She has to adapt and make a home for her baby daughter and aging husband amidst boreholes, long drops and Aga stoves.She comes to terms with her neighbours, Joshua, a practising Sangoma, and Ben, a Jewish pig farmer; is educated in the ways of the Practical by her indomitable maid May; and comes of age through her determined efforts to create things of beauty amidst the khakibos - a lawn and poetry. She even restores the family fortune by engaging in a lucrative and uniquely South African venture.

    And so Ben, a divorced TV journalist, Ronnie, a high-powered CEO, and Michael, a high school English teacher, take leave of their families and jobs for a cross-country road trip to remember. Along the way, they see baseball games, state fairs, Elvis's Las Vegas hotel suite, and a convention of dental hygienists, and not only experience all of America in full bloom, but discover new truths about themselves. All Summer Long is a wise, funny, touching story you'll slurp down like a cold milkshake from the drive-in.

    Struggling with its upkeep whilst looking after her elderly aunts, juggling her work, and nursing a bruised heart, she doesn't bank on falling for handsome property developer Julian,whose job is everything she despises. But Julian has commitments of his own: Kitty, his long term mistress, won't give him up without a fight: seemingly fragile, she's really as tough as nails. Nor does Agnes imagine that stoical Andrew, whose organic farm is being wrenched away from him by a planning application, will fall for her too. Slowly, surely, a love quartet is developing, but relationships are messy things, and only two people can find happiness at the end of it all ...

    A chocoholic grizzly bear, a talking Christmas tree, mince pie overdoses and a very bloody murder. Will poor old Saint Nick make it out alive? Sad, strange, funny and gruesome, this overlapping, multi-genre collection of tales has a little something for every reader. Curl up with a mulled wine and some fictional festive misery, and discover what Father Christmas really likes to drink when he wriggles down your chimney. Spoiler: it isn’t milk.

    For Robyn, the fresh sea air is helping to heal her scars, but maybe not her marriage. For Grace, a new start could help her move on from a heartbreaking loss. When they meet on Sea Glass Beach one day, they form an instant bond and soon they're sharing prosecco, laughter - and even their biggest secrets...Together, the women feel stronger than ever before. So can their friendship help them face old fears and find happy endings - as well as new beginnings?

    Consisting of three early stories concerning Martin and Redwall Abbey, this gift set contains: Martin the Warrior which tells of the legendary mouse and his struggles against the tyrannical Badrang; Mossflower charting the fearsome battle Martin had with the wildcats; and Outcast of Redwall.

    Still haunted by the death of his young son, stalled in his writing career and overfond of the bottle, he finds himself abandoned by his wife for the summer - or, if he doesn't shape up, for good.

    Braced for death, she finds herself instead saving a man's life - a young Chinese cockle picker, one of the only survivors of a tragic mass drowning.

    but what if you could? Most people believe their souls outlive their bodies. Most people would find an organization that tracks their souls into the future and passes on their banked money and memories compelling. Scott Waverly isn't like most people. He spends his days finding and fixing computer security holes. And Scott is skeptical of his new client's claim that they have been calculating and tracking soul identities for almost twenty-six hundred years. Are they running a freaky cult? Or a sophisticated con job? Scott needs to save Soul Identity from an insider attack. Along the way, he discovers the importance of the bridges connecting people's lives.

    Her career is on the up and Oliver, the great love of her life, has just asked her to marry him. The future couldn't look better. But their married bliss soon starts to evaporate when Oliver's power-crazed boss decides that Rhiannon is an unsuitable wife. And when American billionaire Max Romanov, engaged to supermodel Galina Casimir, turns his charm on her, Rhiannon is overcome by the intensity of her feelings for this enigmatic man who proves to be a challenge too hard to resist. Until the web of passion becomes more and more tangled and threatens to destroy a love that consumes like wildfire...

    Readers and critics were enchanted; as NPR commented, “Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.”A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.Brimming with humour, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

    Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family —based on his own—and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign' world of the Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents—conversion, circumcision, the arrival of the plague of electricity—and a fascinating array of characters: the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj; the worker's leader, Bauna Sardar; the storyteller, Talat Mian; the poet-teacher, Syed Ashfaque; the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana; the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg; and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala, interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. Blood Brothers is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

    In this novella, Trans-Siberian Orchestra creator Paul O'Neill spans generations, from WWII Germany to the modern inner-city, and fearlessly dives into the darkest places of the human condition to spin a modern parable about how, even in the grip of great evil, redemption is possible and the spark of hope can burn brightly.

    Not even Twig’s vivid imagination, keen wit, and dark sense of humor is enough to help her survive the escalating assaults of Helen and a new stepbrother, but help comes from an unexpected source—Frank, her stepfather. Sometimes, having one person who loves and believes in you is all a girl needs to keep hope alive. Often raw and irreverent and sprinkled with all the Southern flavoring found in a good bowl of chicken and dumplings, BREAKING TWIG, is about finding love where we least expect it, destroying lives with easy lies, and realizing each of us determine our own truth. (Taken from author's website.)

    Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books help students to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers and exams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature.Each volume:-- Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text-- Uses clear, conversational language-- Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages-- Includes a chronology of the author's life and era-- Provides an overview of the historical context-- Offers a summary of its critical reception-- Lists primary and secondary sources and index