The Ballad of a Broken Nose
The Ballad of a Broken Nose

Author: Arne Svingen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1481415441

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From award-winning Norwegian author Arne Svingen comes “an uplifting coming-of-age story” (The Wall Street Journal) about a relentlessly positive teenager who uses his love of opera to cope with his less-than-perfect home life. Bart is an eternal optimist. At thirteen years old, he’s had a hard life. But Bart knows that things won’t get any better if you have a negative attitude. His mother has pushed him into boxing lessons so that Bart can protect himself, but Bart already has defense mechanisms: he is relentlessly positive…and he loves opera. Listening to—and singing—opera is Bart’s greatest escape, but he’s too shy to share this with anyone. Then popular Ada befriends him and encourages him to perform at the school talent show. Ada can’t keep a secret to save her life, but Bart bonds with her anyway, and her openness helps him realize that his troubles are not burdens that he must bear alone. The Ballad of a Broken Nose is a sweet story about bravery, fear, bullying, sports, and music. But most of all it is about the important days of your life, days when everything seems to happen at once and nothing will ever be the same again.

The Ballad of a Broken Nose
The Ballad of a Broken Nose

Author: Arne Svingen

Publisher:

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781536412727

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Immersing himself in his love for opera in order to cope with a difficult life, a shy and bullied 13-year-old embraces an optimistic outlook and bonds with an outgoing girl who encourages him to perform in a school talent show.

The Ballad of Sy Black
The Ballad of Sy Black

Author: Mark Early

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001-02

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 059517325X

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Sy Black's duty is simple. He has been chosen to guard the Border between the living and the dead and to make sure no one crosses over. For any reason. The Ballad of Sy Black is the haunting story of a man faced with the ultimate decision: accept his fate, or defy it.

The Ballad of the Broken Soldier
The Ballad of the Broken Soldier

Author: Ash Stinson

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2014-04-02

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1304954889

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After waging a draining, unsuccessful war on the neighboring kingdom of Zylekkha, Tahlehsohr is a bubbling cauldron of unrest. The Zylekkhans, war weakened, are determined to get their vengeance and claim the life of the king of Tahlehsohr. Unfortunately for them, the murder of a king is no easy sport. Kirash, the centaur king of Zylekkha's right-hand man and a vampire, sits in the center of a precarious web of alliances as he struggles to topple the Tahlehson government: a gang of elven freedom fighters, an idealistic werewolf hoping to start a revolution, a self-centered but powerful magician, and an undead Tahlehson general who has no choice but to help them. Plagued at every turn by Tahlehson spies and bad luck, they're running out of time. And that might just cost them all their lives.

The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt
The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt

Author: Nick Tooke

Publisher: The Porcupine's Quill

Published: 2019-12-27

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0889844275

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June 1934: the depths of the Great Depression. Reckless with anger and spoiling for a fight, seventeen-year-old Samuel Hewitt and his Shuswap friend Charleyboy conspire to steal a prize stallion and disappear into the blistered, unforgiving terrain of British Columbia’s Thompson River Valley. The boys are looking for a fresh start—and for somewhere to belong. But what they find is a hardscrabble existence enlivened by ruthless criminals and boxcar bums ... until they come upon the denizens of a once-majestic travelling circus struggling to survive in an era in which even marvels have lost their capacity to charm. In this surreal, ramshackle environment, Samuel develops an unexpected kinship with the failing ringmaster and his enigmatic daughter. But violence and treachery are prevalent in the shadows of the Big Top, and Samuel may well find himself on the run once more. In The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt, Nick Tooke presents an uncommon coming-of-age story as well as a thoughtful examination of the meaning of home and family.

The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell
The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell

Author: Kate Brauning

Publisher: Page Street YA

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1645673138

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Nothing is more dangerous than a girl with nothing left to lose. Dinah Caldwell has been filling her father’s role since he abandoned their family four years ago. She and her grief-stricken mom run their subsistence farm deep in the Ozarks, making sure her younger brother never has to worry. Until the day Gabriel Gates, who owns everyone in Charlotte County, kills her mother to steal her family’s well. Homeless, heartbroken, and alone, Dinah only has a single razor-sharp goal: revenge. And now that Gates has put a ten-thousand-dollar bounty on her head, she can’t trust anyone, but she also can’t take down the most powerful man in the mountains by herself. Her only allies are Kara, Dinah’s best friend and secret crush, and Johnny, a young bootlegger who has as much reason to hate Gates as Dinah does. With their help and resources, and maybe even love, she can spark a revolution and set the whole county free—if their combined secrets don’t get them all killed first.

The Ballad of Karla Faye Tucker
The Ballad of Karla Faye Tucker

Author: Mark Beaver

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2023-08-10

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 149684663X

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On a June night in 1983, twenty-three-year-old Karla Faye Tucker and her boyfriend, fueled by a sinister cocktail of illicit drugs, broke into a Houston apartment. “We were very wired,” Tucker later testified, “and we was looking for something to do.” Though they later claimed they entered the premises with no murderous intent, they ended up slaughtering two people—one a sworn enemy, the other an utter stranger. The weapon: a pickax they found in the apartment. Fourteen years later, in early 1998, Tucker was facing lethal injection. But after her religious conversion in prison, Texas would be executing a different woman than the one who’d committed the murders. Her change was so dramatic that the most powerful and influential voices in American televangelism—Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell among them—were urging viewers to contact Texas's governor, George W. Bush, and plead for clemency. One follower was author Mark Beaver’s father, a devout Southern Baptist deacon who asked Beaver to put his fledgling literary ambitions to work by composing a letter on his behalf to Governor Bush. Through a merger of true crime, social history, and memoir, The Ballad of Karla Faye Tucker illustrates how a seemingly distant news story triggers a national reckoning and exposes a growing divide in America’s evangelical community. It’s a tale of how one woman defies all conventions of death row inmates, and her saga serves as an unlikely but fascinating prism for exploring American culture and the limits of forgiveness and transformation. It’s also a deeply personal reflection on how a father’s request leads his son to struggle with who he was raised to be and who he imagines becoming.

Whispering Pine
Whispering Pine

Author: George T. Kocik

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2012-07-24

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1477111298

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Everyone starts out in life on the same level. Some achieve fortune and fame; others do not. That doesnt mean that they have lesser value or lead less meaningful lives than those who have achieved glory. Everybody means something to someone, and is important to them. To those who have achieved great things that have benefitted humanity, my hat goes off to them. To those who have achieved fame and fortune through their hard work, I say Good for you, you worked for it. I may not have amassed a great fortune in my lifetime, nor achieved fame, but I am rich nevertheless. I can count on both hands the ones I love and the ones who love me. I can boast, however, of two achievements of which I am extremely proud. The first is my two children, Christine and Kevin. No father can be prouder of his children than I. There I can say: George, you did well. The second achievement of which lm very proud is the collection of poems that lve composed throughout the years. My English teachers gave up on me in high school. They figured I didnt have a snowballs chance in hell where it came to creative writing. I cant blame them either. I didnt see writing in my future at the age of 16. I was content to speak the English language and that was enough for me. I always enjoyed reading poems in school; some more than others. After I graduated and joined the work force, I found that I had a knack for composing. As time went by, my poems got better and better. I was actually proud of the end product. Here again I can say: Well done, George. Everyone wants to leave something of themselves behind as a testimony to their passing through this world. And so, dear children, I leave you my collection of poems. When your eyes peruse the words that lve written, lIl be there beside you. As for you, dear reader, I hope you take great pleasure in reading my poems.