Hold the Ladder Steady

Growing up in Australia in the early fifties, Robin is intrigued by the folklore of the pink boto told by her father. A childhood fantasy confirms her belief that like all fairy tales, there will always be a boto somewhere waiting just for her. Robin observes the conflicts of Roman Catholicism and the social changes of the sixties that swept like a tide into her adolescence. It was the age of the pill, the Vietnam War and good girls who still wore their hats to mass on Sundays. When she launches herself into life in the city with a man having a cowlick, she leaves the sea behind. New and old friends bring an awareness of the issues that confront Australia in a new age, when the complexities of feminism and sexuality were a thorn in the side of a country that prided itself on fair play.

Holding Strong

Forced to leave school and her foster home, Abigail is a 16-year-old girl who would like nothing more than to be normal or maybe extraordinary. She has big dreams that may just start with returning to school. But will she make it? If Abigail can change her world maybe so can we.

Holes in the Ground: War and Ore

When Thomas Longois Lefoy is sent to Tangiers to investigate a German plot involving Moroccan phosphates, he uncovers a sinister Soviet Union involvement in the Asturias miners’ strike of 1934 and its unforeseen consequences for Andoni Arriola, a Basque metallurgist. As he delves deeper into the case, he finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the Spanish Civil War, the injury and death of British intelligence agents, and the protection of Britain’s interests in the iron and copper mining industries. As he travels from Tangiers to Gibraltar, Huelva, and Bilbao, he witnesses the devastating effects of civil war and the destruction of open-cast mining. Along the way, he encounters Heinrich Rathenau, a German industrial chemist seeking refuge, and becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of espionage and political maneuvering that reveals the high stakes of international trade and the human cost of war.

Hollow Man

It seems the afterlife will not relinquish its grip on Mac Closkey, even after taking from him his marriage and human love. His unusual ministry calls him to investigate Victorian bodies discovered on the local mountain. Once hazed by the world of spirits, Mac Closkey has solved the legendary Jack the Ripper case. Soon his local chapter requires his help to look for the head of the ex-commissioner’s wife whose disappearance is not as straightforward a murder as it first seems. Its repercussions will ripple through the highest realms of British society.

Hollow Puppets

What started out as an investigation into possible murders soon reveals a much darker, older game at play. Suspending everything they have come to believe in and drawing on powers previously unimagined, Jackson and Alex embark on a journey that will leave you breathless in anticipation and horror. Their road is twisted and dark but they face it together, drawing ever closer, united in terror. In their quest for answers, Jackson will need to master himself and his evolving abilities so that he will be ready for the inevitable, climactic showdown with a shadowy, mysterious force. A force of unimaginable age, intent upon manipulating them towards its own evil ends by squeezing every bit of horror, heartache and desperation from the both of them. Jackson has limited time to become what he was always meant to be, will it be enough?

Holly Hermit Crab's New Friends

Holly is a bossy little hermit crab who likes everything just so. In the busy rock pools, along the sandy beach and out into the sea, it is her way or no way. She snaps her claws and makes demands of all the other seaside creatures everywhere she goes.One day, she comes across a rather special looking shimmering shell. A super shiny shell that will have a magical effect on the way she treats others forever. The important lesson in being kind to others that she learns along the way.

Home and Away

Home and Away – A Civil Engineering Odyssey draws on the author’s long career as an engineer responsible for many projects around the world. In the memoir he highlights some of those projects with descriptions of the design processes and the construction methods used to bring the works to successful completion, keeping technical detail to the minimum needed for the reader’s understanding of the projects. Personal reminiscences of his travels complement descriptions of life as an engineer.

Developments in analysis of structures during the author’s working life have enabled all manner of structures to be designed to display elegance of form in a natural way without unnecessary embellishment. Practising engineers understand the satisfaction to be found in designing such engineering works and seeing them built as they envisaged. It is hoped the author’s enthusiasm for his work as expressed in the memoir may inspire others to become the civil engineers of the future.

Honey the Witch in Which Witch Am I?

A young witch sets out to discover what magical talents she holds. With the help and support of her magical family, she faces a series of difficult challenges to find out what type of witch she is destined to become. But what if she is not a witch at all?

Hoodwink

Simon Davis, the PM for the Peoples Unite Party, was confident that in the next election, on 7 May 2015, he would be staying in 10 Downing Street behind the black door. But with the train crash into Waterloo Station and the PM being stretchered off, it was not until he reached the hospital for treatment that his panic kicked in—he had left his parliamentary red case on the crashed train.

The PM was not aware that young Rob Hat had crawled into the first-class carriage to witness the benefits it had to offer. This was when Rob Hat noticed the red parliamentary case. He never knew at this juncture what the contents in this red case were. Later on, when discovery of its contents was to become public knowledge, one could be assured PM Simon Davis would be wanting to kick all his earlier confidence into the long grass.

A little later in the same week, the notorious criminal Trevor Charles Baines was put to rest at Honour Oak Cemetery in South London. With his death, the millions he had stolen died along with him.

It was not until Rob was in the Kilimanjaro region, helping his uncle with his tourism business that also helped the less fortunate children, that he found Baines was out on a jolly, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Even with the disguise, Baines’s unique tattoo gave him away.

Hook, Line and Scammer

Having been dealt a bad hand as she enters the autumn of her life, Elizabeth suddenly finds a spark with Joseph through the power of the internet, but is everyone who they say they are?

Thousands of miles away, Eb is going the other way – although he has done well at school, the pressure of being the man of the house at a young age and a series of misfortunes place him in a compromising position with a local criminal gang.

Unwittingly and unknowingly joined together through DCI Jane Porter’s ambitious police crackdown on Cybercrime, Eb and Elizabeth find they have a common interest in rescuing each other.

A variety of interesting characters in this Venn-diagram of relationships; crime; and justice, bring joy, pain, murder, friendship, identity fraud, family and love together, but when you are not sure who is holding the rod, anyone can get hooked!

Hope

Our world is experiencing a daily decline of cultural, moral, and other important values.

Persisting on the edge of nuclear and environmental disaster, for consolation and happiness the novel Hope returns trust to the individual and society, as his characters find themselves in the focus of depressive influences, but never forget their values.

Love, perseverance and hope are levers for advancing the human being in the true direction, which primarily implies healing human dignity and achieving success that serve as an example.

Hope and Despair – A Collection of Poems

Violence, a pandemic and climate change had led to continued human suffering in the recent decades. Turbulence all around the world has hit everyone on the planet, from those who were alive at the time of the trenches of WW1, to those born in ‘Coronavirus’ times. One young mind deeply disturbed by the current events resorted to writing poetry to express his feelings about the worsening current world situation. Sohan started writing about human suffering from the age of seven, after which poetry became his medium of expression of his feelings, his frustration at the past, his worries about the present, and his fears of the future. Enter a teenager’s mind full of random thoughts, printed in black and white, on topics ranging from past wars to current climate affairs, from things as deep as the mental suffering faced in lockdown to the simple beauty in a painting in this anthology Hope and Despair – A Collection of Poems.