The Mystery of the Squashed Self


Book Description

How to stop self-sabotaging and make your business thrive.




The Squashed Philosophers


Book Description

Life, unfortunately, is rather short, the little storeroom of the brain doesn't have extensible walls and the greatest of thinkers seem to be among the dullest, and the lengthiest, of writers. Which is a pity, because your Prince, whether they call themselves President or King or Prime Minister, has almost certainly read Machiavelli. Your therapist is steeped in Freud, your divines in Augustine. Lawmakers take their cues still from Paine, Rousseau and Hobbes. Science looks yet to Bacon, Copernicus and Darwin. So, here are the few most used, most quoted, the most given, sources of the West. The books that have defined the way the West thinks now, in their author's own words, but condensed and abridged into something readable. And there's more. By compressing these books to a tenth or so of their original size it becomes possible to read the whole thing as a single narrative, as the story of Western Thought, the story of how we got where we are now. The last chapter is waiting to be written.




The Peski Kids 1: The Mystery of the Squashed Cockroach


Book Description

Life is hard enough without having to spend time with your siblings. But there is no other way for Joe, Fin and April Peski to solve the mystery of the cockroach catastrophes that is rocking their new home town of Currawong. Along with Loretta, their stunningly beautiful yet sociopathic next-door neighbour, and Pumpkin, the world’s worst trained dog, they set out to catch the culprit. Together they are The Peski Kids.




Squashed


Book Description

Humor, agriculture and young love all come together in Joan Bauer's first novel, set in rural Iowa. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Morgan's life would be almost perfect if she could just get her potentially prize-winning pumpkin to put on about 200 more pounds--and if she could take off 20 herself...in hopes of attracting Wes, the new boy in town. Ninth Annual Delacorte Press Prize for an Outstanding First Young Adult Novel.




A Bend in the River


Book Description

Widely hailed as Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul’s greatest work, A Bend in the River takes us deeply into the life of a young Indian man who moves to an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Salim is doubly an outsider in his new home—an unnamed country that resembles the Congo—by virtue of his origins in a community of Indian merchants on the coast of East Africa. Uncertain of his future, he has come to take possession of a local trading post he has naively purchased sight unseen. But what Salim discovers on his arrival is a ghost town, reduced to ruins in the wake of the recently departed European colonizers and in the process of being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. Salim struggles to build his business against a backdrop of growing chaos, conflict, ignorance, and poverty. His is a journey into the heart of Africa, into the same territory explored by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness nearly eighty years earlier—but witnessed this time from the other side of the tragedy of colonization. Salim discovers that the nation’s violent legacy persists, through the rise of a dictator who calls himself the people’s savior but whose regime is built on fear and lies. In this haunting masterpiece of postcolonial literature, short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979, Naipaul gives us a convincing and disturbing vision of a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past.




The Mystery of the Stolen Brides


Book Description

It is the summer of 1891 and a young, beautiful bride is snatched from her wedding, leaving her guests shocked and her new husband distraught. A search is hurriedly mounted, but as each minute passes the trail grows colder. In angry desperation they turn to Scotland Yard. In Victorian London, Detective Inspector Solomon Dearborn has been crumbling under the failures of the Jack the Ripper investigation. Reluctantly he and his young assistant, Detective Sergeant Sparrowhawk, turn their attention to the missing Somerset bride. The crux of this mystery, though, is that it has all happened before . . . From Fleet Street to the moors, Dearborn and Sparrowhawk endeavour to find the truth behind this dark and difficult crime.




Jammy Jupiter and the Mystery of the Soggy Socks


Book Description

Brothers, Desmond and Griffin, and their dogs, Koda and Sassy, find solving a mystery around the house can be very exciting. Come and join them in the first of The Jammy Jupiter Mysteries.




The Scam


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Nicolas Fox is a charming con man and master thief on the run. Kate O’Hare is the FBI agent who is hot on his trail. At least that’s what everyone thinks. In reality, Fox and O’Hare are secretly working together to bring down super-criminals the law can’t touch. Criminals like brutal casino magnate Evan Trace. Evan Trace is running a money-laundering operation through his casino in Macau. Some of his best customers are mobsters, dictators, and global terrorists. Nick and Kate will have to go deep undercover as high-stakes gamblers, wagering millions of dollars—and their lives—in an attempt to topple Trace’s empire. It’s a scam that will take Fox and O’Hare from the Las Vegas strip, to the sun-soaked beaches of Oahu’s North Shore, and into the dark back alleys of Macau. Their only backup—a self-absorbed actor, a Somali pirate, and Kate’s father, an ex-soldier who believes a rocket launcher is the best way to solve every problem. What could possibly go wrong?




Killer Physique


Book Description

In this cozy mystery sequel to Killer Honeymoon, a plus-size PI investigates when someone tanks the star of Hollywood’s latest superhero action film. PI Savannah Reid gets a taste of the high life when she attends a Hollywood premiere on the arm of husband Dirk Coulter. Savannah may be a newlywed but even she gets weak in the knees when she meets celebrity athlete-turned-movie-star Jason Tyrone. So imagine how she feels when the star’s rock-hard body is found rock-hard dead . . . Some guys have everything. With his stunning looks and dazzling charm, Jason Tyrone is America’s favorite new action hero. Make that was. Once so spectacular in action, the blockbuster idol is found dead in his hotel room after his latest premiere. Despite his chiseled physique, Jason is never getting up again . . . Though the autopsy reveals Jason may have gotten his killer body through doping, no one wants to believe the beloved athlete is a fraud, least of all Savannah. Soon she’s deeply immersed in the dark world of body enhancing drugs, and wondering if the world-class gym where Jason worked out is really just a front for a lucrative drug ring. Was Jason’s death the price he paid for threatening to expose other celebrities caught in the clutch of keeping a flawless image? Or was everyone’s favorite hero a victim of his own desire to always be at the top of his game? No stranger to society’s obsession with image, Savannah is determined to get to the truth. And for the voluptuous investigator, this time it’s personal. . . . Praise for Killer Physique “The mystery is intriguing, with its theme of body-image issues, but the real strength of this one is the perceptive portrayal of the newlyweds and the funny yet realistic visit from the in-laws.” —Booklist