The woman you see at the bus stop every morning; the man who reaches for the last newspaper just before you get to it. Everyone you meet, and some you nearly meet, will have an impact on the way your day goes.Small World is the story of a group of men and women, living and working in a city, who are connected through love, work, friendship, or simply by virtue of proximity. We connect with the hearts and minds of characters including an all-coping housewife, a stressed out working mother, a put-upon nanny, a long-suffering journalist, an Indian waiter who dreams of stardom, a grieving shop assistant, a stand-up comic and a psychotic policeman - all of whom speak directly to us about their innermost thoughts, fears and desires in a series of interwoven first-person narratives.

    While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is a lighthearted, yet unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.

    This unbelievable feat is contrived by the serendipitous meeting of three great men: Mr Fangfoss (who cares nothing for football), Dr Kossuth - a Hungarian academic and headmaster of the village school, and the Wanderers captain Alex Slingsby, a mighty warrior biding his time in quiet Sinderby for the chance to rise once more.

    It had cracked 100 the day before, and the old weatherman on channel four, the guy who Joyce had said was the most accurate but heard was a pervert, had said today would be hotter by a few degrees."The summer heat in Tucson makes some people dry up and some people boil over. In the dusty, gated desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle), a handful of residents are finding that neighborhood life is becoming increasingly bizarre among the crumbling swimming pools, overwatered lawns, and disaffected children.Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Thomas, her increasingly misanthropic brother, rarely leaves the house, all the while cultivating a disturbing little obsession of his own under the front porch. Down the street, Merv is stuck in a rut, thirty years old and still living at home. Lonely and looking for a way out, he's reaching his breaking point over his insomniac mother, whose oddly compulsive behavior with household appliances threatens to wreak havoc on his life.When a strung-out, magic marker sniffing teenager disappears from the neighborhood and rumors of murder surface, these malcontents find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summerand perhaps their lives.Funny and disturbing, Modern Ranch Living probes the emptiness of modern American culture, the strange things people do to satisfy their twin hungers for pleasure and oblivion, and the unexpected small acts of kindness they can sometimes perform to ease one another's pain. This delicately deadpan comedy makes brilliantly clear why Mark Jude Poirier was named "the young American writer to watch" by the Times Literary Supplement.

    But only in one direction—from simple to complicated. When he was nine, Morris Bird III learned the meaning of bravery. Now, at seventeen, he's on the verge of adulthood . . . and he's fallen in love. But it's 1952 and the Korean War hangs over his head like a dangling sword—and his prickly, complicated relationship with his cold and silent father has never been satisfactorily resolved. When Morris's own mortality stares him in the face, he learns what it truly means to become a man. The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened is the final book in Don Robertson's classic trilogy featuring one of the most endearing characters in American literature.

    But who would want him dead? And why? And who the hell shoots someone with a harpoon, anyway? Disgruntled, failed crime writer, Freddie Winters, spends his days conning old ladies, setting up fake book signings, sneaking into literary festivals uninvited and lamenting his lack of success. When his old Friend, Dylan, turns to him for help, Freddie agrees to use his own limited detective skills to find out who’s behind the murder attempt. With a group of suspicious ex-wives, a jealous rival, a crazed stalker fan and an exploding postman to deal with, Freddie soon stumbles upon a catalogue of crazy behaviour and a truly bizarre motive for murder. But can he stop the killer before it’s too late?

    But having covered her childhood as a Russian princess, her exile in Paris, and the discovery of her phenomenal voice, the prima donna reached her first husband s death

    Discworld is a flat planet, supported on the backs of four elephants, who in turn stand on the back of the great turtle A'Tuin as it swims majestically through space.

    The league had no business awarding a team to dying Park City, but it only took a little pressure—financial and otherwise—to bring the expansion franchise to town. At first, they’re worthless, playing in an empty stadium for slack-jawed fans, but the owners have a plan. Five years to financial security. Five years to complete domination of the sport. Five years to the Super Bowl. And it starts with Taylor Rusk. But Rusk, the finest college quarterback of his generation, is no fool, and he realizes quickly that all is not honest in Park City. He doesn’t want to stop the corruption; he wants a piece of it, and for a price he will lead his new team to glory. In Texas, football is life. But in Park City, it can mean death, too.

    Yes, it’s almost unbelievable to understand how all of it had happened and why the world fell in love with the boy wizard. From the fantastic books written by the British author J.K. Rowling to the blockbuster movies that were welcomed by hundreds of fans outside the cinemas worldwide, Harry Potter’s legacy lives on and is still felt in the pop culture. That’s why we’ll look at the ultimate list of 500 (yeah, you read that right) Potter-related facts! Enjoy and prepare to read tons of exciting facts! You and your kids will love this book... Grab it now while it's still available at this discounted price. NOTE: This is a book intended for any Harry Potter fan of any age. This book is NOT affiliated in any way with any other official or unofficial Harry Potter book.

    Entwhistle may look like your sweet, old granny...but things happen to her: she's caught up in the witness protection program, stuck in an elevator with an assortment of strangers, her house is burglarized and her dog is kidnapped. But Mrs. Entwhistle is dauntless; she didn't get to be a fesity seventy-eight by wimping out. Come join her on her porch swing, meet her best friend, Maxine, and her dog, Roger. Maxine will probably offer you a bowl of her homemade soup. Sit a while. Come back when you can.

    It depicts the fall and rise of the Primrose family, presided over by the benevolent vicar, the narrator of a fairy-tale plot of impersonation and deception, the abduction of a beautiful heroine and the machinations of an aristocratic villain. By turns comic and sentimental, the novel's popularity owes much to its recognizable depiction of domestic life and loving family relationships.New to this edition is an introduction by Robert L. Mack that examines the reasons for the novels enduring popularity, as well as the critical debates over whether it is a straightforward novel of sentiment or a satire on the social and economic inequalities of the period and the very literary conventions and morality it seems to embody. This edition also includes a new, up-to-date bibliography and expanded notes, and contains reprints of Arthur Friedman's authoritative Oxford English Novels text of the corrected first edition of 1766.

    Yet, on the spur of the moment, Lesley suddenly adopts a four-year-old child."If I'd known what I was taking on I shouldn't have done it. . . ." Little did she realize then that the child, Pat, was to govern the whole course of her life. Leaving her London flat, she takes refuge in a country cottage and here, after an acutely trying period of readjustment, life falls for the first time into its true perspective: Lesley discovers for herself the precious distinction between pleasure and happiness.

    Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his frustrating existence is by burning his shop to the ground, and killing himself. Unexpected events, however, conspire at the last moment to lead the bewildered Mr Polly to a bright new future - after he saves a life, fakes his death, and escapes to a life of heroism, hope and ultimate happiness.

    As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions—as well as attracting the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville. Evelina, comic and shrewd, is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full notes to this edition help make this richness all the more readily available to a modern reader.