Tommy Black and the Staff of Light


Book Description

With the world on the brink of World War Two, a young hero discovers his magical legacy New York. 1938. Living in the quiet apartment of his overprotective grandfather, fourteen-year-old Tommy Black knows little about a world on the brink of war. But when he and his grandfather are attacked by ominous shadow creatures on a Saturday afternoon walk, Tommy learns not just about the trouble in Europe, but that magic exists, his grandfather is a great Archmage, and he is heir to his grandfather's magical staff--a staff he has no idea how to control. With his grandfather captured, Tommy barely escapes with his family's magic staff. Desperately trying to figure out to use the staff, Tommy learns what he can as he and family friend Mister Ali fight golems, shadow creatures, magicians, and Djinn on their way to the world's center of magic--the great Citadel of London. But it's when escaping on an enchanted train that Tommy faces his biggest challenge: The beautiful and wild young magician Naomi, whose talent with magic is only rivaled by her ability to insult Tommy in creative ways. With the world seemingly arrayed against him, can Tommy discover the secret of the Staff of Light in time to save his grandfather? For fans of young heroes struggling to discover their role in a familiar yet mysterious new world, Tommy Black evokes Harry Potter and Percy Jackson only with the twentieth century backdrop of a world hurtling toward World War Two.




Thursday


Book Description

NO ONE CAN BE TRUSTED, AND NOTHING IS REAL Ender's Game meets The Matrix in this mind-bending debut science fiction novel from Nebula-Award nominee Jake Kerr. In a near future of decaying cities and gray skies everyone has escaped to the wondrous life of virtual reality. Including the criminals. And the most dangerous criminal in the world is Sunday, the leader of the terrorist group the Order of Days, whose sole mission is to destroy the false life of virtual reality and return people to the land of reality. Stumbling upon Saturday, a key member of the Order of Days, while on a simple mission, young FBI agent Gabby Kane brashly tries to single-handedly capture her, only to botch the mission. Gabby not only allows Saturday to escape, but she seriously injures her own neural connection to virtual reality in the process. With her career in jeopardy, Gabby agrees to a nearly impossible mission: Infiltrate the Order of Days as Thursday and kill the mysterious Sunday. Deep undercover and getting closer to uncovering the Order of Days, Gabby finds herself in increasing danger and without allies. But do enemies and allies even eixst when no one can be trusted and nothing is real? Thursday is the long awaited debut science fiction novel by multiple-award nominated author Jake Kerr. Starting with an undercover mission in virtual reality gone wrong and never taking its foot off the gas, Thursday is the kind of book where chapters don't exist because you can't stop yourself moving from the end of one to the beginning of the next.




Tommy Black and the Coat of Invincibility


Book Description

In this widely anticipated second volume of the Tommy Black series, Tommy finds himself searching for magical artifacts and fighting Nazi magicians in World War 2 Europe. Dedicated to reshaping his family's legacy, Tommy Black has spent two years mastering the powerful Staff of Light and freeing the magical creatures in England. While he was focusing on his personal mission, however, Germany had invaded Europe, igniting the flames of world war. Desiring to help, Tommy volunteers to free the magical creatures in Germany to disrupt the Nazi war machine. Joined by his friend, the powerful magician Naomi, and two others, the group soon discover an extraordinary secret that changes everything--Tommy may not be the only Archmage in the world.




Black Light


Book Description

Stemming from a request for a simple favor, Mathias is thrust into his cousin Tommy’s world of drugs, raves, deceit and murder. When a deal goes bad, the two are left with a duffel bag full of money and three dead bodies, forcing them to flee Los Angeles as they are relentlessly pursued through small towns of the southwest. The cousins careen through an ocean array of alcohol, drugs, and unsuspected self-discovery in a desperate attempt for vindication… and survival. "Christopher Szatkowski's millennial road novel, Blacklight, takes us into a brave new world of collegiate drifters, still variously trying, in Van Morrison's words, 'to get down to what is really real'. It's a surprising and engaging debut." —Aram Saroyan "Mix up equal parts of Hunter S. Thompson and Elmore Leonard's style in a phantasmagoric prose cocktail shaker, toss in a USC student on a careening, drug and booze-soaked road trip across California to Arizona and back, top it off with a few bizarre Christmas tableaux, and you've got Christopher Szatkowski's ambitious new book, Blacklight." —Allen Woodman




Tommy and the Order of Cosmic Champions


Book Description

Sometimes our greatest moments of enlightenment come from our worst mistakes. ​When life supplies eleven-year-old Tommy Grant with some unfavorable circumstances intruding on his otherwise tranquil life in Ohio, he retreats into the spell-binding Order of Cosmic Champions. When he discovers that the largely successful animated program and toy line is holding a nationwide "Create-A-Character" contest where applicants submit their action figure designs, Tommy knows he has to enter as surely as he knows his own name. But when Tommy's character design fails to win the contest, he finds his world crumbling from all sides. And there is only one way he knows to fix it. What follows is a whirlwind coming-of-age adventure of righting wrongs, overcoming perilous obstacles, confronting our inner demons, and challenging the limits of reality. In this waxing nostalgic and imaginative fantasy, readers will discover what excitement lies waiting when you take risks and conquer your fears. Only one question remains: In the final hour when you heed the call, the courage to give your all, will you stand or fall?




Green Light for Murder


Book Description

A mad director, off his meds, is making a movie about how he murders the producers who ruined his career. The movie is in his mind. The murders are real. Tommy Veasy, a pot-smoking homicide detective--our hero--who writes poetry to help him solve cases and ward off despair, thinks he sees a pattern in these seemingly accidental deaths. His colleagues think he's being dramatic. But the bodies keep piling up. The staff of a syndicated TV show in its tenth year, formerly an international hit but now only being aired in Montenegro and Botswana, worries about how they will maintain their Hollywood lifestyles when they become unemployable. How will the producer finance his two-hooker-a-weekend habit? How will the staff writer pay private school tuition, an underwater mortgage, tennis club dues, the housekeeper, the gardener, cable TV bills, the couples' therapist, et al.? Not a big problem: the mad director has planted a bomb in the office phone and is frantically trying to set it off. And meanwhile, a home invader keeps invading the wrong homes, to everyone's perplexity. In other words: it's just another day in paradise.




Tommy at War


Book Description

2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, arguably the definitive conflict in the history of Europe. Never before or since has such a great swell of popular sentiment produced such a patriotic rush to arms. In the trenches and on the battlefield, British soldiers united with their allies to fight valiantly for the cause. At very great cost, they delivered Western Europe from a new Dark Age. Providing a vital insight into this pivotal period, historians John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville disclose the poignant and emotive experiences of war, in the front line and behind, from men and women of every class and background. Combining rich anecdote and unique testimony, the stories of those that passed through the ordeal of war reveal remarkable tales of horror and suffering, but also the comradeship, exhilaration and adventure of the Western Front. This is the human story of the Great War, told by those who lived through it.







From Dunfermline to London: Memoirs of a Staff Nurse 1950-1962


Book Description

From Dunfermline to London recounts the detailed memoirs of a nurse training in the 1950s with the NHS in its infancy. The book combines fascinating and often humorous insights into nursing with personal and touching accounts of patients from all walks of life. Jeanie Traynor Maltby acquired a reputation as a storyteller amongst her nursing friends and regaled her six grandchildren with colourful stories of her training and life as a nurse in Scotland and then London. With excellent detail, a sharp wit and a profound commitment to nursing, these stories contain both humour and poignancy. This informative book also provides a personal perspective on the beginnings of the NHS. From a fever ward in Dunfermline to a general hospital in Edinburgh, and from midwifery in Lewisham to residences of the rich and famous in London, these stories will captivate readers. Inspired by Bill Bryson and Jennifer Worth, From Dunfermline to London will appeal to readers interested in nursing.







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