Scarlet Runner

      Lily Ennis
     Scarlet Runner

The 1912 Waihi Strike tested the resolve of the worker, the town and the government. None could have forseen its devastating effects or the tragedy that would propel the strike into the annals of history. The story follows Archie and Mary struggling to find love against a turbulent industrial dispute. Battles were fought and lost, love won and lost, men died. The strike was never called off.At a time of worldwide revolt against an oppressed and exploited working class, the 1912 Waihi Strike tested the resolve of Mary and Archie, warring unions, the town and the government. None could have forseen the tragedy that would propel the strike into the annals of history.Mary grew up on the Hauraki gold fields having emigrated from Scotland with her family. As the daughter of a mine manager she enjoys a charmed life and teaches piano, sure that music would be the one thing that defines her.Archie Wright came to Waihi to be near his brother after his wife died in childbirth. With two small children to provide for he accepted a job as a stationary engine driver, a position well below the mine manager job he left in Ballarat.When the engine drivers form a separate union Archie does not join them and the action leads to the longest strike in New Zealand’s history.Amongst the turmoil Mary and Archie fight for the rights of the strikers, he as a union representative and she as a Scarlet Runner. But their message is not well received and the government clamps down heavily on the strikers by sending more and more police to the town as the strike drags on.Archie finds himself opposing his brother and Mary causes grievous upset by defying her father. Her family becomes the target of mischief making which has unintended and fatal consequences and which forces Mary to question her loyalties. Mary has a conviction that in her eyes equals that of her mother, Emily, who fought for temperance and won. Emily’s legacy sits heavily on Mary and she sees the strike as her platform for social change. She is a sponge for Archie’s socialist philosophy and with her Scarlet Runner accomplices ensures the aims of the strike gain sympathy from men and women alike.

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    Trick or Treat: 101 Haunting Halloween Rhymes

      Rusty Fischer
     Trick or Treat: 101 Haunting Halloween Rhymes

Trick or Treat contains 101 festive holiday poems all about my favorite time of year… October, costumes, candy and the thrills of trick or treating. From costumes to candy and everything in between, enjoy them all… this Halloween!IntroductionAll September and October long, I’ve been writing short, sweet, occasionally funny, sometimes creepy Halloween poems. Turns out, the ones I enjoy the most are all about costumes, candy, plastic pumpkins, tricks and treats! So I decided –why not write an entire volume of family friendly poetry all about… trick or treating?So… here it is! Trick or Treat contains 101 festive holiday poems all about my favorite time of year… October, costumes, candy and the thrills of trick or treating. And, well, I just can’t help myself, so here’s an extra one to send you off:From costumes to candy and Everything in between, Enjoy them all… This Halloween!Happy Holidays,Rusty Fischer

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    Tye and the Voices in the Storm

      Benedict Beaumont
     Tye and the Voices in the Storm

When his young goat Little Bear wanders off into the mountains, orphaned shepherd boy Tye is thrown into an adventure of dangerous robbers, haunted storms and vicious pirates. Only the mysterious and powerful Hamric seems to know where he is going and more importantly, who he really is....Identity thief Alyson Reid barely escaped the police raid on the Broadway Walk hotel with her life. With her accounts empty, her tools destroyed, and the Houston police hunting her as a murderer she sets out across the city with a single objective: To clear her name. Meanwhile, HPD detective Martin Clark continues the search for Tomas Dekare's killer. Following a trail of a scattered trail of contradictory clues, Martin and Chief Detective Richard Parks edge closer to the truth and come to realize that there is more to their investigation than they had thought. Day Two continues the story of A Ballad of Wayward Spectres; a serialized cyberpunk thriller in four parts.

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    Inventing the Enemy: Essays

      Umberto Eco
     Inventing the Enemy: Essays

Inventing the Enemy covers a wide range of topics on which Umberto Eco has written and lectured for the past ten years, from a disquisition on the theme that runs through his most recent novel, The Prague Cemetery—every country needs an enemy, and if it doesn’t have one, must invent it—to a discussion of ideas that have inspired his earlier novels. Along the way, he takes us on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, and the medieval world. Eco also sheds light on the indignant reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses by fascist journalists of the 1920s and 1930s, and provides a lively examination of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s notions about the soul of an unborn child, censorship, violence, and WikiLeaks. These are essays full of passion, curiosity, and obsessions by one of the world’s most esteemed scholars and critically acclaimed, best-selling novelists.

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    My Lady Ludlow

      Elizabeth Gaskell
     My Lady Ludlow

Lady Ludlow is absolute mistress of Hanbury Court and a resolute opponent of anything that might disturb the class system into which she was born. She will keep no servant who can read and write and insists that the lower orders have no rights, but only duties. But the winds of change are blowing through the village of Hanbury. The vicar, Mr. Gray, wishes to start a Sunday school for religious reasons; Mr. Horner wants to educate the citizens for economic reasons. But Lady Ludlow is not as rigid as one may think.

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    We

      Yevgeny Zamyatin
     We

The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.

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    The Warrior Prophet

      R. Scott Bakker
     The Warrior Prophet

"Book Two of The Prince of Nothing" finds the Holy War continuing its inexorable march southward. But the suspicion begins to dawn that the real threat comes not from the infidel but from within...Steering souls through the subtleties of word and expression, Kellhus strives to extend his dominion over the Men of the Tusk. The sorcerer Achamian and his lover, Esmenet, submit entirely, only to have their faith - and their love - tested in unimaginable ways. Meanwhile, the warrior Cnaiur falls ever deeper into madness. Convinced that Kellhus will betray their pact to murder his father, Cnaiur turns to the agents of the Second Apocalypse and strikes an infernal bargain. The Holy War stands on a knife edge. If all is not to be lost, the great powers of the world will have to choose between their most desperate desires and the end of the world. Between hatred and hope. Between Anasurimbor Kellhus and the second apocalypse.

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    Wanting

      Richard Flanagan
     Wanting

It is 1844. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot Aboriginal girl sits for a portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilization -- one that will determine whether science, Christianity and reason can be imposed in the place of savagery, impulse and desire. A quarter of a century passes. Somewhere in the Arctic, Sir John Franklin has disappeared with his crew and two ships on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. The people of England are horrified by reports of cannibalism filtering back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own life. As several lives become joined by unexpected events and tragedies, Wanting transforms into a stunning contemporary meditation on the ways in which desire -- and its denial -- shape all our lives.

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    What Makes This Book So Great

      Jo Walton
     What Makes This Book So Great

As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. 

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    Swimmer Boy

      Jay Argent
     Swimmer Boy

Liam Green is a sixteen-year-old boy who has just moved to Fairmont with his family. On his first day in his new high school, he falls for Alex, a handsome jock on the swim team. Alex doesn’t seem to be gay, but that does not end Liam’s obsession with him. Fate pushes the boys together, and they become friends—until Liam’s secret is revealed.Liam Green is a sixteen-year-old boy who has just moved to Fairmont with his family. On his first day in his new high school, he falls for Alex, a handsome jock on the swim team. Alex doesn’t seem to be gay, but that does not end Liam’s obsession with him. Fate pushes the boys together, and they become friends—until Liam’s secret is revealed. Swimmer Boy is the first book in Jay Argent’s best-selling Fairmont Boys series. It begins a coming-of-age story about friendship and the kind of love that is found in the most unlikely places.

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    Animal Dreams: A Novel

      Barbara Kingsolver
     Animal Dreams: A Novel

From Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed author of *Flight Behavior,* *The Lacuna*, *The Bean Trees,* and other modern classics, *Animal Dreams* is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman’s struggle to find her place in the world. At the end of her rope, Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home to face her ailing father, with whom she has a difficult, distant relationship. There she meets handsome Apache trainman Loyd Peregrina, who tells her, “If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.” Filled with lyrical writing, Native American legends, a tender love story, and Codi’s quest for identity, *Animal Dreams* is literary fiction at it’s very best. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

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    Mississippi Roll

      George R. R. Martin
     Mississippi Roll

Perfect for current fans and new readers alike, Mississippi Roll is an all-new, adventurous jaunt along one of America's greatest rivers, featuring many beloved characters from the Wild Cards universe Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin, Mississippi Roll features the writing talents of Stephen Leigh, David D. Levine, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Cherie Priest, and Carrie Vaughn. Now in development for TV: Rights to develop Wild Cards for TV have been acquired by Universal Cable Productions, the team behind The Magicians and Mr. Robot, with the co-editor of Wild Cards, Melinda Snodgrass, as executive producer.

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