The last time he was conscious, at thirty-one, O.J. Simpson had just led police on a long car chase and nobody knew the name Monica Lewinsky. When he turns on the strange-looking flat screen in his room at the nursing home, he hears reporters on one channel after another talking about Charlie Sheen’s infamous meltdown. After his mother arrives at his bedside, he learns that his father has died, his wife has divorced him, and the music store that he owned for most of his adult life has been sold. As Joel grapples with the loss of his independence, he realizes that his mother, who has driven him crazy since birth, will be his caretaker for the foreseeable future. Luckily, angels disguised as therapists and the support of old friends help him through a grueling rehabilitation. With one foot in the past and a heavy heart, Joel is about to slowly reenter a very different world than the one he left. Birdcall Morning is an emotional and life-affirming tale about the struggle to start over, the value of friendship, the true nature of love, and the changing times that we live in. It’s the sort of book that takes you on an unexpected journey that’s captivating until the very last word.

    Robert is the nephew of a Lord, and Lydia a mere doctor’s daughter – and a German doctor at that. While her parentage is no hindrance to their relationship in peacetime, when war is declared Robert’s family makes it clear they no longer approve of the match. With no means of contacting Robert on the Western Front, Lydia volunteers herself, joining the Red Cross. But her love affair with Robert has had more than one consequence…

    

    It provides exclusive access to the greatest pleasure mankind has ever known. There's just one problem. Membership is fatal. When two terminally bored Hollywood superstars hear an urban legend that some English students have discovered the secret of ultimate pleasure, they come to London to discover if the rumours are true. They employ young socialite Sophie York to help them. Sophie is a forgotten Reality TV contestant and a self-styled entertainment consultant. She thinks she's landed the job of her dreams but when she and her famous clients collide head on with Oxford University's richest, smartest and most sinister students, it soon becomes a nightmare. The Millionaires' Death Club is a chick lit thriller...with the wickedest of twists.

    Someone is demanding a lot of money from her husband and she wants to know why.What do the dying words of one man - he made me - actually mean?As the mystery unfolds people will come undone and reputations will be ruined before the answer becomes clear.At the end of the day Mrs Swaine might end up wishing she’d let sleeping dogs lie… Also available in the Booker & Cash series: Bad Sons

    But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly turn down her parents' offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. She'd just have to put up with her sister Theresa (making no secret of preferring Tuscany as a holiday destination) and brother Simon (worrying that there might be some sinister agenda behind their parents' wish to take them all away) with their various spouses, teenagers, young children and au pair. In a luxury hotel, with bright sunshine, swimming, diving, glorious food and friendly locals, any family tensions should have melted away in the fabulous heat. The children should have been angelic, the teenagers cheerful, the adults relaxed and happy. But...some problems just refuse to be left at home.

    A series of minority governments, and endless Quebec referendums (designed to lose narrowly, to keep the money coming) have left Canada almost ungovernable. When the Governor General resigns in disgrace and the House of Windsor implodes in London, a media baron launches the idea of a Canadian king or queen elected by lottery.It starts as a joke — except that the lucky winner, King John, a bright and charismatic guy from Toronto, knows exactly what people want. Soon Quebec is gone, while Toronto’s surprise bid to leave Canada is averted by shifting his official residence, the new seat of power, to the Toronto waterfront. Many good things happen, and the politicians go along for the ride. And the blockades of Native lands are ended for good, after John is heroically wounded keeping the peace at risk to his life.His popularity soars and Canadian morale soars with it. Soon the rest of the world is taking notice of this model leader. In the United States, the blue states look enviously northward. Then Canada’s king, ignoring assassination threats, goes on a formal visit to Washington. . .From the Hardcover edition.

    Now two of her top-selling works have been brought together for the first time in an outstanding volume that shines with moving storytelling that celebrates Ireland, its people, and the journey of life itself. Circle of Friends is the heartwarming tale of two girls: Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, friends from the time they're in school together. Off to the university in Dublin to begin a new life and face new challenges, they help and support each other in a world that can bring them great new riches, expanded friendships, and also betrayal of the worst kind. In the Copper Beech, the children of the village of Shancarrig grow up without much obvious excitement, but there's far more there than meets the eye. The mysteries and adventures behind closed doors in a small town shape the children's futures and the life of the town in this moving novel of a country town in Ireland.

    Purely an advisory role, they are told.Harry Delhaze is on a lonely path to self-destruction; George Marriott has promises to keep. It seems to them like the easiest money they’ll ever make.They couldn’t be more wrong.They are forced to battle frostbite in the Atlas Mountains and endure the baking deserts of the sub-Sahara; they are traded, kidnapped, and used as pawns in high-stakes political rivalries; they encounter women who worship cannons for fertility and magician-warlords who talk to the dead and play bloody games of chess with living slaves; and the three muzzle-loading cannon the Sultan has hired them to command are antiques that could explode in their faces at any moment.Then there is the Lord of the Atlas himself, Amastan el-Karim, who harbors a shocking secret that could cost them both their lives – or give one of them a reason to live again.An epic historical adventure that evokes the beautiful and the barbaric of nineteenth century Morocco that transports the reader to a now-lost world of ancient medinas, crumbling palaces, and wild mountain passes.

    

    The Great Khan, Attila, overlord of the Scythian and Germani hordes is no more.The lands of Rome lie in ruin, razed by the Scourge of God.From the ashes of civilization a new power is destined to emerge. Warriors whose fearsome reputation would remain for more than a thousand years.On the plains of Pannonia a boy is born. A boy destined to shape history.Meet Ragnaris, the son of no man.

    Después de muchos años, Klaus, asentado en Criacuervo, un lugar en pleno desierto de La Guajira, decide invitar a Adler y a Cora y conciliar de esa forma un pasado conflictivo. Esta historia recorre el sendero de los destinos rotos, así como el intento desesperado por encontrarle un sentido al camino que no escogimos seguir.*Defeated and humiliated by the swift decline of his career as an Olympic swimmer, Adler Zweig has no other option but to consider how to rebuild his life. However, when he receives a photograph of his older brother Klaus through the mail, it raises the possibility of meeting him in a desert somewhere in northern Colombia, where he works as a diver for an oil rig. The person who sent him the picture, Cora Baumann, is an old friend from his childhood, and is the ex-girlfriend of his brother. The meeting between Cora and Adler, which at the beginning is focused on the arrangements for the trip to the desert, soon unleashes a meticulous reflection on his own past: the devastation of his childhood, Klaus’ youth devoted to violence, the unfathomable emptiness left in both of them by the death of their parents… but in particular, the love that he has been repressing for Cora Baumann.

    B. White in his essay on Don Marquis and his famous creations, and the undimmed enthusiasm of several generations of fans -- who every year buy thousands of copies of Marquis' earlier collections -- testifies to their appeal. A whimsical and sophisticated sage, archy the cockroach entertained readers with iconoclastic observations on pretensions, politics, and our place in the cosmos during Marquis' career as a New York newspaper columnist in the 1920s and 30s.Allegedly tapping out stories at night by leaping from key to key on Marquis' typewriter, archy couldn't quite manage the shift key for capital letters. Although his tales appeared in lower case, his views achieved a level grand enough to solidify Marquis' reputation as an American humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, and Ring Lardner. archyology brings together selected "lost" tales that were literally rescued from oblivion by Jeff Adams, who found them among papers stored in a steamer trunk since Marquis' death.And so archy emerges from his long silence. Whether reporting on characters like emmet the ghost, sailing to Paris to visit the insects of Europe, being trapped for days in a New York subway train, or hanging out in a Long Island orchard enjoying fermented cherries, archy is always both provocative and inimitable. With illustrations by Ed Frascino, a New Yorker regular, this collection reintroduces a delightful cast of characters who reconfirm archy's view of the world: "the only way to live with it is to laugh at it.

    It is based on Oxford Reading Tree which is used in 80% of primary schools. Read With Biff, Chip and Kipper Level 2 Phonics storybooks have been specially written to allow children to practise their letters and sounds as they do at school. Fun plots, familiar characters and carefully levelled text create the perfect combination to build children's confidence and enjoyment of reading. Level 2 practises single letter sounds like 'f' and two letters that make one sound such as 'ff' and combining those sounds to read simple one and two syllable words. These sounds are introduced at Level 2: s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll ss j x y z zz. Each book includes two stories as well as practical tips and ideas for you to use when you reading with your child and fun activities. Visit the Oxford Owl web site for practical advice, all you need to know about phonics and lots of fun activities and free eBooks. With plenty of support available inside the book and online phonics practice at home has never been so fun or so easy!

    So when the bishop calls her to be homemaking counselor, she knows that it's either a joke- or inspiration. Welcome to the Paradise Vue Ward, with stained glass windows so blindingly bright, the congregation has to wear shades. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll keep wondering how the author found out about all the wackiest people in your ward. Surely the funniest Mormon novel ever published. By the end you may discover it's also the best.