A time when men sold their souls for a bag of gold and women sold their bodies for a place to sleep. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she survives by keeping her hatred alive. And what she hates most are the men who use her, leaving her empty and dead inside. Then she meets Michael Hosea. A man who seeks his Father’s heart in everything, Michael Hosea obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel’s every bitter expectation until, despite her resistance her frozen heart begins to thaw. But with her unexpected softening come overwhelming feelings of unworthiness and fear. And so Angel runs. Back to the darkness, away from her husband’s pursuing love, terrified of the truth she can no longer deny: Her final healing must come from the One who loves her even more than Michael Hosea does…the One who will never let her go. A life-changing story of God’s unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love.--back cover

    In Rain of Gold, Victor Villasenor weaves the parallel stories of two families and two countries…bringing us the timeless romance between the volatile bootlegger who would become his father and the beautiful Lupe, his mother–men and women in whose lives the real and the fantastical exist side by side…and in whose hearts the spirit to survive is fueled by a family’s unconditional love.

    Titles include The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three and The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.

    This gift pack includes both titles, for a total listening time of approximately 6 hours.

    With all the stark simplicity of a fractured fairy tale, the trilogy tells the story of twin brothers, Claus and Lucas, locked in an agonizing bond that becomes a gripping allegory of the forces that have divided "brothers" in much of Europe since World War II. Kristof's postmodern saga begins with The Notebook, in which the brothers are children, lost in a country torn apart by conflict, who must learn every trick of evil and cruelty merely to survive. In The Proof, Lucas is challenging to prove his own identity and the existence of his missing brother, a defector to the "other side." The Third Lie, which closes the trilogy, is a biting parable of Eastern and Western Europe today and a deep exploration into the nature of identity, storytelling, and the truths and untruths that lie at the heart of them all. "Stark and haunting." - The San Francisco Chronicle; "A vision of considerable depth and complexity, a powerful portrait of the nobility and perversity of the human heart." - The Christian Science Monitor.

    It’s 1964 in idyllic Zephyr, Alabama. People either work for the paper mill up the Tecumseh River, or for the local dairy. It’s a simple life, but it stirs the impressionable imagination of twelve-year-old aspiring writer Cory Mackenson. He’s certain he’s sensed spirits whispering in the churchyard. He’s heard of the weird bootleggers who lurk in the dark outside of town. He’s seen a flood leave Main Street crawling with snakes. Cory thrills to all of it as only a young boy can.   Then one morning, while accompanying his father on his milk route, he sees a car careen off the road and slowly sink into fathomless Saxon’s Lake. His father dives into the icy water to rescue the driver, and finds a beaten corpse, naked and handcuffed to the steering wheel—a copper wire tightened around the stranger’s neck. In time, the townsfolk seem to forget all about the unsolved murder. But Cory and his father can’t.   Their search for the truth is a journey into a world where innocence and evil collide. What lies before them is the stuff of fear and awe, magic and madness, fantasy and reality. As Cory wades into the deep end of Zephyr and all its mysteries, he’ll discover that while the pleasures of childish things fade away, growing up can be a strange and beautiful ride.   “Strongly echoing the childhood-elegies of King and Bradbury, and every bit their equal,” Boy’s Life, a winner of both the Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Awards, represents a brilliant blend of mystery and rich atmosphere, the finest work of one of today’s most accomplished writers (Kirkus Reviews).

    Five of Dahl’s hugely popular, beloved books have been adapted into winning plays for children. With useful tips on staging, props, and costumes, these plays can be produced with a minimum amount of resources and experience. Teachers, parents, and children everywhere will recognize Quentin Blake’s appealing classic cover art and will find these easy-to-perform plays to be a great source of entertainment!

    Book by Thoene, Bodie

    Then the Great War intervenes. Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, tall and proud, meets an illiterate young factory worker on the road. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers away, the old man—a soldier and a hero who became a prisoner and then a deserter, wandering in the hell that claimed Europe—tells him how he tragically lost one family and gained another. The boy, envying the richness and drama of Alessandro's experiences, realizes that this magnificent tale is not merely a story: it's a recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.

    At once an ironic rendering of the life of Christ and a beautiful novel, Saramago' s tale has sparked intense discussion about the meaning of Christianity and the Church as an institution. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

    

    Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more terrifying issues for him to confront. Being black was tough enough, but Raymond was becoming more and more conscious of sexual feelings that he knew weren't "right." He was completely committed to Sela, his longtime girlfriend, but his attraction to Kelvin, whom he had met during his last year in law school, had become more than just a friendship. No matter how much he tried to suppress them, his feelings were deeply sexual.Fleeing to New York to escape both Sela and Kelvin, Raymond finds himself more confused than ever before. New relationships -- both male and female -- give him enormous pleasure but keep him from finding the inner peace and lasting love he so desperately desires. The horrible illness and death of a friend force Raymond, at last, to face the truth.

    A fourth collection of stories by the award-winning author.

    And he may have no future. His memory is blank. He only knows that he was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face, a Swiss bank account containing four million dollars, and a name: Jason Bourne. But he is marked for death, racing for survival through the layers of his buried past into a world of murderous conspirators - led by the world's most dangerous assassin, Carlos. And no one can help Bourne but the woman who once wanted to escape him. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: In a Kowloon Cabaret, scrawled in a pool of blood, is a name the world wanted to forget: Jason Bourne. The Chinese vice-premier has been slain by a legendary assassin. World leaders ask the same fearful questions: Why has Jason Bourne come back? Who is the next to die? But US officials know the truth: there is no Jason Bourne. The name was created as cover for David Webb on his search for the notorious killer Carlos. Someone else has taken the Bourne identity and unless he is stopped, the world will pay a devastating price. So Jason Bourne must live again. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.Two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And they also know that he wants a final confrontation with Bourne. Now David Webb must do what he hoped he would never have to do again - assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne.

    Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

    There has never been a book like Imajica. Transforming every expectation of fantasy fiction with its heady mingling of radical sexuality and spiritual anarchy, it has carried its millions of readers into regions of passion and philosophy that few books have even attempted to map. It's an epic in every way; vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. A book of erotic mysteries and perverse violence. A book of ancient, mythological landscapes and even more ancient magic.

    M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness. In this volume Joyce Carol Oates, our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic, presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson, the novels and stories that, from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated, postwar America. She opens with "The Lottery" (1949), Jackson's only collection of short fiction, whose disquieting title story-one of the most widely anthologized tales of the 20th century-has entered American folklore. Also among these early works are "The Daemon Lover," a story Oates praises as "deeper, more mysterious, and more disturbing than 'The Lottery, ' " and "Charles," the hilarious sketch that launched Jackson's secondary career as a domestic humorist. Here too are Jackson's masterly short novels: "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959), the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962), the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes, and the essay "Biography of a Story," Jackson's acidly funny account of the public reception of "The Lottery," which provoked more mail from readers of "The New Yorker" than any contribution before or since.

    In every one, dark forces threatened Greece; terrible evil was poised to reenter the world. The future held only one hope: a half-caste Spartan boy, Parmenion. So Tamis made it her mission to see that Parmenion would before the deadliest warrior in the world -- no matter what the cost.Raised to manhood in Sparta, bullied and forced to fight for his life every day, Parmenion had no notion of the unseen dimensions of magic and mystery that shaped his fate. He grew in strength and cunning. His military genius earned him the title Strategos in Sparta. His triumphs for the city of Thebes made him a hero. And finally his fate led him to the service of Philip of Macedon.As Tamis had foreseen, Parmenion's destiny was tied to the Dark God, to Philip, and to the yet-unborn Alexander. All too soon the future was upon them. Parmenion stood poised to defeat evil -- or to open the gate for the Dark God to reenter the world.

    In this omnibus of characteristically hilarious short stories and novels, Jeeves is for the first time shockingly employed to resolve the woes of someone other than Bertie Wooster. Contains The Mating Season, Ring for Jeeves and Very Good, Jeeves.

    

    The Lays of Beleriand features two epic poems dealing with the legends of the Elder Days: "The Lay of the Children of Hurin" in alliterative verse and "The Lay of Leithian" in octosyllabic couplets. The Shaping of Middle-earth contains prose fragments and historical tales of what would become The Silmarillion. Finally, The Lost Road and Other Writings is a companion work of sorts to C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet. (In 1968, the two authors agreed to write tales about what Lewis termed "what we really like in stories." Lewis tried his hand at space travel, while Tolkien took on time travel. The resulting work was The Lost Road.)

    At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.

    Roth watches as his eighty-six-year-old father—famous for his vigor, charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections—battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father's long, stubborn engagement with life.

    He made a deadly mistake. When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray — doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail — already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch’s firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice — if he wants to live.--jgrisham.com

    In his blind jealous rage he later gives away the baby to gypsy Rona Parrish, summoned to help with the delivery. Kathleen, frenzied with grief, is soon after locked away in an asylum. Rejected by her father, the little girl begins her new life with only a valuable brooch pinned to her shawl as a clue to her true origins. Named after Rona's own mother, the lovely raven-haired Starlena grows up in ignorance of her true parentage and vast inheritance, believing her birthplace to be the beautiful Whistledown Valley. And Rona, always afraid, stays watchful over the years for any sign that someone might track Starlena down - someone who wishes her harm...

     The colourful life he had once lived seemed a vague memory; he was now a regular at local AA meetings and was scraping by with work, using an office in a quiet and uneventful probate firm. There were no glamorous women, no exotic holidays and no flash cars. There was just Charley, sobriety, a rented studio and an old Ford Escort. Life was lonely without booze, but it was stable. That is, until the arrival of an expensive looking client in his shabby lawyer’s office… Robin Harwell — a sweetheart from High School with a favour to ask, and $20,000 to pay for it. Defend her step-daughter? No easy task when the charge is murder, the victim her husband and the defendant has already confessed … Angel — the rich little girl with celestial looks and a dead father’s blood on her hands. Innocent child, cool headed killer or completely psychotic? She probably needs a magician more than a lawyer … Apart from the scandalous case they are facing, Robin and Angel seem to be coping remarkably well without Harrison Harwell. Their primary focus is on selling the shipping empire he left behind and making sure Angel doesn’t wind up in jail. Why have they chosen Charley and what are they hiding? Family feuds, secret sexualities and missing records add to the pressure Charley is under — this is the one chance he has to restore his name but he knows he has to take a risk and fight dirty if he wants to win. With the publicity machine revving, the District Attorney prosecuting and the temptation to reach for the bottle growing, Charley must prove there’s a Shadow of A Doubt or else he’s sunk forever. Praise for Shadow of A Doubt: ‘A great read. Shadow of a Doubt has much of the atmosphere and intrigue of Anatomy of a Murder and a humdinger of an ending’ - Scott Turrow William J. Coughlin has combined a career as a United States administrative judge in Detroit with that of a best-selling novelist. His four previous highly acclaimed and successful novels are The Twelve Apostles, His Father’s Daughter, Her Honor and In the Presence of Enemies. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    New challenges to galactic peace have arisen. And Luke Skywalker hears a voice from his past. A voice with a warning. Beware the dark side….The Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet back into barely a quarter of the territory that they once controlled. Leia and Han are married, are expecting Jedi twins, and have shouldered heavy burdens in the government of the new Republic. And Luke Skywalker is the first in a hoped-for new line of Jedi Knights.But thousands of light years away, where a few skirmishes are still taking place, the last of the Emperor's warlords has taken command of the remains of the Imperial fleet. He has made two vital discoveries that could destroy the fragile new Republic—built with such cost to the Rebel Alliance. The tale that emerges is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale—in short, a story that is worthy of the name Star Wars.

    The narrator, Shed, is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction: a half-Indian bisexual boy who lives and works at the Indian Head Hotel in the tiny town of Excellent, Idaho. It's the turn of the century, and the hotel carries on a prosperous business as the town's brothel. The eccentric characters working in the hotel provide Shed with a surrogate family, yet he finds in himself a growing need to learn the meaning of his Indian name, Duivichi-un-Dua, given to him by his mother, who was murdered when he was twelve. Setting off alone across the haunting plains, Shed goes in search of an identity among his true people, encountering a rich pageant of extraordinary characters along the way. Although he learns a great deal about the mysteries and traditions of his Indian heritage, it is not until Shed returns to Excellent and witnesses a series of brutal tragedies that he attains the wisdom that infuses this exceptional and captivating book.

    Leading humanity was the powerful Remillard family, but somebody--or something--known only as "Fury" wanted them out of the way.Only Rogi Remillard, the chosen tool of the most powerful alien being in the Milieu, and his nephew Marc, the greatest metapsychic yet born on Earth, knew about Fury. But even they were powerless to stop it when it began to kill off Remillards and other metapsychic operants--and all the suspects were Remillards themselves.Meanwhile, a Remillard son was born, a boy who could represent the future of all humanity. His incredible mind was more powerful even than his brother Marc's--but he was destined to be desroyed by his own DNA...unless Fury got to him first!From the Paperback edition.

    Somehow he has to get these pilgrims through safely - if he doesn't want to be buried along the trail with the rest of them...

    

    The lonely girl befriends, as only a child can, a tiny fir tree. Anna and Tree, as she calls him, grow up together, unlocking the secrets of friendship and sharing the wonders of nature. It is this same profound appreciation and love of nature that the grown-up Anna, now Sister Anthony, passes on to her students.When Tree is threatened by a winter storm, Sister Anthony, by now an old woman, decides to give up her dearest friend, allowing him to become the most enjoyed and famous tree of all: the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City.A perennial holiday favorite, The Christmas Tree is about learning to love and, ultimately, being able to share that love with others.

    But one fateful day in 1931 brought Marcia's world tumbling about her, and left her and her two daughters without their beloved father. Barty Bendall had always loved her, and the girls needed a father, so Marcia moved to Blackburn with him, where she tried to forget the past. However, Barty sank into bad ways, tyrannizing the family. Even in troubled times, lovely raven-haired Marcia was a fighter. But the news that Curt Ratheter had reappeared would render her helpless prey to wildly conflicting emotions.

    In some trepidation at first, because he has no experience whatever of submarines, his fears are soon set at rest when he discovers that nobody else has either: least of all his superiors. Aboard primitive, ill-equipped vessels, he contends with exploding lavatories. ,transport of Libyan racing camels.a crew drawn from a dozen different nationalities-and a decaying imperial bureaucracy,more of an enemy than the British, the French, the Italians and sea. After surmounting all this, he becomes - accidentally - Austria Hungary's leading U-boat commander and a holder of its highest military decoration. But by 1918, they have no vessel. no country, no coast.

    not that anyone would..."At seventeen, Rose is convinced no one will ever love her, living as she does in the shadow of her beautiful older sister Diana. If Diana is the swan, Rose is the ugly duckling. But for both girls this is going to be an extraordinary summer. It is 1943 and the war has left its mark even in the sleepy seaside town where the girls have been sent out of harm's way. For the first time in their lives they are free of adult restriction... For both girls it is a summer of self-discovery, but especially for Rose who unearths a love story set in another war, a story that becomes more real when she falls in love herself...

    Fiction. Published in 1992, well before Sherman Alexie became well-known as the screenwriter for the film SMOKE SIGNALS, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING has now been turned into a film with none other than Alexie himself in his directorial debut. The screenplay for the movie, which recently won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, is loosly adapted from this book. Many film-goers will want to visit or revisit the elegaic poems and stories that set the tone for the film itself. In an age when many 'Native American' writers publish books that prove their ignorance of the real Indian world, Sherman Alexie paints painfully honest visions of our beautiful and brutal lives--Adrian C. Louis.

    is Vada's best friend. They live near enough to each other to bike ride over and play, or even just hang out. The two are always together, sharing their afternoons, their adventures in the lake, and all of their secrets. Then something terrible happens to Thomas J. and Vada has to learn to fill her days without her best friend around.

    From the top of Nehwon's highest mountain to the deepest catacomb of subterranean Quarmall they journey, even exploring times and worlds beyond Nehwon itself.

    Imprisoned by Herod, John the Baptist struggles to understand a Lord who did not meet his expectations; a dramatic account offering insight into the ways of God.

    Reprint.Contents:The Loch Moose Monster (1989)The Return of the Kangaroo Rex (1989)The Flowering Inferno (1990)Getting the Bugs Out (1990)Raising Cane (1991)Frankenswine (1991)

    1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in. Gilbert's long-suffering older sister, Amy, still mourns the death of Elvis, and his knockout younger sister has become hooked on makeup, boys, and Jesus--in that order, but the biggest event on the horizon for all the Grapes is the eighteenth birthday of Gilbert's younger brother, Arnie, who is a living miracle just for having survived so long. As the Grapes gather in Endora, a mysterious beauty glides through town on a bicycle and rides circles around Gilbert, until he begins to see a new vision of his family and himself.

    For young Mary Bradshaw and her widowed mother life is full of rationing, blackouts and the wail of the air-raid siren. Despite the gloom, Mary's heart is light as she counts her blessings - she's got her loving mother and Bob, her soldier boyfriend whom she adores and hopes to marry soon. During the worst air raid Liverpool has ever suffered, fate deals Mary the first of many cruel blows it has in store for her. She is devastated as her whole world collapses. But Mary doesn't have to face the knocks alone. Her best friend Eileen has a heart and a sense of humour as big as her eighteen stone body - heaven help anyone who hurts her mate! Harry is the boy from up the road who's loved Mary since they were kids and he'll not desert her now. Soon Mary finds that when one door closes, another one really does open.

    Disillusioned with his life, unable to bridge the gap between knowing and doing, Dan sets out on a worldwide quest to rediscover his sense of purpose and source of inspiration.A buried memory sends Dan on a search for a woman shaman, deep in a Hawaiian rain forest. She is the gateway to all his hopes and his fears — and only she can prepare him for what is to come.In worlds of shadow and light, Dan encounters inner tests, mortal challenges, shocking revelations, and unforgettable characters as he ascends the warrior’s path to wisdom and peace. This is the sacred journey we all share, the journey to the Light that shines at the heart of all our lives.

    In this iridescent gem of a novel, Louis de Bernieres returns to the territory he mapped so well in The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, a South American country of resplendent eccentricity, gargantuan corruption, and terrifying violence, where the ordinary machinery of government has rusted and the only thing that works is magic.

    This is the book whose initial publication was an instant sensation: selling out immediately, setting new records, and enthralling readers all over the world. This is the book everyone wants to read, savor, and enjoy...

    The voice of the damned : The last feast of Harlequin --The spectacles in the drawer --flowers of the abyss --Nethescurial --The voice of the demon : The dreaming in Nortown --The mystics of Muelenburg --In the shadow of another world --The cocoons --The voice of the dreamer : The night School --The glamour --The voice of our name : The library of Byzantium --Miss Plarr --The voice of our name : the shadow at the bottom of the world.

    Patriarch Abraham Levy, the proud descendant of fifteen generations of Sephardic Jews, and his wife, the convert Sarah, a monumental, generous woman, illiterate and complex, establish themselves in a village to the west of Jerusalem and become the center of a sprawling, colorful family whose passions, suffering, and unexpected fates partake of both the real and the mythic, not to mention the miraculous. Esau's eponymous narrator is one of a pair of near-sighted Levy twins, who have only a single set of eyeglasses between them. The life choice each boy makes as a result of this childhood experience determines the course of the novel: Jacob, who wears the eyeglasses most of the time, follows his father and becomes the village baker, marrying Leah, fathering children, and shouldering the responsibility of ancestral tradition; while the narrator, with his willfully blurred vision, is cursed and disinherited by his beloved mother and leaves his family and village to become a writer in the United States. After thirty years of exile, he returns home and offers us the brilliant and deeply moving mosaic that is the story of the Levy family. Like his progenitor, Meir Shalev, the narrator finds his portion of the world in books, and the two of them share a Rabelaisian appetite for story and character, an exuberant playfulness, a mischievous sense of irony, and a fascination with the sensuality of childhood, those images, sounds, and odors at the origin of all memory and roots.

    Simons Island and the families who built their lives in that beautiful corner of Georgia. Bright Captivity opens in the last days of the War of 1812, when the British invade the southern United States, and a young officer of the British Royal Marines takes one very special prisoner...Anne Couper knew that one day love would come for her-love for one man, endless and abiding. But she never expected that the very first time she looked into the eyes of Lieutenant John Fraser on her eighteenth birthday she would see there the certainty that this man, her enemy, loved her as deeply as she loved him. The lush plantation of Dungeness would become her prison, the man she loved would be her jailer, and together they would learn that while love offers joy, it also brings harsh choices.

    Lovecraft's classic stories, among them some of the greatest works of horror fiction ever written, including:

    Shapiro. Anne of Green Gables is off to college! Young adults will enjoy this delightful collection, which features the novel Anne of the Islands and two short story collections, Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea. Black-and-white illustrations.

    Babsey makes sure that her family doesn't mix with the rougher people in the neighbourhood - she considers herself a cut above the local community. When her niece Louisa needs a home - her mother is dead, and her father at sea - Babsey does her duty and brings the girl into the household.But Louisa doesn't quite fit in with Babsey's plans. Although life under Aunt Babsey's roof is comfortable, Louisa is acutely aware of the desperate poverty around her. And, as she grows up into a thoughtful young woman, the harsh realities of love and betrayal, war and death, make her determined to find her own way. Louisa will eventually be made famous throughout her city - known for ever as Liverpool Lou. And she might just find love along the way...

    He gets work as the stoker in the Hotel Ambassador, one of the most prestigious hotels in Bratislava, and in his single-mindedness soon discovers that he can take advantage of his position. People will pay to have the heat on and, in short, Racz learns that he who puts the heat on can control things. He rises quickly from stoker in the Ambassador to its owner and much else. Those who oppose him (small-time money changers, former secret police, professional classes) knuckle under while those whose dreams have foundered in the new world order have to make do or become, like academics, increasingly irrelevant. Peter Pišt'anek’s reputation is assured by Rivers of Babylon and by its hero, the most mesmerizing character of Slovak literature, Rácz, an idiot of genius, a psychopathic gangster. Rácz and Rivers of Babylon tell the story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and ex-secret policemen have infiltrated a new ‘democracy’. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pišt'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem. The novel has been translated by Peter Petro of British Columbia University, in close collaboration with author and publisher.

    Nora Kavanagh, left a widow by the Irish Potato Famine, turns for help to rebel Morgan Fitzgerald, who arranges for her and her son to make a dangerous voyage to New York.

    Unique, daring, and unforgettable, it tells the story of an ordinary family who accidentally threaten the security of a hidden civilization as intelligent as our own--a colony of ants determined to survive at any cost....Jonathan Wells and his young family have come to the Paris flat at 3, rue des Sybarites through the bequest of his eccentric late uncle Edmond. Inheriting the dusty apartment, the Wells family are left with only one warning: Never go down into the cellar.But when the family dog disappears down the basement steps, Jonathan follows--and soon his wife, his son, and various would-be rescuers vanish into its mysterious depths.Meanwhile, in a pine stump in a nearby park, a vast civilization is in turmoil. Here a young female from the russet ant nation of Bel-o-kan learns that a strange new weapon has been killing off her comrades. To find out why, she enlists the help of a warrior ant, and the two set off on separate journeys into a harsh and violent world. It is a world where death takes many forms--savage birds and voracious lizards, warlike dwarf ants and rapacious termites, poisonous beetles and, most bizarre of all, the swift, murderous, giant guardians of the edge of the world: cars.Yet the end of the female's desperate quest will be the eerie secret in the cellar at 3, rue des Sybarites--a mystery she must solve in order to fulfill her special destiny as the new queen of her own great empire. But to do so she must first make unthinkable communion with the most barbaric creatures of all. Empire of the Ants is a brilliant evocation of a hidden civilization as complex as our own and far more ancient. It is a fascinating realm where boats are built of leaves and greenflies are domesticated and milked like cows, where citizens lock antennae in "absolute communication" and fight wars with precisely coordinated armies using sprays of glue and acids that can dissolve a snail. Not since Watership Down has a novel so vividly captured the lives and struggles of a fellow species and the valuable lessons they have to teach us.From the Hardcover edition.

    For those who would be heroes, it is a delightful time to be alive--and an easy place to die.Khaavren of the House of Tiassa is a son of landless nobility, possessor of a good sword and "tolerably well acquainted with its use." Along with three loyal friends, he enthusiastically seeks out danger and excitement. But in a realm renowned for repartee and betrayals, where power is as mutable as magic, a young man like Khaavren, newly come from the countryside, had best be wary. His life depends on it. And so does the future of Dragaera.When swordplay beckons, it's all for one--and one for...The Phoenix Guards.

    Here’s the correct version, as published in Omni, 1990." -- Terry Bisson

    The story's hero, Pastor Jason Faircloth, embarks on a journey that lasts eighteen years and takes him through four countries in a quest to find the granddaughter who is being hidden from him. In a process that mirrors our own spiritual journey, he discovers a rich relationship with God and the peace that finally comes with true faith.

    Robbed of her youthful ideals and at the center of scandal and tragedy, Jade ran as far and as fast as she could. But she never forgot the sleepy "company town" where every man, woman, and child was dependent on one wealthy family. And she never forgot their spoiled son, who, with his two friends, changed her life forever. Someday, somehow, she'd return, exact a just revenge -- and free herself from fear, and the powerful family that could destroy her.

    But true magic lurks within the pages of The Little Country, drawing genuine danger from across the oceans into Janey's life, impelling her--armed only with her music--toward a terrifying confrontation.Come walk the mist-draped hills of Cornwall, come walk the ancient standing stones. Listen to the fiddles, and the wind, and the sea. Come step with Janey Little into the pages of...The Little Country.

    William’s loyalty has worn thin over the years but he cannot break the ties with Galloway because times are hard and the house in which he lives belongs to him. Carrie Tanner grows up in the heart of a poor yet loving family, but as she becomes a young woman she becomes involved in the Suffragette movement. The times are changing – and quickly. Will this close-knit community be able to pull together or will it be torn apart?

    This is the story of the men who fought with them -- and the 304 who didn't return.

    A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

    In order to save herself Asano must find Oishi, the leader of the fighting men of her clan. She believes he is three hundred miles to the southwest in the imperial city of Kyoto.Disguising her loveliness in the humble garments of a traveling priest, and calling herself Cat, Lady Asano travels the fabled Tokaido Road. Her only tools are her quick wits, her samurai training, and her deadly, six foot-long naginata. And she will need them all, for a ronin has been hired to pursue her, a mysterious man who will play a role in Cat's drama that neither could have ever imagined. . . .

    Expecting little more than a weekend diversion, Lewis finds himself in a mystical place where two worlds meet, in the time-between-times - and in the heart of a battle between good and evil.The ancient Celts admitted no separation between this world and the Otherworld: the two were delicately interwoven, each dependent on the other. The Paradise War crosses the thin places between this world and that, as Lewis Gillies comes face-to-face with an ancient mystery - and a cosmic catastrophe in the making.

    A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.

     Chances Part One: Gino's Story READ BY THE AUTHOR JACKIE COLLINS NOW A SMASH TELEVISION MINI-SERIES! He started with nothing, and built an empire. She was born to bad times -- and lived through much worse. Orphans and outlaws alike, Gino Satangelo and Carrie Jones were survivors in a harsh, loveless world...a passionate young Italian and an exotic dark beauty whose chance meeting yields a secret that can't be spoken for years to come... From the luxury of Park Avenue to the early days of Las Vegas, the raw heat of jazz-era Harlem to the brutality of gangland Chicago, the Santangelo saga begins to unfold -- a tale of secrets, betrayal, and unbridled lust that sets the stage for one of the most unforgettable heroines that Jackie Collins ever created...the incomparable Lucky Santangelo! JACKIE COLLINS... AS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD HER! Now in this intimate recording, Jackie Collins takes you further into the fast-lane world of Lucky Santangelo than ever before. Listen for yourself...as she delivers a superstar performance that captures all of the passion and breathless suspense that have made her the undisputed Queen of glamorous fiction.

    Adaptation for younger readers.Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law graduate, becomes suspicious of his Memphis tax firm when mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago mob figure into its operations.

    Set in the northern countryside of Victorian-era England, this spellbinding novel of good and evil, wealth and want, and the profound power of love is another major achievement in the career of one of the world's most widely read and beloved authors.

    His brief: to assassinate Chinese Mafia leader, Simon Ng. Howells devises a dangerous and complicated plan to reach his intended victim - only to find himself the next target . . .Patrick Dugan, a Hong Kong policeman, has been held back in his career because of his family connections - his sister is married to Simon Ng. But when Ng's daughter is kidnapped and Ng himself disappears, Dugan gets caught up in a series of violent events and an international spy ring that has spun out of control . . .

    On the land that has become his home, a mountain paradise the Cherokee call Tanisi, Joshua must face his destiny of being a leader in the bitter fight for land and power between the Cherokee, settlers and British royalty, or he will lose the only place he can call his own. In an age of revolution in the deep wilderness of the rugged frontier Joshua must test his loyality, strength and will to survive. THE OVERMOUNTAIN MEN is just the first chapter in an epic saga of love, hate and war form one of the leading authors of frontier fiction, Cameron Judd. They are the men and women who forged a nation, conquered nature and found freedom...THE OVERMOUNTAIN MEN.

    But then a dark cloud threatens the bright promise of summer vacation: on the last day of school, their classmate Tubby Cooke vanishes. Soon, the group discovers stories of other children who once disappeared from Elm Haven. And there are other strange things happening in town: unexplained holes in the ground, a stranger dressed as a World War I soldier, and a rendering-plant truck that seems to be following the five boys. The friends realize that there is a terrible evil lurking in Elm Haven...and they must be the ones to stop it.

    Three Novels in One Volume.

    The scope of his genius is indicated in this volume by the inclusion of the period’s most scintillating comedy – The Importance of Being Earnest; its most notorious novel – The Picture of Dorian Gray; and its most haunting elegy – The Ballad of Reading Gaol; together with a selection of his most acclaimed essays and stories. This expanded new edition now includes the complete version of De Profundis and Wilde’s teasing parable about Shakespeare, The Portrait of Mr. W.H.Introduction by Terry Eagleton

    Beckwith was isolated, sometimes beautiful, sometimes inhospitable, and had been owned by the Hendry family since 1700.When Cara fell in love with Edward Hendry, it was not what her family had intended for her.Edward was fifteen years older than Cara, a pacifist, and a widower with two children, one of whom bitterly resented her new stepmother.But Cara was determined to make the marriage work, in spite of the hard life on the farm, in spite of Edward's reserved personality and the shadow of Nancy, his former wife.Her greatest friend on the farm was Edward's mother.Edith Hendry, a loyal and wise daleswoman, was to see the young bride through many tragedies, many vicissitudes and the years of trying to run the wild sheep farm on her own.And as Cara's life began to change, so Cara changed too, finding a complete and utter happiness where she had never expected to.

    Threatened with financial ruin, young Sara's father sends her to Canada's Prince Edward Island, the birthplace of her late mother, to live with a family she doesn't know.

    Fortunately, Reddy has wise Granny Fox on his side and, with some timely help from other woodland friends, manages to avoid an unhappy ending.As this timeless fable unfolds, children will delight in Reddy's risky antics and the commotion his behavior causes among Johnny Chuck, Drummer the Woodpecker, Peter Rabbit, and the other inhabitants of the Green Forest. Thornton W. Burgess, author of Old Mother West Wind and many other children's classics, was a master at telling a good story that holds a child's attention while instilling an important lesson in the most painless and enjoyable fashion. First published in 1913, The Adventures of Reddy Fox was one of his finest efforts. In this inexpensive Dover edition, newly reset in large, easy-to-read type, it will delight children (and adults) today, just as it did their grandparents.

    "I have really enjoyed reading this whole series...I would recommend the reading of any of the books by this author." - 5 STARS"Loved these books [-] definitely recommend this series: once you start you will want to read them all" - 5 STARS"You finish one book and you just have to start the next one." - 5 STARS"A perfectly marvellous book!" - 5 STARS********************************************************WILL SHE LET MATTERS OF THE HEART CLOUD HER JUDGEMENT?When her father dies, Hari Morgan has no choice to but make a life for herself and her ailing mother and carry on the family shoemaking business. Her talent leads her to an unlikely friendship with Emily Grenfell, the daughter of one of the richest men in Swansea. But friendship is fickle. As their respective fortunes change and they both fall in love with Craig Grenfell, Emily's cousin, Hari must decide whether to follow her heart or her head... The Shoemaker's Daughter is the first title in Iris Gower's The Cordwainers series. The story continues in The Oyster Catchers.

    First time together in a collection sure to shock, three national bestsellers: Weep No More My Lady, A Cry in the Night, and Stillwatch. Even the price is thrilling

    The author of the New York Times bestsellers Circles, First Born and Rightfully Mine sets her latest novel against two backgrounds: the history of Hungary from World War II to the present, and the glittering world of the concert stage which its heroine strives to conquer.

    And Rain of Gold is possibly his finest work -- a sweeping tableau of family ties and cultural traditions.pA pair of strong families, two proud but embattled lineages, find themselves bound together by time and circumstance. Through political upheavals, loves gained and lives lost, the families struggle to keep what is precious to them. This premise would make a mesmerizing novel -- but this story is all true.p"A great love story...magnificent." (Albuquerque Journal)

    He has not been afraid to press the CIA to the explosion point - or to play cat-and-mouse with the KGB. He has successfully tricked Qaddafi and the IRA and once even set himself up as governor of a remote Caribbean island torn between Fidel Castor and the Colombian drug trade.But times have changed and mavericks like McCready are an endangered species. Now, before a panel of his peers, McCready must defend his unorthodox exploits or face dismissal. What hangs in the balance is not only his own career, but the very future of British intelligence.

    This omnibus contains three murder mysteries - "The Dead of Jericho", "Service of all the Dead" and "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn".

    Life isn't easy for widowed George Vannin and his young daughter, but somehow George has raised the child alone and Ellan adores her father. Ellan is ten years old when the shaft at Foxdale Mine collapses, and her father never comes up. From then on she lives with Aunt Maud, a dour woman with a quick temper. Her husband had died in a mining accident too, and she never forgave the family at the Big House for their part in the tragedy. When Ellan is offered a chance to better herself at the Big House, Aunt Maud savagely forbids it. Ellan's chance is yet to come, but she has a long way to go before she finds the happiness she deserves...

    Supported by a resurgent Iraq, Syrian armies again challenge Israel. After their humiliating defeat, the Iraqis have created a lethal nerve gas with a delivery system that can reach into Israel. The embattled Israelis are on the edge of a catastrophic defeat and are about to use nuclear weapons. The American President deploys F-15s to Israel in an effort to keep the Israelis and the Arabs from crossing the firebreak and using weapons of mass destruction. Among the Americans is a brash, young pilot, Matt Pontowski, the grandson of the President. Matt's presence is welcomed as a sign of the President's personal commitment to Israel, but he becomes a liability when he is romantically entangle with a beautiful Israeli whose own loyalties appear to be divided.

    William Stuart, a compassionate platoon leader from the 7th ANGLICO (Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company) survived his unit's last battle but continued to mourn his losses. Douglas Moser, master of the .50 caliber machine gun, was one of those missing in action. Moser, a "gentle giant" of a man, had been Stuart's closest companion. In Valley of the Shadows, Stuart learns that the Red Cross has delivered a letter to Moser's mother informing her that he is a prisoner of war in Laos. "Tell Mr. Stuart," the letter closes. Stuart has his mission. Moser languishes in the POW camp, tormented daily by Nan, the disfigured, soul-dead camp commandant. Meanwhile, Stuart's mission takes him to the mountains of Moser's boyhood home in Georgia and on to the Foreign Legion archives in France as he searches for clues to the exact location of the camp. Along the way, Stuart recruits an old friend from their days together in Da Nang. Fellow navy officer Philip Hooper will bring along his elite team of SEALS (Sea, Air, Land) to form Moser's rescue party. Bureaucratic inertia in Washington and the rising anti-war movement conspire to stall the rescue interminably. Failure of a major operation to liberate the "Hanoi Hilton" adds to the forces arrayed against Moser's rescue. Finally, it is only through the direct intervention of the president that Stuart's mission is a go. But doubts remain: Has Stuart really found the "Valley of the Shadow" mentioned in Moser's letter? Is Moser still alive? And, most importantly, can Stuart, Hooper, and the SEALS really pull it off? Valley of the Shadow is dramatic, vivid, authentic - and surprising. "Old-fashioned heroism in a saga of Vietnam . . ." - Newsday

    Her father, home on leave, peering into the blue wicker basket, comments, "It's about the size of a cat." Later, as sibling after sibling appears, Janet finds herself slipping further and further toward the periphery of family life. Brought up in the unrelenting chill of Calvinism and the Scottish climate, she turns from people to animals, to literature, and to her own fertile imagination.Written with lyricism, poignance, and great unexpected flashes of humor, the novel traces the chain of events that, in the dour setting of Scotland in the 1940s and 50s, cause the bizzare death of a young girl. People, birds, and beasts move in a gleeful danse macabre through a lowering landscape in a tale as rich in atmosphere as it is witty and mordant.

    For the first time between the covers of one book, these are the complete Adrian Mole diaries, taking him from 13 3/4 to 23 3/4.

    Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear—the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing—it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road.

    This time it takes an emergency room to keep her from death. Now, the beautiful and talented photographer retreats to an island paradise off Georgia's coast to find solitude - and herself. As she becomes increasingly involved with the strange and handsome twin scions of the powerful Drummond family, she feels her traumatic memories begin to fade. But when a killer launches a series of gruesome murders, Liz discovers that there is no place to hide - not even in her lover's arms.

    Compelling characters, fluid, thrilling reading, and a strong sense of history set these books apart in the minds of more than a half million fans who’ve loved them. Join Phillips and Pella again or for the first time as peasant and princess alike face the prospect of their beloved Russia being torn apart. Conflict within and without brews as thoughts of revolution stirs the masses and war looms in the Balkans. The lives of the characters will be forever changed…and so will yours.

    The Chromicles comprise all five of the immensely popular series of comic novels consisting of ‘The Darling Buds of May’ (1958), ‘A Breath of French Air’ (1959), ‘When the Green Woods Laugh’ (1960), ‘Oh! To Be in England’ (1963), and ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ (1970). Bates, speaking of how he was inspired to create the Larkin family, recalled the real junkyard that he often passed near his home in Kent; and he remembered seeing a family -- a father, mother and many children, sucking at ice-creams and eating crisps in a "ramshackle lorry that had been recently painted a violent electric blue". He tried writing a brief tale based on the family, but soon decided that he couldn’t waste such a rich gallery of characters to a short story." Pop is a wonderful character who hates pomp, pretension and humbug; loves his family, but doesn’t hesitate to break a few rules... and his and the Larkins' secret is “that they live as many of us would like to live if only we had the guts and nerve to flout the conventions."

    Twelve years before the day in September 1923 when a paragraph in the newspaper made his blood run cold, he had turned his back on it for the last time, turned his back on the woman he loved, and who loved him. But when he read that Consuela Caswell had been charged with murder by poisoning he knew, with a certainty that defied the great divide of all those years, that she could not be guilty. As the remorse and shame of his own betrayal of her came flooding back, he knew too that he could not let matters rest. And when she sent her own daughter to him, pleading for help, he knew that he must return at last to Clouds Frome and to the dark secret that it held.

    Here is a story of a great civilization made human, played out through the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land.

    Funny and touching, these monologues from original live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion focus on the winter season.Includes: "Guys on Ice," "The Christmas Story Re-told," and "Storm Home."

    Le Guin’s Hainish novels and stories are brought together in a single edition, complete and with new introductions by the author. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, these remarkable works redrew the map of modern science fiction. In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Le Guin imagined a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain—an array of worlds whose divergent societies were the result of both evolution and genetic engineering.Le Guin first conceived her League of All Worlds in three early novels of daring inventiveness. In Rocannon’s World (1966), Hainish scientist Gaverel Rocannon ventures to an unnamed planet to conduct a peaceful ethnological survey only to discover a secret outpost of the League’s deadly enemy. In Planet of Exile (1966), the fate of colonists from Earth stranded on distant Werel depends on working together with the planet’s indigenous peoples if they are to survive the oncoming fifteen-year winter. City of Illusions (1967), set far in the future on a sparsely populated Earth that has lost contact with all other planets and is ruled by the mysterious, mind-lying Shing, turns on the appearance of an amnesiac with yellow eyes who may hold the key to humanity’s freedom.In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Earth-born Genly Ai travels to wintery Gethen to convince its nations to join the Ekumen, the confederation of known worlds. To do so he must navigate the subtleties of politics and culture on a planet populated by an ambisexual people who have never known war. The Dispossessed (1974), a philosophical adventure story in which a physicist strives to complete a theory of simultaneity that will for the first time allow instantaneous communication between all the planets of humanity, is set against the backdrop of Le Guin’s richly textured vision of what an anarchist society might look like in practice.The Word for World Is Forest (1972), is set on the colony planet of Athshe, where Terrans have arrived to strip its rich natural forests for a depleted Earth. To do so, they enslave the peaceable indigenous population, until the Athsheans rise up in a desperate act of defiance that will leave them and their planet forever changed.Five Ways to Forgiveness presents for the first time the complete story suite previously published as Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). These five linked stories tell the history of the planet Werel and its slave planet Yeowe as their peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain revolutionary future.In The Telling (2000), Sutty, an observer of the interplanetary confederation known as the Ekumen, has been sent to Aka to investigate why the planet has almost entirely lost its vital oral traditions and spiritual beliefs in the span of a single generation. Sutty’s quest for traces of Aka’s original religion causes her to reexamine her own childhood growing up amidst a repressive religious regime on Earth.Also included are eleven short stories, eight essays (including the provocative “On Not Reading Science Fiction”), and the surprising original 1969 version of the story “Winter’s King.” The endpapers have a map of Gethen colorized from a drawing by Le Guin herself and a planetary chart of the known worlds of the Hainish descent.Brian Attebery, editor, is professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2014) and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), among other books.

    A brand new Poirot omnibus, featuring four of the world-renowned detective's most challenging cases: Three-Act Tragedy, Sad Cypress, Evil Under the Sun and The Hollow

    An Oscar-winning actress returns to her native Virginia to script the story of the famous mother she barely knew, but she gets more than she bargained for when her uncle presents her with her mother's private journals.

    Grafton's mystery novels featuring Millhone are set in 1980s Santa Teresa, a fictionalized town based on Santa Barbara, California. This set includes: "A" Is for Alibi (1982), "B" Is for Burglar (1985), "C" Is for Corpse (1986), "D" Is for Deadbeat (1987) and "E" Is for Evidence (1988).

    Long after interstellar civilization collapsed, Battle Central, a sentient computer, selected a young military officer to restore its fallen glory by conquering a planet -- and then re-conquering the stars.

    The naive daughter of the American ambassador, Sally is madly in love with a golden boy caught in Hitler's horrifying grip. LG Featured Alternate. Martin's.