It's Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce - an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving - is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces' decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop's Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening's shocking conclusion: a body found, past midnight, strangled to death with a length of film. But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must use every ounce of sly wit at her disposal to ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.

The follow-up to My Family and Other Animals and the inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu: A naturalist's memoir of his family's time on a Greek island. In the years before World War II, Gerald Durrell's family left the gloomy shores of England for the sun-drenched island of Corfu. Against this picturesque backdrop, Durrell fondly recalls his family's disorderly household and outrageous antics, including their interactions with locals of both human and animal varieties. After a boyhood spent studying zoology and acquiring the island's exotic insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and sea creatures as pets, Durrell's budding naturalism would later bloom into a passion for conservation that would last a lifetime. Filled with clever observations, amusing anecdotes, and childlike wonder, Birds, Beasts and Relatives is half nature guide, half coming-of-age tale, and all charmingly funny memoir. This ebook features...

Like many girls in Newport Beach, California, Morgan spray tans, night surfs and parties. She even has a purse dog named Bambi. But Morgan also has a secret. She's endured black-outs ever since her mother's death. Following a black-out during an attack at the tanning club she manages, Morgan learns she killed her attacker. It may not be the first time.Set in and around Newport Beach, Vampires of Orange County takes place over one week in Morgan’s life as she looks for answers. Is the ex-boyfriend she never really left behind responsible for her blackouts, her sun-sickness and even her sudden craving for very rare steak? Or is it instead the friend with benefits who may have turned her Chihuahua into a vicious killer?Newport Beach, California-based author, John Bankston is the author of over eighty nonfiction books for young adults. Vampires of Orange County, is his first novel for an adult audience. Vampires of Orange County subverts this popular sub-genre by offering a protagonist who is a humorous and independent young woman who isn't seeking rescue.Volume One Morgan is attacked by an intruder at the Newport Beach tanning club she manages. After blacking out, she awakens in a hospital and learns she killed her attacker. Fifteen-year-old Stephanie has always been the good girl, but now she’s dating a man who’s not only older, but also her sister Morgan’s ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Morgan –– a vegetarian since she was eight –– orders a very rare steak. Fifteen-year-old Stephanie has always been the good girl, but now she’s dating a man who’s not only older, but also her sister Morgan’s ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Morgan –– a vegetarian since she was eight –– orders a very rare steak.

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain

See the difference, read Maya Angelou in Large Print About Large Print All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface This wise book is the wonderful continuation of the bestselling Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. Even the Stars Look Lonesome is Maya Angelou talking of the things she cares about most. In her unique, spellbinding way, she re-creates intimate personal experiences and gives us her wisdom on a wide variety of subjects. She tells us how a house can both hurt its occupants and heal them. She talks about Africa. She gives us a profile of Oprah. She enlightens us about age and sexuality. She confesses to the problems fame brings and shares with us the indelible lessons she has learned about rage and violence. And she sings the praises of sensuality. Even the Stars Look Lonesome imparts the lessons of a lifetime.

Based on a True StoryIn Brian's Last Ride the author brings the reader to the scene of an unintentional hit-and-run; then walks them through the aftermath.Winnipeg Free Press, Monday, September 24, 1984, Page 4 – A collision between two dirt bikes Friday night has resulted in the death of a 14year old youth from Landmark. RCMP said Brian Mark Kauenhofen was killed when he rear-ended a second bike driven by another youth and a female passenger. The other two riders escaped with minor injuries. In Brian's Last Ride the author brings the reader to the scene of an unintentional hit-and-run; then walks them through the aftermath.

Madeleine L'Engle's first adult novel in four years -- now in paperback! With 23,000 copies sold since May 1996, this "haunting domestic drama" (Publishers Weekly) examines the powers of faith and mercy in one family's confrontation with a legacy of evil.Best known for A Wrinkle in Time -- the children's classic that has sold more than 2 million copies since 1962 -- Madeleine L'Engle is as adept at exploring faith and human experience as she is at spinning fascinating, fantastic tales. Now this masterful storyteller blends her two passions and offers an engrossing new story to delight her devoted audience. When Dr. Camilla Dickinson's teenage granddaughter confronts her with the disquieting question of whether Camilla is, in fact, her grandmother, long-kept secrets rise to the surface to test the faith, love and loyalty of the Xanthakos family. This skillful, gripping tale shuttles between past and troubled present, providing clues to a multigenerational mystery -- clues that begin to focus on Camilla's son, the deeply troubled TV idol Artaxias, and on Camilla's mother, the irresistibly beautiful and adulterous Rose. Though riveting and psychologically complex, A Live Coal in the Sea is "infused with the warmth of love and mercy" (Booklist), showcasing the keen eye and deep compassion that have made L'Engle one of this century's premier writers on faith and its place in human experience.

Sasha s prince is wicked, Sun s is missing they take up the sword, L.A. style! Sasharia En Garde Book 2 In the magical world of Khanerenth, there s a long way to go before Sasha and her dream prince, Jehan, can get to perfect. Jehan s deception has left her unable to trust him, and grimly determined to search for her missing father. Jehan only wants to protect Sasha from the dangerous undercover mission he s undertaken to heal the broken kingdom, but he knows she can t afford to listen to him not when he s the one living a lie. Enemies, allies and temptation make the ballroom floor as dangerous as pirate raids. In a world where love is danger and honor is difficult to define, the crown is not the only thing on the line for a wicked prince and a princess with a core of steel. There s a royal price for love."

Anthony Swofford's Jarhead is the first Gulf War memoir by a frontline infantry marine, and it is a searing, unforgettable narrative. When the marines -- or "jarheads," as they call themselves -- were sent in 1990 to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It was one misery upon another. He lived in sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrayed him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, he pulled a gun on one of his fellow marines, and he was shot at by both Iraqis and Americans. At the end of the war, Swofford hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later was nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker. Swofford weaves this experience of war with vivid accounts of boot camp (which included physical abuse by his drill instructor), reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. As engagement with the Iraqis draws closer, he is forced to consider what it is to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. Unlike the real-time print and television coverage of the Gulf War, which was highly scripted by the Pentagon, Swofford's account subverts the conventional wisdom that U.S. military interventions are now merely surgical insertions of superior forces that result in few American casualties. Jarhead insists we remember the Americans who are in fact wounded or killed, the fields of smoking enemy corpses left behind, and the continuing difficulty that American soldiers have reentering civilian life. A harrowing yet inspiring portrait of a tormented consciousness struggling for inner peace, Jarhead will elbow for room on that short shelf of American war classics that includes Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and be admired not only for the raw beauty of its prose but also for the depth of its pained heart.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next. The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."