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Simone’s Choice
Imagine you are in a bar celebrating your birthday and your freedom as a newly divorced man when your eyes meet those of a stunning blue eyed blonde. The connection is instant and electric. Finally, after such a long and desperately hard road, could true love be within your reach?
This is deeply personal and moving true story written by author David John Baird about Michael, a 51-year-old professional, and the torrid and steamy romance that nearly destroyed him and his belief in finding the “one”.
In this semi-biographical romance thriller, Michael meets Simone, a bubbly Italian on the eve of her return to Singapore. They exchange numbers and embark on a cyber romance of Skype dates and instant messaging. He is over the moon when she announces she has a job in Sydney and is moving to be by his side. Their romance is passionate and raw, honest, and deeply authentic. The story, in Michael’s words, is an insightful account of his thoughts during their flourishing romance.
However, the constant interruption by Simone’s ex-boyfriend Marco arouses his suspicions and what happens next, no one could anticipate.
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So How Will You Sleep?
Do you want to sleep in a tree like a koala?
How about at the bottom of the ocean like a whale?
Or upside down in a cave like a bat?
Discover how different creatures go to sleep at night and imagine yourself snuggling down with them at bed time.
You can also try and spot the playful caterpillar hidden on every page.
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SOE Agent Code Name LILLY
Mary Dumont is a third officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service working at the Admiralty Communications Centre in London in 1942 where she is recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to become a wireless operator-saboteur. Parachuted into France, Mary joins a small band of resistance fighters where she leads a double life, a schoolteacher by day, a wireless operator by night; all goes horribly wrong, Mary is captured and tortured by an SS major who is determined to obtain both her codes and the names of her companions. Mary makes a daring escape during an air raid, unknown to her, German Intelligence has infiltrated SOE, a double agent known to Mary has also been parachuted into France to capture a Dutch scientist who is escaping to England with plans for the German V1 flying bomb. Evading capture, Mary’s resistance cell must get the scientist to England before he can be handed over to the Gestapo, but first Mary must eliminate the German double agent. Just when she thinks it is safe on returning to England, Mary and her companions discover the identity of the traitor within SOE, they must try to eliminate him before he can return the scientist to the Germans.
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Some Service to the State
The year is 1925. In the borderlands of a newly partitioned Ireland, a doctor new to Northern Ireland begins a search for a missing patient, a young girl who has fallen pregnant.
Meeting a wall of silence, she enlists the help of a local, a former IRA volunteer recently released from jail. Their enquiry brings them into contact with a community still suffering from the wounds of civil war. More worrying for them, they find they are beginning to rattle skeletons that some powerful people would prefer went undisturbed.
As they slowly begin to unravel the truth of the girl’s fate, they find that the traces they are following lead to some crimes more monstrous that they ever previously considered.
“Some Service to the State is a superb book with dialogue that would not be out of place on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. Mick McAlinden is a former IRA man caught on the wrong side of the border and the wrong side of history: a law student who ends up working in an abattoir. Aidan McQuade has created a character whose travails highlight the thwarted dreams and the tragedy of partition for so many people in post-revolutionary Ireland.”
- Ronan McGreevy, journalist and author of Great Hatred: the Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
“Like Graham Greene, Dennis Lehane, and Louise Penny before him, McQuade takes the humble crime story and uses it like a scalpel to probe and expose the darkness in human souls and human society.”
- Martin W. Sandler, National Book Award-winning author and historian.
“The sparring sparky dialogue is a delight and never fails to vivify the darkness. McQuade shows prodigious skill in shining a spotlight on the scandal of mother-and-baby homes and in brilliantly imbuing the past with his own potent blend of heart, soul and wit.”
- Rosemary Jenkinson, multi-award winning playwright and author of Marching Season.
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Songs From The Mansion House Garden
Through the ages we have lived in a split society of the haves and have-nots. Songs From The Mansion House Garden is a poetic look into the lives people lead, some through wealth, others religion or through nature, and how we perceive each other. Each will have an opinion on wealth; whether it is a necessity or a creator of each life.
By the end the reader can make their own decision on the author’s thoughts.
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Sparkles, the Magical White Unicorn: Book 1
Sparkles is a magical white unicorn who lives in a beautiful meadow with all her animal friends in a magical kingdom known as ‘Paradise Falls’.
There’s Rascal, the rabbit, Fawn, the baby deer and Blue, the blue bird.
By day they go on marvellous adventures together and by night they sleep under a magical star-lit sky in a green pasture full of sunflowers.
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Spy Within
Samantha and Emma’s late afternoon shopping trip was interrupted by a sudden attack to their town by an unknown enemy. The instinct to reconnect the broken family amid chaos and fear led them back home. Just when you think they are safe something else happens. The unexpected happens. We follow this family through much destruction and loss. We see the young people grow stronger, adults in the making. We see a broken marriage begin to heal in the brokenness. However, there’s a spy within and even the spy doesn’t realize who they are and what they are meant to do. Enjoy this tantalizing story as we go through the ups and downs, literally, when their world goes upside down. Or, dare I say, upside up?
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Steeple City
Steeple City is set in Cork City, Ireland and is a humorous story of how selfishness and loneliness can consume a family whose mother dies giving birth. We get to see life through the eyes of the main character Fin, a funny, lying, stealing fourteen-year-old bastard who despises his older gay brother and womanising father. The only rock in his life is his granny “The Mad Mullah”. The more hardship Fin inflicts or is inflicted upon him the more relatable he becomes. His toxic humour helps him and the reader navigate a year in his life. Fin’s immediate and extended family experience a year of love, laughter and death where an array of characters enter Steeple City with their own unique self-destructive story.
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Stumblings
‘Better to have questions you can’t answer than answers you can’t question.’
The author describes these poems as ‘stumblings’ because they are stumbling attempts to understand what can seem beyond understanding. In his writing he confronts the issues that are inescapably a part of being human, as he sees them playing out in the maelstrom of his own life. He takes us into areas of desperation, confusion, even despair, but also of acceptance, fulfilment, ecstasy, obstinate faith, and above all of tender love.
The poems range widely through philosophical musings, urgent questioning about what it is to be human, irony, self-mockery, overwhelming passion – and always with an intensity that acknowledges that everything matters, everything has meaning if only we could decode it. And throughout this volume the writer attempts to comprehend and reach the elusive God who he believes in but fails so comprehensively to connect with as deeply as he longs to.
Any readers who are prepared to stumble with the writer on this poetic journey through life may find themselves in a place where they can at least begin to understand, accept, and even glory in their imperfect humanity as the writer does. And maybe hope to stumble into Grace, enlightened and affirmed.
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Stumped
The brutal murder of a young married woman during an annual cricket match in the sleepy countryside village of Bundary near Bristol forms the backdrop to a novel of illicit affairs, an escort agency and the attempted break-up of an international drug smuggling ring based in the Balkans and operating in Britain and Eastern Europe.
Solving the murder involves cooperation between the Avon and Somerset Police and officers from the West Midlands who are working with The National Crime Agency to discover how drugs are being imported into Britain from The Balkans.
The visiting cricket team captain is a known drug dealer from the Wolverhampton area who is offered amnesty of a potential prison sentence if he will go undercover to try to break up the drug ring.
This brings him into contact with one of the suspects for the murder as he travels to Dubrovnik and Montenegro, where he meets up with the operators of the drug cartel who own a vineyard near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
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Subsequently Inevitable
They say our lives flash before our eyes when we die, but what if we preselect all the possibilities of our lives before we are born? Subsequently Inevitable is for anyone who ever wondered what might have been. What if you had stayed with the one that got away, had that baby…or what if you acted on those cold feet? Summer’s life will be everything she signed up for, as all the alternatives for her life paths play out. Find out what happens if Summer ends up alone or with the abusive Craig, loveable Luke, complicated Louanne, toxic Lexi, the man of her dreams, Tym, or her first but very twisted love, Stefan. The path Summer chooses is her decision to make, but the events that follow are subsequently inevitable.
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Summer Poetry in Loch Ness
The glistening holy water of Loch Ness and the glorious surrounding hills of bloom and heather n' thistle glow into beautiful summer poetry from the mouths of cherubs, angels and the treasured imagination of Miss Bonnie Blue Sunflower. Breathe in the warmth as the shimmering sun rises and sun sets and the angelic never-ending sunshine in-between bringing all the joys of summer to Loch Ness. Feel the gentle, mellow breeze from the wings of ladybirds and fluttering butterflies and treat your sweet taste buds to the fruit and honey of poetry from heaven all about Loch Ness. One day, your soul will be led to Loch Ness by butterflies and birds of paradise because whatever your faith, all heavens are above the magical water of Loch Ness and the glorious dusk auroras sent by all of heavens' angels to delight your eyes and bring warmth to the enchanting heart of all those who truly believe in the glory and faith of poetry loved by all gods.