Downing tools in the allotment where they have toiled for the last six years, Valerie and her husband Wolfram decide to cycle to Germany to visit his mother. Before they leave, Val's guide the Aztec Priest appears among the bean rows and tells her this will be a Vision Quest - and so it turns out to be, not least due to their involvement in Channel 4's 'Real Holiday Show'. In spite of the dangers they encounter on this trip they develop an appetite for foreign parts and embark on many subsequent cycling adventures, all of which turn out more or less disastrously. Travel with them as they ride through France, Italy and their beloved Black Forest - the stoic Val shouting instructions from behind as the hapless blind Wolf does his best to avoid hitting anything. Share their horrors and delights at the larger-than-life characters they meet abroad and the comradeship of their Asian neighbours on the allotments. A heartwarming and spiritual tale of two lives inextricably intertwined - until Fate intervened.

The football star made famous in the hit film (and book) The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher shares his personal account of his story, in this inspirational New York Times bestseller. Looking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family. Eventually he grasped onto football as his ticket out and worked hard to make his dream into a reality. With his adoptive family, the Touhys, and other influential people in mind, he describes the absolute necessity of seeking out positive role models and good friends who share the same values to achieve one's dreams. Sharing untold stories of heartache, determination, courage, and love, I Beat the Odds is an incredibly rousing tale of one young man's quest to achieve the American dream.

Story of Michael Oher, a rising gridiron star, who was rescued from the ghettos of Memphis and placed with a wealthy family to help develop his football skills.

FBI agents Savich and Sherlock face two baffling cases in this riveting novel of knife-edge suspense from #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. When 6-year-old Sam Kettering manages to escape after being kidnapped, FBI Agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich join forces with the boy’s father Miles—an ex FBI agent—to pursue his kidnapper, a creepy, charasmatic Southern evangelist. As if the kidnapping case weren’t enough, Savich and Sherlock are at the same time desperate to find the cold-blooded killer of three high school math teachers in the Washington, D.C. area.

For the first time, the remarkable couple depicted in The Blind Side tells their own deeply inspiring story First came the bestselling book, then the Oscar-nominated movie—the story of Michael Oher and the family who adopted him has become one of the most talked-about true stories of our time. But until now, Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy have never told this astonishing tale in their own way and with their own words. For Leigh Anne and Sean, it all begins with family. Leigh Anne, the daughter of a tough-as-nails U.S. Marshal, decided early on that her mission was to raise children who would become "cheerful givers." Sean, who grew up poor, believed that one day he could provide a home that would be "a place of miracles." Together, they raised two remarkable children—Collins and Sean Jr.—who shared their deep Christian faith and their commitment to making a difference. And then one day Leigh Anne met a homeless African-American boy named Michael and decided that her family could be his. She and her husband taught Michael what this book teaches all of us: Everyone has a blind side, but a loving heart always sees a path toward true charity. Michael Oher's improbable transformation could never have happened if Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy had not opened their hearts to him. In this compelling, funny, and profoundly inspiring book, In a Heartbeat, the Tuohys take us on an extraordinary journey of faith and love—and teach us unforgettable lessons about the power of giving.

When New York City's Mayor is desperate to find his missing daughter, Detective Michael Bennett steps in to help the Mayor and strike a deal to save his son in prison. Bennett and the mayor have always had a tense relationship, but now the mayor sees in Bennett a discreet investigator with family worries of his own. Just one father helping another. The detective leaps into the case and sources lead him to a homicide in the Bronx. The victim has ties to a sophisticated hacking operation—and also to the mayor's missing daughter, Natalie, a twenty-one-year-old computer prodigy. The murder is part of a serial killing spree, one with national security implications. And suddenly Bennett is at the center of a dangerous triangle anchored by NYPD, FBI, and a transnational criminal organization. Michael Bennett has always been an honorable man, but sometimes—when the lives of innocents are at stake—honor has to take a back seat. Survival comes first.

Fourteen-year-old Natalie O'Reilly's world is turned upside down with the news that she will soon go blind. As if this weren't shocking enough, she is forced to face the fact that she must now attend a school for the blind to learn Braille and how to use a cane. As Natalie tackles the skills that will help her to survive in a sighted world, she inwardly hopes for a miracle that will save her sight. But will that miracle come, or will she need to learn to embrace her new life?

Amid the chaos of civilians fleeing west in a provincial German railway station in 1945, Helene has brought her seven-year-old son. Having survived with him through the horrors and deprivations of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns. This is a tale of hope, loneliness and love; of a life lived in terrible times; the story of a family, an era, and a fascinating woman. 'This is a great big silence-breaker of a novel, a laser beam into the German darkness from a writer who, one feels, has a great deal more to say' Evening Standard 'Admirable...inspired and haunting' Times Literary Supplement 'Franck's command of the language of misery and loss is awesome, but so is her gift for describing the warmth of burgeoning life when things are going right' The Times 'A rich, moving and complex novel... Julia Franck may well have written a great novel' Scotsman 'The Blind Side of the Heartis a masterpiece, in an exquisite translation by Anthea Bell' Arts & Book Review

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Can you ever truly know someone? And what if you suspect the unthinkable? London, 2005. Despite her friends’ warnings, a young Englishwoman can’t resist her attraction to a charismatic Russian ex-soldier recently arrived in London. But, realising how deeply war-time incidents have affected him, she starts to suspect that he’s hiding a horrifying secret... Set in the year of London’s 7/7 terrorism attacks, Blind Side is a powerful tale of love and friendship, trauma and betrayal, secrets and obsession. A gripping, multi-faceted psychological mystery thriller that will stay with you long after you’ve reached the end, appealing especially to fans of Rosamund Lupton, Claire Mackintosh, Louise Doughty, Stella Rimington and Sadie Jones. “builds suspense brilliantly” — Gail Cleare, USA Today bestselling author of The Taste of Air “An absolutely stunning debut from Jennie Ensor; so thought-provoking and profound that every reader will get something different out of reading it” — The Book Magnet “I read this book over the course of the day without putting it down once. It’s a powerful and engaging novel, thought-provoking and difficult to forget once you’ve reached the end” — Reviewed The Book “a storyline that doesn’t let you go until the very last page”— Keeper of Pages “a thrilling psychological story that I really enjoyed and raced through” — The Last Word Book Review “Blind Side is a story that will keep you up until the early hours, totally gripping and full of suspense. A fantastic debut by Jennie Ensor and one I will highly recommend”— It’s All About the Books