When J’s car breaks down outside the village pub Ruth the landlady has no reason to disbelieve his explanation that he was just passing through. They have an instant attraction to the other. Whilst he waits for his car to be repaired J tells Ruth of his career and background. Then the details of his job begin to change and Ruth starts to wonder if J has another reason for staying in the village.Kit needed a new start from her past. She escaped an abusive relationship and traveled from place to place for two years in fear of her ex boyfriend, Gabe, from finding her. Along her way she stops and makes an unexpected friend with a waitress, Tiffany. She feels at home in this small town and being able to have a new friend and a fresh start she feels like she has found what she was looking for. She finds a new love interest with a strong man, Steven, and they soon become lovers. But will the past come back to haunt her? Will she be able to make it out alive this time?

A couple of dozen poems about a particular relationship, a particular planet, and a personal grab bag of memories and dreams.It's quiz night at the Red Lion - time for The Circleto pit their wits against the rest of the regulars......and each other.The sound of wedding bells is, most definitely, in the air!The story continues in the novella, Breaking Waves, and the In The Stars Part II (Cancer-Sagittarius).* * * * *In The Stars follows 'The Circle' of friends through a full year, with each episode covering the period of time indicated by the zodiac sign from which it takes its title.'Gemini' is the sixth episode of In The Stars, released in May 2014. For those readers unfamiliar with the series, 'Capricorn' (episode one) re-introduces the main characters, so you could pick it up from here and perhaps catch up with the previous books later (I hope you will!).The full novel of In The Stars Part I (Capricorn–Gemini) is also available for purchase as a paperback and ebook.* * * * *Some things are just meant to be, or sometimes it seems that way. Like old uni pals inexplicably moving to your hometown, or realising that your childhood best friend is the love of your life, or landing a star role in a hit TV series that could well be your autobiography.Fate, karma, written in the stars, or just bizarre quirks of coincidence?For better or worse, the events of the next six months will push the friends to the limits. For The Circle can expand and contract, but it is always whole; eternal.Set over the first six months of a year of The Circle, In The Stars Part I explores the day-to-day lives of nine friends from high school who are now it their late thirties, following them through celebration, loss, illness and life-changing decisions.What readers say about the Hiding Behind The Couch Series:"The remarkable characterisation in these novels is what makes them for me.""This story reminds me of my favorite movies about friendship and relationships.""Few authors have explored the depths of longtime friends within a group, or 'circle' the way Debbie McGowan has!""I have a love-hate relationship with Debbie McGowan's Hiding Behind the Couch Series. I love to read them, I HATE it when they're over."

Part 2 of All the Days of John Mann. Continues the story begun in The Stolen Days of John Mann. Choke survivor John Mann and ally Gunner travel a long and treacherous road in their search for David and revenge on the traffickers who took him. Can they outrun the unseen net that tightens around them? Danger, betrayal and death are the common coin, Mann's ability to kill or cure the ultimate prize.Part 2 of All the Days of John Mann. Continues the story that began in The Stolen Days of John Mann.Preacher John Mann is the only known survivor of exposure to the choke, the virus that has decimated humanity. As society struggles to survive and rebuild, Mann and his uncertain ally Gunner leave Keen in her brother's safekeeping while they continue on the trail of the missing boy David. Their road is full of treacherous turns that can only lead them into brutal conflict with a gang of Russian traffickers.While Doctor Russell's relentless pursuit of Mann brings her closer to her quarry, unseen, the Government's net draws ever tighter around them all.Suffering a crisis of faith, Mann is all too aware that his very existence puts all those he would hold close at risk.'His faith seemed to diminish by the mile the further he moved away from Keen, like fuel dripping out onto the road from a cracked tank.'When danger, betrayal and death are the common currency, John Mann's potential as a weapon or as the source of a vaccine is the ultimate prize that all would profit by but which he won't easily surrender.

A riveting new account of the long-overlooked achievement of British-led forces who, against all odds, scored the first major Allied victory of the Second World WarSurprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, in 1941 British and Commonwealth forces completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops. This compelling book draws on an array of previously unseen documents to provide both a detailed campaign history and a fresh appreciation of the first significant Allied success of the war.Andrew Stewart investigates such topics as Britain's African wartime strategy; how the fighting forces were assembled (most from British colonies, none from the U.S.); General Archibald Wavell's command abilities and his difficult relationship with Winston...

Terrorists Come To the Ghetto...And only One Man Can Stop them!After leading a successful mission to take out Iraqi warlord Samhal Hussein, Sgt John Williams is hailed as a Hero by the U.S Army. However, when he returns to the South Bronx he finds his neighborhood being oppressed by a neighborhood drug kingpin.With the NYPD scared, and residents feeling powerless, John realizes that he has to declare his own war on terror to save his neighborhood and protect his community.

A short story of pronounced madness in a modern, mechanical world. A solitary night watchman at a museum faces his own inadequacy when compared with the museum's security system. As he sinks into depression and alcoholism, a woman appears, seemingly from nowhere, and plucks the watchman from despair in order to further her own otherworldly hobby.Chinese wisdom secretly passed through handwritten fortunes influences the lives of two men from different cultures connected by a shared source of enlightenment. Each overcomes adversity to achieve inner awareness through personal journeys. Michael Hamilton, successful San Francisco advertising executive, has his world shattered when he becomes a casualty of the 1994 California recession. He faces a bleak future: unemployed, despondent, and alone. To pull himself together he must overcome emotional obstacles and accept a broader, unconventional vision of reality. A secret mentor guides him as he opens a new business and finds romance with strong-willed, Jennie Greene. Will his fear of commitment once again interfere, keeping him stuck in the painful past? Wu, respected manager of the family-owned Good Fortune Chinese restaurant, enjoys financial security. He has been a loving husband and father, but is at odds with his aging father, Chow Lee Tong, the restaurant's bookkeeper and formerly a great scholar in his youth. Gradually, Wu neglects his wife, Anna and their sons due to his assiduous attention to business. He is too distracted to realize he is putting his marriage in jeopardy and sacrificing his family relationships in his quest for greater wealth. Wu and Michael each face challenges that, like the mirrored images of the Yin/Yang symbol, are identical yet reversed. Good Fortune awaits them, but first they must discover happiness is less tied to outward goals than inner awareness. Tong's gentle wisdom shows them the way.

A short story set on Hirta, an island in the archipelago of St Kilda, Scotland.This is the second short story in a trilogy about these majestic islands.On the 29th of August 1930 the last remaining inhabitants left their homes for good, this short story is based at that time.Lydia, the former baker's apprentice, has grown into a powerful mage indeed. Now known as Aurora, she and her Cluster ride out into the world for the first time, hunting down magically altered monsters ravaging the countryside of her homeland. This simple and straightforward task leads the Cluster into battle with demons and other evils, including a dark mage who kills to raise power. Little do they know that the act of rescuing his next intended victim will alter all of their lives forever...Stand-alone sequel to Apprentice.

Tom Angleberger's latest, loopiest middle-grade novel begins when M'Lady Luggertuck loosens her corset (it's never been loosened before!), thereby setting off a chain of events in which all the strict rules of Smugwick Manor are abandoned. When, as a result of "the Loosening," the precious family heirloom, the Luggertuck Lump (quite literally a lump), goes missing, the Luggertucks look for someone to blame. Is it Horton Halfpott, the good-natured but lowly kitchen boy who can't tell a lie? Or one of the many colorful cast members in this silly romp of a mystery.

From the limitless imagination of acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and DreamWorks Animation, get ready to meet a new cast of otherworldly characters in 3Below—the exciting, new Tales of Arcadia series, which picks up where Trollhunters left off.For twins Aja and Krel being the new kids at school is hard. Honestly though, it's high school. When isn't there drama? But there may be a tad more drama than usual when you are teenage royals from another planet trying to blend in to the quiet little town of Arcadia Oaks, USA. In this first adventure of the Tales of Arcadia: 3Below series, Aja and Krel grudgingly attend Arcadia's annual sci-fi/pop culture convention (Arcadia Con) and discover it's easy to hide in plain sight when everyone is wearing a costume! The aliens meet up with Eli, Steve, Toby, Jim, and Claire from the Trollhunters series, who come in handy when an alien bounty hunter arrives at the convention to collect the bounty on Aja...

Join Thomas in his search to make sense of fragments of conversations and letters from his English students. A short story for lovers of quotations, fables, and anyone who has ever been a teacher or a student.Kayla Covington is a Private Eye for all occasions on the alien world of Pheros. She is the one you hire to find what you have lost, to glean information on a rival to use against them, or to discreetly remove something that could cause embarrassment. She thought she had seen and heard it all, that was until she was hired to infiltrate a secret society to uncover their secrets and steal their prized artifact. Now the only question that she cares about is, will she make it out of this alive?

Adventures Among Books

When Thetra’s parents are assassinated by unknown murderers, it leaves him eager for revenge. He sets out with his brother Arek to hunt down the killers. They find them in the city’s restaurant, acting as normal citizens of Toage, but they attack them with their weapons. Arek has a bucket of paint poured on him, and Thetra must save his brother's life.There is only one dragon that can save Thetra.There is only one army Thetra must protect.Everyone else is his enemy.When Thetra’s parents are assassinated by unknown murderers, it leaves him eager for revenge. He sets out with his brother Arek to hunt down the killers. They find them in the city’s restaurant, acting as normal citizens of Toage, but they attack them with their weapons. Arek has a bucket of paint poured on him, and Thetra must save his brother's life. He has never saved a man’s life before, and he does not know what to do.

Top 100 Books Master Skylark - A Story of Shakspere\'s Time by John Bennett There was an unwonted buzzing in the east end of Stratford on that next to the last day of April, 1596. It was as if some one had thrust a stick into a hive of bees and they had come whirling out to see. The low stone guard-wall of old Clopton bridge, built a hundred years before by rich Sir Hugh, sometime Mayor of London, was lined with straddling boys, like strawberries upon a spear of grass, and along the low causeway from the west across the lowland to the town, brown-faced, barefoot youngsters sat beside the roadway with their chubby legs a-dangle down the mossy stones, staring away into the south across the grassy levels of the valley of the Stour. Punts were poling slowly up the Avon to the bridge; and at the outlets of the town, where the streets came down to the waterside among the weeds, little knots of men and serving-maids stood looking into the south and listening. Some had waited for an hour, some for two; yet still there was no sound but the piping of the birds in white-thorn hedges, the hollow lowing of kine knee-deep in grassy meadows, and the long rush of the river through the sedge beside the pebbly shore; and naught to see but quiet valleys, primrose lanes, and Warwick orchards white with bloom, stretching away to the misty hills. But still they stood and looked and listened. The wind came stealing up out of the south, soft and warm and sweet and still, moving the ripples upon the river with gray gusts; and, scudding free before the wind, a dog came trotting up the road with wet pink tongue and sidelong gait. At the throat of Clopton bridge he stopped and scanned the way with dubious eye, then clapped his tail between his legs and bolted for the town. The laughing shout that followed him into the Warwick road seemed not to die away, but to linger in the air like the drowsy hum of bees--a hum that came and went at intervals upon the shifting wind, and grew by littles, taking body till it came unbroken as a long, low, distance-muffled murmur from the south, so faint as scarcely to be heard.

In the cataclysm of the battle of the gods, a portal to Hell has been opened, releasing legions of unnatural creatures that have pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. While warring deities clash with fallen angels, the only hope for mankind’s survival lies with the most unlikely heroes: Former assassin Rachel Hael has rejoined blood-magician Mina Greene and her little dog, Basilis, on one last desperate mission to save the world from the ravages of Hell. As Rachel travels to the final confrontation she has both sought and feared, she begins to realize that time itself is unraveling. And so she must prepare herself for a sacrifice that may claim her heart, her life, her soul—and even then it may not be enough.

Suspended by chains over a seemingly bottomless abyss, the ancient city of Deepgate is home to a young angel, an assassin, and a psychotic murderer hungry for revenge—or redemption. But soon a shocking betrayal will unite all three in a desperate quest.... The last of his line, Dill is descended from legendary Battle-archons who once defended the city. Forbidden to fly and untrained even to wield the great sword inherited from his forebears, he has become a figurehead for a dying tradition. Now he lives a sheltered existence in one of Deepgate’s crumbling temple spires under the watchful eye of the Presbyter who rules the city. Spine assassin Rachel Hael has better things to do than oversee the Presbyter’s angel. Each dark moon she must fight for her life among the city chains, hunting an immortal predator with a taste for blood. But when a traitor brings enemies to Deepgate’s doorstep, Dill and Rachel are forced into an uneasy alliance with the city’s oldest and most dangerous foe. They must journey down into the uncharted chasm to save their sprawling metropolis—and themselves—from annihilation. Once they descend however, they learn that what lies below is far more sinister than what they’ve been taught to expect. From the Hardcover edition.