The Herdmans plus Halloween have always spelled disaster. Every year these six kids -- the worst in the history of Woodrow Wilson School, and possibly even the world -- wreak havoc on the whole town. They steal candy, spray-paint kids, and take anything that's not nailed down. Now the mayor has had it. He's decided to cancel Halloween. There won't be any Herdmans to contend with this year, but there won't be any candy, either. And what's Halloween without candy? And without trick-or-treating? The Herdmans manage to turn the worst Halloween ever into the best Halloween ever in this uproarious sequel to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
Dragon and Herdsman, the fourth Dragonback adventure from award-winning author Timothy Zahn Jack Morgan has had it rough. He was orphaned at three, then lost his Uncle Virgil ten years later. But the plucky fourteen-year-old didn't know what rough was until he met Draycos, sole survivor of an advance force of alien refugees that had been brutally ambushed over the world where Jack was in hiding from the authorities. The K'da poet-warrior needed to bond with a host, or he would die; the reformed boy thief and con artist needed a friend, someone he could depend on as he tried to clear his name. Since then they've formed a unique team, determined to find and expose those responsible for the slaughter of Draycos's team. In the months since fate threw them together, they've been through a lot. But when Jack tries to hack the computer in an office of the notorious Malison Ring, their quest nearly ends in the jaws of that mercenary organization's trap. Luckily, Alison Kayna, a girl Jack had worked with as a reluctant mercenary for another outfit, comes to his rescue. Evading pursuit, they escape to the primitive world of Rho Scorvi, where she's planned a rendezvous with friends. But at the edge of Rho Scorvi's hundred-mile-wide forest, they make a shocking discovery: traveling with a group of the planet's native Erassvas is a small lost colony of Draycos's own race, the K'da. But unlike Draycos's people, these K'da--known as Phookas--are slow, lethargic, and unintelligent. When the Malison Ring tracks Jack's ship, the Essenay to Rho Scorvi, Jack realizes that unless he and Draycos and a reluctant Alison can lead the Phookas to safety in the forest, these unfortunate creatures will become the latest victims of the genocide that threatens to wipe out their entire race. Jack has already been a thief, a soldier, and a slave. Now he must become a herdsman, protecting the Phookas from danger as they travel deep into the unexplored forest. But even more importantly, he must protect from the mercenaries and Alison the dark secret of the herd and Jack's poet-warrior ally. Only if they succeed do they stand a chance of surviving Rho Scorvi to continue their quest . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
This work lays out the tasks and techniques of the herdsman whilst maintaining a central concern with the welfare of the stock throughout the text. Topics covered are general stockmanship, feeding, cow management, milking, housing, health, calf rearing, herd replacements, breeding and bulls, preparing stock for show and sale, maintenance of machinery and equipment, and records and record keeping.
This compelling autobiography encapsulates the profound changes that transformed the underdeveloped world in the twentieth century. Jamsrangiin Sambuu, born in 1895 to a herder family in a remote region of Mongolia, rose to become ambassador and eventually president of a haltingly industrialized and urbanized Communist country. In the process, he came to know Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and other leading figures. Sambuu relates horrifying vignettes of the harsh and oppressive rule over Mongolia by the Chinese, the Manchus, and the Mongolian nobility and lamas until 1911. Yet his stories of exploitation and torture are balanced by a lively, picturesque, and informative portrait of traditional herding life, including diet, popular religion, marital ceremonies, and medicine. Sambuu relates how his visceral hatred of the avaricious Mongolian Buddhist monks and nobles prompted him to join the Communist movement in the early 1920s. Valued for his education and work ethic, he rose rapidly in the Party bureaucracy, becoming ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II and to North Korea during the Korean War. Recounting his eventful diplomatic career, Sambuu paints vivid portraits of Stalin, Anastas Mikoyan, and other prominent Soviet leaders. Enriched by a thoughtful introduction by leading scholar Morris Rossabi that sets the historical stage, this life story of a still-beloved Mongolian illuminates a world few in the West have seen.
The Dodoth—a tall, handsome people of the northern tip of Uganda—are a tribe in transition. They are proud, often cruel, warrior herdsmen whose oldest members live just as they did hundreds of years ago, but whose younger members sometimes learn to read and write and have brushed against the modern world. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas accompanied three anthropological expeditions to Africa and lived among the Dodoth. She displays a remarkable ability to communicate with the tribespeople and describe their lives and customs.
A secret agent aboard a galactic railroad must derail a sinister conspiracy in this “rip-roaring” thriller by the author of Star Wars: Thrawn (Publishers Weekly). The universe is a dangerous place, a fact violently brought home to Frank Compton for perhaps the thousandth time when a stranger delivering a message dies right in front of him. An operative for Western Alliance Intelligence until his whistle-blowing activities got him fired, Compton is now being sought out by the Spiders, the robotic alien beings responsible for the upkeep and operation of the Quadrail transportation system, which connects the galaxy’s twelve inhabited empires. The discovery of a sinister plot to use the Quadrail for ill has brought the Spiders to Compton—for only someone possessing the former agent’s unique skills can stop the scheme for good. But when Compton leaves Earth behind—joining forces with Bayta, the Spiders’ beautiful, half-human representative aboard the Quadrail—the terrifying scope of a vast, galaxy-wide conspiracy begins to reveal itself. Targeted on all sides by alien assassins of every shape and species, Compton and his enigmatic new partner are suddenly in a race against a clock ticking down to an irreversible doomsday, one in which the galactic night train will derail, carrying all members of humanity screaming to their deaths. The first in the Quadrail series from the Hugo Award–winning author of Blackcollar and many New York Times–bestselling Star Wars novels, Night Train to Rigel is an action-packed “great read” (Booklist).