Lava pours from the Thunder Mountain, driven by a malevolent spirit who has taken Swamp Witch under his tutelage. The thumpi work furiously to build barriers to the continual lava flow which imperils the Tree of Life and the Emerald Forest. To make matters worse, Swamp Witch has convinced Captain Potter and his men to make an assault on the Emerald Forest to steal the Forest Stone and recapture the thumpi. Join Princess Bee as the final battles between good and evil are fought in the land of the shuffle thumpus. Visit www.shufflethumpus.com for more information on the Shuffle Thumpus trilogy.
In the first book of the shuffle thumpus we find the thumpi living an idyllic existence in the Emerald Forest beneath the Tree of Life. After encountering the beautiful and magical unicorns they are captured by the dreaded loose skins and made to work the gold mines of Newtown. Geni, one of the thumpi leaders, becomes allies with a flying unicorn called Champion and a very unique rodent called King Rat. With these two and a group of thumpi rescuers they plot and execute a daring escape. All but one shuffle thumpus makes it to safety. Now they are on the run with the loose skins scouring the land looking for them. Gabby, the last remaining shuffle thumpus sits in his prison in the Caves of Despair hoping his friends will rescue him. Each day he is taken, in chains, to the mountain to dig for gold. He works all day without rest, while the loose skins whip and beat him when his strength wanes. How will he survive? What more can happen to our thumpi friends?
This book is indeed a puzzle book, intended to amuse the readers as they try to deduce the right answer to the various challenges that line this book's pages. From riddles to sudoku-style puzzles, the author truly knows his craft and those seeking brain teasers to tickle the mind would be delighted to discover this book.
First edition of Sinclair's savage satire, loosely based on the life and career of Edward L. Doheny, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. Although Sinclair's famous novel The Jungle deals with Chicago's meatpacking industry, he moved west to Pasadena in 1916 and began writing novels set in California, the best of which was Oil!, the story of the education of Bunny Ross, son of wildcat oil man Joe Ross after oil is discovered outside Los Angeles. The novel was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In California Classics, Lawrence Clark Powell called Oil! "Sinclair's most sustained and best writing."
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
