Once Upon a Time (Bomb) is a charming memoir of a young boy growing up in El Salvador. It tells the story of Alfonso Duque the Thirteenth, a youngster from a poverty-stricken family and a budding poet. Surrounded by hovering women-his mother, aunts, grandmothers, and sisters-little Alfonso still manages to enjoy boyish pranks and endure scraped elbows, knees, and ego while also discovering the pleasures of reading. The womenfolk laughingly describe him on his 'throne' atop the trees or back in the outhouse, where he often escapes to read. This work of innocence is set against a darker backdrop of the growing violence in the Salvadoran countryside and the news coming from the fronts of the Second World War. Argueta incorporates many of the best-loved local folktales into the narrative, the Siguanaba, Chinchintora the Snake, Theodora the Coyote, some of them personalized or hilariously adapted by the women to fit their own circumstances. In the book, the author works through memory, re-encounters a nostalgic past, re-creates paradise, and re-acquaints himself with his poetic roots after years of exile from poetry, his homeland, and the luxury of dreaming.

Argues that each individual's life is a never-ending story, and uses the elements of a story to show readers how to understand their lives better, showcasing the "big picture" God writes in each person's story.

Once Upon A Time-bomb is a book about global warming. It is a warning - that the time clock is ticking. It is a book for all ages, in children's book format.

After a young stranger walks up to Elizabeth Kenney on campus, and announces that he's her brother, she drops out of school to begin a startling and surprising search of a family she's never taken the time to know. She learns of a wanderlust grandfather, bomber pilot and hero of WWII and Korea, then of her own surgeon father and his idyllic and unbreakable bond with his father. This nostalgic and sometimes spiritual story takes the reader through America's Depression, the wars, and postwar California and Mid-America, where safe tranquility unsuspectingly teeters on the threshold of today's helter-skelter world. Elizabeth becomes torn between the wishes of her affluent, matriarchal grandmother and her own creative needs. So, caught up in the editing of her father's stored journals, Elizabeth creates a modern fairytale that tenderly invites every reader with love, laughter and tears.

"ONCE UPON A TIME" IS TIMELESS Young, beautiful, and wealthy, Emma Pennington is accustomed to a very comfortable life. Although war rages abroad, she hardly feels its effect. She and her mother travel from their home in Britain to the family estate in Belgium, never imagining that the war could reach them there. But it does. Soon Emma finds herself stranded in a war-torn country, utterly alone. Enemy troops fight to take over her estate, leaving her with no way to reach her family, and no way out. With all of her attention focused on survival and escape, Emma hardly expects to find love. But the war will teach her that life is unpredictable, people aren't always what they seem, and magic is lurking everywhere.

Not quite four months after the Western Region's election of October 10, 1965, did the localized mayhem in that Region find its way furiously into the center of the nation on January 15, 1966! It was like a whirl-wind of nothing but anarchy and lawlessness. The serious aftermath of the marred and rigged election was that it acted as the last straw that broke the Carmel's back, providing immediate reason for the army to overthrow the government of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Anarchy ensued; a counter coup led to the death of Major-General Ironsi. Callous barbarous massacre of thousands of easterners in the North followed. With their lives in jeopardy, easterners fled for safety to eastern region; refugee crisis followed. To guarantee their safety, easterners seceded from Nigeria and on May 30th 1967, formed an independent and sovereign nation of the Republic of Biafra. Determined to bring Easterners back, on July 6, 1967 Nigeria invaded Biafra; waged a gruesome thirty-month-civil war against Biafra. Nigeria blockaded Biafra on land, sea and air, to prevent food from entering Biafra. A malnutrition disease, Kwashiorkor that caused the deaths of thousands of Biafrans, followed. Nigeria bombed Biafran civilians, killing thousands. On January 12, 1970 the war ended leaving more than three million people dead in a war that was totally avoidable!

Sharp, sarcastic, and efficiently lethal, John Charming would feel right at home having drinks with Dean Winchester and Harry Dresden. DARING, the second book in the Pax Arcana series, is just as addicting as the first. Something is rotten in the state of Wisconsin. Werewolf packs are being united and absorbed into an army of super soldiers by a mysterious figure who speaks like an angel and fights like a demon. And every Knight Templar -- keepers of the magical peace between mankind and magickind -- who tries to get close to this big bad wolf winds up dead. No knight can infiltrate a group whose members can smell a human from a mile away. . .no knight except one. John Charming. Ex knight. Current werewolf. Hunted by the men who trained him, he now might be their only salvation. But animal instincts are rising up to claim John more powerfully than ever before, and he must decide if this new leader of wolves is a madman. . .or a messiah.

Joseph Daniels narrates his family’s origins, beginning with their arrival from England among the 1820 Settlers that landed in Cape Town, South Africa. Starting with nothing except a plot of land and the promise of prosperity in the Dark Continent, his ancestors John Henry and Kathleen Daniels, build a legacy that will intertwine their European heritage and that of the Black, indigenous people of Africa. Generations later, their mixed-race descendant Joseph Daniels, born in the turbulent years leading up to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, strives to adapt to an environment rife with racial contradictions, political tension, and violence. Joseph shares the tender, harrowing, and humorous moments of his family’s lives, set against a backdrop of Zimbabwe and South Africa’s rich culture and history. Starting with the clash of African kings in Southern Africa, Joseph’s multigenerational tale moves through European colonization, the Rhodesian Civil War, Zimbabwe’s independence, and Robert Mugabe’s long presidency. By the time Joseph comes of age in the 1990s, he must navigate the complexity of his mixed-race Coloured identity while seeking to establish his generational inheritance and legacy. An episodic novel that sweeps across the centuries, Once Upon a Time in Zimbabwe is replete with historical detail and unforgettable characters. At turns adventurous, romantic, thrilling, and heartbreaking, the story of Joseph Daniels and his family is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction discusses why literature matters, how narrative works, and what is distinctly English about English literature. Jonathan Bate considers how we determine the content of the field, and looks at the three major kinds of imaginative literature - English poetry, English drama and The English novel.

A gripping and shocking insight into the lives of Russiaâe(tm)s most famous oligarchs from New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House. Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: âeoeGodfather of the Kremlinâe Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminium. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the âeoeWild Eastâe of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger manâe(tm)s krysha- literally, his roof, his protector. Written with the heart-stopping pace of a thriller -but even more compelling because it is true - this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovskyâe(tm)s krysha, Abramovich built one of Russiaâe(tm)s largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries - including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media - and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovskyâe(tm)s footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide. Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called âe~the story of our ageâe(tm).