A vivid, compelling and intensely moving novel from an exciting new voice in young adult fiction. Coo is trying to cope with the hand that life has dealt her. At sixteen, she feels she’s too young to have lost her older brother, Sam, to alcoholism. She’s skipping school to avoid the sympathy and questions of her friends and teachers, and shunning her parents, angry that they failed to protect her, and desperate to avoid having to face the fact that, towards the end, she began to wish Sam would leave forever – even die. Then, one day, truanting by the Brighton seafront, Coo meets Banks, a homeless alcoholic and she’s surprised to discover that it is possible for her life to get more complicated. Despite warnings from her friends and family, Coo and Banks develop an unlikely friendship. Brought together through a series of unexpected events, strange midnight feasts, a near drowning and the unravelling of secrets, together they seek their chance for redemption. That is, until Coo’s feelings start getting dangerously out of hand.

A classic tale of nautical adventure from the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, now published in eBook for the very first time to commemorate the Patrick O’Brian centenary. The lighthouse was one of the most lonely in the world, guarding a dangerous reef in the cold northern seas. It therefore seemed a good idea to Sullivan and Ross that they both be its keepers; after all, two's company. But long months of isolation and boredom can test even the stoutest of friendships. So when a great storm deposits the carcass of a huge whale on the rocks, attracting to it flocks of hungry seabirds and packs of deadly sharks, and later the arrival of two unexpected guests, it provides the two friends with a welcome distraction from their tedium. Yet as the months drag on, they find that there is only so long that man can live in peace with his fellow. First published under a pseudonym, this classic tale of nautical adventure will thrill every fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of Napoleonic sagas. Together with 'Noughts and Crosses' and 'No Pirates Nowadays', it is also a captivating companion to his novel, THE ROAD TO SAMARCAND, which also features Sullivan and Ross.

A classic tale of nautical adventure from the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, now published in eBook for the very first time to commemorate the Patrick O’Brian centenary. When Sullivan and Ross decide to go shark fishing among the atolls of the Great Barrier Reef little do they know what awaits them. With their schooner beached for cleaning they take a small whaler out to sea, but when the very devil of a storm turns the whole of the sea white, it drives them to the nearest atoll for shelter. It is only when they set out once again that they discover the seas are now filled with sharks, driven to a bloodlust by the smell of their butchered fellows that clings to the whaler. Becalmed and surrounded by the world's most fearsome predators, Sullivan and Ross discover that the hunters and become the hunted. First published under a pseudonym, this classic tale of nautical adventure will thrill every fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of Napoleonic sagas. Together with 'Two's Company' and 'No Pirates Nowadays', it is also a captivating companion to his novel, THE ROAD TO SAMARCAND, which also features Sullivan and Ross.

Taking us back to the realm of Caedmon and Rowena, AJ Nuest has created a breathtaking follow up to The Golden Key Chronicles. Waiting for the next Outlander? Don’t miss this enthralling fantasy romance! ‘Incredibly tantalizing’ – Love Reading Romance Rhys had one job to do. One measly errand that shouldn’t have been a problem, given the nature of his powers. But when an old enemy reappears, detailing the result of his actions, Rhys is forced to make a choice between a future with Faedrah or dying before his time. Frustrated and out of options, he agrees to her suggestion they to leap forward in time to the future…even though a good chance exists his powers will be nothing but a memory in his world. Flying blind on a wing and a prayer, they prepare to fight for everything they love against a wizard of insurmountable power. Faedrah does her best to gather their closest allies. The sides are squared in a war to control the future of both worlds. With the stakes so high, only one advantage has been cast in their favor. The sigil of utmost protection inherent in Rhys’ signature. If not enough to thwart the evil awaiting at the Austiere gates, she could find herself imprisoned in the future, while her kingdom and all those she has sworn to protect are lost to the mists of time.

In this compelling collection of short stories, bestselling author Michael Chabon explores adolescent desire, love, friendship and fatherhood, moving subtly and incisively across this powerful emotional ground. Wry and whimsical, but also with intellectual depth, A MODEL WORLD is a collection of eleven wonderful stories about growing up and growing wise. In ‘S Angel’ a group of wedding guests is hijacked by a fast-talking real estate agent, but not before the bride herself disappears. ‘Smoke’ takes us to a baseball catcher’s funeral, where one of the mourners – a has-been pitcher – confronts the ruins of his career. In the hilarious title story, a graduate student plagiarizes a dissertation on the movement of clouds, only to find himself and his faculty advisor in a parlour game where each player must confess the worst thing he or she has ever done. The second part of the book, ‘The Lost World’, is a series of stories about a young boy, Nathan Shapiro, who must face the wrenching emotions caused by his parents’ bitter divorce. Serious, yet shot through with wit, humour and compassion, these are unforgettable stories from one of America’s most celebrated writers.

Blaster Squad #1 Terror on the Moon

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is a novel by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The themes and settings of Through the Looking-Glass make it a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May (4 May), uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on 4 November (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on. Short Summary: Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty")—the offspring of Dinah, Alice's cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—when she ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up on the fireplace mantel, she pokes at the wall-hung mirror behind the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she is able to step through it to an alternative world. In this reflected version of her own house, she finds a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. She also observes that the chess pieces have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up. Upon leaving the house (where it had been a cold, snowy night), she enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers have the power of human speech; they perceive Alice as being a "flower that can move about." Elsewhere in the garden, Alice meets the Red Queen, who is now human-sized, and who impresses Alice with her ability to run at breathtaking speeds. This is a reference to the chess rule that queens are able to move any number of vacant squares at once, in any direction, which makes them the most "agile" of pieces. The Red Queen reveals to Alice that the entire countryside is laid out in squares, like a gigantic chessboard, and offers to make Alice a queen if she can move all the way to the eighth rank/row in a chess match. This is a reference to the chess rule of Promotion. Alice is placed in the second rank as one of the White Queen's pawns, and begins her journey across the chessboard by boarding a train that literally jumps over the third row and directly into the fourth rank, thus acting on the rule that pawns can advance two spaces on their first move.

The War of the Worlds is a military science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. It first appeared in serialized form in 1897, published simultaneously in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The first appearance in book form was published by William Heinemann of London in 1898. It is the first-person narrative of the adventures of an unnamed protagonist and his brother in Surrey and London as Earth is invaded by Martians. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories that detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon. The War of the Worlds has two parts, Book One: The Coming of the Martians and Book Two: The Earth under the Martians. The narrator, a philosophically-inclined author, struggles to return to his wife while seeing the Martians lay waste to southern England. Book One also imparts the experience of his brother, also unnamed, who describes events in the capital and escapes the Martians by boarding a ship near Tillingham, on the Essex coast. The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British Imperialism, and generally Victorian superstitions, fears and prejudices. At the time of publication it was classified as a scientific romance, like his earlier novel The Time Machine. The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never gone out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert Hutchings Goddard. Plot SummaryYet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.— H. G. Wells (1898), The War of the Worlds The Coming of the MartiansThe narrative opens in an astronomical observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of the planet Mars, creating much interest in the scientific community. Later a "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, near the narrator's home in Woking, Surrey. He is among the first to discover that the object is an artificial cylinder that opens, disgorging Martians who are "big" and "greyish" with "oily brown skin," "the size, perhaps, of a bear," with "two large dark-coloured eyes," and a lipless "V-shaped mouth" surrounded by "Gorgon groups of tentacles." The narrator finds them "at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous." They briefly emerge, have difficulty in coping with the Earth's atmosphere, and rapidly retreat into the cylinder. A human deputation (which includes the astronomer Ogilvy) approaches the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. Military forces arrive that night to surround the common, including Maxim guns. The population of Woking and the surrounding villages are reassured by the presence of the military. A tense day begins, with much anticipation of military action by the narrator.

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in. The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror. Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing something that they often did, and were seeking what they often sought. Half savage as the man showed, with no covering on his matted head, with his brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder, with the loose knot of a looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard and whisker, with such dress as he wore seeming to be made out of the mud that begrimed his boat, still there was a business-like usage in his steady gaze. So with every lithe action of the girl, with every turn of her wrist, perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror; they were things of usage. 'Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the sweep of it.' Trusting to the girl's skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed the coming tide with an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But, it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood. This caught the girl's eye, and she shivered. 'What ails you?' said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent on the advancing waters; 'I see nothing afloat.' The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again. Wheresoever the strong tide met with an impediment, his gaze paused for an instant. At every mooring-chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that split the current into a broad-arrowhead, at the offsets from the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy water, at the floating logs of timber lashed together lying off certain wharves, his shining eyes darted a hungry look. After a darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened in his hold, and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore. Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in her sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.

In 1888 a client, Mary Morstan, comes with two puzzles for Holmes. The first is the disappearance of her father Captain Arthur Morstan in December 1878 and the second is that she has received 6 pearls in the mail from an anonymous benefactor once a year since 1882, since she answered an anonymous newspaper query inquiring for her. With the last pearl she has received a letter remarking that she has been a wronged woman and asks for meeting. Holmes takes the case and soon discovers that Major Sholto — Morstan's only friend who had denied seeing Morstan — had died in 1882 and that within a short span of time Mary began to receive the pearls, implying a connection. The only clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress with the names of Jonathan Small and three Sikhs, who are named Dost Akbar, Abdullah Khan, and Mahomet Singh. Holmes, Watson, and Mary meet Thaddeus Sholto, the son of the late Major Sholto and Capt Morstan's Army friend who has sent her the pearls. Thaddeus remarks that his father had a paranoid fear of one-legged men and confirms that Mary's father had seen the Major the night he died. That night, in a quarrel about an Agra Treasure, Morstan — who was in weak health — suffered a heart attack. Not wanting to bring attention to the object of the quarrel to public notice, Sholto disposed of the body and hid the treasure. However his own health became worse when he received a letter from India. Dying, he called his two sons and confessed to Morstan's death and was about to divulge the location of the treasure when he suddenly cried "Keep him out!". The puzzled sons glimpsed a face in the window but the only trace was a single footstep in the dirt. On their father's body is a note reading "The Sign of Four". Both brothers quarreled over whether a legacy should be left to Mary Morstan and Thaddeus left his brother Bartholomew, taking a chaplet and sending its pearls to Mary. The reason he sent the letter is that Bartholomew has found the treasure and possibly Thaddeus and Mary might confront him for a division of it. Bartholomew is found dead in his home from a poison dart and the treasure is missing. While the police wrongly take Thaddeus in as a suspect Holmes deduces that there are two persons involved in the murder: a one-legged man, Jonathan Small, as well as another "small" accomplice. He traces them to a boat landing where Small has hired a launch named the Aurora. With the help of his Baker Street Irregulars and his own disguise Holmes traces the launch. In a Police launch Holmes and Watson chase the Aurora and capture it but in the process end up killing the "small" companion after he attempts to kill Holmes with a poisoned dart shot from a blow-pipe. Small tries to escape but is captured. However the iron treasure box is empty; Small claims to have dumped the treasure over the side during the chase.

The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey in Victorian England, and identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator.In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to A.D. 802,701, where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival. Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller is shocked to find his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside, which resembles a Sphinx. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Within their dwellings he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers. The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of humanity at its peak. Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time. Because the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest, and they are then overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is presumably lost in the fire, as are the Morlocks. The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing butterflies in a world covered in simple lichenous vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out.

This book is called The White Spark as the white spark or vacuum cell in Nature IS THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD—it is a ubiquitous principle of the universe and is the cause and parent of electricity, combustion, radium, snow-flakes, flowers, trees, leaves, crystallization, wireless telegraphy, animal forms and EVEN LIFE ITSELF. This book is the key to every department of human endeavor, as it enunciates the basic principle and THE PRIME MOVER of the universe.?It tells the road to health, the cause and cure of disease, the truth about the germ humbug and drug treatments, serums and antitoxins. It shows why luminosity is produced on the flesh of various organisms, why a slice of pollock when first iced, then heated to 100 degrees and then thrust into a temperature of 50 degrees becomes luminous. It shows the farmer that he can become a magician of agriculture—tells that the nitrogen of the air is only a dust of quartz rocks, like the invisible moisture of the air is "a dust of water"—that the nodules on the roots of the clover and legumes do not abstract nitrogen from the air, for if they did nature would have placed these bacteriological growths on the vine and not the root, the scientists have the cart before the horse in this case and the nodular cells form the proteids from sand or silica, this book tells how it is done. It tells what a trance is and how the soul can leave the body temporarily. How JESUS CHRIST is carrying out the biblical prophesy by TELEPATHY. Gives the truths about the ideal society, alcohol, drunkenness, causes of crime, longevity and law.

High into air are the great New York buildings lifted by a ray whose source no telescope can find.It seemed only fitting and proper that the greatest of all leaps into space should start from Roosevelt Field, where so many great flights had begun and ended. Fliers whose names had rung—for a space—around the world, had landed here and been received by New York with all the pomp of visiting kings. Fliers had departed here for the lands of kings, to be received by them when their journeys were ended. Of course Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer were disappointed that Franz Kress had beaten them out in the race to be first into the stratosphere above fifty-five thousand feet. There was a chance that Kress would fail, when it would be the turn of Jeter and Eyer. They didn't wish for his failure, of course. They were sports-men as well as scientists; but they were just human enough to anticipate the plaudits of the world which would be showered without stint upon the fliers who succeeded. The warship simply vanished into the night sky. "At least, Tema," said Jeter quietly, "we can look his ship over and see if there is anything about it that will suggest something to us. Of course, whether he succeeds or fails, we shall make the attempt as soon as we are ready.""Indeed, yes," replied Eyer. "For no man will ever fly so high that another may not fly even higher. Once planes are constructed of unlimited flying radius ... well, the universe is large and there should be no end of space fights for a long time."

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS “THE ORIENT MAGIC” The Talking Bird, The Singing Tree, and the Golden WaterThe Story of the Fisherman and the GenieThe History of the Young King of the Black IslesThe Story of Gulnare of the SeaThe Story of Aladdin; Or, the Wonderful LampThe Story of Prince AgibThe Story of the City of BrassThe Story of Ali Baba and the Forty ThievesThe History of Codadad and His BrothersThe Story of Sinbad the Voyager The Talking Bird:It will be sufficient to break off a branch and carry it to plant in your gardenThe Fisherman and the GenieThe smoke ascended to the clouds, and extending itself along the sea and upon the shore formed a great mist The Young King of the Black IslesWhen he came to this part of his narrative the young king could not restrain his tearsGulnare of the SeaAnd she proceeded to burn perfume and repeat spells until the sea foamed and was agitatedAladdinAt the same time the earth, trembling, opened just before the magician, and uncovered a stone, laid horizontally, with a brass ring fixed into the middlePrince AgibAnd when the boat came to me I found in it a man of brass, with a tablet of lead upon his breast, engraven with names and talismans Prince AgibAt the approach of evening I opened the first closet and, entering it, found a mansion like paradiseThe City of BrassAnd when they had ascended that mountain they saw a city than which eyes had not beheld any greaterThe Story of Ali Baba and the Forty ThievesCassim ... was so alarmed at the danger he was in that the more he endeavoured to remember the word Sesame the more his memory was confoundedThe History of Codadad and His BrothersAs it drew near we saw ten or twelve armed pirates appear on the deckSecond Voyage of SinbadThe spot where she left me was encompassed on all sides by mountains that seemed to reach above the clouds, and so steep that there was no possibility of getting out of the valleyThird Voyage of SinbadHaving finished his repast, he returned to his porch, where he lay and fell asleep, snoring louder than thunder.. Little excuse is needed, perhaps, for any fresh selection from the famous "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," provided it be representative enough, and worthy enough, to enlist a new army of youthful readers. Of the two hundred and sixty-four bewildering, unparalleled stories, the true lover can hardly spare one, yet there must always be favourites, even among these. We have chosen some of the most delightful, in our opinion; some, too, that chanced to appeal particularly to the genius of the artist. If, enticed by our choice and the beauty of the pictures, we manage to attract a few thousand more true lovers to the fountain-book, we shall have served our humble turn. The only real danger lies in neglecting it, in rearing a child who does not know it and has never fallen under its spell. You remember Maimoune, in the story of Prince Camaralzaman, and what she said to Danhasch, the genie who had just arrived from the farthest limits of China? "Be sure thou tellest me nothing but what is true or I shall clip thy wings!" This is what the modern child sometimes says to the genies of literature, and his own wings are too often clipped in consequence."The Empire of the Fairies is no more. Reason has banished them from ev'ry shore;Steam has outstripped their dragons and their cars,Gas has eclipsed their glow-worms and their stars."?douard Laboulaye says in his introduction to Nouveaux Contes Bleus: "Mothers who love your children, do not set them too soon to the study of history; let them dream while they are young.

In offering this study to a public accustomed only to the unquestioning acceptance of the home as something perfect, holy, quite above discussion, a word of explanation is needed. First, let it be clearly and definitely stated, the purpose of this book is to maintain and improve the home. Criticism there is, deep and thorough; but not with the intention of robbing us of one essential element of home life—rather of saving us from conditions not only unessential, but gravely detrimental to home life. Every human being should have a home; the single person his or her home; and the family their home. The home should offer to the individual rest, peace, quiet, comfort, health, and that degree of personal expression requisite; and these conditions should be maintained by the best methods of the time. The home should be to the child a place of happiness and true development; to the adult a place of happiness and that beautiful reinforcement of the spirit needed by the world's workers. We are here to perform our best service to society, and to find our best individual growth and expression; a right home is essential to both these uses. The place of childhood's glowing memories, of youth's ideals, of the calm satisfaction of mature life, of peaceful shelter for the aged; this is not attacked, this we shall not lose, but gain more universally. What is here asserted is that our real home life is clogged and injured by a number of conditions which are not necessary, which are directly inimical to the home; and that we shall do well to lay these aside. As to the element of sanctity—that which is really sacred can bear examination, no darkened room is needed for real miracles; mystery and shadow belong to jugglers, not to the truth. The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement. This specially dear and ancient one, however, we have successfully kept shut, and so it has not improved as have some others.

Holmes decodes a warning from Porlock, an informant against arch-criminal Moriarty, for "Douglas" resident five years at "Birlstone". Scotland Yard's MacDonald asks them to investigate a corpse with the same look and circle-in-triangle brand on the forearm as Birlstone owner Douglas. The head was blown off by an American-style sawed-off shotgun. Apparently, an intruder dropped a card with VV341, and left across a shallow moat. Watson observes the bereaved English wife and best male friend in unusually good spirits. When Holmes pretends the moat will be drained, the conspirators retrieve a missing dumb-bell weighting down the visitor's clothes beneath the water. Douglas comes from hiding, to explain he killed the assassin Baldwin in self-defence; the plan was to save him from more attacks by criminal survivors of Vermissa Valley. He hands Dr. Watson the following account. Young McMurdo gains reputation as tough counterfeiter, Freemen Lodge member fleeing murder charges in Chicago. In the Vermissa coal mine area, McGinty rules Scowrers branded by a circle in square, the local Lodge 341 who extort, murder, and exchange vicious deeds with nearby Lodges. Pretty Ettie prefers McMurdo to nasty Baldwin, and wants to flee, but will wait some months. When word comes that Pinkerton sent Edwards, McMurdo gathers ringleaders in one room, and springs his trap on them, surrounded by the law. Although the worst were hanged, after ten years, villains were freed, and chased McMurdo-Edwards-Douglas, despite changes of name, location, and wife. He married Ettie, then she died in California, where he made a fortune. The Valley of Fear, notable for Professor Moriarty's involvement, is set before "The Final Problem", the short story in which Moriarty was introduced. This introduces a logical difficulty, as in "The Final Problem" Dr. Watson has never heard of Moriarty, whereas by the end of The Valley Of Fear he is, or should be, familiar with his name and character. The "Moriarty" element in the story is tied into the fate of the informer in the story. It ties the Molly Maguire background to another event of that period: the murder of James Carey, an informer who was shot on board a ship off the coast of Natal, South Africa in 1883 by Patrick O'Donnell, an Irish republican who had relatives in the Mollies and briefly visited the Pennsylvania coal mining district, supposedly looking for the suspected informer among them.

Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". First published as a book on 23 May 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881 and 1882 under the title Treasure Island or, the mutiny of the Hispaniola with Stevenson adopting the pseudonym Captain George North. Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is a tale known for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature now and then. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels. The influence of Treasure Island on popular perceptions of pirates is enormous, including treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen carrying parrots on their shoulders. Short Summary of the Book:The novel is divided into six parts and 34 chapters: The novel opens in the seaside village of Black Hill Cove in south-west England (to Stevenson, in his letters and in the related fictional play Admiral Guinea, near Barnstaple, Devon) in the mid-18th century. The narrator, James "Jim" Hawkins, is the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old drunken seaman named Billy Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of a notorious late pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crewmates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". Customs men approach and the pirates escape to their vessel (all except for Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' horses).

Creep, Shadow! was written in the year 1934 by Abraham Merritt. This book is one of the most popular novels of Abraham Merritt, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.

Skye a világon mindennél jobban szereti az ikertesóját, Summert. Mindig mindent együtt csinálnak, ám a Skye újabban kezdi azt érezni, teljesen elt?nik testvére árnyékában, mellette mindig csak a második legjobb lehet. Emiatt is érinti annyira fájdalmasan, mikor kiderül, Alfie is csak azért barátkozik vele, hogy meghódíthassa Summer szívét. Skye szeretne ?nmaga lenni, megmutatni saját stílusát és egyéniségét. De nem k?nny? elszánnia magát, hiszen egy t?kéletes, men? és népszer? ikertestvér mellett miért lenne bárki pont rá kíváncsi? ?t lány, ?t néz?pont, ?t k?nyv. Cherry után a Mályvacukor égboltból megismerjük Skye t?rténetét. Egy k?nyvsorozat, melyben minden testvérnek megvan a maga t?rténete Neked melyik lány lesz a kedvenced? Talán a Mályvacukor égbolt f?h?se, Skye? ? az a lány, akinek sz?ke, hullámos a haja, kék a szeme, egy kissé talán kül?nc, de mindig vidám, kedves és barátságos. Igazi egyéniség. A szerz?r?l: Cathy Cassidy nyolc-kilencéves korában írta meg els? képesk?nyvét kis?ccsének, és azóta ontja magából a t?rténeteket. Magyarul els?ként a Csajok és csokik-sorozata jelent meg (a Cseresznyés ábrándot most a második k?tet, a Mályvacukor égbolt k?veti), melynek a vagány Tanberry-n?vérek a f?h?sei. De mellettük felt?nik néhány szupermen? srác is, valamint Cathy egyik legnagyobb szerelme, a csokoládé is fontos szerepet kap. Cathy Skóciában él a családjával. Az ?sszes munka k?zül, amivel valaha megpróbálkozott, az írást szereti a legjobban hiszen amikor ír, mást sem kell csinálnia, mint ébren álmodozni egész álló nap.

Red Eve was written in the year 1911 by Henry Rider Haggard. This book is one of the most popular novels of Henry Rider Haggard, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.

The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung, also sometimes translated as The Transformation) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It has been cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is studied in colleges and universities across the Western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed (metamorphosed) into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. The cause of Samsa's transformation is never revealed, and Kafka never did give an explanation. The rest of Kafka's novella deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his parents and sister, who are repulsed by the horrible, verminous creature Gregor has become. Part I: One day, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find himself transformed into a "ungeheures Ungeziefer", literally "monstrous vermin", often interpreted as a giant bug or insect. He believes it is a dream, and reflects on how dreary life as a traveling salesman is. As he looks at the wall clock, he realizes he has overslept, and missed his train for work. He ponders on the consequences of this delay. Gregor becomes annoyed at how his boss never accepts excuses or explanations from any of his employees no matter how hard working they are, displaying an apparent lack of trusting abilities. Gregor's mother knocks on the door and he answers her. She is concerned for Gregor because he is late for work, which is unorthodox for Gregor. Gregor answers his mother and realizes that his voice has changed, but his answer is short so his mother does not notice the voice change. His sister, Grete, to whom he was very close, then whispers through the door and begs him to open the door. All his family members think that he is ill and ask him to open the door. He tries to get out of bed, but he is incapable of moving his body. While trying to move, he finds that his office manager, the chief clerk, has shown up to check on him. He finally rocks his body to the floor and calls out that he will open the door shortly.