His Tales and Legends from India, Angry River, Strange Men, Strange Places, The Blue Umbrella, A Long Walk for Bina and Hanuman to the Rescue are also available in Rupa paperback. The Ruskin Bond's Children's Omnibus has been a firm favourite with young readers for several years. Ghost Stories from the Raj, The Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories, The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure, The Rupa Book of Himalayan Tales and The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories are some of his recent books for Rupa.

     After the unfortunate events that took place in Britain, Jacob Hunter is no longer certain of many things, but this ill-fated truth is one he understands implicitly. Having spent months battling his addiction to the all-powerful blue orb, a device capable of traveling through time but equally adept at breaking a man’s mind, Jacob has finally succumbed to it. Once aided by loyal companions and the woman he loves, Jacob has abandoned everyone he has ever trusted, his mind warped by the orb’s influence. However, recently given new clues concerning the orb’s potential, Jacob departs for Rome, where he now knows a second orb lay hidden, waiting to be reunited with the orb he already possesses. Accompanied only by Rome’s manipulative empress, Agrippina the Younger, the pair journey to Rome where they hope to discover the secret to the orb’s power, but a destructive truth lies behind what they seek, one he may not be fully prepared to combat… But Jacob is not the only one about to embark on a daring quest. Having been abandoned and left without direction in the hinterlands of ancient Britain, Jacob’s sister, Diana, must find it in herself to rally Jacob’s jilted friends and corral an enraged Helena, the woman he loves, who carries her own mysterious secret after her life was miraculously saved at the brink of death. Unprepared for the responsibility suddenly thrust on her by Jacob's disappearance, Diana understands that she and her friends must find him before it's too late. Clouded and perverted though his mind may be, she knows her brother all too well. Jacob, tormented and driven beyond rationality, is prepared to sacrifice everything to find the lost orb. Including his life...

    When billionaire mogul James Preston hires an escort as a date for his brother’s wedding, he knows he’s taking a risk. One thing he won’t be taking? The escort’s clothes off. He just wants a date—not a girlfriend. Not a relationship. No strings. No ties. No games. No sex. He has his reasons. He lost someone he loved, and isn’t interested in trying again. Too many opportunities for mistakes or worse, heartbreak. Audrey Reynolds became a high-end escort to keep her brother in his expensive group home. James Preston is the client of her dreams—he’s offering to pay her more money for two weeks than she’s ever made before. But James is... difficult. He’s gorgeous, troubled and all too human for Audrey's business-like tastes. Determined to complete her assignment and collect the money, Audrey tries to play by James’s rules. But before she knows what's happening, he's rewriting the contract. When Audrey ends up in James’s bed, he realizes that she’s everything he’s wanted… and everything he’s been running from. Escorting the Actress He was my party-boy billionaire stepbrother... Now he's my disinherited, sexy escort? FML! Kyle: She was my geeky, brace-faced stepsister. Now she's a stunning Hollywood actress. And she just became a client at the upscale escort agency where I work. Things might finally be looking up. Lowell: I had a PR disaster on my hands. I needed a pretend boyfriend--so I called the escort service. But then stepbrother bad boy showed up. Now I'm all sorts of screwed. Or wishing I was. Wait--I take that back! I take it back! Kyle: My powerful father will do anything to keep me away from Lowell, including dangling my fortune in front of me. But I just might be more interested in what my sexy ex-stepsister has to offer. That is, if I can convince her to give it to me. Escorting the Player Win or Lose... Winning is important but this is championship quarterback Chase Layne's last chance for glory. All he wants for his final season is to win the Superbowl. But dreams of ending his career on a high will be sacked if his soon to be ex-wife has her way. She and her new boyfriend have plans to ruin Chase in a media smear, stealing everything he's worked to achieve. He just has to show the press he's still in control and on top of his game, in business and his private life. It's How You Play the Game... Avery Banks knows all about being played. Life has done that to her for years now and she's tired of being the loser. All she needs is a big score...a job paying enough money to allow her stop turning tricks for good and to get her sister into rehab. Then it happens! She gets the dream job pretending to be a star football player's girlfriend. All she has to do is make him look good, help him keep up his All American Boy image for the next few weeks. Easy, right? Except her sister sees an even bigger payoff: Blackmailing Chase. As Chase and Avery play offense to everyone trying to bring them down, Avery must also face the hard truth: she's made the ultimate rookie mistake...falling in love with a client. Escorting the Groom TO HAVE AND TO HOLD… Ruthless technology billionaire Lucas Ford has run out of time. The rules of his trust make it clear: be married by thirty-five and stay married for one year. Otherwise, bye-bye inheritance—and the family fortune will be inherited by his sister, who might very well blow it on Botox and funding her sorority alma mater.

    Pages: 48. Chapters: Altheda, Altheda's potion, Altheda's wand, Amata, Amata's lover, Antioch Peverell, Antioch Peverell's first wand, Antioch Peverell's killer, Asha, Babbitty, Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump, Brigade of Witch-Hunters, Cadmus Peverell, Cadmus Peverell's girlfriend, Cadmus Peverell's wand, Captain of the Brigade of Witch-Hunters, Charlatan, Cloak of Invisibility, Crystal casket, Death, Elder Wand, Enchanted garden, Evil sorcerer, Fountain, Gold statue of Babbitty, Grumble the Grubby Goat, Hairy Heart, Ignotus Peverell, Ignotus Peverell's son, Ignotus Peverell's wand, King, Kinsfolk, Maiden, Never-Ending Hill, Old man's donkey, Old man's family, Old man, Peasant woman's granddaughter, Peasant woman, Poisonous toadstool, Poultice for warts, Resurrection Stone, Sabre, Silver chalice, Sir Luckless, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Hopping Pot, The Tale of the Three Brothers, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, The Warlock's friends, The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, Warlock, Wizard's father, Wizard, Young woman's child, Young woman. Excerpt: Altheda was one of the three female protagonists in The Fountain of Fair Fortune, written by Beedle the Bard. Altheda was a witch who came to the Fountain in the hope of finding relief from poverty and despair, as her home, money, and wand had all been stolen by a Dark Wizard. After completing three trials, Altheda arrived at the Fountain with her companions Asha, Amata, and Sir Luckless. Before the four could decide who would get to bathe in the Fountain, however, Asha collapsed from exhaustion. Altheda quickly gathered some of the herbs that grew around the Fountain and prepared a potion for Asha. The potion not only saved Asha's life, but also cured her of the malady she suffered, which she had believed only the Fountain could heal. In curing Asha's sickness, Altheda realized that she had the means to earn a living, and thus had no need to...

    The hood raised her, but she's determined to let her humbled spirit take her out of it. Living a normal life is only a choice that she's made, however. Unlike Gianni, her mother, Tommy, is a bigger queen pin than any king pin in Tallahassee Florida and in the down south area. She takes care of Gianni and her two kids with no problems. Tommy could easily give Gianni the salon and big house that Gianni has always dreamed of, but Gianni wants to accomplish her goals on her own. Due to her mother being in and out of Federal Prison, Gianni reminds herself that she has two kids to think about, and she can not and will never leave her kids behind, like Tommy did her. Instead, Gianni allows her baby's father, Lamont, to take care of her and her kids. She feels he owes her that much, due to all the pain he's caused her. However, dealing with him has caused nothing but heartache, distraction and drama. After finding out about the third child that he could possibly have on her, she finally decides to stray away from him and focus on she and her kids. She meets a handsome and wealthy man by the name of Kreed at her mother's house during Tommy's known 'gambling day'. Kreed is a different breed, and though Gianni only wants friends so that she can do a little living, Kreed is hard to shake. He has that smart, hood, and smooth demeanor that Gianni admires. Being surrounded by drugs and a lot of money didn't mean a thing to Kreed. He loves his legal businesses and he enjoys living his life the right way. He's feeling Gianni just as much as she's feeling him, but he when Lamont finds out that there's a new man in town who's stole Gianni's heart, he makes she and her kids life a living hell. Which causes Kreed to bring out his old vicious ways! Tumultuous drama starts to unfold, and it will be up to Gianni to get everything in line to save what she has with Kreed.

    89 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Diamond Age, or, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

    No Zombies. No games. After their hurried escape from the Drake Mountain Facility, Isaac, and his group stumbled upon a farmhouse in a secluded valley. It's what they've been looking for. A place to make their home, both now and in the future.Can it be so easy though? Danger is coming and only time will tell if they have found the salvation they've been seeking or if their dreams will be crushed, leaving them to the same fate as all of those that died before them. This boxed set contains episodes 4-6 of America Falls, a compelling, action-packed series about who we are, and who we have to become in order to survive.What Amazon readers are saying: ★★★★★ "The characters are rich and believable, I was cheering, raging and crying as I read."★★★★★ "The story kind of sneaks up on you and before you know it, the afternoon is gone."★★★★★ "Compelling action! I could not stop reading this series... give me more, more, more!★★★★★  " I LOVED IT ! I couldn't skip words or chapters or paragraphs, I was afraid I would miss something!!!

    "Tank Farm Dynamo" sure tried! What if we found the nerve, the spirit and daring to use every resource -- including those that NASA simply threw away? An unabashedly old-fashioned hard SF story with science and technology as central, problem-solving players... plus a real twist.

    Originally published in The Strand magazine from 1918 to 1922 and later collected as The Inimitable Jeeves, these ten tales by comedic master P. G. Wodehouse abound in sparkling wit. "Scoring off Jeeves" recounts a lunch with Aunt Agatha ("A pretty frightful ordeal … Practically the nearest thing to being disemboweled."), who insists that Bertie propose to Honaria Glossop ("simply nothing more nor less than a pot of poison"), necessitating Jeeves' rescue of the perennial bachelor ("and according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that"). Other stories include "The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace," featuring Bertie's frolicsome cousins ("as innocuous as a pair of sprightly young tarantulas"); "Aunt Agatha Takes the Count," involving our hero's formidable relative and her intrusion upon his vacation in the south of France; and "Comrade Bingo," in which Bertie's school chum masquerades as a Bolshevist and Jeeves comes very near to being rattled.

    Over time he has learned to accept his confinement. After all, it is no more than he deserves given the heinous nature of his previous crimes. However, when a new member of the nursing staff begins taking an interest in Tommy, he learns things previously kept from him: Like why he is being permanently dosed with meds. How, and why, his parents really died. And is it just a coincidence his earlier crimes occurred at the time of a full moon? Nurse Jenny informs Tommy about the true nature of his world: Secret Government cabals, and their plans for a New World Order; the murder of his parents, and facing up to the reality of his life as a werewolf. Then, when she thinks he is ready, she tells him the biggest secret of all: Nurse Jenny has a way out of Broad-lands. But, as is often the case, nothing comes without a price. What is the real motivation for her aiding Tommy's escape? A tale of horror that unfolds beneath the light of a full moon.

    See far-flung worlds, they said. Meet interesting creatures, and kill them all. Soldiers fighting aliens in unforgiving landscapes, where every breath could be their last. Featuring stories by Weston Ochse, Mike Resnick, and others. From near-future to far-future, featuring some of the best writers working in the field today.

    It was the Professor's Wife, always a perceptive hostess, came to her husband's rescue by saying, "Top of the stairs, end of the hall, last door."Oddly enough, it was the start of a puzzling and all but unspeakable misadventure. As it were.

    In another universe, humanity is overrun by monsters so evil that their very presence dims the light of the stars. In yet another universe, humanity is drawn into an endless battle for dominion over the galaxy. This is not one of those universes. In this universe, humanity is in charge of the Galactic Peace Committee. In theory, the Committee is an unmatched force for good, bringing peace and prosperity to countless worlds and ensuring that conflicts between different races are settled with words and not planet-cracking weaponry or super plagues designed to turn everyone into goo. In theory. Jake Smith is a diplomat. He works for the Committee. This is his story – and it goes about as well as you’d expect. In other words, it doesn’t go very well at all. Can Jake survive petty aliens? Sure. He’s a diplomat. It’s all part of the job. What about angry aliens? Probably. He does have a killer robot for a secretary, and he’s not bad with a shock staff. How about a fleet of aliens out for blood? That… that might be a little bit trickier. The Galactic Peace Committee… keeping peace (sort of) throughout the galaxy.

    As tiny and inconspicuous as it may seem, That-Which-Had-Been exhibits an unexpected and varied gift for survival, as it journeys implacably toward its ultimate destination. Along the way, it meets a rich array of ordinary human beings, some of whom assist it along its way, others who impede its progress, none of whom have any idea of its existence.From whence comes the strange, but universal, experience of deja vu? Why do some people exhibit a wisdom far beyond their age and experience - persons reincarnationists refer to as 'old souls'? Joseph Wurtenbaugh in this short story offers a fascinating and tantalizingly plausible explanation for these phenomena, presented in a natural setting that brims with adventure and exhilarating possibility. Not to be missed by anyone who enjoys science fiction or thinking outside the box.

    While some of these narratives are loosely based in fact, they are written with a large dollop of literary license. The characters are not "politically correct" in today's parlance and speak in the vernacular of their time and culture. Some of them you will like ...others you may not. No disrespect or offense is intended in the telling. These are their stories.The lead story "Fat of The Land" was a past runner-up in the national Raymond Carver short story awards.