Chrestomanci has decreed that no children will practice witchcraft without supervision - Gwendolen Chant, a talented young witch, has no intention of being daunted by his rules and is determined to get the better of him.

New York's social darling just woke up in a nightmare: Oklahoma. Problem is, it's right where God wants her. Bella Kirkwood had it all--A-list friends, Broadway in her backyard, Daddy's credit card. Then her father decided to trade in her mother for a newer model. After that, her mom fell in love with a man she met on the Internet and moved the family to Truman, Oklahoma. To a farm no less! But that's just the beginning of Bella's problems. Her semi-pro-wrestler stepdad signs up the family for a reality TV show. As if having a camera crew follow her around isn't bad enough, Bella discovers a conspiracy against the Truman High prom queen candidates. And that's before the arrival of the Fritz Family Carnival with its creepy clown. Bella is one skinny-mocha frappe away from a total meltdown. How can a girl go on when her charmed life is gone and God appears to be giving her the total smack down?

The rules of the game are changing, and the winner takes all... Two superpowers must ponder their next move over Europe’s ballistic-missile chessboard in the face of the worst threat to world peace since the Cuban missile crisis. This threat is brandished by the maverick statesman holding sway over the Elysée Palace – Henri Fouquet. France’s new Napoleon stands prepared to imperil the entire northern hemisphere with his grand designs for a new world order by changing the rules of the game to nuclear poker. Englishman Henry Wright is unwittingly drawn into this incendiary setting after signing up with a US intelligence-gathering agency. Bewitched by Alexy Geary, the agency’s persuasive Senior Vice-President, whilst also suspicious of her motives and mistrustful of the enigmatic organisation behind her, man-in-the-middle Henry is soon entangled in a web of violence and intrigue. Alexy Geary’s challenge is to defuse the situation before the Soviet Union seizes upon French brinkmanship as a pretext for sparking off World War III – or the Pentagon unleashes its ‘Star Wars’ laser technology. With the stakes this high, all that stands in the way of mutual assured destruction is Henry Wright, an unassuming interpreter caught up in an epic predicament... The Man with A Charmed Life is a gripping political thriller, set in the pre-Gorbachev Cold War era, featuring flawed, flesh-and-blood mortals, far removed from the carbon-copy heroes and villains that already populate the literary world.

The author of A Bridge Across the Ocean and The Last Year of the War journeys from the present day to World War II England, as two sisters are separated by the chaos of wartime... Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades...beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden—one that will test her convictions and her heart. 1940s, England. As Hitler wages an unprecedented war against London’s civilian population, hundreds of thousands of children are evacuated to foster homes in the rural countryside. But even as fifteen-year-old Emmy Downtree and her much younger sister Julia find refuge in a charming Cotswold cottage, Emmy’s burning ambition to return to the city and apprentice with a fashion designer pits her against Julia’s profound need for her sister’s presence. Acting at cross purposes just as the Luftwaffe rains down its terrible destruction, the sisters are cruelly separated, and their lives are transformed...

At some early age, I came up with a motto that pretty well characterizes my life. It states that "I live my life in defiance of dullness." Things have certainly worked out that way. For one example, when I was in the registrar's office in graduate admissions at the University of Colorado, he looked at my transcript from Dartmouth and told me that I'd just wasted four years of my life. The professor of geology who was to be my graduate adviser agreed, and said that I'd need to take math, physics, and chemistry and at the same time bring my gentleman's C+ grade average from Dartmouth (a result of too much guitar playing, too much rockclimbing, and too little studying) up to an honor grade level. I didn't think so, and so I took undergraduate Chinese instead. I got an A in every Chinese course I took there and got into Harvard with a full scholarship. I didn't like the department there, so I transferred back to geology, but had to quit after a year and a half because of a nervous collapse. I then became a professional skier in the winters and a park ranger in the summers. After a few years of that, I decided to go back to Harvard, but they told me I'd have to take the graduate record exams. I took them and got the highest score in the world (840) in geology. It took me a year to finish the master's degree, but I didn't go on to the PhD because I felt it would drive me into a narrow specialty. Nevertheless, the Harvard master's was enough to secure college teaching positions at two good universities. As I was leaving Harvard, the chairman of the Department of Applied Chemistry there wrote me a recommendation at my request. Among other nice things, it said, "In a place that's crowded with geniuses, David Laing stands above the crowd." One man's opinion, I suppose, but it made me happy and set the stage for further exploits, most of which, together with earlier ones, are recounted in this book.which I irreverently call "My Orterbyogriffy."

His first screen test was a disaster, his features were large and irregular, his left ear outsized the right, yet he would one day be headlined as the Most Handsome Man in the World. And most of his leading ladies—among them, Ingrid Bergman, Jennifer Jones, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Ava Gardner—would not disagree. Irreverent, candid, refreshingly honest, Lynn Haney's carefully researched biography not only charts the remarkable career of the Oscar-winning star but also plumbs Peck's frequently troubling complexity in his off-screen roles as husband, father, lover, and son. About the tough times, Haney minces no words; but the misfortunes by no means eclipse the energy, intensity, and excitement that characterized Peck's five decades of moviemaking. This is a book filled with telling photographs, and a story cast with movie moguls from Louis B. Mayer to Darryl Zanuck, with directors from Hitchcock and Walsh to Huston and Wyler, with nearly every major luminary in Hollywood, and, starring for the first time in toto, Gregory Peck.

In this fiercely personal account of her battling the before, and surviving the after, of losing her husband to cancer, Carla Malden takes us on a journey through grief to gratitude that alerts the entire forever-young generation: this is not your mother’s widowhood. AfterImage is a story of love more than loss, memory more than sorrow, life more than death.

In this heartbreaking, haunting, yet ultimately forgiving memoir of a damaged childhood, the author, the daughter of the last Thane of Cawdor in Scotland, recalls growing up in a fractured fairytale Scottish castle (featured in Shakespeares "Macbeth"). Photos.

In this touching short story, two young lovers are swept up in the excitement of their newfound affection, dreaming of a life together filled with endless love and happiness. But their dreams are shattered by the onset of war, and the two are forced to part ways, believing that their love will keep them connected no matter what. The man, a war correspondent, heads off to the front lines, blissfully unaware of the dangers that lie ahead. His undying faith in the power of their love is both heartwarming and heartbreaking, as he risks everything for the chance to be reunited with his beloved.