Little Freddie is just a foal with big dreams. Not every racehorse gets to run in the Kentucky Derby. Even then, there is only one winner.Join this Thoroughbred horse on an adventure from his first days in the pasture to the excitement of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Share his triumphs and failures as Little Freddie learns what it takes to make your dreams come true!
Little Freddie was born out of wedlock to his teenage mother, Jenny Rakes, and his proud father, Jonathan Baker, who lived on the Ozark farm next to the Rakes. The desertion of his teen mother prior to his first birthday gave Freddie a family of only his maternal grandmother and his proud dad, Jonathan. At the death of his loving Grandmother Rakes, all that was left the preteen could call a "loving family" was his dad, Johnathan Baker. So as you can imagine his dad's shock when son, Fred, refused any schooling past the eighth grade, adding "ignorance" to the "out of wedlock" description of his son, Fred. His mother and her husband arrived prior to the end of Fred's teen years to visit with him and inform him he had three half brothers and a half sister since they had married. His refusal to say more than hello and not even see the "family" set the tone to his mother's life as it related to Fred. Before Fred finished his teen years, the family of his brother and sister, escorted by their half-sister, Penny, arrived unannounced and uninvited on his doorstep. His shock included his first question, to himself, What can I do for them? Of course, he had sympathy for them when he learned of the accidental death of their mother and father. His remaining teen years made it necessary for him to find a better paying job in the Ozarks and caused his life to be everything from horrible to misery. The way this transforms the children's relationship with Fred Baker and Penny Halloran, their half-sister, is an exciting and educational exhibit of the flying teen years. The arrival of the finishing touches to the family includes "fake" parents, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and all of 'em, as one says in the Ozarks. The close chase by a panther after their little sister, Sue Ann, reminds one just how dangerous even a ten year old can be. The teen boys needed little help going from the problem of working students to a wonderful loving Christian family.
In his old home in Oklahoma, Mark Williams mourns for the members of his family who were lost on the infamous Trail of Tears. He mourns for his brother and his two young daughters, and he longs to know what happened to his parents and his little sister, Walela, as he prays for answers in the ghostly moonlight. In Missouri, under the same pale moonlight, Lela Schmidt prays in memory of the parents, also lost on the Trail of Tears. She remembers her brothers, her heart wrenched by the mystery of their fate. Did they reach the Indian Territory safely all those years ago, or were they too gripped by the cold hand of death on the long journey west? Shed barely escaped that gruesome fate herself, rescued by Fredrik Schmidt. They have since shared a secret that must never be told. The story of Fredrik and Lela began in Hummingbird and continued through Until Next We Meet. Rejoin their journey of love, faith, and courage in The Legacy.
For the first time, the final years of one of the world's most captivating rock showman are laid bare. Including interviews from Freddie Mercury's closest friends in the last years of his life, along with personal photographs, Somebody to Love is an authoritative biography of the great man. Here are previously unknown and startling facts about the singer and his life, moving detail on his lifelong search for love and personal fulfilment, and of course his tragic contraction of a then killer disease in the mid-1980s. Woven throughout Freddie's life is the shocking story of how the HIV virus came to hold the world in its grip, was cruelly labelled 'The Gay Plague' and the unwitting few who indirectly infected thousands of men, women and children - Freddie Mercury himself being one of the most famous. The death of this vibrant and spectacularly talented rock star, shook the world of medicine as well as the world of music. Somebody to Love finally puts the record straight and pays detailed tribute to the man himself.
'Exactly the sort of tribute Mercury himself would have wanted' SPECTATOR 'No one has captured better than Lesley-Ann Jones the magical, enchanting dualism of Freddie Mercury' THE TIMES 'Truly definitive, truly Freddie, an energetic, entertaining and essential account' SIR TIM RICE 'This book grabs you with its opening, then builds. Insight and anecdote in perfect harmony' SIMON NAPIER-BELL 'At last a massive tribute to a massive talent' STEVE HARLEY, COCKNEY REBEL This is the definitive biography of Freddie Mercury. Written by an award-winning rock journalist, Lesley-Ann Jones toured widely with Queen forming lasting friendships with the band. Now, having secured access to the remaining band members and those who were closest to Freddie, from childhood to death, Lesley-Ann has written the most in depth account of one of music's best loved and most complex figures. Meticulously researched, sympathetic, unsensational, the book will focus on the period in the 1980s when Queen began to fragment, before their Live Aid performance put them back in the frame. In her journey to understand the man behind the legend, Lesley-Ann Jones has travelled from London to Zanzibar to India. Packed with exclusive interviews and told with the invaluable perspective that the twenty years since Mercury's death presents, Freddie Mercury is the most up to date portrait of a legendary man.
Caught between the past and the future, can friendship survive in changing times? Thirteen years have passed since the railway came to the Borders, bringing changes that would radically alter the lives of the people who lived there. Yet the steam train was not the only legacy from the men who built the railway – in their wake they left several fatherless children. One such child is Kitty Scott. Wild through neglect and an outcast within the community, Kitty is a loner... until she rescues newcomer Marie Benjamin from the taunts of her classmates – the same taunts that have clouded Kitty’s own life. So begins a friendship that lasts beyond their childhood in the Scottish Borders, to Edinburgh, London, and finally Paris, where the influence of heredity comes full circle and friendship’s true worth is recognised. The second book in the A Bridge In Time series, this is an engaging saga of hope and love for fans of Tessa Barclay and Val Wood.
