In this sequel to The Spy Princess, Lilah, newly made a princess, teams up with Atan, the hidden princess of the oldest country in the world, Sartor, to free the kingdom from a century of enchantment. Capture, escape, a forest beyond time, ancient beings, civilizations secreted in caves, and a deadly enemy await the girls. Atan knows that if she survives, the challenges facing a fifteen-year-old queen are only beginning.

"Laughter is the language of the soul," Pablo Neruda said. Among the most lasting voices of the most tumultuous (in his own words, "the saddest") century, a witness and a chronicler of its most decisive events, he is the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, the emblem of the engaged poet, an artist whose heart, always with the people, is literally consumed by passion. His work, oscillating from epic meditations on politics and history to intimate reflections on animals, food, and everyday objects, is filled with humor and affection.This bilingual selection of more than fifty of Neruda's best poems, edited and with an introduction by the distinguished Latin American scholar Ilan Stavans and brilliantly translated by an array of well-known poets, also includes some poems previously unavailable in English. I Explain a Few Things distills the poet's brilliance to its most essential and illuminates Neruda's...

A collection of short stories by one of America’s great twentieth-century writers In his introduction to this collection of sharply crafted short stories, James Jones compares novel writing to a long-term, chronic illness. Writing short stories, he says, is like a brief, intense fever: the kind that can kill or disappear in a matter of days. Although best known for epic war novels such as From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, Jones also wrote short stories, and the ones in this volume burn with deadly intensity. Besides the expected stories of the soldier’s life, Jones gives us something surprising: five stories of childhood, tender and horrifying at the same time, inspired by his early life in the Depression-stricken Midwest. They and the other shorts in this volume are accompanied by author’s notes, which supplement Jones’s introduction, and a preface by his daughter, Kaylie Jones.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author’s estate.

"Wait Till Next Year" is the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries. We meet the people who influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a 70-year-old when she was only in her 30s and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to which she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers. This is also the story of a girlhood in which the great religious festivals of the Catholic church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce a passionate love of history, ceremony, and ritual. It is the story of growing up in what seemed on the surface a more innocent era until one recalls the terror of polio, the paranoia of McCarthyism reflected even in the children's games, the obsession with A-bomb drills in school, and the ugly face of racial prejudice. It was a time whose relative tranquility contained the seeds of the turbulent decade of the 60s. Shortly after the Dodgers left, Goodwin'smother died, and the family moved from the old neighborhood to an apartment on the other side of town. This move coincided with the move of several other families on the block and with the decline of the corner store as the supermarket began to take over. It was the end.

One would suppose that during the Depression there wasn't much to laugh about in America. But one would be wrong. This book takes up Betty's story before she'd had any success as a writer - when she went back to live with her mother. With a failed chicken farm and marriage behind her, Betty was desperate to make a living in a country without any jobs. Luckily she had her sister Mary batting for her, and catapulting Betty into one hilarious situation after another, while she watched safely from the sidelines.

Vanished! That’s what Andrea Wilton and Brian Strait discover when they come to visit their best friends one evening. Where could they be and does God answer prayers, two questions they find the answers to as they journey to another world of voodoo, murder, and more missing people. Andrea and Brian also discover each other as they learn to scuba, and fight a common enemy.Frightened after finding blood on their carpet, Andrea Wilton agrees to join forces with  Trent Michner's best friend, Brian Strait, in order to discover what happened to Trent and his wife, her best friend. The bad guys are not far behind and do everything in their power to discourage the search.A neighbor is murdered on her doorstep leaving behind the first clue in the search. Andrea and Brian follow one clue after another, all the way to Haiti. More missing people lead them to voodoo ceremonies and throw away children.Andrea grows more confident and begins to look a little more closely at Brian as a true friend. Their confidence in their Lord and in each other grows as they discover the evil that lurks just around the corner.

Robert Ranke Graves (7/24/1895–12/7/1985) was an English poet, translator & novelist. This edition contains a linked table of contents

Shirley Jackson, author of the classic short story The Lottery, was known for her terse, haunting prose. But the writer possessed another side, one which is delightfully exposed in this hilariously charming memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont. Fans of Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Cheaper by the Dozen, and anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote will find much to recognize in Shirley Jackson's home and neighborhood: children who won't behave, cars that won't start, furnaces that break down, a pugnacious corner bully, household help that never stays, and a patient, capable husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day."Our house," writes Jackson, "is old, noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books." Jackson's literary talents are in evidence everywhere, as is her trenchant, unsentimental wit. Yet there is no mistaking the happiness and love in these pages, which are crowded with the raucous voices of an extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.

The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

From the author of the best-selling and beloved The End of Your Life Book Club - a wonderfully engaging new book: both a celebration of reading in general and an impassioned recommendation of specific books that can help guide us through our daily lives. "I've always believed that everything you need to know you can find in a book," writes Will Schwalbe in his introduction to this thought-provoking, heartfelt, and inspiring new book about books. In each chapter he makes clear the ways in which a particular book has helped to shape how he leads his own life and the ways in which it might help to shape ours. He talks about what brought him to each book - or vice versa; the people in his life he associates each book with; how each has led him to other books; how each is part of his understanding of himself in the world. And he relates each book to a question of our daily lives, for example: Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener speaks to quitting; 1984 to disconnecting from our electronics; James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to the power of finding ourselves and connecting with one another; Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea to taking time to recharge; Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird to being sensitive to the surrounding world; The Little Prince to making friends; Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train to trusting. Here, too, are books by Dickens, Daphne du Maurier, Haruki Murakami, Edna Lewis, E. B. White, and Hanya Yanagihara, among many others. A treasure of a book for everyone who loves books, loves reading, and loves to hear the answer to the question: "What are you reading?"

Subject: Delete this message after you read it ...Dear Hayley,I'm assuming you're still hungover, so I'll make this brief.Last night, you slipped under my sheets (without my permission), and we almost had sex. I got the hell out of the bed once I realized it was you, and I took you home.That's the story.The end.Period.Just in case you've forgotten, you're my best friend's little sister. We will never be anything more. (We can't be anything more.) Our previous friendship is still unresolved—or "over" in your terms, so I'd prefer if we worked on becoming 'just friends' again since you're in town.Nonetheless, I'm not a man who leaves questions unanswered—even the drunken ones, so to properly close our inappropriate conversation:1) Yes, I liked the way your lips felt against mine when you were on top of me.
2) Yes, I do "prefer" rough sex, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't rough with you.
3) No, I had no idea you were still a virgin ...This message never happened,Corey

Rosy, the elephant bequeathed to young Adrian Rookwhistle by a reprobate relative, turned out to be a handful: not alone because of her size but also because of her fondness for strong drink. To Adrian she represented the chance to get away froma City shop and a suburban lodging by exploiting her theatrical talent and experience. To Rosy their progress towards the gayer South Coast resorts offered undreamed-of opportunities for drink and destruction. So the Monkspepper Hunt is driven to delirium and Lady Fenneltree's stately home reduced to a shambles. In due course the always efficient local constabulary caught up with the pair, whose ensuing trial was a like a triumph of the law and of the author's comic genius. The verdict was--but the story has to be read to be believed, if then. Even though the author does maintain that it is entirely credible, indeed that this, his first novel, is 'an almost true story'.

From her mid-teens Sylvia Plath wrote stories, at first easily and successfully, but then with increasing difficulty as the demands of her real vision complicated her growing ambition to make a career as a conventional storywriter. When the first edition of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams appeared, Margaret Walters said of it in the Guardian, 'the book does offer . . . new insight into her development as a writer, suggesting how even her mistakes and dead ends contributed to the formation of an original and pathfinding talent'. This second edition contains the thirteen stories included in the first edition together with five pieces of her journalism, as well as a few fragments from her journal; and a further nine stories selected from the Indiana archive.

Laura is injured and unconscious. Abiku has come to devour Connor's living soul. What's more, the demon hasn't come alone.Connor stepped back a pace as Abiku flowed down from the bed with a cat-like grace. Connor looked around his room desperately searching for something he could use as a weapon but there was nothing that would inflict any harm; just books on computer programming; DVD’s of Maximum Impact performances; programs from Sheffield United’s recent matches. Instead he turned inwards and opened his psychic doorway onto the future. If he could see what Abiku would do before she did it he would have at least some chance to getting out of this. But instead of opening onto the future his door was already ajar, exposing his vulnerable mind to the other world. In the eerie pale light from that terrible realm Connor could see shadows moving. Silhouettes dancing like Chinese theatre puppets. It wasn’t just one but several - dozens in fact.

Jane Austen herself, according to her family, used to speculate on the future of her characters. In “The Poignant Sting,” a line from Emma inspired a novelette. Mansfield Park inspired two alternate sequels, both involving characters from other books, and finally, a fantasia about Miss Austen herself, supposing she had been able to travel to Eastern Europe, where she met a mysterious and sinister count. Whose wit prevailed?