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.

    This giftable edition of Dickens’s 1843 work will delight those who already know the perennial classic, as well as any collector of beautiful case-bound books.Additionally, this collector’s edition will include shorter, lesser-known works by famous authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each story and poem has been lovingly selected to celebrate the heart of the season and to gently remind readers of the true meaning of Christmas.

    In a range of work including novels of literary suspense that test both their protagonists’ souls and their readers’ nerves to the breaking point, Graham Greene explored a territory located somewhere on the border between despair and faith, treachery and love.

    He’s playing by Moscow rules now.It’s not the grim Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and critics are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where new Stalinists are plotting to reclaim an empire lost and challenge the dominance of its U.S. enemy.Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel, is an arms dealer—and he is about to deliver Russia’s most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11. The Defector Six months after Moscow Rules, Allon has resumed his honeymoon with wife, Chiara. But his world is again thrown into turmoil with news from London. Former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who saved Allon’s life in Moscow, has vanished. British intelligence thinks was a double agent all along, but Allon knows better. He also knows he made a promise.In the days to come, Allon and his team of operatives find themselves in a deadly duel with the ruthless Ivan Kharkov. It will take Allon from a quiet mews in London to the snowbound forests of Russia. Faced with losing the one thing he holds most dear, Allon will be tested in ways he never imagined possible. And his life will never be the same.

    Indeed, this enduring obsession provided fodder for some of Singh’s best-known work, both as a journalist and as a peerless raconteur.On Women, a wide-ranging selection of Singh’s writings on the subject, includes Singh’s recounting of an embarrassingly drunken meeting with Begum Para, an actress of yesteryears; a sharp profile of Shraddha Mata, a tantric sadhvi who was alleged to have borne Jawaharlal Nehru’s illegitimate child; and a touching sketch of Singh’s grandmother in the twilight of her life. Also featured in this volume are unforgettable women characters from Khushwant Singh’s most popular works of fiction: Georgine, a clueless American teenager who is seduced by a middle-aged tour guide in Delhi; and Nooran, a young girl in pre-Partition Punjab, who discovers the sweet pleasure of first love only to be overtaken by cataclysmic events which leave her adrift.Insightful, poignant, and occasionally wicked, the essays and extracts in On Women are testament to why Khushwant Singh remains one of the most popular writers of our times.

    Somerset Maugham’s “Before the Party” is a novelette first published in the December 1922 edition of “Nash’s Magazine.” After the death of her husband, an alcoholic colonial administrator in Borneo, Millicent returns to England to live with her parents and sister. Did Millicent’s husband die of a fever, as Millicent claims, or was his throat cut? And if the latter, was it suicide or homicide?Sample passage:Mrs. Skinner had thought it very peculiar that her daughter should have no photographs of Harold in her room. Indeed she had spoken of it once, but Millicent had made no reply. Millicent had been strangely silent since she came back from Borneo, and had not encouraged the sympathy Mrs. Skinner would have been so willing to show her. She seemed unwilling to speak of her great loss. Sorrow took people in different ways. Her husband had said the best thing was to leave her alone. The thought of him turned her ideas to the party they were going to.About the author:W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a British novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Notable novels are “Of Human Bondage,” “The Moon and Sixpence,” and “The Razor’s Edge.”

    Each book describes a classic novel and drama by explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.

    Blunt talks to Mr. Henson, Charlie’s mentor, like he knows him, but Charlie knows that can’t be. John Peter Henson is a good man who would only spend time with someone like Blunt the day he put him into the ground…Unwilling to give up Mr. Henson’s secret and tarnish his good name, Charlie tries to put the pieces together himself. Maggie Buchanan knows he’s hiding something and she’s on his trail as well. Together, they turn the tables on Blunt’s outlaws. Charlie ends up in possession of a treasure map to Mexican gold that may just get him killed.“The pace is fast, the action plentiful, the characters colorful and memorable, and the writing is top-notch.” – Wayne D. Dundee

    Battling blistering heat, starvation, wild animals, and despair, he is not comforted by the company of a rough and ready sort named Morrison. Soon Durham begins to suspect he may never return home—and to top it all off the tea has almost run out. Tales from the Archives are short stories set in the world of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. They explore events mentioned in the novels, characters seen and unseen and may include novel teasers of things to come.

    His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.This collection is both timely and timeless, a rich celebration of Stuart McLean's inimitable voice, and of the importance of love, community, kindness, and the healing power of laughter.

    Clay wouldn't have said his life was defined by his place on the high school football team's roster, but when he's sidelined by injury, everything, including his sense of self, seems different. And it's not just that his concussion was bad enough to cause his parents and doctors to worry, to make him have trouble concentrating. It's that he's seeing the previously familiar people in his world—from his girlfriend Megan to his geriatric neighbor Mrs. Scotto—from a new perspective. Perrotta's warmth and ability to describe the dramatic moments in the average lives of characters of every age are perfectly presented in "Senior Season", a story that will add a layer to fans' pleasure in this author's themes and concerns. This e-book also includes an excerpt of THE LEFTOVERS.

    His father is an abusive drunk with muddled religious views, and his mother, as hard as she tries to defend her son, only ever ends up delaying the inevitable. Things take a turn for the worse one Friday when Bobby brings home a black eye from school. The following day his father brings him out into the woods on a mission to do “God’s Work” and bring him into adulthood. A coming-of-age story about the sins of a father and a son’s chance to absolve himself from them.

    Each story follows the life of a person living on a fictitious council estate in London. The stories illustrate the realities and struggles that ordinary people go through at a time when people are feeling disenfranchised and are frustrated at not having their voices heard. Ranging from a humorous look at the gentrification of London to the realities of living with addiction the stories place the reader in the shoes of each character allowing them to feel their emotions.

    Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1950s.Included within this work are stories by Poul Anderson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Paul Ernst, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson, Phillip Jose Farmer, Lester Del Rey, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Ben Bova, and many others.This collection includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder (James De Mille)A World by the Tale (Randall Garrett)A World is Born (Leigh Brackett)Accidental Death (Peter Baily)Arena (Fredric Brown)Atom Boy (Ray Cummings)Beyond Lies the Wub (Phillip K. Dick)Blind Spot (Bascom Jones)Cully (Jack Egan)Dead Giveaway (Randall Garrett)Dead Ringer (Lester Del Rey)Dead World (Jack Douglas)Divinity (Joseph Samachson)Four Miles Within (Anthony Gilmore)Heist Job on Thizar (Randall Garrett)Hex (Laurence Janifer)In the Year 2889 (Jules Verne)Indulgence of Negu Mah (Robert Arthur)Lease to Doomsday (Lee Archer)Lost in Translation (Laurence Janifer)McIlvane’s Star (August Derleth)Missing Link (Frank Herbert)Next Logical Step (Ben Bova)Pandemic (J.F. Bone)Remember the Alamo (T.R. Fehrenbach)Salvage in Space (Jack Williamson)Security (Poul Anderson)Subspace Survivors (E.E. “Doc” Smith)The Aliens (Murray Leinster)The Big Trip Up Yonder (Kurt Vonnegut)The Chronic Argonauts (H.G. Wells)The Cosmic Express (Jack Williamson)The Day Time Stopped Moving (Bradner Buckner)The Eternal Wall (Raymond Z. Gallun)The Gifts of Asti (Andre Norton)The Hated (Frederick Pohl)The Last Evolution (John W. Campbell)The Man Who Saw the Future (Edmond Hamilton)The Memory of Mars (Raymond F. Jones)The Moon is Green (Fritz Leiber)The Nothing Equation (Tom Godwin)The Power and the Glory (Charles W. Diffin)The Radiant Shell (Paul Ernst)The Stoker and the Stars (Algis Budrys)The Street That Wasn’t There (Carl Jacobi and Clifford D. Simak)The World Behind the Moon (Paul Ernst)There is a Reaper (Charles De Vet)They Twinkled Like Jewels (Phillip José Farmer)Waste Not, Want (Dave Dryfoos)Year of the Big Thaw (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

    In Short days, Long Nights a woman wakes to find a man in her bed and tries to piece together the jigsaw of the night before. But is he dead or just sleeping? In Girls on Ice two fashion students walk on the frozen sea until they are caught in a snowstorn, out of sight of land. Set as far apart as Finland, the Austrian Tyrol and upstate New York, the worlds of these stores come alive to the touch. Characters, themes and nuances resound from story to story forming unexpected connections and delightful surprises.