He has returned from his annual pilgrimage to a graveyard in Wales. Now he hopes to take refuge from his memories by heading an archeological dig in the village of Wytchlow. It is a simple project -- checking for ancient relics before a land developer levels the earth -- until a woman with an all-too-familiar face stumbles into the path of his car.Bobby Redhead bears a striking resemblance to a woman he loved and tragically lost years ago. Bobby cannot understand the emotions she evokes in Patrick, but she can sense his deep suffering. What has he done that he cannot forgive? And why is Bobby so drawn to him?As Bobby reaches out, Patrick retreats into silence and shadows, focusing obsessively on the dig. They are hunting ancient Roman mosaics, but there is something more tantalizing in the soil of Wytchlow. It is only a myth, a local folktale, a song sung one night in a pub by an otherwise mute man. The story goes that a Saxon girl called the German Queen has been buried close by. The only evidence is the old song, but it is enough to capture Patrick's imagination as nothing has in years.It has also captured the unwanted interest of a television producer fascinated with Patrick's past. Yet nothing will deter Patrick from the project -- not the television hype, nor the developer's greed, nor the bittersweet relationship of working so close to Bobby. As centuries fall away, the Saxon warrior woman lost to time is suddenly as vividly alive to Patrick as the woman standing beside him. As Patrick struggles with the unforgivable tragedy he cannot forget, he senses a connection between Bobby and the lost queen and discovers his destiny is powerfully entwined with them both. Beneath the shadows of a timeless moon, under layers of earth that have protected her secrets, can the fragile bones of a royal matriarch heal the hearts of those who would dare free her?

    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).

     A shadowy organization that will kill anyone to find it. A woman who will do whatever it takes to get there first. Josephine Bennett — Jo to everyone but her family and closest friends — is Harvey Bennett's (of the Harvey Bennett Mysteries series) youngest cousin. An archeologist with an attitude, she wants to find what G.E. Kinkaid's diary is pointing to. "A cross between Indiana Jones and Lara Croft." Kinkaid's diary chronicles his incredible expedition into the Temple of the Snake, deep in a cave in Arizona. ...A temple that has Egyptian hieroglyphics and artifacts that could change the history of not only the United States... but of the entire human race. The journal is the key to finding the cave and the temple, but Axel LaFitte and a shadowy organization are willing to kill to get into the temple first. Why? No one knows. Follow Jo's quest to find the temple, figure out what's inside that is worth killing for and stay alive! If you love Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure, you're going to LOVE Jo Bennett!

    or get them killed. From the depths of the Atlantic off Cape Canaveral Florida, searching for sunken Spanish treasure, to the Andes mountains of Ecuador chasing the legend of a lost golden library, Dr. Colten X. Burnett and the Risky Business team are on a quixotic adventure.While trying to make an honest, well sort of honest living, searching for remnants of the lost 1715 fleet, Risky Business Ltd. becomes entangled in a mystery that covers two continents and may rewrite history.The lure of uncovering a lost civilization, as well as the secrets it holds, motivates the team on their dangerous journey into a cosmological unknown. -Sunken Treasure Lost Worlds is the first book in Hep Aldridge's action and adventure series about Dr. Colten X. Burnett and the Risky Business team Grab a copy today.

    (Timur Lenk would leave piles of severed heads in his conquered cities; another tribe sent nine sacks of ears to their khan.) Less studied is the remarkable effectiveness of their battle techniques: For two thousand years, these horse-archer armies were an unstoppable force to sedentary peoples, be they Romans, Crusaders, Chinese, or medieval. Erik Hildinger introduces the most important of these raiders as well as a host of other tribes and examines in detail their tactics, strategies, and weaponry—a form of highly mobile and defensive warfare that even armies of today can learn from.

    Hundreds of miles away from her home, the immortal Guru and His secret disciples meet in a forested mountain to discuss metaphysical ways of steering her soul back to a life of happiness and prosperity. This treasure is the second instalment in the Immortal Talks book series. It contains six priceless chapters: A Thousand Lives; The Linga Code; Incomplete; The Invisible Four; The Awareness Setting; Continuity.

     With the quizzical grimace of long-neglected astigmatism she adjusted the steel-bowed spectacles that had been her mother's, had of a notion peddler for two dozen eggs and a pound of butter. The wooden-wheeled clock—a noisy but amazingly accurate and exquisitely ornamented product of old Ferd's, while laid up one winter with a broken leg that had kept him two months sober—clacked irascibly at Martha that another blistering August morning was nearly five hours old.

    But he’s too broken to love again. Recovering from the wounds of war is one thing, but the wounds from a previous relationship is another.Jemma Smith grants wishes for the ill through her Grant-A-Wish app, but can she grant her dying grandfather’s last wish to see her settle down before Christmas? She’d always dreamed of getting married and knows her grandfather just wants to see her happy, but she’s not getting any younger and it’s too late for her now, isn’t it?After meeting Luke through his matchmaking aunt, Sue Mae, Jemma wonders if she could make this work. Or will a marriage of convenience be all they can handle to appease their folks?

    Further extracts are available as digital shorts, accompanying the London Southbank festival programme.Jean Sibelius hailed from the ‘small nation’ of Finland. Working in isolation, far from the great artistic capitals of Europe, Ross shows how Sibelius’s reinvention of classical forms went on to set the pace for classical composers around the world.Now a major festival running throughout 2013 at London’s Southbank, The Rest is Noise is an intricate commentary not just on the sounds that defined the century, but on art’s troublesome dance with politics, social and cultural change.Alex Ross is the New Yorker’s music critic, and the winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Rest is Noise, which was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson and Pulitzer prizes for non-fiction.

    When the chance to purchase the Cosset Cove Advertiser, a small weekly newspaper in the New England seaside town she'd spent many happy childhood vacations, it seemed too good an opportunity to turn down. Charlotte soon settles in to her new role as owner, chief reporter and general gofer of the Advertiser. Life is sweet, her new friends and colleagues Clara, Abigail and Amy, along with Barney, the huge Maine Coon cat, can both delight and frustrate in equal measure. This idyllic new life is disturbed when Charlotte has to interview a blast from her past. It is completely shattered when that interview leads to murder. Things only go from bad to worse as Charlotte is suspected of being the culprit. Can Charlotte, and her new found friends, clear her name and bring the real murderer to justice? Or will being on the trail of a cold blooded killer only put their own lives at risk? “A charming traditional cozy mystery in a modern day setting. Contains plenty of light witty humor and will keep you guessing right to the end!”

    Organised crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels.In Gangland, award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime and violent gangs.The brutal execution of a husband-and-wife; the undercover cop who infiltrated a casino VIP lounge; the midnight fishing trip which led to the country's biggest cocaine bust; the gangster who shot his best friend in a motorcycle shop: these stories go behind the headlines and open the door to an invisible world - a world where millions of dollars are made, life is cheap, and allegiances change like the flick of a switch.

    What would you do if you made a wish in a well and woke up in a world full of dragons? What if they made you their queen? Would you use the magic they gave you to cleanse the corruption plaguing the land? Help cure your new best friend’s mother? Fall in love with two dashingly handsome guys? One who is a notorious bad boy and the other who is smart, tender, and funny? Tell the king that he can shove it sideways if he doesn’t want your help, knowing full well he needs you more than you need him? Or would you do all of the above?

    REPLACING BARNIE, WHERE WISHES COME TRUE, NIGHT MUSIC which is only now released -- bundled together for your enjoyment. They come with a warning--you may stay up late at night laughing.Enjoy!REPLACING BARNIELydia O'Reilley, divorce attorney, is on the fast track to make partner until she meets a hot stranger at the Candy Bar, and one thing leads to another. The following morning she's doing a joint deposition and in walks Jed, the man she'd spent the night with, and her new client's soon-to-be-ex husband. Later she learns the condom broke and she's pregnant. Now her perfect life is seriously derailed, and it may take a little magic to make everything right.WHERE WISHES COME TRUESusie spends Friday night at the Candy Bar, the hottest spot in South Beach. She wears a perfect size 2, and blows her money on Jimmy Choo shoes. But appearances can be deceiving. Perfect on the outside, her flaws are carried deep. Disfigured at birth, her father, a renowned plastic surgeon started her life under the knife and her sees herself as the ugly duckling in a family of swans. Her words, not mine. She is about to begin an adventure of a lifetime, a 6-week sojourn in Florence to study painting, when Brett, a hot firefighter who she has known and loved forever, is badly injured and scarred. He pushes her away, but she is a champion for the underdog, and it's impossible for her to leave anyone in need, little alone the man she loves. She must choose between her dream of studying painting or staying behind to help the man she loves--even if he doesn't love her. Will Susie ever find the happiness that has always been outside her grasp, and learn that love begins within?NIGHT MUSICFran Sherman is a survivor—she’s also resilient, stubborn, tenacious, feisty, and a whole slew of other words, but you get my point. If a tornado came her way, she’d probably swallow it whole and spit the damn thing out. That’s Fran Sherman, like a tank and just as indestructible.And yet, tonight at the Candy Bar she feels vulnerable as if something beyond her control just might get the better of her.Fire chief John Hanley is also at the bar that night. He’s looking forward to retirement in a few years, and has dreams of starting a fishing charter business. After being married to a woman who harped at him for 20 years, and then ran off with another woman, the last thing he wants is romance and a dame messing with his plans. And yet, that old Candy Bar magic has a way of playing tricks, and once you’re caught in its path, you’re swept along on a tumultuous, enjoyable ride.This hilarious, touching story is sure to capture your heart.

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