It’s a decision Huck’s creator already had made, albeit for somewhat different reasons, a quarter of a century earlier. He wasn’t even Mark Twain then, but as Huck might have said, “That ain’t no matter.” With the Civil War spreading across his native Missouri, twenty-five-year-old Samuel Clemens, suddenly out of work as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, gladly accepted his brother Orion’s offer to join him in Nevada Territory, far from the crimsoned battlefields of war.A rollicking, hilarious stagecoach journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains was just the beginning of a nearly six-year-long odyssey that took Samuel Clemens from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hawaii, with lengthy stopovers in Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco. By the time it was over, he would find himself reborn as Mark Twain, America’s best-loved, most influential writer. The “trouble,” as he famously promised, had begun.With a pitch-perfect blend of appreciative humor and critical authority, acclaimed literary biographer Roy Morris, Jr., sheds new light on this crucial but still largely unexamined period in Mark Twain’s life. Morris carefully sorts fact from fiction—never an easy task when dealing with Twain—to tell the story of a young genius finding his voice in the ramshackle mining camps, boomtowns, and newspaper offices of the wild and woolly West, while the Civil War rages half a continent away.With the frequent help of Twain’s own words, Morris follows his subject on a winding journey of selfdiscovery filled with high adventure and low comedy, as Clemens/Twain dodges Indians and gunfighters, receives marriage advice from Brigham Young, burns down a mountain with a frying pan, gets claim-jumped by rival miners, narrowly avoids fighting a duel, hikes across the floor of an active volcano, becomes one of the first white men to try the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing, and writes his first great literary success, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”Lighting Out for the Territory is a fascinating, even inspiring, account of how an unemployed riverboat pilot, would-be Confederate guerrilla, failed prospector, neophyte newspaper reporter, and parttime San Francisco aesthete reinvented himself as America’s most famous and beloved writer. It’s a good story, and mostly true—with some stretchers thrown in for good measure.

    Twelve year-old Biddy has survived an intolerable life of indenture by remembering two things: adults can’t be trusted, and it’s best to be invisible. Due to an early trauma, she’s mute with no memory of her past. The man who holds her contract for indenture has evil plans for her, and he will stop at nothing to ensure his schemes come to fruition. Things look hopeless for Biddy until she meets two school teachers, Brenna and Emily. From that moment on, these three lives become intricately entwined. Biddy’s new champions take desperate measures to ensure her safety. Life and death choices are made and these accelerate into an unanticipated conclusion. As is often the case in life, what was wished for is granted in a most unexpected way. Victoria Murata has again embraced history to tell an enduring story of love and loss in our country’s not too distant past.

     Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway.He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with twenty years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.

    You are a deniable asset. Betrayal is punished by death.'A writer of almost cinematic talent' DAILY EXPRESSAlex Reeve was Operative 66. A former special-ops soldier and one of the UK's most lethal weapons, he was a member of SC9 - an elite covert unit with a remit to assassinate the country's most dangerous enemies.Falsely accused of treason, Reeve was condemned to live in the shadows as the merciless killers he once trained alongside were ordered to terminate the 'rogue asset'.But tricked into revealing himself, Reeve is dragged into a deadly international conspiracy involving the British state, shadowy Russian agents... and his own father, a violent murderer newly released from prison.But if there's one man who can survive... it is Operative 66.From the internationally bestselling author of the Wilde & Chase series comes an explosive new thriller - the perfect pulse-racing read for fans of LEE CHILD, VINCE FLYNN and GREGG HURWITZ., ,

     You will learn how to pray for financial miracles and what to do when the answer is not forthcoming. You must simply read this book to gain a better understanding of prayer for finances.

    David Schneider’s The Invention of Surgery is an in-depth biography of the practice that has leapt forward over the centuries from the dangerous guesswork of ancient Greek physicians through the world-changing “implant revolution” of the twentieth century.The Invention of Surgery explains this dramatic progress and highlights the personalities of the discipline's most dynamic historical figures. It links together the lives of the pioneering scientists who first understood what causes disease, how organs become infected or cancerous, and how surgery could powerfully intercede in people’s lives, and then shows how the rise of surgery intersected with many of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the last century, including the evolution of medical education, the transformation of the hospital from a place of dying to a habitation of healing, the development of antibiotics, and the rise of transistors and polymer science.And as Schneider argues, surgery has not finished transforming; new technologies are constantly reinventing both the practice of surgery and the nature of the objects we are permanently implanting in our bodies. Schneider considers these latest developments, asking “What’s next?” and analyzing how our conception of surgery has changed alongside our evolving ideas of medicine, technology, and our bodies.

    He explores the growth of a modern consumer society, the impact of immigration, the invention of modern pop music, and the British retreat from empire. He tells the story of the colourful characters of the period, like Harold Macmillan, Kingsley Amis, and Paul McCartney, and brings to life the experience of the first post-imperial generation, from the Notting Hill riots to the first Beatles hits, from the Profumo scandal to the cult of James Bond.

    Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warming of imminent collapse.The esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how America might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military, Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of venality in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic though various forms of privatization. He persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside -- two things that are in our power to change.In lively, richly detailed historical stories based on the latest scholarship, the ancient world leaps to life and casts our own contemporary world in a provocative new light.

    It reveals a simplicity beneath the complex workings of the mind and the principles behind the creation of our life experience.

    Every religion has angels, Sylvia tells us. Different from spirit guides, angels are spiritual messengers who are available to help us if we will simply ask for their assistance. Sylvia goes on to discuss the properties of angels; the true nature of God, good, evil, and the Other Side; and explains how we can overcome guilt, accept ourselves, and thereby understand our own particular “contract.” In the second half of the program, Sylvia leads a meditation that invokes the presence of our angels and individual spirit guides, and invites them to communicate with us. We feel their protection, receive their healing, and with Sylvia’s encouragement, learn how to ask them for the help we desire.