. . . An underground classic. . . . A bicycling book that follows a different course—one with characters you can relate to, whose actions raise questions about life on and off the bicycle. . . . The heart of The Yellow Jersey is the Tour de France itself, which serves as a metaphor for life.—Bicycling Magazine"This is sports fiction at its very best. Mr. Hurne has a cool, downbeat style descended from Lardner and Hemingway, and a fine hand with the hairpins turns of suspense."—The New York Times Book Review"Full of wit, charm, excitement, and intelligence."—Publishers WeeklyAn excerpt from the novel:It's a funny sort of stage. Everyone seems to be waiting for Romain to attack. Van Faignaert, as I expected, is taking things easy and trying to keep the bunch together. Butch Cassidy's not a bad climber and on the Col de Foreyssasse he has a go, but the Belgian team swoops and soon has him under control. I can see on the faces of the spectators that they are disappointed. They've turned out in their thousands expecting this to be It; I feel like shouting to them to go home and come back tomorrow. We get strung out a bit coming down the Foreyssasse but regroup at the bottom. The ominous threat of Romain taking off, coupled with the strong control of the race by the Belgian team, who're doing their damnedest to keep everyone in one lump, has really put the mockers on things.I'm just beginning to think that the worst of the stage has passed when the rider directly in front of me punctures, loses control and goes sliding along the loose surface on his side. It's on a sharp descent and the bunch is moving. Although it all happens in a split second, I'm unable to go either to the left or right of the fallen man and I jam on my brakes. With both wheels locked solid I pile into him at about thirty miles per hour. Normally I would have been flung over the handlebars, but my toe straps are sufficiently tight for me to do several cartwheels with the bike still attached to me. For a second everything seems upside down; then pain. I lie there feeling as if I'll never move again. From the front of the group I see v

    But the stories end abruptly on the day Adele and her sister are orphaned, and they grow up with only each other to rely on. Adele finds work in an antiques shop but when a wrongful accusation robs her of her reputation, her future looks bleak. So it's not hard for Col Vincent, a successful businessman, to persuade Adele to marry him. Adele grows to love him - until she realises that her husband is a violent man. In the 1930s, a woman who leaves her husband faces penury. Somehow Adele survives, and then news comes that will transform her life, bringing back the haunting memory of the Lydgate Widow - and the man who has loved Adele for decades...

    And yet he was powerless to protect her, being crushed by the hero. But fate has more in store for him as he gets another chance to protect his master once more and try to change his destiny despite all odds.

    Their search for Answers takes them to Japan where M. Bison, using his minions including Cammy, Vega, and Sagat, keeps a close eye on Ryu for reasons unknowns. This draws the attention of Hong Kong Interpol agent Chun-Li and US Special Ops officer Guile who each bear their own personal grudge against the evil Shadaloo syndicate.This volume collects the main stories in the first six issues of the hit Street Fighter comic book series and well as the rare, hard-to-find issue #0.

    . . without her. Will Olive be able to find her own place in the show before the curtain comes up?        In Camp, Olive and Willow are off to have the best time at summer camp. But when Olive makes quick friends, Willow struggles to form connections and latches on to Olive, and it’s more than Olive can handle. When this begins to wear on Olive, the girls aren’t just fighting, they may not even be friends by the time camp is over. Will the two be able to patch things up before the final lights out?

    Roll up your character and get ready! THE GREATEST GAMER ON EARTH At the University of California, Escondido, no one would guess that freshman Shesh Maccabee is a hard-core gamer—and in recovery to boot, following a court order, a wireless ban, and months of therapy (all because of one little seven-day Internet café episode). His friend Mike—who personally prefers Japanese-console RPGs—is tasked with keeping Shesh far away from any computer with access to World of Warfare.      Everything's going according to plan—until a Ren Faire fangirl introduces them to the campus gaming club, where they meet Theodore, a fanatical tabletop game master whose single goal in life is to run the greatest Mages & Monsters game in the world. And there just happens to be room for two more players. Soon Shesh and Mike are dragged into the dungeon of hard-core gaming—and cops, baboon men, Sri Lankan cave roaches, and Gothémon card collectors converge in the zaniest adventure that ever involved twenty-sided dice!

    When they near their goal, an arrogant Trainer named Cross stands in their way. Can Ash and Pikachu defeat him and reach Ho-Oh as they promised, or will their journey end here?

    Most of his friends are dead or disappeared. Corrupt CIA Director Marcus Cain is poised to ascend to the highest levels of power, and the shadowy group known as the Circle is causing chaos across the globe.

    Daigo has just passed the near-impossible exam to become a firefighter, and his beautiful former teacher, Ms. Ochial, will certainly be impressed by his new uniform! A fire breaks out in the high schools, and 18-year-old Daigo must face scorching flames and to make 18-year-old Daigo must face scorching flames and to make sure his favorite teacher makes it out alive! now, all he has to do is stop being so recklessly fearless! Available in either the regular version, or the Special Collector's Edition printed in the original right-to-left Japanese format!

    But why is this successful, hardworking boss of mine so preverted?! The new sensational work love story!!

    The cast has a simple structure as well: almost all the characters look essentially alike — male, very short (just "three apples tall"), with blue skin, white trousers with a hole for their short tails, white hat in the style of a Phrygian cap, and some additional accessory that identifies each one's personality. (For instance, Handy Smurf wears overalls instead of the standard trousers, a brimmed hat, and a pencil above his ear). Smurfs can walk and run, but often move by skipping on both feet. They love to eat smilax leaves, whose berries the smurfs naturally call smurfberries.The male Smurfs almost never appear without their hats, which leaves a mystery amongst the fans as to whether they have hair or not. The animated series canon state that they may be bald: one episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon has Greedy Smurf removing his chef's hat to give Papa Smurf a pie he had concealed under it, revealing a bald head. Another episode, St. Smurf and the Dragon, shows Hefty Smurf's hat rising up off his bald head briefly as he and others slide to a stop. Both Papa Smurf and Grandpa Smurf have full beards and hair visibly coming from under their hats above the earline. In The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, a Smurf took off his hat briefly for a polite gesture.In the comics, the last page of first album Les Schtroumpfs noirs (The Black Smurfs) shows Papa Smurf's hat blown off by an explosion, revealing his completely bald head (which may simply be due to old age). In Le Schtroumpfeur de Bijoux (The Jewel Smurfer), Jokey Smurf gets very angry and defensive when a human tells him he should take off his hat.The smurfs fulfill simple archetypes of everyday people: Lazy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and so on. All smurfs but Papa, Baby, Nanny and Grandpa are said to be 100 years old, and there are normally 100 smurfs (but this number increases as new smurf characters appear: smurflings, Nanny, etc).

    She was lonely and unsettled - her parents had been killed in a car accident, her boyfriend had decided to go back to his wife, and as a painter she led a solitary life in her North Yorkshire home town. But she felt immediately at home in the gracious stone house that had been bequeathed to her, and was made welcome by the local residents - in particular, by the members of the Mindon Amateur Dramatic Society (somewhat appropriately known as MADS) presided over by the formidable Ursula. Ursula liked to run things her way, and brooked no opposition when the ambitious decision was made (largely by herself) to put on A Midsummer Night's Dream as their next production. Petra , to her surprise and pleasure, was put in charge of the wardrobe. Rivalries, squabbles, love affairs and seething resentments threatened to scupper the production, and all Ursula's managerial skills were needed to prevent disaster. But Petra had more pressing things on her mind than the costumes for the cast. A mystery from her past began to haunt her - and the answer to that mystery might solve the puzzle of why she had been left such a beautiful house by a total stranger.

    He’s taken to hospital for treatment. Then people start trying to assassinate him.The man has to find out why, how to get them to stop, and what the CIA has to do with all this. There’s also the little problem of working out who he used to be, and why that changed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Piper and best friend Lance are trying to find him…Jonathon Fairfax – still the world’s most socially awkward hero – is back. If only he knew.‘A hugely entertaining novel … a surprising, yet strangely fitting, progression to the Jonathon Fairfax story.’ Scott Pack (former head buyer for Waterstones)Pick up the latest Jonathon Fairfax novel – sequel to two Amazon bestsellers: The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax (‘A comic gem’ Stylist, ‘You can’t help being tickled’ The Guardian, Bath Novel Award shortlist) and Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed (‘A funny, daft-yet-relatable, nerve-jangly thriller’ Emerald Street).*That’s a trashcan or dumpster, for American readers.The Jonathon Fairfax novels can be read in any order.

    She was also a mom at fourteen years old, and did what she had to do to raise her daughter, Chyna. Now Chyna's all grown up, a stunningly beautiful exotic dancer with a baby girl of her own, while super-sexy Roxy is at the height of her power running Harlem Heat, a gun-trafficking ring. It's a lucrative life- style some would do anything to have. And when former drug kingpin Panama Pete returns to the hood after serving fifteen years in prison, a spiral of violence traps Roxy and Chyna and has them running from the law - and running for their lives.

    Sama's father has had a heart attack, and doctors give him a month to live. With his teddy bear in tow, Sama crawls under his bed and finds a magical portal to a strange realm called Undertown. What is this dark new world? To find out, Sama begins a journey through the depths of Undertown, where he searches for The Sugar Stone, a magical object that might be able to save his dad! This is volume 1 of the Undertown manga series.