Shane Donnegan spends virtually all his life in Australia before moving back to his native Westport. The 14-year-old is flabbergasted when he smashes his new school’s swimming records. He’s further gobsmacked that he can understand languages he’s never heard before. On a school trip to Westport House, he becomes strangely drawn to the surroundings and the weird activities of its billionaire owner, Lord Dunraven. Suspecting something seriously nasty is going on, Shane and friends sneak by night into Westport House Estate. Passing through fields of gigantic Venus fly-traps, they discover that Dunraven is secretly carrying out grotesque experiments − supposedly assisted by a prehistoric druid. Encountering deadly dangers, Shane learns that the unspeakable horrors within the Estate have disturbing links with his own dark past… Roddy O’Sullivan is a keen children’s writer. After a long career in medicine, he now devotes himself to lecturing and campaigning for the protection of the lakes, rivers and wildlife of his native Ireland. Roddy enjoys playing the guitar, fishing and birdwatching. His lifelong interest in past civilisations was the inspiration behind his adventure stories for younger readers which involve the unexpected meetings of today’s world with that of the ancients.

The Aran Islands' Terrifying Secret is the third book in Roddy O'Sullivan's Fomorian Series, a trilogy for 10-14 year-olds, set in the West of Ireland. Shane Donnegan gains work experience off the Aran Islands aboard the St Fergus, an Irish naval ship. With his friends Zara and Tubs, he digs up a chunk of a colossal, long-extinct shellfish and persuades the ship’s Captain to explore nearby subterranean sea-caves. Here they discover a wrecked 18th-century whaler and a treasure chest. But what happens next defies belief − the crew are set upon in circumstances that call into question our very understanding of nature itself. The Minister of the Environment steals the gold from the treasure chest and sells the film & TV rights to a consortium of rich foreign gangsters. Battling against these ruthless thugs, Shane and his friends face certain death when a typhoon propels themselves and the rudderless St Fergus towards the cliffs of Inishmore. Their survival rests with Shane seeking help from the formidable beings that had earlier attacked the crew… Roddy O’Sullivan is a keen children’s writer. After a long career in medicine, he now devotes himself to lecturing and campaigning for the protection of the lakes, rivers and wildlife of his native Ireland. Roddy enjoys playing the guitar, fishing and birdwatching. His lifelong interest in past civilisations was the inspiration behind his adventure stories for younger readers which involve the unexpected meetings of today’s world with that of the ancients.

What do you do when Hollywood takes over your tiny Maine village to make a movie? Cassidy Beauvoir, chair of the board of overseers of Amity Landing, is ready to throw the bums out; that is, until she meets Jasper MacEwan, the director of American Waterloo: the Rout of the Penobscot Expedition. It's instant attraction until a series of deadly incidents threatens their budding romance. Are the attacks directed at the movie crew or the townspeople? As the two search for answers, the trail leads them to long-held secrets of the worst naval defeat of the American Revolution—including betrayal, murder, and a lost hoard of English gold.

James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi's Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War allows us to see what really happened to American forces in Southeast Asia, separating popular myth from explosive reality in a clear, concise manner. Containing more than two hundred examinations of different aspects of the war, the book questions why the American military ignored the lessons taught by previous encounters with insurgency forces; probes the use of group think and mind control by the North Vietnamese; and explores the role technology played in shaping the way the war was fought. Of course, the book also reveals the "dirty little secrets," the truth behind such aspects of the conflict as the rise of the Montagnard mercenaries--the most feared group of soldiers participating in the secret war in Laos-and the details of the hidden struggle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. With its unique and perceptive examination of the conflict, Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War by James F. Dunnigan & Albert A. Nofi offers a critical addition to the library of Vietnam War history.

The only comprehensive and up-to-date book of its kind with the latest information.

New York Times Bestseller For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work. Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

A young survivor of the Bosnian War returns to his homeland to confront the people who betrayed his family. The story behind the YA novel World in Between: Based on a True Refugee Story. At age eleven, Kenan Trebincevic was a happy, karate-loving kid living with his family in the quiet Eastern European town of Brcko. Then, in the spring of 1992, war broke out and his friends, neighbors and teammates all turned on him. Pero - Kenan's beloved karate coach - showed up at his door with an AK-47 - screaming: "You have one hour to leave or be killed!" Kenan’s only crime: he was Muslim. This poignant, searing memoir chronicles Kenan’s miraculous escape from the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign that swept the former Yugoslavia. After two decades in the United States, Kenan honors his father’s wish to visit their homeland, making a list of what he wants to do there. Kenan decides to confront the former next door neighbor who stole from his mother, see the concentration camp where his Dad and brother were imprisoned and stand on the grave of his first betrayer to make sure he’s really dead. Back in the land of his birth, Kenan finds something more powerful—and shocking—than revenge.

The story of the William Morris Agency is the stoyr of show business itself. Founded at the turn of the century, it stood as the premier agency in Hollywood for 80 years. With unvarnished descriptions of the board that runs William Morris and the needy and demanding stars they represent, The Agency is a compelling tale that lifts the curtain on the most intriguing business in Americ today. Photos.

The figure of the violent man in the African American imagination has a long history. He can be found in 19th-century bad man ballads like "Stagolee" and "John Hardy," as well as in the black convict recitations that influenced "gangsta" rap. "Born in a Mighty Bad Land" connects this figure with similar characters in African American fiction. Many writers -- McKay and Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance; Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison in the '40s and '50s; Himes in the '50s and '60s -- saw the "bad nigger" as an archetypal figure in the black imagination and psyche. "Blaxploitation" novels in the '70s made him a virtually mythical character. More recently, Mosley, Wideman, and Morrison have presented him as ghetto philosopher and cultural adventurer. Behind the folklore and fiction, many theories have been proposed to explain the source of the bad man's intra-racial violence. Jerry H. Bryant explores all of these elements in a wide-ranging and illuminating look at one of the most misunderstood figures in African American culture.