of Hopewell. And the future of the country. This Fourth of July, while friends and families picnic in Sinnissippi Park and fireworks explode in celebration of freedom and independence, the fate of Humanity will be decided . . . A novel that weaves together family drama, fading innocence, cataclysm, and enlightenment, Running with the Demon will forever change the way you think about the fantasy novel. As believable as it is imaginative, as wondrous as it is frightening, it is a rich, exquisitely-written tale to be savored long after the last page is turned.

In this sequel to Wallbanger, the second book in the Cocktail series, fan favorites Caroline and Simon negotiate the rollercoaster of their new relationship while house-sitting in San Francisco. Playing house was never so much fun—or so confusing. With her boss on her honeymoon, Caroline’s working crazy long hours to keep the interior design company running—especially since she’s also the lead designer for the renovation of a gorgeous old hotel on Sausalito. So with her hotshot photographer boyfriend gallivanting all over the world for his job, she and Simon are heavy-duty into “absence makes the heart grow fonder” mode. Neither has any complaints about the great reunion sex, though! Then Simon decides he’s tired of so much travelling, and he’s suddenly home more. A lot more. And wanting Caroline home more, too. Though their friends’ romantic lives provide plenty of welcome distraction, eventually Caroline and Simon have to sort their relationship out. Neither wants “out of sight, out of mind,” but can they create their own happy mid-ground cliché?

With Sea of Silver Light, Tad Williams completes his massive Otherland quartet, one of SF's more intriguing explorations of the eroding boundaries of the human and the nonhuman, the living and the dead. Otherland is a sequence that contains many secrets, and Williams plays fair by unpacking all of them in the final book. A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever. Williams manages a vast cast of emotionally involving characters with considerable panache, but the real strength of the book is its endlessly questing intelligence; it is, among other things, an enquiry into the nature of storytelling as a way for human beings to give structure to their perceptions of the universe around them. It is as story that Sea of Silver Light ultimately works so well--involving us in the grueling descent of a vast mountain, the siege of an underground fortress, gun battles in a nightmare Wild West. Williams never neglects to tell us how things feel. He efficiently ties up every plot strand and convincingly reveals every secret in this large, complex plot. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

The Heart of What Was Lost takes place in the half-year after the end of To Green Angel Tower, and tells of the attempt by Isgrimnur and a force largely made up of Rimmersgard soldiers to destroy the remaining Norns as they flee back to their homeland and their mountain. It also answers some questions about what actually happened in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Green Angel Tower.

A riveting novel that explores the high price of success in the life of one woman—the first female president of a lauded ivy league institution—and her hold upon her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons, from Joyce Carol Oates, author of the New York Times bestseller A Widow’s Story Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate—or destiny. After her rescue, the well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their middle-class values, seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past. Meredith “M.R.” Neukirchen is the first woman president of an Ivy League university. Her commitment to her career and moral fervor for her role are all-consuming. Involved with a secret lover whose feelings for her are teasingly undefined, and concerned with the intensifying crisis of the American political climate as the United States edges toward war with Iraq, M.R. is confronted with challenges to her leadership that test her in ways she could not have anticipated. The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undo her. A reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Neukirchen into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past, Mudwoman is at once a psychic ghost story and an intimate portrait of a woman cracking the glass ceiling at enormous personal cost, which explores the tension between childhood and adulthood, the real and the imagined, and the “public” and “private” in the life of a highly complex contemporary woman.

A terrorist doesn't let strangers in her flat because they might be undercover police or intelligence agents, but her children bring their mates home and they run all over the place. The terrorist doesn't know that a kid has bugged every room in her house, cloned the hard drive on her PC, and copied all the numbers in her phone book. The kid works for CHERUB. CHERUB agents are aged between ten and seventeen. They live in the real world, slipping under adult radar and getting information that sends criminals and terrorists to jail.

Radiance is a decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera mystery set in a Hollywood—and solar system—very different from our own, from the phenomenal talent behind the New York Times bestselling The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Severin Unck’s father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father’s films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe. But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony’s last survivor, Severin will never return. Aesthetically recalling A Trip to the Moon and House of Leaves, and told using techniques from reality TV, classic film, gossip magazines, and meta-fictional narrative, Radiance is a solar system-spanning story of love, exploration, family, loss, quantum physics, and silent film.

Young Adult/ Mature Situations The last thing Laken Stewart remembers is the oncoming car, then bursting through the windshield. Two months dissolve without her knowledge and she finds herself in unfamiliar surroundings with strangers who not only profess to know her but insist she’s someone else entirely. Laken discovers her long dead boyfriend, Wesley, has been thrown into this alternate world as well. He is quick to inform her she suffered a horrible fall and that her memory hasn’t fully returned. According to Wesley the other life she had—her name, her family, they were simply a side effect of her brain trauma. In her quest for answers she meets Cooper Flanders, the son of her psychiatrist who readily believes every word she says. Laken Stewart knows she died on that hot July afternoon, but now she’s alive—or is she?

On the surface, Emily Meckler leads the perfect life. She has three best friends, two loving parents, and the ideal setup at the Connecticut prep school where her father is the headmaster. But Emily also suffers from devastating nightmares about fire and water, and nobody knows why. Then the enigmatic Del Sugar enters her life, and Emily is immediately swept away—but her passionate relationship with Del is just the first of many things that aren't quite what they seem in Emily's life. As the lies she's been told start to unravel, Emily must set out to discover the truth regarding her nightmare; on a journey that will lead her to question everything she thought she knew about love, family, and her own idyllic past. This companion novel to Warman's critically acclaimed Breathless proves that sometimes the biggest lies are told to the people you love the most.

My first memory was of a slap, hard across the face: the sting on my cheek and the jarring of my bones as I slammed back into my bed. It was my dad who had hit me. I had been four. Most of my memories were much of the same and no one ever saw, no one ever fought to help, no one ever cared. Then we moved. My new neighbor cared, rescued the twelve-year-old I had been from a beating. Always thought I'd suffer the nightmare alone, I was wrong. Mace Donati saved me that day in all the ways a person could be saved. And his daughter, Mia, she became the friend I had always wanted, my conscience when my own faltered, the light that led me home when I had lost my way. The girl who grew into the only woman I would ever love. But when you realize you're more like your father than the good people who took you in and gave you a home, the only way to return their kindness is to let them go. I let them go, got so far lost in the shadows I couldn't remember who I was anymore. Mia never gave up on me. She fought for me, kept the light on so I'd find my way back. And when I did, life threw us a curveball. I had to hurt Mia in order to save her. But when my past comes back to haunt me and I almost lose her, I'm ready to fight for her...fight to find a way back into her heart while keeping the demons from my past from finishing what they started. Cole Campbell

Princess Flian finds herself the unwilling object of desire of three royals. Is the one she wants a villain--or a hero? Waking up in a strange place, Flian Elandersi at first doesn't know who she is. One wicked prince tells her she is secretly engaged to an even more wicked king who wants to marry her right away. But before that happens, yet another wicked prince crashes through a window on horseback to sweep her off her feet. Memory returns, and Flian realizes that all any of them seem to want is her considerable wealth, not her pleasant-but-ordinary self. She longs to escape the barracks-like, military atmosphere and return to civilization and her musical studies. Flian endures another abduction, this time in the middle of a poetry reading. Who is the villain? Prince Garian Herlester--languid, elegant, sarcastic? Prince Jaim--he of the dashing horsemanship? Or King Jason Szinzar, whose ambiguous warning might be a threat? Flian decides it's time to throw off civilization and take action. The problem with action is that duels of wit turn into duels of steel--and love can't be grabbed and galloped away. NOTE: this edition has gone out of print, and has been edited and reissued by Book View Cafe.

Evangeline longs to be free, to live in the world outside the castle walls. But freedom comes at a cost. Evangeline is the ward and cousin of King Richard II, and yet she dreams of a life outside of Berkhamsted Castle, where she might be free to marry for love and not politics. But the young king betroths her to his closest advisor, Lord Shiveley, a man twice as old as Evangeline. Desperate to escape a life married to a man she finds revolting, Evangeline runs away from the king and joins a small band of servants on their way back to their home village. To keep her identity a secret, Evangeline pretends to be mute. Evangeline soon regrets the charade as she gets to know Wesley, the handsome young leader of the servants, whom she later discovers is the son of a wealthy lord. But she cannot reveal her true identity for fear she will be forced to return to King Richard and her arranged marriage. Wesley le Wyse is intrigued by the beautiful new servant girl. When he learns that she lost her voice from a beating by a cruel former master, he is outraged. But his anger is soon redirected when he learns she has been lying to him. Not only is she not mute, but she isn't even a servant. Weighed down by remorse for deceiving Wesley, Evangeline fears no one will ever love her. But her future is not the only thing at stake, as she finds herself embroiled in a tangled web that threatens England's monarchy. Should she give herself up to save the only person who cares about her? If she does, who will save the king from a plot to steal his throne?