How To Fly For Free: Practical Tips The Airlines Don't Want You To Know


Scott Keyes - 2012
    You’ll learn how to quickly rack up hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles. (These tips helped me earn over 1.4 million points since 2010.) You’ll also learn how to:- Earn elite status in just one flight- Bring along a companion anywhere you fly — free — for two years- Add extra cities to your trip- Get bumped- And morePlenty of books promise to teach you how to get the cheapest airfare possible with 350 pages worth of useless tips like “book your flights on Tuesdays at 1pm” or “try to fly the same carrier each time.” This isn’t that book. How To Fly For Free is a practical, step-by-step guide that will let you avoid paying thousands for airfare.Words: 13,132Pages: 56-----------------------Table of ContentsIntroductionSection 1: How to Get Free Flights1) The Fastest Way To Get Free Flights2) How Your Credit Score Works3) Step-By-Step Guides For Three Types Of Travelers4) How To Get Bumped5) Earning Elite Status In One Roundtrip Flight6) Complaints = Miles7) Bring A Companion For FreeSection 2: How to Use Your Miles8) Spending Points Wisely9) How To Fly To Additional Cities For Free10) Using Partner Airlines To Fly Anywhere In The WorldSection 3: Planning a Trip From Start to Finish11) How To Plan A Trip, Step-By-Step12) Finding Cheap Flights-----------------------About the author: Scott Keyes is a travel expert who has earned 1.4 million points in the past two years. He personally travels around 100,000 miles per year. Though once skeptical about the usefulness of frequent flyer miles, free trips to places like Norway, Dominican Republic, and the Galapagos Islands put his fears to rest.

Irresistible Force


D.D. Ayres - 2014
    She just knows he’ll make a terrific watch dog—and with an abusive ex who won’t let go, she needs all the protection she can get. But Shay never suspected that her new pet is actually a trained police K-9 named Bogart—until Bogart’s even more gorgeous, human partner shows up on her doorstep.Officer James Cannon is one tall, strong alpha male who’s convinced that Shay stole his dog. But once he gets closer to the suspect, he realizes that this stubborn, independent woman not only needs a guard dog, she needs James as well. It seems that someone from her past is stalking her, and threatening her life. When danger meets desire, will James risk his career and his best friend…to protect the woman who’s stolen his heart?

Language


Xiaolu Guo - 2017
    The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of dominant personal pronouns and moody verbs. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker…Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu GuoVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.Also in the Vintage Minis series:Desire by Haruki MurakamiEating by Nigella LawsonRace by Toni MorrisonBabies by Anne Enright

The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing


Sonia Faleiro - 2021
    Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic.They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started.Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing; and hours later they were found hanging in the orchard. Who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the people left behind.In the ensuing months, the investigation into their deaths would implode everything that their small community held to be true, and instigate a national conversation about sex and violence. Slipping deftly behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honor in a village in northern India, The Good Girls returns to the scene of Padma and Lalli's short lives and shameful deaths, and dares to ask: what is the human cost of shame?

In Spades


K. Pinson - 2013
    With an alcoholic father, a void of a mother and a town full of gossip, she struggles to find her place in the world.The only thing that saved her on her path of self destruction is her beautiful little sister, her miracle. Desperately trying to save Abby from a life that Avalynn has been trying so hard to escape from, she plots to take Abby away.The plan going dangerously astray, leaving Avalynn beaten and broken in what once was the hallway mirror in her childhood home. Avalynn finally comes to in the hospital after nearly being beaten to death. Father-Dead, Mother-Missing, Abby-In foster care--Everything changing in the blink of an eye.Avalynn immediately sets to work to get her life in order , receive custody of precious Abby and focusing every ounce of attention, giving Abby the the life she deserves. Avalynn, now a 22 year old Elementary School Teacher and New Mommy, struggling to raise a beautiful and feisty five year old whom was just diagnosed with Mild Autism Disorder. Lots of challenges for her to face in the midst. Avalynn is ready to go at them all head on if it means Abby is raised in a happy and healthy home. Abby is the only thing she cares about...not even caring about herself or her life...that is...until she meets him. The man that can shatter her entire world with one glance. Their relationship a roller coaster ride from start to finish. One that Avalynn never wants to get off of..but she may not have a choice. Her happily ever after coming to a screeching halt yet again. Heartbreak, love, loss and hope--This story has it all, In Spades.

The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects


John Tingey - 2010
    Reginald Bray (1879-1939) was one of an ordinary middle-class Englishman quietly living out his time as an accountant in the leafy suburb of Forest Hill, London. A glimpse behind his study door, however, revealed his extraordinary passion for sending unusual items through the mail. In 1898, Bray purchased a copy of the Post Office Guide, and began to study the regulations published quarterly by the British postal authorities. He discovered that the smallest item one could post was a bee, and the largest, an elephant. Intrigued,he decided to experiment with sending ordinary and strange objects through the post unwrapped, including a turnip, abowler hat, a bicycle pump, shirt cuffs, seaweed, a clothes brush, even a rabbit's skull. He eventually posted his Irish terrier and himself (not together), earning him the name "The Human Letter." He also mailed cards to challenging addressessome in the form of picture puzzles, others sent to ambiguous recipients at hard to reach destinationsall in the name of testing the deductive powers of the beleaguered postman. Over time hispassion changed from sending curios to amassing the world's largest collection of autographs, also via the post. Starting with key British military officers involved in the Second Boer War, he acquired thousands of autographs during the first four decades of the twentieth centuryof politicians, military men, performing artists, aviators, sporting stars, and many others. By the time he died in 1939, Bray had sent out more than thirty-two thousand postal curios and autograph requests. The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects tells W. Reginald Bray's remarkable tale for the first time and includes delightful illustrations of some of his most amazing postal creations. Readers will never look at the objects they post the same way again.

All The Evil of This World


Jared Dillian - 2016
    On March 2nd, 2000, the technology company 3Com spun off its insanely profitable hand-held computer subsidiary, Palm. It was one of the most fascinatingly high profile and complex and bungled trades in history, but All The Evil Of This World isn't about the millions and millions of dollars that instantly came into play, it's about seven separate voices from seven separate individuals (an ambitious low-level clerk fresh out of school, a drug-addicted, party-throwing broker with bad taste and gross amounts of money, a seemingly infallible hedge fund manager tortured by his own good luck, to name a few) and the 3Com/Palm trade is what weaves their stories together. They all collide into it and out of it, and it sometimes unites them, implodes them, saves them, or destroys them.This book is not for the faint of heart--these characters are just as troubled and intense and volatile as their surroundings, and the writing pulls not a single punch--but it's an unrelenting examination into a cast of characters that we rarely examine fairly or patiently, and who we often find it easy to dehumanize. The people who inhabit this world aren't cartoon heroes or villains--as it turns out, people who happen to handle large amounts of money for a living--are just people, with shortcomings, just like us.

She Kills Monsters


Qui Nguyen - 2012
    When Agnes finds Tilly's Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly's refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and 90s pop culture, acclaimed young playwright Qui Nguyen offers a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.

Four Treasures of the Sky


Jenny Tinghui Zhang
    But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

Sleepers Awake


Kenneth Patchen - 1946
    A work of extraordinary imaginative invention, it might be described as “novelistic fantasy”—a pioneering new direction in fiction which created its own protean form as it was written. Patchen mingled narrative with dream visions, surrealism with satire, poetry with statements of principle, and explored the then almost uncharted territory of visual word structures twenty years before “Concrete Poetry” became a popular international movement.Sleepers Awake is a rallying cry to young and old, as Patchen advances his long struggle against inhumanity, oppression, war and hypocrisy. Now brutal, now lyrical, he gives us life and the world as we must take these if they are to have full meaning; the horror and the beauty, the joy and the suffering together.

Tangled Sin


Georgia Lyn Hunter - 2016
    And should be read before Heart's Inferno.In a world of encroaching darkness and carnal hunger, a deadly sin awakens…Bound to a legacy he cannot escape, Riley is a demon unlike any other. With each passing century, his soul grows darker until the seductive trouble-magnet, Saia Sen-Grayson, stumbles into his path and throws his entire world off-kilter. But danger has a way of finding him and destroying anything worthwhile in his life.The biggest challenge in Saia’s life is evading her matchmaking socialite mother. Then she crashes into the sexiest man in her aunt’s building. One look into his striking green eyes and her fleeing days skid to a halt, except she gets more than she bargains in the sexy, tattooed bartender.And neither can deny the burning attraction between them.When his tainted past closes in on him, Riley’s forced to make the toughest decision ever to keep her safe. Then Saia’s hauled by a deadly adversary into his dark and treacherous world of Stygia—a place of old betrayals. Now Riley must face his past and accept his future in order to save the woman who belongs to him.But danger comes in many forms and the one least expected might be the sin that seals their fates once and for all…

The Manaslu Adventure: Three hapless friends try to climb a big mountain


Mark Horrell - 2012
    When they returned the next year, they were met with sticks and stones, stripped naked and sent home with red cheeks.Mark Horrell and his two friends Mark and Ian shared a dream to climb an 8,000m peak, but it seemed the gods were against them too. They had made no fewer than eight attempts without success (though they had managed to return with their clothes on).With towering ice walls, monsoon rainstorms, arm-twisting crevasses and – most dangerous of all – welcoming teahouses ready to entrap them, would it be different this time?

Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations


Artur Beifuss - 2013
    The branding they employ may contain complex systems of meaning and emotion; it conveys the group's beliefs and capabilities. Branding Terror is the first comprehensive survey of the visual identity of the world’s major terrorist organizations, from al-Qaeda and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the Tamil Tigers. Each of the 60-plus entries contains a concise description of the group’s ideology, leadership, and modus operandi, and a brief timeline of events. The group’s branding — the symbolism, colors, and typography of its logo and flag — is then analyzed in detail. Branding Terror does not seek to make any political statements; rather, it offers insight into an understudied area of counter-intelligence, and provides an original and provocative source of inspiration for graphic designers.

Heads I Win, Tails I Win: Why Smart Investors Fail and How to Tilt the Odds in Your Favor


Spencer Jakab - 2016
      Garrison Keillor described Lake Wobegon as the town where all the children are above average. Now Spencer Jakab introduces us to Lake Moneybegone, where all the women are wise, all the men are hard-working, and all the investors are below average. It's a big place--almost everyone from teachers to doctors to bankers and even most fund managers live here.   Since leaving his job as a top-rated stock analyst to become an investing columnist, Jakab has watched his readers make the same bad decisions again and again. Jakab looks at all the typical advice, from the clearly risky to the seemingly safe, to show you how various strategies are undermining even the most savvy investor's returns. The paths that lead to a seven figure nest egg are surprisingly few, but he reveals reliable strategies that can multiply a typical retirement saver's nest egg fourfold or more.   Jakab combines wise storytelling with a knack for doing the math on complicated ideas to explain why you shouldn't buy Apple, or care about tomorrow's big IPO, or even try to act on the belief that a recession is  around the corner. He also explains why you should never trust a World Cup predicting octopus, and why you shouldn't invest in companies with an X or Z in their names--information more useful than it sounds, and every bit as fun. His core audience? Readers who fall somewhere in the gap between "401(k)s for Dummies" and "Advanced Microeconomics." Whatever your level of expertise, though, a tour of Jakab's Lake Moneybegone will be entertaining and almost certainly profitable too.

The Lion's Shared Bride


Bonnie Burrows - 2015
     After signing up to an adult dating site she found herself receiving lots of different and very interesting propositions. One in particular interested her a lot... Two handsome young men named Soren and Aedan wanted to meet her and “share” her sexually for the weekend. Nina had never experienced a menage before and the thought of being pleasured by two muscle bound hunks for a few days was very appealing to her naughty side. However, she was soon going to learn that these men were also Lion Shifters and they have intentions for her way beyond just one weekend. They need a mate and they need her soon....