She is unaware that around every corner myriad family secrets from the past unfold. From a Saxon clearing to a monastery, Tudor dwelling to the present day, this sacred plot has nurtured her ancestors. Generations of Bagshott women have found refuge and solace tending it through years of plague, civil war and beyond. This is their story.

    Series has nearly 2000 pages of combined lightning-paced action. Readers are describing this series as: A fierce, sparkling and enchanted SciFi tale! Realms of Time (Book 4) Welcome to the fourth installment of the Scrapyard Ship series, Realms of Time. Captain Jason Reynolds and his team are up against a new, and unexpected foe—an adversarial force that has every intention of aligning with the powerful and dreaded Craing Empire.  The enemy strikes from Earth’s high orbit, deploying five time-shifting spheres. The spheres are strategically positioned to link-up and set Earth’s clock back 100 years into the past. But when that course of action is interrupted by The Lilly’s crew, the results become far worse. Fluctuating time realms rapidly spread across the globe and threaten to rip the planet apart. Join Jason, Billy, Traveler, Ricket and Dira on their mission as they literally travel to the ends of time to bring Earth back to the twenty-first century. Craing Dominion (Book 5) The Wild Wild Wild ride continues ... Welcome to Craing Dominion, Book 5 of the best-selling Scrapyard Ship series.  Truly dark times have come to the Allied forces, the crew of The Lilly, and Earth — we knew they were coming but nothing will have prepared you for this …  With the introduction of Craing commander Ot-Mul, there’s a new standard for evil that will not only shape the rest of this series, but Science Fiction literature as a whole.  Join Captain Jason Reynolds as he ventures into the proverbial lion’s den in a last ditch effort to even the playing field with the Craing — an empire that has embarked on a pursuit that will guarantee their de facto dominance for millennia to come.  The Great Space (Book 6) They knew the day would come—the day when Earth itself would come under direct attack by the Craing. After destroying much of Jhardon and the Mau planet of Carz-Mau, an elite Vanguard fleet of seven Craing dreadnaughts, planet killers, enters Earth’s orbit. Captain Jason Reynolds and the crew aboard his Caldurian ship, The Lilly, are once again pulled into action to fend off what just might be their most ruthless and powerful adversary yet. In an unanticipated turn of events, thousands of molt weevils are unleashed on Earth, swarming insectoid aliens with one intent … kill every man, woman, and child on the surface of the planet. Nan and Mollie must utilize their own cunning and resourcefulness to stay alive long enough to be rescued.  Call To Battle (Book 7) Welcome to the final, heart-pounding, episode of the Scrapyard Ship series books. It’s all about to end in one climatic crescendo.  The story continues, with Captain Jason Reynolds, and his team: Billy, Rizzo, and the rhino-warrior, Traveler. They must attempt to rescue Ricket and Gaddy, still held captive aboard the impregnable Dreathlor prison barge. Only then, can Jason return to The Lilly, his highly advanced Caldurian vessel … where it all began.  The elusive Admiral Ot-Mul, leader of the Craing Drac-Vin forces, has not only survived, but thrived, in the far, outer-reaches of space. With hundreds of thousands of warships under his command, Ot-Mul’s combined fleets are on the move. But, in truth, he cares about little else than making one man suffer … Captain Jason Reynolds.  With the approach of an enormous fighting force on the horizon, it’s the last call to battle.

    When she moves to Guisethorpe on the east coast of England, the townsfolk are intrigued by the glamorous and mysterious stranger, with her flame-red hair and abrupt manners.Florence doesn’t care about the gossips – she’s drawn to the peaceful seaside town by the pull of her childhood, when she lived for a brief but happy time with her beloved late mother. The riddle of those days remains and now Florence can only snatch at half-remembered memories and shadowy figures in her dreams.As Florence is reluctantly drawn into the lives of her new neighbours, the layers of her own life are revealed, though it’s clear not everyone wishes her well. Far from finding peace, Florence has found instead turmoil and secrets. Can she put the pieces of her past together, or will it remain a closed book forever…?

    You do not have to read it to enjoy this story & if you enjoy this can go back and see how it all began.It’s how it ends that’s undecided!

    For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an airplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest, drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens. In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life, and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest—can they survive at all? This work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination is a modern-day fable about the elements of love.

    The latest scientific discoveries about fat metabolism and exercise are made accessible for daily use.

    But ambition quickly took wing. The house swelled to 225 rooms and became - until 2012 when it was topped by the home of a billionaire in Mumbai, India – the world’s largest residence ever built for a private citizen. Here’s the story of the house that Vanderbilt built - from the gardens by Frederick Law Olmsted to the John Singer Sargent portraits that adorn its walls.

    * The hilarious, heartwarming and surprisingly inspiring account of one BBC Breakfast TV presenter's secret passion for bees...!

    She loved her roles as a homicide investigator and hostage negotiator with the NSW police force, but she never knew what her work day might bring. She might be investigating a crime scene; talking a suicidal woman down from a cliff; or trying to convince a deranged man not to slit the throat of his wife and children.As a negotiator, Belinda often found herself on cliff edges, waiting in doorways or out amongst the elements, persuading the murderous and suicidal to drop their weapons, stop terrorising their families, step back from the ledge.Belinda was so physically slight she needed help lifting on her ballistics vest, but her team never doubted her physical or mental courage. She was put forward for a bravery award and promoted to inspector but every time she stepped into a negotiation, her life was in danger, and over time the horrors she saw and her punishing schedule began to take their toll. After years of broken sleep, traumatic crime scenes and death, a series of disastrous events one weekend brought everything to a head.The next morning when she awoke, Belinda found she was shaking so badly she could not get out of bed. Unsure what was happening to her, she sought counselling but one day, shortly after, she saw the name of an old hostage-taking adversary in the paper; he had killed his ex-girlfriend. It was too much and as the continued stress took its toll, Belinda found herself contemplating jumping off a cliff in the Moreton Bay National Park. She had even written the suicide note.Under Siege shows us the remarkable job homicide investigators and hostage negotiators perform, and their endurance and courage in impossible circumstances. More than that, this courageous memoir reveals how the daily trauma and stress affected Belinda's roles as wife and mother, how she fought against the terrifying post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted to come back from a very dark place.'Her extraordinary journey juggling the roles of police negotiator, homicide investigator, wife and mother shines a light on this little-understood limb of law enforcement.' Mark Whittaker, Fairfax newspapers

    

    Written as a catharsis in the months following the loss of her father in late 2016, Jessica has taken pen to page to say things he and others will never read, either because they can't, or just won't. Containing entirely new works, this is a can't miss release.

    The poem started out as a simple observation of the snow in moonlight, and turned into a poem with more to offer. I'm offering it free to my readers. I've had it on my blog, where it's gotten much response, and wanted to give everyone another way to access it.

    When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.  As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress’s maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.   Featuring a cast of characters drawn from history, The Queen of the Night follows Lilliet as she moves ever closer to the truth behind the mysterious opera and the role that could secure her reputation -- or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.

    When building a family, they complement the kids. But what happens when things get out of hand? For writer and house husband, Matt Whyman, it's a case of catastrophe management in coping with four children and all the ill-advised animals amassed by his career wife, Emma.

    Poet Laureate Billy Collins comes a twelfth collection of poetry offering nearly fifty new poems that showcase the generosity, wit, and imaginative play that prompted The Wall Street Journal to call him America's favorite poet.The Rain in Portugal, a title that admits he's not much of a rhymer, sheds Collins's ironic light on such subjects as travel and art, cats and dogs, loneliness and love, beauty and death. His tones range from the whimsical "the dogs of Minneapolis . . . / have no idea they're in Minneapolis" to the elegiac in a reaction to the death of Seamus Heaney. A student of the everyday, here Collins contemplates a weather vane, a still life painting, the calendar, and a child lost at a beach. His imaginative fabrications have Shakespeare flying comfortably in first class and Keith Richards supporting the globe on his head. By turns entertaining, engaging, and enlightening, The Rain in Portugal amounts to another chorus of poems from one of the most respected and familiar voices in the world of American poetry.On Rhyme It's possible that a stitch in time might save as many as twelve or as few as three, and I have no trouble remembering that September has thirty days. So do June, November, and April. I like a cat wearing a chapeau or a trilby, Little Jack Horner sitting on a sofa, old men who are not from Nantucket, and how life can seem almost unreal when you are gently rowing a boat down a stream. That's why instead of recalling today that it mostly pours in Spain, I am going to picture the rain in Portugal, how it falls on the hillside vineyards, on the surface of the deep harbors where fishing boats are swaying, and in the narrow alleys of the cities where three boys in tee shirts are kicking a soccer ball in the rain, ignoring the window-cries of their mothers.