Ruby Rogers is about to turn ten. She wants to be a gangster when she grows up. She also wants nothing more than a tree house for her birthday. Problem is, there aren't any trees in her garden, and her family laugh off the idea. Ruby's furious, but then life takes a turn for the better when, through her best friend Yasmin, she meets Holly Helvellyn, a super-cool Gothic girl who's friends with Yasmin's older sister. It turns out Holly rather fancies Ruby's older brother Joe - the brooding artist in the sixth-form who has a strange habit of talking in newspaper headlines. One day Holly asks Ruby to steal something from Joe's bedroom for a joke, setting off a chain of events that culminate in some very unexpected but pleasant surprises . . .
It's Yasmin's birthday and Ruby, short of money, makes her the most wonderful home-made card ever. Yasmin's best present, though, is a set of windup false teeth, which Ruby borrows, but which never make it home - well, not in one piece, anyway. Oh dear. Plagued with guilt, Ruby's convinced Yasmin will never forgive her and can't face 'fessing up straight away. Life always seems to get so complicated for our Ruby! A much-needed series for all those tom-boy girls out there!
Winter is closing in, and with it comes a new set of problems. Ruby is afraid of the dark, and older brother Joe enjoys taking advantage of this by giving her scares whenever he can. The fabulous Holly points out that everyone is afraid of something. True as this turns out to be, it doesn't really help Ruby, especially when she discovers that her babysitter is even more afraid of the dark than she is! On top of that, it's the school play and Ruby also has to confront her stage fright. And then, when things really can't get any worse, Joe is still going out with that awful girl, Tiffany. Why, oh why, won't he come to his senses, dump her and go out with the wacky, witty and wonderful Holly?
A tutorial and reference to the object-oriented programming language for beginning to experienced programmers, updated for version 1.8, describes the language's structure, syntax, and operation, and explains how to build applications. Original. (Intermediate)
Girl, 15, Charming But Insane, huge bum, massive ears, seeks . . . Well, seeks Ben Jones, but failing that, large Muslim-type burka garment to cover her deformities. Life can be trying when your best friend is a goddess, you are a woeful underachiever, and Ben Jones won't even look in your direction. Painfully spot on, Girl, 15, reveals with Technicolor precision the agony and the ecstasy (and the embarrassment) of being a teenager. With razor-sharp observation and deadpan humour we are offered a privileged peek at the life of Jess, 15, charming, but most definitely insane. This novel has a unique voice and humour that will make you want to read it again and again - if you can bring yourself to put it down in the first place.
Special edition of Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel—featuring a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson and book club extras inside In this deluxe tenth anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces the beautiful novel Tinkers, which begins with an old man who lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past, where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature. The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel—the first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since A Confederacy of Dunces received the award nearly thirty years before—is as extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family’s history, Paul Harding began writing Tinkers when his rock band broke up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published, the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare the novel’s remarkable success “the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent memory.” That story is still being written as readers across the country continue to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and passionate audience. Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers. He teaches at Stony Brook Southampton.
This is the story of the work of the original NASA space pioneers; men and women who were suddenly organized in 1958 from the then National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into the Space Task Group. A relatively small group, they developed the initial mission concept plans and procedures for the U. S. space program. Then they boldly built hardware and facilities to accomplish those missions. The group existed only three years before they were transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in 1962, but their organization left a large mark on what would follow.Von Ehrenfried's personal experience with the STG at Langley uniquely positions him to describe the way the group was structured and how it reacted to the new demands of a post-Sputnik era. He artfully analyzes how the growing space program was managed and what techniques enabled it to develop so quickly from an operations perspective. The result is a fascinating window into history, amply backed up by first person documentation and interviews.
