Buckle Up. Things are about to get weird. Sometimes, you just have to do things yourself.... IF you don't get eaten by an invisible monster first. Sixteen-year-old Ruby Park is a handful. With her parents in prison, she’s tossed between her relatives like a hot potato, finally ending up with her weird uncle, Simon Goodnight. Determined to get along with her last relative who can stand her and isn’t locked up, Ruby nonetheless can’t resist snooping into her uncle’s mysterious business and its anonymous clients. Is it a detective agency, or…? Ruby soon learns those clients are bizarre creatures who can’t go out in public to do their own business. She thought she was a misfit, but these people make her look downright normal by comparison. And hey, for the first time ever, she can actually be helpful! She should’ve known this couldn’t last, though. When Simon is arrested for murder, it’s up to her and her crew of oddball friends and minions to clear her uncle’s name, and do it faster than a caffeinated cheetah, or her newfound happy home will go up in smoke. But the deeper she digs, the more complications she uncovers. Can she rescue Simon while keeping his clients’ secrets, and not start a war or become a monster’s snack? With the help of her friends, a bit of snark, a lot of wit, and a crusader’s sense of justice, Ruby’s madcap navigation of these rocky waters will leave you grinning from ear to ear.

Recruited as babies by a mysterious organization known as the Orphanage, sixteen-year-old twin brothers Bennet and Collin mean the world to each other, even though they’re complete opposites. Collin is training to be a field agent while Bennet is an earpiece, in constant communication with his brother, monitoring his activities and providing computer support from a safe distance. When a mission goes horribly wrong, Bennet is left bereft, missing his other half. Already introverted, he retreats into himself. In his final statement, Collin urged him to leave the Orphanage, but it’s the only home he’s ever known. Instead, he makes a drastic decision: he’ll fill the Collin-sized hole in his heart by rejecting his computer-focused career path, trying instead to match Collin’s physical prowess so he can become a field agent like him. Training with Collin’s old girlfriend, Darcy, a skilled assassin, Bennet tries to prove he can be just as skillful with his fists and a gun as at the keyboard, in the face of skepticism from the Orphanage and all of his classmates. As he struggles to succeed, Bennet must question how much he has hurt those around him and how much more important it is to be himself than just a copy of his brother. When his class is given its final assignment, both his new skills as a field agent and his old skills as an earpiece are put to the ultimate test. Failure could prove fatal, not only to himself but to his fellow agents-in-training—the only family he has left. And as if that weren’t enough, the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance . . .

Tony Brooks was unique. He was barely out of school when recruited in 1941 by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the wartime secret service established by Churchill to 'set Europe ablaze'. After extensive training he was parachuted into France in July 1942 - being among the first (and youngest) British agents sent to support the nascent French Resistance. Brook's success was primarily due to his exceptional qualities as a secret agent, although he was aided by large and frequent slices of luck. Among much else, he survived brushes with a British traitor and a notorious double agent; the Gestapo's capture of his wireless operator and subsequent attempts to trap Brooks; brief incarceration in a Spanish concentration camp; injuries resulting from a parachute jump into France; and even capture and interrogation by the Gestapo - although his cover story held and he was released. In an age when we so often take our heroes from the worlds of sport, film, television, music, fashion, or just 'celebrity', it is perhaps salutary to be reminded of a young man who ended the war in command of a disparate force of some 10,000 armed resistance fighters, and decorated with two of this country's highest awards for gallantry, the DSO and MC. At the time, he was just twenty-three years old. This remarkable, detailed and intimate account of a clandestine agent's dangerous wartime career combines the historian's expert eye with the narrative colour of remembered events. As a study in courage, it has few, if any, equals.

Vols. for 1910-56 include convention proceedings of various insurance organizations.

Some authors just write about it. Chris Ryan has been there, done it, and lived to tell the tale. Agent 21 is the first in the action-packed adventure series by the real-life SAS hero. When Zak Darke's parents die in an unexplained mass murder he's left alone in the world. That is until he's sought out by a mysterious man: 'I work for a government agency,' the man tells him. 'You don't need to know which one. Not yet. All you need to know is that we've had our eye on you. There's a possibility you could help us in certain . . . operational situations.' Zak becomes Agent 21. What happened to the 20 agents before him he'll never know. What he does know is that his life is about to change for ever . . .