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Prior Knowledge
Summer of 1966. The Vietnam war is reaching its height, and Sonny has just enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. On his way home from the recruiting office he meets Joe, a 15-year-old from New York City. The two teenagers form a strong bond and spend every day in each other’s company until Sonny leaves for Vietnam.
Years later, Hendricks is on a flight home from the war. A chance encounter with a fellow veteran leads him to upstate New York and a career in the New York State Police. But Hendricks is suffering partial memory loss due to trauma he suffered in the war. He needs to build a new life for himself, which he does successfully, until one day he finds himself in a situation that triggers emotions he cannot explain or control.
Is Hendricks regaining his lost memories? And what is the significance of Sonny and Joe’s friendship all those years earlier? Hendricks’s journey is painful. Will it lead him to discover what has eluded him for so long?
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Potential
Thirty-year-old single dad, David Lucas, has taken up running as a therapeutic release from watching his wife die of cancer. When he sets out on his regular morning run to tackle the worst fog the Fens have experienced for many years, he is unaware that his life is to change in a way he could never have imagined. And when tragedy strikes, a chance encounter with ex-Olympic runner and coach, Charlie Greaves, presents him with the opportunity of a lifetime - a possible place in the 2012 Olympic team. But can he and will he take it? At home, his life has its problems with his live-in girlfriend and 11-year-old son at loggerheads. In the days and months leading up to the big day, and in the midst of receiving some devastating news, will he turn his back on his dream and be the father and partner his family needs? Relive again the halcyon days of that golden summer of 2012 in this exciting and compelling novel, and discover if one man, with one goal, has what it takes to go for gold.
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Pig
“We can do what we like,” said the burly policemen to Bill. “We’re the law.” That sounded just the sort of job that might suit him. Do what you like with impunity, have a bit of power over folk, and get paid a half-decent wage at the same time. It was the moment of his epiphany, but it was a change of life that brought Bill into a larger game than the one he was used to, a world where more powerful people than he exercised their entitlements, a world where he was returned to a familiar struggle against unfair laws and the plight of desperate people. Using his native wit – and a GCSE in Latin, he would proudly claim – Bill treads a risky path to help foil organised people trafficking, sustained throughout by his sense of humour and an old-school irreverence. If you can’t beat them, join them, may have been his motto, but he learns that sometimes one has to accept there are certain elements of established society that will never be beaten. Bill, however, remains optimistic to the last, he has his own inner advocate for survival, and survive he will.
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Perhaps a Jealous Foe
The action begins in 2000 with Louise looking at her past. Then it moves back to 1970, where Louise has everything a contemporary woman could ask for: a loving husband, two children, a beautiful home, a good social life. The family is comfortably off, and while her life is circumscribed by her domestic duties and her involvement with the church, she is content with her lot.
Then, she meets Nicholas, and everything changes. While Nicholas makes his attraction to Louise obvious from the outset, he is apparently as conventional as Louise and too inhibited to proceed with more than flirtation and verbal innuendo.
The relationship between Louise and Nicholas develops slowly, because of the lack of opportunity, and because Nicholas seems unable to make up his mind what he really wants. When they finally make love, all is not quite as Louise had expected. Nicholas eventually also admits to the secret in his past which Louise has discovered by chance.
The story reaches its climax in a night of passion in which Louise, changes her mind, and exults in having finally got the man she loves so much.
Finally, the story returns to 2000, where the aftermath of that night is revealed.
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Passion of Kin
Dive into a whirlpool of family secrets, vengeance, and dark pasts in this stirring narrative that commences amidst the 1949 North Carolina cotton mill strike, marking the onset of unionization and a cauldron of violence. As two young adults inherit the turbulent legacy of their kin, a storm of revelations threatens to shatter the fragile bonds holding their family together. Unveiling secrets could be a path to healing or the trigger for further discord and bloodshed.
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Overview
An estate agent’s true stories of battles between buyers and sellers, plus a guide on where the world’s greatest treasure troves exist, and how to get them. This is also the story of a revolutionary sailing rig and, most importantly, the proofs of worlds beyond. To help his clients’ anonymity, Ian has placed this as a post-war romance, recalling what people paid for estates in those days.
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Outnumbered by Daughters
The book is an adult fictional novel, based on a young man’s struggle with sadness, tragedy, complicated romances and family life. He attempts to bring up twin girls and an older stepdaughter as a single parent through their middle school years.
He encounters all sorts of problems that readers could relate to in their own personal life, involving mixed emotions and hardship, including his own complicated and failed romances on his journey through this stage of parenthood.
He has to deal with embarrassment and overcome all sorts of new experiences as he tries to understand the problems and needs that young girls have to face as they grow up.
The girls’ teenage years present him with a completely different set of problems, but he does at least have better success with romance, resulting in a wife, new daughter and stepdaughter finally completing his family.
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Out Of The Dark
Imagine you could no longer use the internet or your mobile phone!
This is the scenario in 2050 when the oil runs out and Britain can’t produce enough electricity.
Drastic power cuts then become the norm, and many people lose their jobs and their homes.
The story is seen through the eyes of two women. Jess, in her thirties, is tied to a job she hates and has to live apart from her husband and young son, while Gertrude, in her seventies, has not left her flat for twenty years and cannot contact her son in Australia.
Their lives are linked, but neither woman has a real concept of the struggles that the other faces each day. Both of them are seeking a solution to get out of the dark.
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Our Lost Boy
A tragic secret, a broken family, a lost boy – who was Edward, and what happened to him?
Life for Jen and her family, including 11 year old, autistic son Ned, hasn’t always been easy, but things are improving. Ned is thriving in the right school, and getting the support he needs to navigate his way through an alien and sometimes frightening world.
But Jen is troubled by something from her past. She’s haunted by a nightmare that has disturbed her since childhood, and she’s increasingly uneasy about her relationship with her cold, distant parents - what are they hiding from her?
‘Our Lost Boy’ follows Jen’s search for the truth, taking her back to her childhood home in Yorkshire where shocking memories are reawakened.
Jen and her mother, Maureen, have been pulled apart by a tragic secret, but when the truth is out can they mend their broken relationship? Can Jen forgive Maureen, and can Maureen forgive herself?
And what about Ned - can the 21st century offer him, and others like him, the future that Edward was denied?
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One
Meet Adam – it’s his fault whenever his football team loses, Angelina who sabotages her ballet classmates, Billy who can’t sit still, Dora who has decided it’s time to fall in love, Kathy who knows her own mind when it comes to fashion, Alice who starts a campaign to save the apricot tree in her backyard and Armellieery who has friends named ‘Palooma, Cheetah and Paisleee with three e’s’. These are a few of the characters who appear in One – a book of monologues for young performers.There are 81 solos in One. They are sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes magical and sometimes daring – each with something different to offer young people looking for dramatic content that is relevant, engaging and challenging. These performers may be studying Drama at secondary Colleges, university Performing Arts courses, Youth Theatre companies or preparing for eisteddfods and community events.The monologues here will also appeal to teachers of theatre and drama and prove useful in classes based on character and voice development, the use of dramatic elements and stagecraft, use of space, actor-audience relationships and the study of important theatrical theorists. These works will reward ‘digging’ beneath the surface to discover suggested or hidden meaning. One may also appeal to more mature readers and those with a love of theatre.Chris Dickins is a playwright, theatre director and teacher who has been working in the Performing Arts since 1973. He is a prolific playwright having written around 90 plays – many of which have been specially commissioned for small community companies. Chris’ plays have been produced across Australia and Internationally; been studied for VCA Drama courses; used as teaching resources at universities and at NIDA and have been nominated for Victorian Green Room awards. In 1993 Chris represented Australia at the five writers from five Nations ASSITEJ international congress (the children’s theatre branch of UNESCO) in Frankfurt, Germany where his theories on theatre were adopted into ASSITEJ archives. Chris shares his life with wife Christine and lives in the rural artisan village of Fish Creek, Victoria, Australia.
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Nothing Personal
Deemed ugly by her mother, who walked out on her at birth, Cypia was brought up by her father, who adored her.
Used and abused in her teens by people who should have loved her, the twists and turns of her life had brought her to this.
Having suffered from anorexia her whole life, she felt so much guilt for things she had no control over.
She realised that she couldn’t change the past, no matter how hard she tried.
But given one last wish, she wanted to be re-united with the children she hadn’t seen for 42 years, had loved her whole life and would till her last breath.£3.50 -
Nothing Left Behind
When faced with your own mortality, when death is imminent for you and all those around you, what would you do differently? What would you regret? How would you raise your child? How would you face your final hours? These are the questions Brennan, Joel and Eve are faced with, when thrown into a world of limited days. Plagued by a nightmare, Joel cannot decipher, he is desperate to do what is right by his daughter. Brennan believes he has nothing to show for his life and, now when it is too late, he is overcome by bitterness and self-loathing. And Eve’s agoraphobia and anxiety is wearing thin as another part of her is desperate for life.
The reader is plunged into our characters inner worlds, as fate drags them together in the final days, submerged with both despair and hope, devastation and love. And what of your worldview; your beliefs, philosophy and politics, where would it lead you when you come to stand face-to-face with death itself?
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