Not only is Kyle Summer's ambition to become a big-league baseball pitcher, the quest defines his entire existence. Nothing else seems as important, until his father takes ill and he is called back home to the farm.(This selection is also available in: The Empty House, assorted stories)excerpt:Now the road north steamed beneath the headlights, illuming a path through a lush growth of small trees and bushes lining both sides. Eventually he turned one last time east, crossing a stream, before heading northward again. By the time he reached the outskirts of Dudley he was ready to stop. And he needed gas anyway. He pulled into the Quick-Fill and stood for a moment in the artificial light holding the palm of one hand to his lower back before lifting the nozzle away from the pump with the other. He let his back go to turn the selector to regular grade and raise the safety switch, after which the pump clicked to life and the gas flowed, cooling the handle. As he held the grip trigger he looked around, noting the empty lot across the road where the Mobil garage had stood before burning. He remembered the red winged horse set in the front gable and reproduced on the white globes atop the gas pumps. Not so long ago he had hung out there with his friends on weekends—washing and polishing cars, changing oil or the occasional tire. But except for the missing garage and the new Quick-Fill everything else in Dudley seemed the same. Adopting a philosophical attitude, he supposed change was either good or bad, depending on how you defined progress.

Register to receive more books:https://blogforhealthy.com/3weekdietHow to Lose 14 Pounds in 14 DaysThe ultimate guide to enhance body shape and lose weight.This free report shows you:- How to finally put a stop to waistline-increasing emotional eating once and for all using simple, manageable tips.- How to create a diet plan that works with healthy, delicious foods you can buy today and starRegister to receive more books:https://blogforhealthy.com/3weekdiet/How to Lose 14 Pounds in 14 DaysThe ultimate guide to enhance body shape and lose weight.This free report shows you:- How to finally put a stop to waistline-increasing emotional eating once and for all using simple, manageable tips.- How to create a diet plan that works with healthy, delicious foods you can buy today and start eating for your next meal.- How to avoid unwanted health problems while burning weight at a rapid fire speed in the next two weeks.- The centuries-old secrets of sleep and water. Discover how these two simple essential parts of life can shed pounds.- The secret to having fun with exercise and maintaining a daily routine, even if you HATE the gym, your running shoes and the pool.

Willow has lived her whole live on-board her family’s boat, Tinkerbell. Home-schooled by her Mum and Dad, she longs to go to a real school, and to have proper friends.When events force her to go to school for a few weeks, she discovers that school life isn’t all she hoped it would be.Can Willow find her place in a classroom? Or will she realise her true home is on the water?Willow Irvine has lived her whole live on-board her family’s narrowboat, Tinkerbell. Home-schooled by her Mum and Dad, she longs to go to a real school, and to have proper friends.When events force her to move in with her cousins and go to their school for a term, she discovers that school life isn’t all she hoped it would be.Can Willow find her place in a classroom? Or will she realise her true home is on the water?

You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I daresay you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up...

This brilliant satire of the women’s rights movement in America is the story of the ravishing inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant and the bitter struggle between two distant cousins who seek to control her. Will the privileged Boston feminist Olive Chancellor succeed in turning her beloved ward into a celebrated activist and lifetime companion? Or will Basil Ransom, a conservative southern lawyer, steal Verena’s heart and remove her from the limelight? “The Bostonians has a vigor and blithe wit found nowhere else in James,” writes A. S. Byatt in her Introduction. “It is about idealism in a democracy that is still recovering from a civil war bitterly fought for social ideals . . . [written] with a ferocious, precise, detailed—and wildly comic—realism.”

Derek and his friends, living outside of London during World War II, find plenty of opportunities to explore bomb craters, collect shrapnel, and identify the fighter planes that fly overhead. When a bomb hits close to school, causing classes to be canceled, the boys are overjoyed: They can spend the day building their secret camp. But when their work on the camp is sabotaged, a tough neighboring gang is to blame. A violent clash with the rival gang—followed by a long night of bombing close at hand—change forever Derek's feelings about the war.

While the major fighting of the war moves to the south in the summer of 1779, a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry, backed by three sloops-of-war, sails to the desolate and fog-bound coast of New England. Establishing a garrison and naval base at Penobscot Bay, in the eastern province of Massachusetts that would become Maine, the Scots—the only British troops between Canada and New York—harry rebel privateers and give shelter to American loyalists. In response, Massachusetts sends a fleet of more than forty vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to “captivate, kill or destroy” the foreign invaders. Second in command is Peleg Wadsworth, a veteran of the battles at Lexington and Long Island, once aide to General Washington, and a man who sees clearly what must be done to expel the invaders. But ineptitude and irresolution lead to a mortifying defeat—and have stunning repercussions for two men on opposite sides: an untested eighteen-year-old Scottish lieutenant named John Moore, who will begin an illustrious military career; and a Boston silversmith and patriot named Paul Revere, who will face court-martial for disobedience and cowardice. Grounded firmly in history, inimitably told in Cornwell's thrilling narrative style, The Fort is the extraordinary novel of this fascinating clash between a superpower and a nation in the making.

I was happy in my small town. In my life as a single, thirty-two year old woman. I had a good job, wonderful friends, my independence. I also hadn't got laid in three years. Hadn't been on a date in two. Had stopped counting calories and wearing makeup... a while ago. Then Brett Jacobs waltzed in. Caressed my thigh, dug rough fingers into my hair, lowered his soft mouth to my skin, took sexual control of my mind and stirred it all around with what he packed in his pants. He flipped my quiet life upside down and crawled into a place in my heart I thought was dead. The issue is his secret. The issue is her. The issue is that I don't even know she exists, and he thinks she's dead. The issue is that shit is about to hit the fan and I can't hold on to him tight enough.

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn't ask to be the target of Nader McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far. But Lucky has a secret--one that helps him wade through the daily mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos--the prison his grandfather couldn't escape--where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It's dangerous and wild, and it's a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside?

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s magnificent Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied and self-destructively naive protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life. Having left a wife and a livelihood in Africa, Willie is persuaded to return to his native India to join an underground movement on behalf of its oppressed lower castes. Instead he finds himself in the company of dilettantes and psychopaths, relentlessly hunted by police and spurned by the people he means to liberate. But this is only one stop in a quest for authenticity that takes in all the fanaticism and folly of the postmodern era. Moving with dreamlike swiftness from guerrilla encampment to prison cell, from the squalor of rural India to the glut and moral desolation of 1980s London, Magic Seeds is a novel of oracular power, dazzling in its economy and unblinking in its observations. From the Trade Paperback edition.

From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: Philosopher Kings, a tale of gods and humans, and the surprising things they have to learn from one another. Twenty years have elapsed since the events of The Just City. The City, founded by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, organized on the principles espoused in Plato's Republic and populated by people from all eras of human history, has now split into five cities, and low-level armed conflict between them is not unheard-of. The god Apollo, living (by his own choice) a human life as "Pythias" in the City, his true identity known only to a few, is now married and the father of several children. But a tragic loss causes him to become consumed with the desire for revenge. Being Apollo, he goes handling it in a seemingly rational and systematic way, but it's evident, particularly to his precocious daughter Arete, that he is unhinged with grief. Along with Arete and several of his sons, plus a boatload of other volunteers--including the now fantastically aged Marsilio Ficino, the great humanist of Renaissance Florence--Pythias/Apollo goes sailing into the mysterious Eastern Mediterranean of pre-antiquity to see what they can find—possibly the man who may have caused his great grief, possibly communities of the earliest people to call themselves "Greek." What Apollo, his daughter, and the rest of the expedition will discover…will change everything. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

George III's behaviour has often been odd, but now he is deranged, with rumours circulating that he has even addressed an oak tree as the King of Prussia. Doctors are brought in, the government wavers and the Prince Regent manoeuvres himself into power. Alan Bennett's play explores the court of a mad king, and the fearful treatments he was forced to undergo. It is about the nature of kingship itself, showing how by subtle degrees the ruler's delirium erodes his authority and status.

The young man Col dreams of one day joining the holy clergy and departs on a journey from the bathhouse "The Spice and Wolf Inn," owned by his savior, Lawrence. The Winfiel Kingdom's prince has invited him to help correct the sins of the church. But as his travels begin, Col discovers in his luggage a young girl with a wolf's ears and tail named Myuri who stowed away for the ride! In the past, Col had accompanied the wisewolf Holo and the traveling merchant Lawrence on their own wanderings, eventually growing up alongside their daughter, Myuri as siblings. But as Col prepared to set off, Myuri opposed his departure and so she secretly ran away from home to join him! This is the story of Wolf and Parchment, and the pair's travels that will someday change the world!

Each day, sixth-grader Rusty feeds a dog that's left chained in the frigid weather with no shelter, food, or water. When he realizes the dog has been injured, he tries to have Animal Control help - but when that fails, Rusty and his friend Andrew unchain the dog and take it. With the dog in their hideout, the boys face multiple challenges, including Andrew's snoopy sister and the escalating threats of the dog's abusive owner. Even more challenging? The appearance of a ghost dog that appears in Rusty's room, and is trying to lead him to an even deeper secret. . . .Peg Kehret delivers another fast-paced story with lots of heart, which will leave young readers cheering for Rusty and the dogs.Heartwarming, suspenseful, and adventurous, Ghost Dog Secrets is another winner for Kehret." - VOYA"This tale is both heart-wrenching and heart-racing." - The News Tribune