The most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction. The Drummond family, reunited for the first time in years, has gathered near Cape Canaveral to watch the launch into space of their beloved daughter and sister, Sarah. Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical sun-kidnapping, blackmail, gunplay, and black market negotiations, to name a few. But even as the Drummonds' lives spin out of control, Coupland reminds us of their humanity at every turn, hammering out a hilarious masterpiece with the keen eye of a cultural critic and the heart and soul of a gifted storyteller. He tells not only the characters' stories but also the story of our times--thalidomide, AIDS, born-again Christianity, drugs, divorce, the Internet-all bound together with the familiar glue of family love and madness.

Conman Arthur Broker has finally become a resident on easy street while posing as a paranormal investigator, separating superstitious suckers from their money. This cozy lifestyle shatters after the beautiful and possibly unstable Fiona Ambrose turns to him for help against the Daughters of All, a mysterious cult that has a knack for drug peddling, kidnapping and murder.Conman Arthur Broker believes he has finally become a permanent resident on easy street while posing as a paranormal investigator to separate superstitious suckers from their money. Unfortunately this cozy lifestyle shatters after the beautiful and possibly unstable Fiona Ambrose shows up on his doorstep. In her quest to find her sister and prove her sanity, Fiona accidentally throws Broker headfirst into a conspiracy orchestrated by the Daughters of All, a mysterious cult with a knack for drug peddling, kidnapping and murder. With both mundane and arcane assassins on his trail, Broker uses his despicable talents, underhanded expertise and plenty of dumb luck to topple the cult and defeat the ravenous devil they worship…all while making a profit.

The book that marked the first appearance in the United States of Robertson Davies’ mischievous alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks, is now available as an eBook for the first time. In 1942, two years after returning to Canada from Britain, Robertson Davies took up the role of editor of the Peterborough Examiner. During his tenure as editor at the Examiner, a post he held until 1955, and later as publisher of the newspaper (1955–65), Davies published witty, curmudgeonly, mischievous, and fiercely individualistic editorials under the name of his alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks, “one of the choice and master spirits of his age.” In this single volume, first published in 1985, the “gentle headwaiter to Marchbanks’ splendid banquet” has edited and selected from his alter ego’s observations to bring together previous titles in the Marchbanks bibliography: The Diary (1947), The Table Talk (1949), and Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack (1967).  Here is treasure! Marchbanks on politics, on his furnace, on theatre, on the taxman, on trains, on Christmas, on book-banners, on manners, indeed on everything under the sun! Not only this, but Davies’ copious and quite delectable Notes are “calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passage of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form.” Reviewing the first edition of Papers for the New York Times in 1986, Davies’ longtime friend John Kenneth Galbraith said: “Not many journalists would wish to risk having their daily efflux dug out and published after a lapse of 40 years. . . . This writing of four decades ago is consistently incisive, insulting, funny, relevant and altogether interesting.” The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, best savoured at leisure, and returned to time and again, “offers a humourous and insightful picture of postwar Canadian life as seen through the eyes of a delightful eccentric who reminds . . . of a boozeless W.C. Fields.” Charles Bishop, English Dept., University of New Orleans.

Step into a parallel universe where snails are the hot item to bet on at the track and frogs are the great goalkeepers. Unfortunately, even great goalkeepers are no match for illustrious and selfish soccer club owners. Will the club survive or risk ruin at the hands of disengaged owners or will they sell to the chinese laundry man.Step into the parallel universe of the planet The Ar where nothing is as it should be. Snails are the hot item to bet on at the track and frogs are the great soccer goalkeepers. However, set amidst the backdrop of fun and light-hearted snail races and frog goalies are two illustrious and selfish soccer club owners who are forced to endure another season at the helm of a nonperforming soccer club. How is the club to reach Nirvana when all the owners want to do is sell and be done?

Daniel Ford's inner voice one again goes unheeded and from there the situation spins out of control. Before long his screaming, roaring fans invade the scene and outright havoc ensues. Pleas for assistance dispatch aid in quieting the chaos. Troops arrive. Operations succeed and fail. Problem solved? There's no telling what might happen when technology breaks down. Plant tongue firmly in cheek.Pat has been exploring the South Sea island of Vitua when he gets a day off. He goes fishing with his girlfriend, the lovely Hinatea from another island, who is an expert at all kinds of fishing. She decides he is the perfect bait to catch a giant octopus. Pat disagrees.A short story with some of the heroes from In Search of Spice, with the Princess Asmara in charge.Culture clash is explored, not just between East and West, but between East and East. This story takes you back five hundred years to the lives and beliefs of the people who lived in the South Seas.

Someone stole the prize for a major sporting event. It will take three bounty hunters, a pro-racer, one super model, one ‘super’ model, at least two robots and the known universe’s most popular (and most dramatically debt riddled) celebrity to get it back. This is a fast paced, multi-fronted, heist story with a side-order of science fiction and a small helping of the old ultra violence.The Hunt is on. Epic Death, Baby Doll Judah Stardust, and Peppermint White Ninja are pitted against each other to find who stole the prize for the biggest sports event of the season, the Race of the Ancients. The prize has been stolen under mysterious, and sadly not also sexy, circumstances. Official rules apply, and little else is followed closely.Cirrhosis Induction, professional racer and retired gang-member; Sunshine Apocalypse, super model; Last Chance, technically a model but definitely a drug addict; and the most famous person in the known universe, Truckee Dumpstar are all looking for the culprit as well. Mostly because they are all implicated in the theft at some point, but let’s say it is altruism.Running across multiple worlds, meals in zero-gee restaurants, robot duplicates, hyper-sexualized children, high-speed train crashes, flavor based interviews, and more are in store for our heroes and heroines. Oh, and there is that race that needs to be taken care of also. So get on that.

Even though the chance of a candidate like me getting elected President is remote, just thinking about the possibility is frightening.Everyone thinks that the Flying Saucers are stored at Area-51 in Nevada. But that isn't true. They are actually someplace else and when a curious Airman steals a piece, he discovers just how the aliens were able to ignore the limits of the Speed of light.How this man uses the device to make money is the gist of the story.

Penrod is a collection of comic sketches by Booth Tarkington that was first published in 1914. The book follows the misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States, in a similar vein to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In Penrod, Tarkington established characters who appeared in two further books.

Spoof on a high strung man about to blow his top. Funny short storyThere's a certain intimacy about the word "embedded." I don't know who came up with it, but once it was in common usage, we talked about it endlessly in the pub. Embedded, being there, part of the action, eyewitness news on the front line. Embedded became a term shared by the media and the military to describe correspondents who were carried to war as an extra mural member of a fighting unit, journalist as warrior, and it was hoped, certainly from the military standpoint, that this symbiosis, a new quirk on the old Stockholm syndrome, would rub off on the reporters and ensure that coverage swayed towards the soldiers' point of view. Sure there was huffing and puffing over journalistic integrity and freedom of the press, but if you wanted to go to war there was no better way than embedded.You see the Vietnam War had taught the military a hard lesson. If you have newsmen running around the combat zone, left to their own devices, reporting the kill count as it happens, blood baths like Mi Li Four, then the public appetite for the conflict diminishes in direct proportion to the tv footage of body bags coming home. So if you couldn't muzzle the media, then the next best thing was to get them on board, get them embedded, in the hope that the old adage that it is better to have your critic in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in, would pay dividends.Not that the military were less than sanguine about the prospect, Imagine how it would have been if there had been reporters embedded at The Somme filing eyeball accounts from the trenches of soldiers eating rats to stay alive, and the criminal lunacy of officers ordering troops over the top into machinegun fire.But those kind of considerations didn't cloud the judgement a couple of centuries ago when the spectre of invasion from across the Channel loomed large, and Napoleon Bonaparte summoned the combined naval strength of France and Spain into the largest battle fleet the world had ever seen; when the course of history hung by a thread. When the nation turned to one man, already hailed as a national hero, to save the day. So this is the story. With all the journalistic technique, the breakneck speed of instant communication technology and the clamour for on scene reporting; with every morsel of the action devoured to satisfy the voracious appetite of twenty four seven rolling news I can tell you what transpired when Nelson set sail for the great sea battle off Cape Trafalgar because I was there, embedded with the fleet.My name is John Pretty, naval correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, and with the benefit of hindsight I have collected all my pieces, the news columns, the features, the e-mails, the tapes and scribbled shorthand notes, into a chronological sequence, translated the arcane patois of the eighteenth century tar into the modern idiom to give you a feel of how Trafalgar played in the press. If you want the unalloyed facts, go to the history books, but if you're curious to know how it felt to report Trafalgar then as Mark Twain put it, turn the page, read the log.

Dillon Carmichael was a popular guy in school. He was an awesome skateboard maniac and he could go steady with any girl he wanted. No one knew he was tired of dating the popular girls and wanted to go out with Megan Cartwright, who happened to be a nerd. Dillon was afraid that if word got out about his secret crush, he could lose his popularity. Will he choose the nerd or his popularity.Dillon Carmichael was the most popular guy in school. He was an awesome skateboard maniac and he could go steady with any girl he wanted. No one knew he was tired of dating the popular girls and wanted to go out with Megan Cartwright, the school’s President of Student Counsel who happened to be a nerd. Dillon was afraid that if word got out about his secret crush, he could lose his popularity. And seeing first hand how the unpopular kids are pushed around and viewed as undesirable, wasn’t a path Dillon wanted to travel. Will he chose his heart or his friends?

Wonka is back to ease us out of the Summer and towards the next set of tricksy decisions. As per he is like an arrow to Owner's brain keeping her on target with the beloved Life Plan. Even Jung gets a look in, leafing through his vast library of ancient wisdom to provide Owner with answers. Hers of course. Find out the latest with Wonka, as he quite rightly tells it how it is.Wonka is proud to present Conversations part four, which apart from some small input from the great Carl Jung, centres on his brave attempts to keep Owner going. Going with the Life Plan and therefore able to tackle all those impossible decisions. Whether dealing with the beloved Skylark car or crushed into a corner with Ruggles, Owner finds the strength to cope, always bolstered up by Wonka if not guardian angels and anyone else at hand. As we move from late Summer to the fresh demands of Autumn, do read the very latest in our series, and have some pleasant time out courtesy of Wonka!

Eighteen-year-old Yazmin's life is pretty crazy right now. Her new relationship with her fave star isn't quite what she expects it to be and she seems to be finding herself in one bizarre situation after another. But hey - how many girls can say they've appeared in a music video, partied in a spooky mansion and been through a succession of mad adventures all in the space of a few short weeks?Eighteen-year-old Yazmin's life is pretty crazy right now. Her new relationship with her fave star isn't quite what she expects it to be and she seems to be finding herself in one bizarre situation after another. But hey - how many girls can say they've appeared in a music video, partied in a spooky mansion and been through a succession of mad adventures all in the space of a few short weeks?Crazy Mad Life is the second book in the lighthearted Stage Door series.

Synopsis: Lucian and Tara may have won Dom Wars and the Million--two, in fact--but they didn't realize they'd be the reigning Mr. and Mrs. Dildo USA. As the new "Faces" of the large adult-toy company, they're required to train at least five couples within five years, in the art of Dominance and submission. In addition to selling X amount of Gladiator toys. Only problem is, Gramma isn't leaving Maplewood, Missouri, which means they'll have to conduct Undercover Operation-Kink in Tara's stuck-up, religious hometown, without getting caught and having the entire family thrown out. But two million dollars is two million dollars, and Lucian and Tara didn't come all this way to forfeit everything they sacrificed. So, the plan is to Dom and sub up, find a way to pull this kink-heist off, and collect their winnings. And with the help of his good friend Steve, he's sure they can manage anything.

This hilarious, true short story, is a real life account of an amazing weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix.If you've ever wanted to be wisked away on a hilarious, slighty drunken, crazy weekend, fly on a helicopter, meet wonderful people, drink lots of French wine, wake up in a strange woman's apartment, party around the clock all while watching the F1 Grand Prix, then this short story is for you.They say that truth is stranger than fiction.This hilarious true short story, won't take you long to read, but it all actually happened.If you've ever wanted to be wisked away on a hilarious, slighty drunken, crazy weekend, fly into town on a helicopter, meet wonderful interesting people, drink lots of French wine, wake up in a strange woman's apartment, party around the clock all while watching the F1 Grand Prix, then this short story is for you.An ideal read for a train journey or for the daily commute!

Matt’s struggle to win media fame by his 14th birthday leads to escalating disasters. Add some romantic complications and things become really disastrous. Young Adult humor.Matt’s struggle to win media fame by his 14th birthday leads to escalating disasters. Add some romantic complications and things become really disastrous.Young Adult humor.