In 19th century Bowdon, England, Charlotte was a humble servant whose main care in life was her daughter Tooty. She only ever loved one man – her first husband, Rodney, who died tragically young. After his death she had no choice but to work long hours for the owners of the big houses of the day. It was a hard life for both mother and daughter, but it gave her a perspective on history as she saw the world changing before her eyes and class barriers and prejudices beginning to dissolve. When a series of terrible crimes come to light, Charlotte begins to wonder if her new friend David is somehow mixed up in them. Fate places her in a unique position to understand what has really been happening and who is responsible. A Bowdon Romance weaves the thread of local history into a fascinating portrait of life as it must have been in 19th century England.

For more than two years, Rose Elders and her daughter Elizabeth were hounded, bullied and intimidated almost to the point of madness, all because certain junior public servants misused their power, while senior ones who could have stopped it failed to use theirs as they should have. It all started when Elizabeth found she was being stalked by a well-known local misfit who was clearly trying to gain power over the women in order to get his hands on their money. He made a trumped-up claim to the local Social Services mental health team that Elizabeth was abusing her mother, and when Elizabeth complained that he was stalking her he accused her of libel. Then the social worker who had appointed herself to handle the case, for perverted reasons of her own, decided to take the stalker’s side and set out to have Elizabeth certified. Fortunately, her attempts were thwarted by doctors who knew better, but this did not prevent her from making the Elders’ life hell for two years.The author has written A Dangerous Obsession, based on a true story, to show how open to abuse UK mental health legislation is.

SCIENCE / FANTASY set in the far future's distant past...with a thread of ROMANCE running throughout: Three planets doomed to extinction, and only a handful of heroes are equipped to save them from time paradoxes and nasty aliens. WEBS OF PARADOX is a complete story-arc, HIGH ACTION / ADVENTURE you will find difficult to put down. Amazon Reviews on Part One [previously published as Reins of Time]: - The world is complete, and the characters vivid. Obviously, a lot of effort was put into making this world work, and the mesh of the two worlds blends completely. The action is nonstop as the characters are tumbled from one precarious situation to another, and the ending comes together nicely. This was an enjoyable read, well worth the greater story depth and thoughts required to follow the story. TiggerKat

For centuries, individuals have strived for "the good life:" the ability to provide for oneself and one's family, make meaningful contributions to society, and enjoy culture and nature, among other happy pursuits. The wisdom to achieve this great life is contained in The Literature of Possibility, a digital collection featuring a new introduction that brings Tom Butler-Bowdon's 50 Classics series

Intended for courses with a major focus on poetry during the Romantic period, this volume includes all the poetry selections from Volume 4 of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, along with a number of works newly edited for this volume. The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Poetry maintains the Broadview Anthology of British Literature’s characteristic balance of canonical favorites and lesser-known gems, featuring a breadth of poetry from William Blake to Phillis Wheatley, from Ebenezer Elliott to Felicia Hemans. To give a sense of the full sweep of the Romantic period, the anthology incorporates important early figures from William Collins to Phillis Wheatley, as well as works by Victorians—such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson—for whom Romanticism was a formative force. “Contexts” sections provide valuable background on cultural matters such as “The Natural and the Sublime” and “The Abolition of Slavery,” while the companion website offers a wealth of additional resources and primary works. Longer works newly prepared for the bound book include Byron’s Manfred and The Giaour, Keats’s Hyperion, and substantial selections from Wordsworth’s fourteen-book Prelude; authors newly added for this volume include Hannah Cowley, Hannah More, Ann Yearsley, Robert Southey, and Thomas Moore.

The present volume is intended to be a substantial contribution to the history of Alabama, by giving expansion to the recorded lives of its foremost citizens—men who alike on the field and in the forum, on the bench and in the sphere of commerce, in the lecture room and in the pulpit, on the farm and in the court, in the field of development as well as in the ordinary walks of life, have shared conspicuously in the erection of one of the proudest of the American commonwealths. The distinction achieved by these eminent citizens in various orbits are worthy of perpetual record, and their respective deeds and accomplishments deserve more than a bare reference in the current chronicles of the state. Along the successive eras through which Alabama has passed, first as a territory, then as a state, for a period exceeding a hundred years, each of these worthies made a contribution to the construction of a mighty commonwealth, and sheer justice requires that the specific task so worthily wrought by each should be a matter of permanent record. The effort is here made not to follow the beaten path of chronological biography, so much, as to seize on the salient points in the life of each eminent leader, show who and what he was, and that which he did. By means of a method like this, these distinguished men become reflectors of the period in which each lived and wrought. In addition, is a series of romantic sketches which lie outside the channel of ordinary history, and yet they serve the function of imparting to its pages a zest and flavor that relieve it largely of commonplace. These scenes derived from the transactions of nearly four hundred years, have been carefully gleaned from every possible source, and are here embodied for the first time in convenient form. The conditions which have attended on the evolution of a great state from the rawest of savage wildernesses, have yielded a store of material intensely romantic. The original tribes with their rude settlements and forts dotting the uncleared surface of Alabama over, skimming the waters of the streams and bordering bays in their tiny canoes, and threading the forests along narrow paths; the invasions of the Spanish and the French, and their transactions and conflicts as they would encounter aboriginal resistance, and the later and lasting occupation of the territory by the Anglo-Saxon, who came with dominant determination to possess the land and to transform it through the agencies of a conquering civilization into an exalted government—these have yielded a harvest of romance exceptional in its rareness and fascinating in its nature. While the record of scenes like these afford diversion, at the same time, they serve as no inferior contribution to our history. Like the lives of prominent makers of history, these rare scenes are indexes of the times in which they took place.