His sociopathic tendencies coupled with his political views make him a very dangerous man indeed. Farzad wants the world to sit up and take notice of him and randomly selects six bystanders to hold hostage at a city restaurant.JACOB BROWN is a fitness fanatic who finds himself at the centre of a bizarre situation when he arrives at his favourite restaurant to pick up a takeaway for dinner.JAGRITI GOSHAL is a young unassuming Indian waitress working at Alessandro’s Cucina.REGINA TERRY is a fearless Afro-American woman in Australia on a business visa who unexpectedly finds herself embroiled in a crazy siege with a madman.LEVI HAINES and BILL WALKER are colleagues having a business dinner at the restaurant. Bill is Levi’s sleazy boss with unethical intentions and Levi is dining with him against her will.PAUL TOWNSEND is a local electrician who happens to drop off a quote at Alessandro’s Cucina at the same time Farzad descends on the restaurant to begin taking hostages.Follow the roller coaster ride of emotions as these strangers find themselves embroiled in a terrifying siege orchestrated by a madman. The authorities scramble to put together a definitive plan of action to contain the situation quickly. But not everyone will come out alive ...

    Also includes an extract from her new novel, Spirits of the Ghan.To the members of the Otto Bin Empire - the homeless men and women who gather around the plastic bins near the docks - Clive is an enigmatic addition to their ranks. Intelligent, healthy and always well presented, even Clive struggles to understand why he finds himself at the bottom of the barrel. How did it happen?'I'm just a bloke going through a period of adjustment,' he tells himself, 'I'll be back on my feet soon.'But as the weeks turn into months Clive slowly adjusts to his circumstances. He finds tolerance, acceptance and friendship and slowly begins to see humanity in its purest light. He finally realises that dignity, self-respect and honour are to be found in abundance in the Otto Bin Empire . and who knows? Perhaps even love.

    Prostitute. Gangster’s Wife. Survivor. Tara grew up in squalor on the island of Alderney. When she was only four, she was sexually abused by one of her mother’s many lovers, a horror that continued for five long years. As a teenager, desperate to escape the toxic environment at home, she fled to London – but was swiftly drawn into working as a prostitute. She became involved with some of London’s most notorious gangsters – even marrying one – but when she realised the danger she was inflicting on her children, she knew she had to find a way to get out. This is the inspiring story of one woman’s will to survive, and to fight for a better life.

    Author Pat Blaskower is your personal coach, guiding and encouraging you and your partner to play winning tennis by showing you how to:- choose a compatible partner - determine your jobs on the court - learn poaching skills - communicate with each other and opposing teams - maintain mental toughness - use various formations and strategies - pick your shots intelligently - decide where to play: tournaments or leagues - and much, much more!The book also includes detailed court diagrams that show you how to execute offense, defense, and tactical plays; checklists that summarize the most important points of each chapter; and on-court drills to help you improve and refine your skills. The Art of Doubles is loaded with practical, proven tennis strategies that you can put to work immediately to see improvements in your own doubles game!

    Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk.It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying, that these beautifully written pages record.

    In this guide John Harrison shows the reader how to get the most out of their plot, providing a complete introduction to planting and growing your own vegetables and plants.

    They’ve experienced events they can’t otherwise explain. Same with other professions that deal with injuries, accidents, or death. Police officers, firemen, 911 operators, they’ve seen the worst that people can do to one another, and they’ve all had brushes with the unexplained. Don’t believe in ghosts? This book might change your mind steal any hope of sleep. These stories are unexplainable, true accounts from first responders, police officers, firemen, and 911 operators, told from the perspective of everyday people. Every single tale between these covers is one hundred percent true. Think you can explain them? We dare you to try.

    What we don’t see is the arduous, life-threatening challenges they face at every moment. Beaks, Bones, and Bird Songs guides the reader through the myriad, and often almost miraculous, things that birds do every day to merely stay alive. Like the goldfinch, which manages extreme weather changes by doubling the density of its plumage in winter. Or urban birds, which navigate traffic through a keen understanding of posted speed limits. In engaging and accessible prose, Roger Lederer shares how and why birds use their sensory abilities to see ultraviolet, find food without seeing it, fly thousands of miles without stopping, change their songs in noisy cities, navigate by smell, and much more.

    Did you know...The Galápagos Penguin's speckled markings make each of them as unique as a snowflake? The Emperor Penguin weighs the same as a Labrador retriever? The Adélie Penguin takes its name from the sweetheart of a Napoleonic naval captain turned explorer?From tiny fairy penguins to the regal emperor penguin, street artist and ornithologist, Matt Sewell, illustrates one of the world’s favourite birds in this follow-up to Owls, Our Garden Birds, Our Songbirds and Our Woodland Birds.

    He didn't want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn't want to think about his failed relationship with "the one" or his potential for ruining a new relationship with "the next one." And he almost certainly didn't want to think about turning forty. And so instead he went birding.Birding was a lifelong passion. It was only among the birds that Neil found a calm that had eluded him in the confusing world of humans. But this time he also found competition. His growing list of species reluctantly catapulted him into a Big Year--a race to find the most birds in one year. His peregrinations across twenty-eight states and six provinces in search of exotic species took him to a hoarfrost-covered forest in Massachusetts to find a Fieldfare; to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to see a rare Nutting's Flycatcher; and to Vancouver for the Red-flanked Bluetail. Neil's Big Year was as unplanned as it was accidental: It was the perfect distraction to life.Neil shocked the birding world by finding 749 species of bird and breaking the long-standing Big Year record. He also surprised himself: During his time among the hummingbirds, tanagers, and boobies, he found a renewed sense of confidence and hope about the world and his place in it.

    It is written in an easy-to-remember way which links the theory back to your practical driving experience to help you really understand.

    But every time they think they've finally closed the door, the bird makes an unexpected appearance. It happened in the 1920s, and it’s happened in almost every subsequent decade. For more than 60 years, each sighting has been met with ridicule and scorn. Respected researchers and naturalists have been branded as quacks just for having the temerity to say that the ivory-bill still exists. Yet the reports still trickle in. Is there any truth to these sightings, or are they just a case of wishful thinking, misidentification, or outright fabrication? To unravel the mystery, author Tim Gallagher heads south, deep into the eerie swamps and bayous of the vast Mississippi Delta, searching for people who claim to have seen this rarest of birds and following up—sometimes more than 30 years after the fact—on their sightings. He meets a colorful array of characters: a cigar-chomping ex-boxer who took two controversial pictures of an alleged ivory-bill in 1971; a former corporate lawyer who abandoned her career to search for ivory-bills full time; two men who grew up in the ivory-bill’s last known stronghold in a final remnant of primeval forest in Louisiana. With his buddy Bobby Harrison, a true son of the South from Alabama, Gallagher hits the swamps, wading through hip-deep, boot-sucking mud and canoeing through turgid, mud brown bayous where deadly cottonmouth water moccasins abound. In most cases, they are clearly decades too late. But when the two speak to an Arkansas backwoods kayaker who saw a mystery woodpecker the week before and has a description of the bird that is too good to be a fantasy, the hunt is on. Their Eureka moment comes a few days later as a huge woodpecker flies in front of their canoe, and they both cry out, “Ivory-bill!” This sighting—the first time since 1944 that two qualified observers positively identify an ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States—quickly leads to the largest search ever launched to find a rare bird, as researchers fan out across the bayou, hoping to document the existence of this most iconic of birds.

    Exploring along those beaches offers encounters with myriads of plants, animals, minerals, and manmade objects--all are covered in this comprehensive guide with descriptive accounts of 822 items, 983 color images, and 431 maps. Beginning with the premise that beaches are themselves alive, this guide to the natural history of Florida beaches heralds the living things and metaphorical life near, on, and within the state's sandy margins. It is organized into Beach Features, Beach Animals, Beach Plants, Beach Minerals, and Hand of Man. In addition to being an identification guide, the book reveals much of the wonder and mystery between dune and sea along Florida's long coastline.

    In this groundbreaking and meticulously field-tested guide, the rich variety of Sierra life-- trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, and insects-- comes alive.

    Seeking to address the various challenges of off-camera lighting, professional photographers and advanced amateurs alike will find a range of confidence-building instruction, beginning with basic how’s and why’s of lighting for creative effect, the types of equipment available and instruction about their proper use, clear definitions of various technical concepts such as managing shutter speed and controlling flash exposure, using ambient light as well as natural sunlight during a shoot, and incorporating off-camera flash into a portrait session. Concluding this lesson plan is a look at five different real-life photo sessions, each employing a different flash technique. Here, photographers get a deeper understanding of each concept put into practice, marrying the elements of lighting with the natural elements presented by the shoot.