The Last Fidget


Book Description

Ash, a solitary imp from a secretive, hidden world needs help and Tilly, a young girl with mysterious connections, might just be able to help him. Tilly has spent most of her life shadowing her grandfather's explorations in the natural world. As a twelve year old with a passion for science and nature, she loves to search the great outdoors in the hope of finding the next big botanical discovery. While a bewildered Ash, left vulnerable and alone after a traumatic event, Tilly stays at her grandfather's house for the last time as her family sort out his belongings, after he sadly passes away. She spends many hours exploring the cottage garden, but then, is drawn into the mysterious Whispering Woods which lie at the back of the cottage. A challenging journey awaits the young explorer as she ventures in alone and quickly finds herself lost. But then she hears strange whispers calling her. With curiosity and perhaps a touch of magic, Tilly is drawn into a different magical world where she is desperately needed to help the saddened imp left all alone, cruelly separated from the rest of his family. It is not long before Tilly discovers a mystical past to her grandfather's life and she is persuaded to help the lonely imp in his quest to re-join his mysterious clan. The unlikely pair must create the Newid charm, but to do that they must first find the scroll and gather what is needed for the charm to work. With magical fairies, endangered species and frightening beasts along the way, the pair face many challenges, yet cling onto hope and each other. Craving success for her new friend, Tilly goes on a journey of magical discovery which seems almost impossible to achieve. With an uncertain path and unforeseen events the quest appears fraught with dangers and with little time to achieve. Will the new friendship between Ash and Tilly survive the challenge ahead? And will Ash be reunited with his family before time runs out?




Everyone Needs a Hero


Book Description

The book 'Everyone Needs a Hero' comprises six adventure stories for children. Each story has different characters and a new hero emerges in each one. But the heroes are all brave, resourceful and clever animals. In the first story, we meet Maisie and her friend TimTom and their adventures take them to the National Gallery in London to rescue the head curator who has been kidnapped to force him to steal a painting. Other adventures arise on the way, but the two cats show resourcefulness and bravery on every turn of the page. In the second story, we are introduced to Rosy the Duck who lives a sad life, bullied by other ducks on the lake who make her life a misery. Read how one day Rosy helps a fellow creature and that good turn leads to a complete change in her life. Story three tells us about two green parakeets who take on some vicious thieves and save the life of a policeman, but at no small cost to themselves. Moving on to story four, we meet Reg the tortoise and Pickles the guinea pig. Reg is a bit arrogant and cares for no one but himself and his main thoughts are centred around his next meal, until one day he is dragged into an adventure by Pickles to try and save their family's house from being burgled. In story five, we meet Charlie of no fixed address. He has a solitary life until one day, he rescues some kittens who had been left to die in a bin. In this story, Charlie has to rescue the kittens yet again before his own life changes completely. The last story takes us to a farm to meet twins Peter and Paul Pig and their little brother Frank. They live a wonderful life on the farm until one day, they realise they were about to go to market, so they plan their escape with near disastrous consequences. The stories are packed full of delightful animal adventures with our heroes demonstrating some vital life values such as friendship, teamwork, ingenuity, resourcefulness, bravery and love. The book has 30 delightful colour illustrations to enhance the reader's experience.




The Well of Loneliness


Book Description

This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Well of Loneliness' is a novel that follows an upper-class Englishwoman who falls in love with another woman while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the best-seller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). This is her only work with overt lesbian themes and tells the story of the life of a masculine lesbian named Stephen Gordon.




The Cult of Smart


Book Description

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.




Jane Eyre (Painted Edition)


Book Description

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is now available in an affordable softcover edition, featuring striking hand-painted cover art from Laci Fowler and distinctive interior design elements, making it ideal for classic fiction lovers, readers in high-school or college literature courses, and fans of annual reading challenges and "Required Reading" lists. Considered one of the greatest romance novels of all time, Jane Eyre is now available as an affordable softcover edition. Whether you're buying it as a gift or for yourself, this softcover edition includes: A beautiful cover featuring Laci Fowler's distinctive hand-painted art. Decorative interior pages with pull quotes throughout. Part of a 4-volume collection including Frankenstein, The Great Gatsby, and Little Women. Charlotte Brontë's first published novel centers on the title character as she struggles to escape the hardships of her childhood, eventually finding work as a governess at the sprawling Thornfield Hall. Her new life there is derailed when she falls in love with her mysterious employer, Mr. Rochester. Ahead of its time with its themes of feminism and religion, Jane Eyre is a must-have for any well-appointed library.




The Four Loves


Book Description

The revered author's classic work that examines the four types of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God.? In this work Lewis examines four varieties of love, as approached from the Greek language: storge, the most basic form; philia, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; eros, passionate love; and agape, the love of God, the greatest and least selfish. ?Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God.? "There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable . . . draw nearer to God, not be trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."? In Four Loves, C. S. Lewis explores love to help you · Strengthen your interpersonal relationships · Understand the different between needed pleasures and appreciation pleasures and need-love and gift-love · Care for the people in your life, avoid pitfalls, and improve your relationship God The Four Loves holds a mirror to our current society and leaves no doubt that our modern understanding of love is heavily misunderstood.




Rats Saw God


Book Description

Steve details his descent from bright star to burnout in this newly repackaged edition of the definitive, highly acclaimed novel from the creator of Veronica Mars and Party Down. Houston, sophomore year: Steve is on top of the world. He and his friends are the talk of the school. He’s in love with a terrific girl. He can even deal with “the astronaut”—a world-famous hero who happens to be his father. San Diego, senior year: Steve is bummed out, drugged out, flunking out. A no-nonsense counselor says he can graduate if he writes a 100-page paper. So Steve starts writing, and as the paper becomes more and more personal, he reveals how a National Merit Scholar has become an under-achieving stoner. And in telling how he got to where he is, Steve discovers how to get to where he wants to be.




Modern Girls


Book Description

A dazzling debut novel set in New York City’s Jewish immigrant community in 1935... How was it that out of all the girls in the office, I was the one to find myself in this situation? This didn’t happen to nice Jewish girls. In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options. After the birth of five children—and twenty years as a housewife—Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, is itching to return to the social activism she embraced as a young woman. With strikes and breadlines at home and National Socialism rising in Europe, there is much more important work to do than cooking and cleaning. So when she realizes that she, too, is pregnant, she struggles to reconcile her longings with her faith. As mother and daughter wrestle with unthinkable choices, they are forced to confront their beliefs, the changing world, and the fact that their lives will never again be the same….




Out Of Control


Book Description

Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.




The Secret of the League


Book Description

A secret organization of upper class dissenters, called The League, is not happy with their weak government and wants to overthrow it. In a clever plan they bring about a civil war in Britain by manipulating the coal strike with foreign help and plant a fascist regime in its place. What comes about is a total breakdown giving an accurate prediction of the rise of Fascism, as George Orwell famously noted. Superficially the novel (also alternately known as What Might Have Been) seems like it is promoting the cause of The League but it is in fact a bleary take on what might end up happening if such a thing comes to pass when the government is overtaken by the conservatives. Who becomes a hero and who becomes a villain is only a matter of seizing absolute power! In fact Orwell credited this novel as his inspiration behind his own successful dystopian classic 1984. Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) was an English author and a recluse who wrote the famous Kai Lung and Max Carrados series. Interestingly Bramah's humorous works were ranked with Jerome K Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood.