Captain Norstad stood up to a swindler, but now he might lose the riverboat they all love. “Sometimes there’s a cost for doing the right thing,” Captain Norstad stated. Will he and the other Freedom Seekers recover the stolen money before a double payment is due? When the Freedom Seekers learn that Micah Parker has escaped and is running for the Mississippi River, they leave the Christina and take up the search. They request the help of the Underground Railroad, but will they find Micah before the slave catchers? When God’s law and man’s law conflict, which will they choose to follow? From the golden age of steamboats, the rush of immigrants to new lands, and the dangers of the Underground Railroad come true-to-life stories of courage, integrity, and suspense in the Freedom Seekers series.

Ruskin Bond wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen years old. Since then, he has written over 500 short stories and articles. Ruskin Bond received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

By using true tales of thieves, swindlers, and fraudsters at work, Financial Serial Killers illustrates how these perpetrators get their hooks into investors' wallets, savings accounts, and portfolios—and never let go. The worst financial crisis since the great depression revealed that thousands of mom and pop investors had lost millions to so-called Mini-Madoffs. They are the thieves and conmen who had used phony financial acumen to steal investors' money, wipe out savings, and damage lives. Financial Serial Killers reveals the cons—from the grand to picayune—advisers cultivate with their victims—relationships that are essential to the fraud. Take the story of Lillian, the little old lady who invested with Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. After her husband died, she thought her family's treasure of $24 million in stock controlled by Buffett was safe. It was—until a family relative introduced the eighty-nine-year-old grandmother to a pair of unscrupulous insurance agents who convinced her to reinvest her savings in life insurance—decimating her nest egg while padding the agents' pockets. Lillian's story, as well as other accounts of deceit and fraud are the core of Financial Serial Killers. Readers will learn how to better protect their family's wealth and savings after reading this book.

Lin Xi, the pawnbroker who was about to lose his job, coincidentally obtained a pair of Heaven's Eyes from the jade pendant his master left behind. He wanted to see how Lin Xi would grow up, pick up treasures while growing up, and play the strings of fate. A pair of Heaven's Eyes could detect treasure, avoid disaster, and drive away evil. However, what secrets did it hide ...

Selected papers presented at the Italy on Screen Conference, held at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, in 2007.

Two hard-luck drifters and a grizzled prospector seek gold in the mountains in Mexico. They start off as friends, but after they discover the lode the greed and paranoia set in.

Uncovering the professional secrets of con artists and swindlers in the medieval Middle East The Book of Charlatans is a comprehensive guide to trickery and scams as practiced in the thirteenth century in the cities of the Middle East, especially in Syria and Egypt. The author, al-Jawbarī, was well versed in the practices he describes and may well have been a reformed charlatan himself. Divided into thirty chapters, his book reveals the secrets of everyone from “Those Who Claim to be Prophets” to “Those Who Claim to Have Leprosy” and “Those Who Dye Horses.” The material is informed in part by the author’s own experience with alchemy, astrology, and geomancy, and in part by his extensive research. The work is unique in its systematic, detailed, and inclusive approach to a subject that is by nature arcane and that has relevance not only for social history but also for the history of science. Covering everything from invisible writing to doctoring gemstones and quack medicine, The Book of Charlatans opens a fascinating window into a subculture of beggars’ guilds and professional con artists in the medieval Arab world. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.