Have you ever wondered why so many motorcyclists have a tiny little bell hanging off the bottom of their bike? They were placed there by a friend to protect them on their travels. These little bells are known throughout the motorcycle community as Guardian Bells. They carry the Guardian magic which has strict rules set to 'activate' the safekeeping of the rider. Come back in time with us and meet the wildly imaginative Guardians, learn their story and find out how this folklore spread through a very unlikely friendship. If you love motorcycles you will love this fictional tale. Perfect for readers of all ages.
Jeff Greenwood-Adams is the oldest man in England, and for two thirds of his long life has been harbouring an incredible secret. A secret that will one day benefit mankind enormously. A curious letter addressed to him is then discovered within an alien monolith on a remote and unknown world at the very edge of the solar system. Its a message from his younger brother Alan, whom he hasnt seen for almost a hundred and twenty years. It details the nature of the secret, but not its whereabouts. Jeff is then compelled to recount a curious legend; one he has dedicated his life to studying. It begins a hundred million years ago with a failed colonisation of Earth, and the unlikely survival of a single alien being who lives up until the twelfth century. He has in his possession an artefact a symbol of his race, but when he dies passes it onto John, a lowly English medieval serf. John is then faced with an almost impossible quest to take the artefact to a remote and sacred location, then wait an astonishing eight hundred and thirteen years for the rightful owners of the artefact to return for it. The story then fades through the centuries, until an English sailing boat bound for Ceylon strays off course and discovers an incredibly old man living alone on a barren island. He claims to have been there for six hundred years. The soul survivor of that sailing boat then begins a new life in India, but on his deathbed compels his eldest daughter to revisit the island and document the old mans fascinating story. That story then becomes the Legend of the Last Guardian!
The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. This movie tie-in edition features cover art from the movie and exclusive Q&A with members of the cast, including Taylor Swift, Brenton Thwaites and Cameron Monaghan.
An immersive examination of why the age of democratic revolutions was also a time of hero worship and strongmen In Men on Horseback, the Princeton University historian David A. Bell offers a dramatic new interpretation of modern politics, arguing that the history of democracy is inextricable from the history of charisma, its shadow self. Bell begins with Corsica’s Pasquale Paoli, an icon of republican virtue whose exploits were once renowned throughout the Atlantic World. Paoli would become a signal influence in both George Washington’s America and Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. In turn, Bonaparte would exalt Washington even as he fashioned an entirely different form of leadership. In the same period, Toussaint Louverture sought to make French Revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality a reality for the formerly enslaved people of what would become Haiti, only to be betrayed by Napoleon himself. Simon Bolivar witnessed the coronation of Napoleon and later sought refuge in newly independent Haiti as he fought to liberate Latin America from Spanish rule. Tracing these stories and their interconnections, Bell weaves a spellbinding tale of power and its ability to mesmerize. Ultimately, Bell tells the crucial and neglected story of how political leadership was reinvented for a revolutionary world that wanted to do without kings and queens. If leaders no longer rule by divine right, what underlies their authority? Military valor? The consent of the people? Their own Godlike qualities? Bell’s subjects all struggled with this question, learning from each other’s example as they did so. They were men on horseback who sought to be men of the people—as Bell shows, modern democracy, militarism, and the cult of the strongman all emerged together. Today, with democracy’s appeal and durability under threat around the world, Bell’s account of its dark twin is timely and revelatory. For all its dangers, charisma cannot be dispensed with; in the end, Bell offers a stirring injunction to reimagine it as an animating force for good in the politics of our time.
‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.
An English translation and a commentary on the chronicle of Queen Cama, an important but neglected female monarch who founded a dynasty in Northern Thailand.
A bold new history of the French Revolution from the standpoint of the peasants, workers, women and sans culottes The assault on the Bastille, the Reign of Terror, Danton mocking his executioner, Robespierre dispensing a fearful justice, and the archetypal gadfly Marat—the events and figures of the French Revolution have exercised a hold on the historical imagination for more than 200 years. It has been a template for heroic insurrection and, to more conservative minds, a cautionary tale. In the hands of Eric Hazan, author of The Invention of Paris, the revolution becomes a rational and pure struggle for emancipation. In this new history, the first significant account of the French Revolution in over twenty years, Hazan maintains that it fundamentally changed the Western world—for the better. Looking at history from the bottom up, providing an account of working people and peasants, Hazan asks, how did they see their opportunities? What were they fighting for? What was the Terror and could it be justified? And how was the revolution stopped in its tracks? The People’s History of the French Revolution is a vivid retelling of events, bringing them to life with a multitude of voices. Only in this way, by understanding the desires and demands of the lower classes, can the revolutionary bloodshed and the implacable will of a man such as Robespierre be truly understood.
Bernard Sumner pioneered the post-punk movement when he broke onto the scene as a founding member of Joy Division, and later as the front man of New Order. Heavily influencing U2 and The Cure while paving the way for post-punk revivalists like Interpol, Sumner's has left an indelible mark on punk and rock music that endures to this day. Famously reluctant to speak out, for the first time Sumner tell his story, a vivid and illuminating account of his childhood in Manchester, the early days of Joy Division, and the bands subsequent critical and popular successes. Sumner recounts Ian Curtis' tragic death on the eve of the band's first American tour, the formation of breakout band New Order, and his own first-hand account of the ecstasy and the agony of the 1970s Manchester music scene. Witty, fascinating and surprisingly moving, Chapter and Verse is an account of insights and spectacular personal revelations, including an appendix containing a complete transcript of a recording made of Ian Curtis experiencing hypnotic regression under the Sumner's amateur guidance and tensions between himself and former band member Peter Hook.
Can magic come in the form of a sleigh bell, or through an orphaned dog? Follow ten-year-old Aspen Pepin and his little dog, Oreo, when he becomes lost in New Hampshires Wapack Mountain Range on Christmas Eve. During the night, a stranger appears. He doesnt offer a rescue, but words of hope and an unusual gifta sleigh bell. As Aspen grows up, the mysterious lure of his sleigh bell beckons him to the wilderness, and he finds himself entering a magical valley, where he finds the true origins of his sleigh bell and the personal connection he has to the Legend of Bell Mountain. A tale for the young and young at heart, THE SECRET OF THE SLEIGH BELL teaches us that there is a little magic in each of us, and through positive thinking, we can overcome many obstacles in our lives.
"A young Barn Owl named Soren lives peacefully with his family. After he is pushed from his nest by his older brother, his idyllic world transforms into one of confusion and danger, as he is captured by evil chick-snatching owls and taken to the St Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls"--Goodreads.com.
