The #1 New York Times bestselling Beautiful Creatures series continues in this brand-new digital-exclusive story. Catch up with Ethan, Lena, and Link as they finally graduate from high school and get ready to leave the small Southern town of Gatlin. But when Dark Caster Ridley makes an appearance, the sometime bad girl can't resist picking a fight with her sometime boyfriend, Link. Angry and rebellious as ever, Ridley ends up alone in New York City and becomes entangled in the dangerous underground Caster club scene, where the stakes are high and losers pay the ultimate price. Where's a Linkubus when you need him?
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere. At least, that's what I thought. Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong. There was a curse. There was a girl. And in the end, there was a grave. Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever. Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them. In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
* "A natural fit for Stranger Things fans." - Booklist, starred review From New York Times bestselling author Lauren DeStefano comes an atmospheric and spine-tingling story about four children who dream in tandem. Tucked deep in the woods and surrounded by a great iron fence lies Brassmere Academy for the Extraordinary, a school for orphans with strange and wonderful gifts. Twelve-year-old Plum has lived there for as long as she can remember. Each night, she ventures into her dreams alongside her three best friends, Vien, Gwendle, and Artem to fight monsters and journey on dangerous quests. But one night, Plum gets a mysterious warning that she and her friends are no longer safe. And the next morning, Artem is nowhere to be found. As Plum, Vien, and Gwendle search for their friend--in both the dreaming and waking worlds--they start to uncover alarming secrets about Brassmere and its intentions. Will they be able to find Artem before it's too late, or will they be next to disappear?
From the world of Beautiful Creatures--the instant New York Times bestselling tale of love and magic. Ridley Duchannes is nobody's heroine. She's a Dark Caster, a Siren. She can make you do things. Anything. You can't trust her, or yourself when she's around. And she'll be the first to tell you to stay away--especially if you're going to do something as stupid as fall in love with her. Lucky for Ridley, her wannabe rocker boyfriend, Wesley "Link" Lincoln, never listens to anyone. Link doesn't care if Rid's no good for him, and he takes her along when he leaves small-town Gatlin to follow his rock-star dream. He teams up with a ragtag group of Dark Casters, and when the band scores a gig at a hot Underground club, it looks like all of Link's dreams are about to come true. But New York City is a dangerous place for both Casters and Mortals, and soon Ridley realizes that Link's bandmates are keeping secrets. With bad-boy club owner Lennox Gates on her heels, Rid is determined to find out the truth. What she discovers is worse than she could have imagined: Link has a price on his head that no Caster or Mortal can ever pay. With their lives on the line, what's a Siren to do? Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthors of the Beautiful Creatures novels, are back to cast another magical spell. Their signature blend of mystery, suspense, and romance, with a healthy dose of wit and danger, will pull fans in and leave them begging for more.
Every culture, in every era, has its adventure myths - the golden hero willing to walk through fire elevates us all beyond our fears and limits. But more often than commonly recognized, there are darker reasons for dangerous pursuits. When do mountains, poles, and oceans become merely an incidental stage for a troubled psychodrama? Where, truly, falls the line between adventure and madness? Psychologist Geoff Powter looks into the lives of eleven adventurers he calls The Burdened, The Bent, and The Lost, presenting previously unpublished information provided by witnesses, friends, and family.
"Typhoon," "earthquake," "explosion," "upheaval," are words connoting waste and destruction, to be sure. But remember there is a creative aspect to catastrophe which sweeps away the old and prepares the way for the new. Be that as it may, in describing the presidency of Duffy Artois the word "revolution" is simply inadequate. "Firestorm" might be a word used by members of the two-party machine that governed America before Artois. But in truth no single word suffices. Only a bookful of words might hope to capture the visionary reel of the Artois era. Hence "The Dangerous Dream." We can discover no writing nor record that predicted greatness for the ambitious and popular boy growing up in Los Angeles: growing first into a passable scholar, then into a criminal attorney, into a prosecutor, a district attorney, and climactically, in 1998, into the California governor's mansion. Young Duffy Artois seemed destined merely for worldly success. In 2002, as California governor, Artois bravely took all the blame for an abyssal budget deficit, even though there was plenty of blame to go around. After one 4-year term, he was narrowly defeated for reelection. For the next 5 years he was content to work behind the scenes as a consultant, speechwriter, campaign manager. He was content to be invisible. All the while, in the privacy of his heart, a critical mass was smoldering. Historians may quibble about whether the catharsis began during his term as governor or afterward. There is no quibble about the historical fact that by 2007, the year a man named Skipper came along and lighted the fuse, Artois had morphed into a walking, talking megaton bomb.
Untamable. Damaged. Angry. Once full of promise and life, now lost in the shadows of resentment and detachment, this is Dream of Night's story—and it is also Shiloh’s. One is a thoroughbred racehorse, the other an eleven-year-old foster child. Starved to the bone, Dream of Night is still a very powerful animal, kicking, bucking, screaming to show his strength. Shiloh has been starved in other ways—starved of affection, starved of stability and she lashes out too…with sarcasm. This injured and abused racehorse has a lot in common with punky Shiloh and by chance they both find themselves under the care of Jessalyn DiLima—a last stop for each before the state takes more drastic measures—sending the girl to a “residential facility” and the horse to a vet...for euthanizing. Jess is giving them a second chance, a last chance—but she fosters animals and children like this for a reason—she’s a little broken, too. And she knows what it’s like to have lost nearly everything she loves. As the horse warms up to the girl and the girl lets her guard down for the horse, the three of them become an unlikely family. They recognize their similarities in order to heal their pasts, but not before one last tragedy threatens to take it all away.
An exhilarating, wondrous middle grade debut about a brother and sister on a quest that “swoops from thrilling to terrifying to heartwarming and back again” (BookPage) to defeat a tyrannical ruler and protect a magical book. “[W]ill appeal to readers of Kelly Barnhill and Lemony Snicket” (Publishers Weekly). Rachel and Robert live a gray, dreary life under the rule of cruel and calculating Charles Malstain. That is, until one night, when their librarian father enlists their help to steal a forbidden book. Before their father is captured, Rachel and Robert are given one mission: find the missing final page. But to uncover the secrets of The Book of Stolen Dreams, the siblings must face darkness and combat many evils to be rewarded with the astonishing, magical truth about the book. Nevertheless, they resolve to do everything in their power to stop it from falling into Charles Malstain’s hands. For if it does, he could rule their world forever.
A literary and political biography of Muammar Gaddafi, Leader of the Revolution. Most Western readers do not know the real story of a man, who was born in a Bedouin tent, destined to follow a nomadic life, wandering across Libya with his family. But his father recognized that this long-awaited son was special, and he sent the boy to school at age 10. Little Muammar had to walk the more than 20 miles to the school and back home on weekends. Despite his extreme poverty--he slept on the Mosque floor at night--he not only loved to learn, but to share what he learned with other children too poor to go to school. Like American boys, he loved his family, his religion and his country. He longed to make a difference and to honor all three---and he grew up to do just that. To the end of his life, he remained true to his Muslim faith, his family and the country he rescued from Colonial enslavement. He was always on the side of freedom and supported those who fought for it. He was not a terrorist and he didn't support terrorism, but he became the man the West loved to hate and demonize. Though he was only known as his country's Leader and Guide, he invented a form of democracy his nation practiced, and he sought to help the countries of Africa, the West branded and described him as a "brutal dictator". Despite overwhelming evidence that his country loved and wanted him to remain their leader, the West was dermined in 2011 to do what their previous assassination attempts had failed to do: eliminate Gaddafi. Shortly before his death, Gaddafi told the West that he "was in a place you will never get me: I am in the hearts of millions." Once you know his life story, you will see why this has remained and will continue to remain true.
The novel, Golden Streams, Dangerous Dreams, is the same story Shawn Swanky, and the Dragon Heart Pictures production team, made into a feature length movie in the summer of 2002. After hearing about the GSDD project, or after seeing the movie, so many people found the underlying story so entertaining, enoyable and interesting, that they began asking for copies of the script to read. Screenwriter/director Shawn Swanky responded with this fascinating short novel. Fast moving and easy to read, it features all the personal conflicts, the vivid sketching of competing visions, and the escalating drama that left people enjoying, and thinking about, the movie for days after leaving the theatre. Rarely ever has a young author packed so much story and wisdom into such a short space. Will the Anderson brothers discover Jim Richmond's buried treasure, and emerge from the gold rush rich as princes? Will the innocent Thomas be pulled along as his older brother takes ever bigger, and increasingly more questionable, risks? Will Paul realize his dream, or will he go mad from hurried hope and hot desire? Will the constable arrive in time to save Claire, Jim's fianc;eacute;e, from becoming another gold rush casualty at Paul's hand? And, then, among all these characters competing for the gold, there is also an ever deepening conflict between different visions of what makes a human being rich, truly rich, and about "...what it takes" to become rich. In the end, it is this conflict that might see Thomas either dead, or emerging from Devil's Canyon a rich man. GSDD is about the hope of living one's life as one who is rich. It is about trying too hard to realize a dream, and it explores what it means to be a "rich" human being. Although set in gold rush Barkerville, it is a universal story, one re-enacted in many settings, in many times, and even in our own time. The digital revolution, and the advent of the Internet, is only the most recent example of a major gold rush. In such an event, being first, having dumb luck, making a fortunate choice, or any combination of these, rather than hard work, diligence, discipline or knowledge, are most important in determining who has the chance to become disproportionately rich. These riches flow first to those there to seize them, not to those who would earn them, deserve them or know best how to use them. And, then, it seems most of those who grabbed the gold begin to loose it. Thus, the legacy of a gold rush is equally as well measured in the grotesque distortion of lives endured by so many participants, and their families, as it is in terms of the wealth created. "A story teller's first job is to entertain," Swanky says. "It has been gratifying to have so many people tell me Golden Streams, Dangerous Dreams made them both laugh and cry in the two hours it takes to read the book or watch the movie."
