Self-image, body changes, and social changes chip away at individual’s self-confidence. Withdrawal and hiding can often seem like the easiest escape. You cannot escape from life. An excellent student, our hero is ripped from his friends and everything he knows when his father is moved across the country for his job. Intent on re-establishing the mother’s employment, the parents appear to withdraw from their high school student as he is dropped into a situation where he knows no one. Everyone experiences physical and emotional problems but our protagonist is ashamed of his body and won’t even talk to his parents who seem oblivious. Wearing baggy clothes, coats and hoods, it is easy to hide his body and isolate himself since he knows no one. Others assume he is overweight, shy or has acne problems. The strangely dressed student is a magnet for bullies and everyone else ignores him. Teachers might have gotten involved or pushed him to participate in class, but as an excellent student, grades are not an issue. Life evolves into a strategy to be left alone and survive another day. Because of this, attacks are not reported. An accident at school will expose our protagonist’s secrets to a classmate. How that classmate responds will change our protagonist’s life. There are still bullying and attacks, but with newfound confidence, our hero will deal with things differently. Can this quiet, isolated person evolve into an example and build real friendships while accepting life’s little hurdles? This series of books contain examples of high school life that help the reader to identify and deal with bullying behavior in a high school setting. The books in this series are intended to be safe reading for teens and tweens. Thank you for reading on Daring Diane Disclaimer This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

    The young would clash on the bloody battlefields of Bull Run and Fredericksburg, while in intrigue-ridden Washington and Richmond strong-willed men and beautiful women would defend their principles with their lives...or satisfy illicit cravings with schemes that could destroy friends and enemies alike. This surging drama is the second part of the trilogy that includes NORTH AND SOUTH and HEAVEN AND HELL. "Craftsmanship nears artistry....A coherent and penetrating vision of the seamy underside of war." (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

    Robert is the nephew of a Lord, and Lydia a mere doctor’s daughter – and a German doctor at that. While her parentage is no hindrance to their relationship in peacetime, when war is declared Robert’s family makes it clear they no longer approve of the match. With no means of contacting Robert on the Western Front, Lydia volunteers herself, joining the Red Cross. But her love affair with Robert has had more than one consequence…

    Composed of pure energy, this superior race has attacked the Anunnaki home world and is now setting a course for Earth.The energy-based aliens believe in a system of trial by battle. They seek to push Shane and his friends into the arena with the ones who killed their parents. The results will determine if humans deserve to live, or if they should be made extinct as well. It's up to Shane to keep his friends--and an army of kids who look up to him--alive. They'll be fighting not just for their own lives, but for the fate of the entire human race. Can the enemy of Shane's enemy be his friend, or is this just another species determined to exploit and destroy them?

    She searches old haunts and uninhabited lands, and learns to trust no one. Racing against time, Amanda faces death threats, deceptions, and ghosts from her past. Will she escape paradise?TOURIST TRAPPEDBook One in the Trapped TrilogyCrackerjack divorce attorney Amanda Sloane spends her life defending the soon-to-be-ex-wives of Chicago’s upper crust, but her orderly world crumbles when her estranged father persuades her to help search for Rebecca Adams, the half-sister she’s resented for thirty years.Amanda drags along computer-geek-turned-attorney Chad Cooper, and together they chase across the Yucatan, pursuing an ever-changing string of leads. The duo encounters treacherous alliances, attacks on their associates, and a deadline for a hefty ransom.Amanda digs up more than clues when their search collides with the past she believed long buried. Old memories chip away at pretenses, threatening to crush Amanda’s carefully constructed life.Time is running out. When the bullets start to fly, Amanda and Chad wonder: who will survive Cancun?TOURIST TRAPPED takes the reader on a tropical adventure: bone-white Caribbean beaches, jewel-toned waters, and picturesque islands. But the stunning beauty cannot belie the fact that Rebecca and her husband have vanished. While Amanda and Chad hunt for the kidnapped couple, they stumble onto an international conspiracy that reaches all the way back to Chicago—and may cost Amanda and Chad far more than a ransom. TOURIST TRAPPED is a gripping thriller that combines psychological suspense with plenty of action and family angst. No one escapes Cancun unscathed.

     The trade paperback edition of David Bowman's prize-winning first novel, Let the Dog Drive, has developed a cult following. Now Bowman's exuberantly praised second novel -- a hard-boiled comedy about love, abduction, and child care, set in a future where electricity has disappeared and fertility is on the wane, but human passions are as messy as ever -- is also in trade paperback.

    A bumper eBook collection of all 17 Roman Mysteries adventures including The Thieves of Ostia, The Secrets of Vesuvius, The Pirates of Pompeii, The Assassins of Rome, The Dolphins of Laurentum, The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina, The Enemies of Jupiter, The Gladiators From Capua, The Colossus of Rhodes, The Fugitive From Corinth, The Sirens of Surrentum, The Charioteer of Delphi, The Slave-Girl From Jerusalem, The Beggar of Volubilis, The Scribes From Alexandria, The Prophet From Ephesus and The Man From Pomegranate Street.

    Master storyteller Les Edgerton guides us on a haunting journey inside the criminal mind to show that no matter how depraved a person appears to be, there might still exist a spark of humanity.

    Someone is demanding a lot of money from her husband and she wants to know why.What do the dying words of one man - he made me - actually mean?As the mystery unfolds people will come undone and reputations will be ruined before the answer becomes clear.At the end of the day Mrs Swaine might end up wishing she’d let sleeping dogs lie… Also available in the Booker & Cash series: Bad Sons

    But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly turn down her parents' offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. She'd just have to put up with her sister Theresa (making no secret of preferring Tuscany as a holiday destination) and brother Simon (worrying that there might be some sinister agenda behind their parents' wish to take them all away) with their various spouses, teenagers, young children and au pair. In a luxury hotel, with bright sunshine, swimming, diving, glorious food and friendly locals, any family tensions should have melted away in the fabulous heat. The children should have been angelic, the teenagers cheerful, the adults relaxed and happy. But...some problems just refuse to be left at home.

    He is stranded at a motorway service station and all he has left are the clothes he has on. He is approached by a smart eighteen year old with money, a four wheel drive and a video camera, who hums the eponymous song and has strong Neo Nazi views. Together they journey through England and get caught up in sabotaged fox hunt, an encounter with travellers and an illegal rave. They seem to get on, but Danny's luck has changed completely - for the worse. Wherever they go, a mysterious trail of death follows them. Danny is unknowingly trapped by the worst type of enemy imaginable, and one who is completely out of control.

    Purely an advisory role, they are told.Harry Delhaze is on a lonely path to self-destruction; George Marriott has promises to keep. It seems to them like the easiest money they’ll ever make.They couldn’t be more wrong.They are forced to battle frostbite in the Atlas Mountains and endure the baking deserts of the sub-Sahara; they are traded, kidnapped, and used as pawns in high-stakes political rivalries; they encounter women who worship cannons for fertility and magician-warlords who talk to the dead and play bloody games of chess with living slaves; and the three muzzle-loading cannon the Sultan has hired them to command are antiques that could explode in their faces at any moment.Then there is the Lord of the Atlas himself, Amastan el-Karim, who harbors a shocking secret that could cost them both their lives – or give one of them a reason to live again.An epic historical adventure that evokes the beautiful and the barbaric of nineteenth century Morocco that transports the reader to a now-lost world of ancient medinas, crumbling palaces, and wild mountain passes.

    

    The Great Khan, Attila, overlord of the Scythian and Germani hordes is no more.The lands of Rome lie in ruin, razed by the Scourge of God.From the ashes of civilization a new power is destined to emerge. Warriors whose fearsome reputation would remain for more than a thousand years.On the plains of Pannonia a boy is born. A boy destined to shape history.Meet Ragnaris, the son of no man.

    Instead, Tex gets dumped on his mother's doorstep, where Farley Dickerson, the big oaf she's just married, and his two kids have made themselves at home. Nobody's more surprised than Tex, then, when he discovers he likes his new stepfather, that he actually wants to spend the summer at Mom's, and that he - Tex Donleavy - is going to play ball on Farley's Little League team. And then there's the plucky and brooding Jack, Farley's daughter, who becomes Tex's closest ally, as well as his greatest source of confusion. In all, it's shaping up to be a summer full of surprises - though nothing can prepare Tex for the biggest surprise of all, a secret so terrible that it will change the lives of every member of his family. Through his careful, lyrical prose, Tim Johnston expertly balances the pain of inching toward maturity with sly humor, making his fiction debut an auspicious occasion.