The Big Man


William McIlvanney - 1985
    When a bare-knuckle fight offers both money and a purpose, he finds it turns into a monumental struggle to keep his heritage and integrity intact.

Half Hidden


Emma Blair - 1996
    But she is forced to admit she respects and admires Dr Peter Schmidt and they begin a relationship. Then, however, typhoid strikes.

The Last Mile - EXTENDED FREE PREVIEW (first 7 chapters) (Amos Decker series)


David Baldacci - 2016
    Now, Decker returns in a spectacular new thriller . . . THE LAST MILEConvicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution--for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier--when he's granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime.Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars's case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men's families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth.The confession has the potential to make Melvin Mars--guilty or not--a free man. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now?But when a member of Decker's team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger--and more sinister--than just one convicted criminal's life hangs in the balance. Decker will need all of his extraordinary brainpower to stop an innocent man from being executed.

Brides and Grooms Box Set: Marriage Wanted\Bride Wanted\Groom Wanted


Debbie Macomber - 2014
    A man from Alaska advertises for a bride in Seattleand finds one. A businesswoman marries her company's prize chemist to allow him to stay in the country. All unusual marriages. All couples who don't seem to be well-suited. And yet love can come about in unexpected ways!Three classic romance novels by Debbie Macomber. One great price!This bundle includes: MARRIAGE WANTEDBRIDE WANTEDGROOM WANTED

Good? Bad? Who knows?


Ajahn Brahm - 2014
    After all, it is when we take some responsibility for our predicament, then we are empowered to make the necessary changes to improve our lives.

The Cincinnati Kid: A Novel


Richard Jessup - 1963
    He was a tight man. Everything about him was close and quiet; his gestures were short and clean, with no wasted movement. His eyes were bright and hard, the kind of blue you might see in the sky at high noon, if you looked straight up at the sky; almost white, but still pale, pale blue. He had dark yellowish circles under his eyes that rested on his cheekbones where the skin was drawn tight, as if he might have liver trouble from too much drinking, but he was physically sound and the circles came from playing stud poker all day and all night for many years. He had been playing in the back room of Hoban’s Pool Room and Poker Parlor since Monday at 4 p.m. It had started out as fooling around and then, as happened so many times, it developed into a game. The others began to drop in and a gig was working. It was nickel-and-dime stuff as long as it was The Kid and The Shooter and Pig, but when Carey and Carmody came in, both of whom bet the Cardinals and had won nicely over the weekend double-header, the play moved, deceptively, from nickel-and-dime to a quarter and a half and then wide open. It was Wednesday now, eleven in the morning. The game, like an endlessly circling bird, moved with a slow inexorable pace toward the center pot of money that grew magically with each dealt hand; revolving hands of cards, accompanied with a musical comment of silver upon silver tossed into the center of the table as the chant was heard, so soft as to be a litany calling on ghostly assistance and deliverance. “Queens bet.” “A half.” “In.” “Kicking it a half.” “And another half.” “And a half more.” “Buck and a half to me, and a half more.” The ritual quickened. It was the fourth card. Now the whisper and flutter of paper money would wash into the middle of the table. Someone dealt. The cards sliced through the smoky airless room like silent stealing death. And with each card, face up, a chant of destiny from the dealer, for he was the sole instrument in the life of a rambling-gambling man, bringing face up for all the world to see the next wonderful secret. There is nothing more for the gambling man. It is all there, sealed in the narrow turn of the next card. “A five to the queens, a jack to the possible, a nothing to the fours, an ace to the kicker, and the Gun shoots himself a red ten. Still queens.” “Queens check.” The raiser came back with a touch, a breath, feeling his way into those checking queens like a man fumbling in the dark. He touched it and then the queens slammed down hard on him. “Twenty dollars.” It was the clap of doom. Three players dropped out and it was back to the raiser. He hesitated. He knew three fours could not beat three queens. And to make sure (though there was another card coming and another chance) there were three queens, it would cost him twenty dollars. Pig had the fours. The Kid had the queens. They looked at each other’s cards. They were past the point as rambling-gambling men where they could play each other’s faces. Pig played the cards. There was no hope in playing The Kid. And it was not worth twenty dollars to see if The Kid was bluffing. He folded. The Shooter gathered up the cards and began to shuffle. In his huge hands the cards were like summer moths around a light, fluttering, singing, tightening and then disappearing as he cut them and rippled them again. The Shooter was acknowledged as the best man with cards along the Mississippi and west to Vegas. He looked over at The Kid who was stacking his half dollars. “They say Lancey is in town,” he said softly.

Pauper's Gold


Margaret Dickinson - 2006
    It is a cruel blow for such a young girl, but her three travelling companions are even younger than she is, and Hannah is determined to keep their spirits up and remain in good cheer.Once she is settled in the mill, Hannah discovers that the hours of work are long, and the daily routine is dangerous, arduous and harsh, but her bright singing and capacity for joy lighten the load for everyone.Hannah soon becomes a favourite with the other mill workers. Friendships are forged and an innocent love starts to blossom. But can such a fragile love survive cruel reality? It is not long before she attracts the eye of Edmund Critchlow, the man who owns them all, body and soul - the man from whom no pretty mill girl is safe.Times are hard in the cotton industry as civil war rages across America affecting even the mill owner and the lives of all his workers . . .

My Mother's Secret


J.L. Witterick - 2013
     Based on a true story, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a profound, captivating, and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the clever and "righteous" mother and daughter who teamed up to save them. Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are unlikely heroines. They are simple people who mind their own business and don't stand out from the crowd. Until 1939, when crisis strikes. The Nazis have invaded Poland and they are starting to persecute the Jews. Providing shelter to a Jew has become a death sentence. And yet, Franciszka and Helena decide to do just that. In their tiny, two-bedroom home in Sokal, Poland, they cleverly hide a Jewish family of two brothers and their wives in their pigsty out back, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen floorboards, and a defecting German soldier in the attic--each group completely unbeknownst to the others. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commanders standing guard right outside her yard. Told simply and succinctly from four different perspectives, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a reminder that there are, in fact, no profiles of courage and each individual's character is a personal choice. This book was inspired by the true story of Franciszka Halamajowa, who, with her daughter, saved the lives of fifteen Jews in Poland during the Second World War. She also hid a young German soldier in her attic at the same time. Before the war, there were six thousand Jews in Sokal, Poland. Only thirty survived the war and half of those did so because of Franciszka.

All Families are Psychotic


Douglas Coupland - 2001
    Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical sun-kidnapping, blackmail, gunplay, and black market negotiations, to name a few. But even as the Drummonds' lives spin out of control, Coupland reminds us of their humanity at every turn, hammering out a hilarious masterpiece with the keen eye of a cultural critic and the heart and soul of a gifted storyteller. He tells not only the characters' stories but also the story of our times--thalidomide, AIDS, born-again Christianity, drugs, divorce, the Internet-all bound together with the familiar glue of family love and madness.

Catching the Sky


Colten Moore - 2016
    But instead of working the landor the cattle that fed upon it, the Moore brothers, Colten and Caleb, heeded another call.Their dreams, paired with hard work and family sacrifice, eventually became reality. The Moore brothers, with their boundary-exploding athleticism, innovation and appetite for risk, became stars on the burgeoning freestyle ATV and snowmobile circuits. If it had wheels, they could flip it—often higher and better than anyone else—leading a band of pioneers intent on breaking new ground and in a new sport before multitudes of fans at the X Games and beyond.In this vivid, page-turning narrative, Colten Moore offers a profound and deeply moving perspective on his life and that of his brother. Catching the Sky is a clear-eyed look at extreme sports, what drives people to take wild chances, and how one man, Colten, couldn't stop even after the worst possible outcome. His story reminds us that we can dream—and sometimes achieve the impossible, that we can follow our own path, that we can lose something, lose everything, only to find it again—often in the most unlikely place.

Wonder Travels in Mysterious Lands رحلات عجيبة في البلاد الغريبة


Sonia Nimr - 2013
    Qamar travels dangerous waters, she faces slavery, danger and hardships, she meets so many people, tutors and friends, she lives, loves and travels once more, will her journeys ever end, especially when her reality becomes too much to bear? The fates throw us into high tides while we glide in life; we spend a long journey with Qamar. The book is engaging and attractive, it throws the reader in the midst of seas beautifully weaved with the skillful narration of a storyteller.تسير الرواية في مغامرات أخاذة تتحدى الواقع لامرأة أشجع من رجال عصرها، تتكشف حياتها أمام عيون أستاذة جامعية تدعى لحضور مؤتمر في المغرب، وهناك تستلم مخطوطة قديمة تحكي سيرة صاحبتها المغامرة قمر. رغم محبة الأهل والأصدقاء وخوفهم، تسافر قمر في مياه خطرة، تواجه العبودية والمصاعب والخطر، تمضي وتقابل أشخاصاً ومعلمين يبادلونها المحبة والاحترام، تساعدهم وتعيش معهم ثم ترحل مرة أخرى، رحلاتها لا تنتهي، أم أنها ستتوقف عن المغامرة عندما يؤلمها الواقع؟ ترمينا الأقدار بين كفين وتتصارع الأمواج العاتية في رحلتنا نحو الحياة ونمضي مع قمر في رحلة طويلة. كتاب شيق وجذاب يرمي القارئ في بحور المغامرة والاستكشاف، من خلال إحساس جميل ولمسة حكواتي في القص.

Hidden In This School


xxskater2girl16xx
    HITS.

Dancing With Elephants


Kalyn Nicholson - 2019
    Covering topics from love and heartbreak to chaos and self-discovery, each poem is laced in a cozy, magical energy that is sure to hold the reader suspended in the in-between.

Wake


Elizabeth Knox - 2013
    With an invisible monster you never know when you're in danger and when you're safe—if you retreat to your fortress you can't be sure you haven't locked it in with you. The invisible monster is something on which no one is an expert. But everyone has the same relationship to it. It could just as well be peering over your shoulder as mine.On a sunny spring morning the settlement of Kahukura in Tasman is suddenly overwhelmed by a mysterious mass insanity. A handful of survivors find themselves cut off from the world, and surrounded by the dead. As the group of try to take care of one another, and survive in ever more difficult circumstances, it becomes apparent that this isn't the first time that this has happened, and that they aren't all survivors and victims - two of them are something quite other. And, it seems, they are trapped with something. Something unseen is picking at the loose threads of their characters, corrupting, provoking, and haunting them.Wake is a book that asks: 'What are the last things left when the worst has happened?' It is a book about extreme events, ordinary people, heroic compassion—and invisible monsters.

Viking's Dawn


Henry Treece - 1956
    They come to grief on an island in the Hebrides.