The Boggart

The Boggart

Susan Cooper

Children's Books / Science Fiction & Fantasy / Biographies & Memoirs

"Centuries old and housands of miles from home". When Emily and Jess Volnik's family inherits a remote, crumbling Scottish castle, they also inherit the Boggart - an invisible, mischievous spirit who's been playing tricks on residents of Castle Keep for generations. Then the Boggart is trapped in a rolltop desk and inadvertently shipped to the Volniks' home in Toronto, where nothing will ever be the same - for the Volniks or the Boggart. In a world that doesn't believe in magic, the Boggart's pranks wreak havoc. And even the newfound joys of peanut butter and pizza and fudge sauce eventually wear thin for the Boggart. He wants to go home - but his only hope lies in a risky and daring blend of modern technology and ancient magic.
Read online
  • 556
The Colossus

The Colossus

Sylvia Plath

Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

With this startling, exhilarating book of poems, which was first published in 1960, Sylvia Plath burst into literature with spectacular force. In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 555
Report of the County Chairman

Report of the County Chairman

James A. Michener

Historical Fiction / History / Biographies & Memoirs

James A. Michener, the acclaimed author of sweeping historical blockbusters, chronicles his personal involvement in one of the most dramatic elections of the twentieth century: the presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. A relative newcomer to politics, Michener served as the Democratic chairman in his native Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a rural battleground precinct where the major controversies of the day—notably Kennedy’s Catholicism—brought cultural divides to the forefront. First published shortly after the 1960 election, Report of the County Chairman remains an intimate, gripping account of the power of grassroots political involvement. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii. Praise for *Report of the County Chairman  * “A candid account of the Kennedy/Nixon campaign.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer  * “Fascinating . . . The personalities are vividly and vigorously sketched—the workers, the volunteers, the hatchet men, the pros and . . . key figures on the barnstorming tour.”—Kirkus Reviews “Instructive . . . Anti-Catholicism was not just a Southern problem. In Pennsylvania, accounts of increasing anti-Catholicism were widespread. No one documented this sentiment more clearly than famed Pennsylvania novelist James Michener.”—The Morning Call* (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Read online
  • 553
Monk Dawson

Monk Dawson

Piers Paul Read

Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Edward Dawson is sent by his widowed mother to be educated at Kirkham, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks. Conscientious and idealistic, Dawson is persuaded that he has a monastic vocation and joins the community upon leaving school. He soon feels that educating the sons of the rich is an inadequate response to suffering and injustice and so leaves Kirkham to serve as a secular priest in London. Under the eye of an indulgent archbishop, Dawson’s radical sermons and provocative articles in the Catholic press gain him many admirers, but they also persuade him that the solutions to human suffering are to be found in social work, politics and perhaps psychology but not religion.
Read online
  • 553
Father and I Were Ranchers

Father and I Were Ranchers

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

Ralph was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes, the pleasures and perils of ranching in the early twentieth century are experienced... auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms all give authentic color to Little Britches. So do wonderfully told adventures, which equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Newly republished in a hardcover edition with a 1950s cover, jacket and pictorial endpages. Interior illustrations by Edward Shenton.
Read online
  • 553


Existence

Existence

James Frey

Biographies & Memoirs / Science Fiction & Fantasy

This third thrilling digital prequel novella to Endgame: The Calling follows the lives of four of the twelve Players before they were chosen as the one to save their ancient bloodline—and win Endgame.Before the Calling . . . Twelve Players-in-training are tested to the very edge of their physical and mental abilities. Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 3: Existence follows Sarah, Jago, An, and Hilal, as they prepare for the apocalyptic game that may or may not occur.They must shed their normal lives and transform into the Players they were meant to be.They must train, learn, prepare.To Play, survive, and solve.To kill or be killed.Endgame is real.Endgame is coming. And only one can win.
Read online
  • 551
The Path of the King

The Path of the King

John Buchan

Literature & Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers / Biographies & Memoirs

The little hut among the oak trees was dim in the October twilight on the evening of St. Callixtus\' Day. It had been used by swineherds, for the earthen floor was puddled by the feet of generations of hogs, and in the corner lay piles of rotting acorns. Outside the mist had filled the forest, and the ways were muffled with fallen leaves, so that the four men who approached the place came as stealthily as shades. They reconnoitred a moment at the entrance, for it was a country of war. "Quarters for the night," said one, and put his shoulder to the door of oak-toppings hinged on strips of cowhide. But he had not taken a step inside before he hastily withdrew. "There is something there," he cried—"something that breathes. A light, Gil." One of the four lit a lantern from his flint and poked it within. It revealed the foul floor and the rotting acorns, and in the far corner, on a bed of withered boughs, something dark which might be a man. They stood still and listened. There was the sound of painful breathing, and then the gasp with which a sick man wakens. A figure disengaged itself from the shadows. Seeing it was but one man, the four pushed inside, and the last pulled the door to behind him. "What have we here?" the leader cried. A man had dragged himself to his feet, a short, square fellow who held himself erect with a grip on a side-post. His eyes were vacant, dazzled by the light and also by pain. He seemed to have had hard usage that day, for his shaggy locks were matted with blood from a sword-cut above his forehead, one arm hung limp, and his tunic was torn and gashed. He had no weapons but a knife which he held blade upwards in the hollow of his big hand. The four who confronted him were as ill-looking a quartet as Duke William\'s motley host could show. One, the leader, was an unfrocked priest of Rouen; one was a hedge-robber from the western marches who had followed Alan of Brittany; a third had the olive cheeks and the long nose of the south; and the fourth was a heavy German from beyond the Rhine. They were the kites that batten on the offal of war, and the great battle on the seashore having been won by better men, were creeping into the conquered land for the firstfruits of its plunder. "An English porker," cried the leader. "We will have the tusks off him." Indeed, in the wild light the wounded man, with his flat face and forked beard, had the look of a boar cornered by hounds. "\'Ware his teeth," said the one they called Gil. "He has a knife in his trotter." The evil faces of the four were growing merry. They were worthless soldiers, but adepts in murder. Loot was their first thought, but after that furtive slaying. There seemed nothing to rob here, but there was weak flesh to make sport of. Gil warily crept on one side, where he held his spear ready. The ex-priest, who had picked up somewhere a round English buckler, gave the orders. "I will run in on him, and take his stroke, so you be ready to close. There is nothing to be feared from the swine. See, he is blooded and faints." The lantern had been set on the ground by the door and revealed only the lower limbs of the four. Their heads were murky in shadow. Their speech was foreign to the wounded man, but he saw their purpose. He was clearly foredone with pain, but his vacant eyes kindled to slow anger, and he shook back his hair so that the bleeding broke out again on his forehead. He was as silent as an old tusker at bay. The ex-priest gave the word and the four closed in on him. He defeated their plan by hurling himself on the leader\'s shield, so that his weight bore him backwards and he could not use his weapon. The spears on the flanks failed for the same reason, and the two men posted there had well-nigh been the death of each other. The fourth, the one from the south, whose business it had been to support the priest, tripped and fell sprawling beside the lantern.
Read online
  • 551
Dear Ann

Dear Ann

Bobbie Ann Mason

Short Stories / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love.Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who's traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Anne fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for—a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the "Real Thing," to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future...
Read online
  • 548
The Green Lady

The Green Lady

Benjamin Parsons

Biographies & Memoirs / Politics / History

Comedy, mystery and the battle of the sexes… all set in a haunted castle! Armed with only cunning and charm, who will see it through the night when the ghostly Green Lady walks?In this tale of comedy, mystery and the battle of the sexes, cheating-heart Hamish has finally driven his wife Elizabeth out of her senses. She has fled into the crypt of her ancestral home, convinced that she's the ghost of the Green Lady, whose spectral footsteps stalk the dark passages of Brackley Castle. But Hamish's friend Max isn't so sure. He suspects Elizabeth has a trick or two up her sleeve, especially as she's being aided and abetted by her clever, bewitching cousin Mina. Armed with only cunning and charm, who will see it through the night when the ghostly Green Lady walks?
Read online
  • 548
The Islands of Unwisdom

The Islands of Unwisdom

Robert Graves

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

Swashbuckling historical fiction from the author of I, Claudius. "A cleverly balanced mixture of spice, fact, humor and adventure on and off the high seas" (Kirkus Reviews). Set in the Age of Exploration, The Islands of Unwisdom tells the story of the ill-fated Don Álvaro de Mendaña y Neyra, a Spanish explorer set on finding the Solomon Islands, the mythical source of King Solomon's vast wealth. Driven by greed, ambition, and lust, Don Alvaro and his wife, the beautiful and dangerous Ysabel, lead a crew of adventurers beyond the horizon in search of the wealth of their wildest dreams. However, that's not exactly what they find. In the hands of master historical novelist, classicist, and poet Robert Graves, this tale offers a fascinating look at a brutal and bloody era, and insights into the reasons for Spain's failure to ultimately dominate world exploration during this time.
Read online
  • 547
Ghost Hawk

Ghost Hawk

Susan Cooper

Children's Books / Science Fiction & Fantasy / Biographies & Memoirs

From Newbery Medalist Susan Cooper, a story of adventure and friendship between a young Native American and a colonial New England settler. On the winter day Little Hawk is sent into the woods alone, he can take only a bow and arrows, his handcrafted tomahawk, and the amazing metal knife his father traded for with the new white settlers. If Little Hawk survives three moons by himself, he will be a man. John Wakely is only ten when his father dies, but he has already experienced the warmth and friendship of the nearby tribes. Yet his fellow colonists aren’t as accepting of the native people. When he is apprenticed to a barrel-maker, John sees how quickly the relationships between settlers and natives are deteriorating. His friendship with Little Hawk will put both boys in grave danger. The intertwining stories of Little Hawk and John Wakely are a fascinating tale of friendship and an eye-opening look at the history of our nation. Newbery Medalist Susan Cooper also includes a timeline and an author’s note that discusses the historical context of this important and moving novel.**
Read online
  • 547
183