' What need have you to dread the monstrous crying of wind?' -W.B. Yeats Buenos Aires, 1939: Anna McGeoch arrives in Argentina from Scotland to join her brother and his wife and work on a Christian mission among the Matacos Indians. But within hours of her arrival she learns that her brother has been killed. Anna stays on in Buenos Aires and is welcomed into the glamorous lifestyle of the Hurlingham Club's polo-playing community. When she marries Tito Cadoret, a life of wealth and happiness seems to lie ahead. But, unknown to Anna, Cadoret is already in thrall to a corrupt and powerful lawyer, and as the years pass, he and his family are drawn ever deeper into a dark world of murder, blackmail, and the 'Dirty War'. When, in 1982, the British Task Force sails for the Falklands, Anna's daughter Nikki sails with it as a naval nurse aboard a hospital ship. After the battles are over, she tends the wounds of British and Argentine sailors and soldiers, and sees at first hand the tragedy and futility of armed conflict. As in the case of so many women down the centuries, Anna and Nikki suffer much in order to keep the family together, and the price they pay for personal freedom is high.

On a scorching, dusty road in south-central Illinois in the late 1930's, Doc finds Cully, eleven, running from his father's death in the fields. He takes Cully in, as he had taken in other stray creatures, and teaches him the life of a rural veterinarian. Thus the boy gains an understanding that death, a commonplace in nature's cycle, reaches animals and people, young and old, by accident or intent. One day a letter from Connecticut, three-months delayed, arrives for the boy Cully from the mother who had abandoned him two years earlier. The letter, an old out-of-tune piano, a curling photograph, and some names buried deep in his vanished youth draw Doc with Cully eastward on the National Road, Cully toward his future and Doc toward his forgotten youth. With quiet, poetic force, the journal-told story emerges like the gradual focusing of an old stereopticon, the two pictures blending to reveal an unsuspected three-dimensional depth as the lost boy searches for his mother and Doc tries to piece together a repressed and catastrophic past. Cully and Doc's odyssey of discovery is steeped in knowledge of and love for the land across which they journey. It is a true American myth, yet it reverberates with echoes of the Arthurian legend, of Henry Hudson, of the orphan trains, of traumatic conflagrations, and of the dying rooms where waifs' bodies are sold for cash. The dramatic and surprising ending is at once a tearful defeat and a smile-producing victory.

Agnes Greaves is 16 years old in 1913. The daughter of a wealthy Mill owner, her life takes a drastic change of direction when she falls for the handsome businessman, William Hamilton. The story follows Agnes' life through the First World War and the lives of her husband and daughters, as told through the eyes of her youngest daughter, Sarah, as she grows up in a challenging household and makes her mark in the world during the Second World War. Media Lawson-Butler lives on the South coast of England and wrote this book at the age of 86, inspired by stories of her own family and the hardships of her own childhood. Now 90, Media is happy to finally see her book in print.

On May 27, 1969 in the sleepy power town of New Canaan, Connecticut, ten-year-old Mary Mount, the daughter of an IBM research scientist was abducted and murdered. Several persons including serial killers became suspects. A year and a half after Mary's abduction and murder, John Rice, a 17-year-old honor student and Boy Scout in New Canaan, brutally murdered four members of his family. Rice became another suspect in Mary Mount's murder. Rice found not guilty of the murders of his family by reason of insanity was released back into society after spending only five years at Connecticut's Whiting Institute for the criminally insane. The Wind Cries Mary reveals more shocking twists to the story and enlists Criminal Profiler Greg Cooper for his expert analysis concerning Mary Mount's killer and the possibility of John Rice as her murderer.

It is 1613 and Heidelberg greets the dawn of a promising, magical age as it welcomes a beautiful English princess. But the promise is false and soon all of central Europe writhes in rebellion and war. Wind Time, Wolf Time follows the lives of two sisters and two brothers as they struggle to survive in treacherous times. Katerina and Anna, poor young women made bold by desperation, tie their destinies to that of their ill-starred princess. Meanwhile, Thomas and Josef, sons of a Munich merchant, discover the secrets of their bitter past as they cross paths with princes and rogues.

The terrifying bestseller from the author of House of Reckoning The children were waiting. Waiting for centuries. Waiting for someone to hear their cries. Now nine-year-old Christine Lyons has come to live in the house on the hill—the house where no children have lived for fifty years. Now little Christie will sleep in the old-fashioned nursery on the third floor. Now Christie's terror will begin. A sound was coming to her. Her mind began to drift . . . Usually it came to her at night, when the wind was blowing. But today it was bright and clear; the wind was still. And yet the sound was there. A baby, crying out for its mother. Instinctively Diana knelt next to Christie and took the child in her arms. “It's all right,” she whispered. “Everything's going to be all right.” Perplexed, Christie looked into Diana's eyes. “I am all right, Aunt Diana. Really, I am,” Christie insisted. “But you were crying. I heard you. Good girls never cry. Only bad children cry. They cry. And cry. And then they must be punished. . . .”

Many moons and suns ago, a baby cradled in a gentle creature's beak floats downward from the stars onto a cottage doorstep. As a sleepy man and wife open the door and stumble over the basket, they lift the blanket and can hardly believe their eyes. With a gurgle of delight, the tiny baby holds out star-like hands. As the childless couple drops to their knees, they read a note pinned to the basket that tells them to guard her well, for she is Sazani Ayan, beloved child of the Ishtari. Brought by ancient thunderbirds to impartially record the lives of Mother Earth's hidden creatures, Sazani is given a mentor and the name Wind Walker. But nothing prepares her for the determined creatures she soon encounters that include a teasing rock spirit and his shape-shifting mother; a lisping baby dragon; dancing Neldons; quarreling tree spirits; a dour whale; and a clairvoyant Yeti. Suzani must put any hesitations aside, for it is now her mission to help the creatures bring strong messages for humankind. In this delightful fantasy tale, as Wind Walker and a new friend discover their special gifts, they must summon help from Earth's magical creatures in order to overcome painful obstacles and grow into their true destinies.

A Kite in the Wind is an anthology of essays by 20 veteran writers and master teachers. While the contributors offer specific, practical advice on such fundamental aspects of craft as characterization, character names, the first person point of view, and unreliable narrators, they also give extended, thoughtful consideration to more sophisticated topics, including “imminence,” or the power of a sense of beginning; creating and maintaining tension; “lushness”; and the deliberate manipulation of information to create particular effects. The essays in A Kite in the Wind begin as personal investigations — attempts to understand why a decision in a particular story or novel seemed unsuccessful; to define a quality or problem that seemed either unrecognized or unsatisfactorily defined; to understand what, despite years of experience as a fiction writer, resisted comprehension; and to pursue haunting, even unanswerable questions. Unlike a how-to book, the anthology is less an instruction manual than it is an intimate visit with twenty very different writers as they explore topics that excite, intrigue, and even puzzle them. Each discussion uses specific examples and illustrations, including both canonical stories and novels and writing less frequently discussed, from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, by both American and international authors. The contributors share their hard-earned insights for beginning and advanced writers with humility, wit, and compassion. The first section of the book focuses on narration, with particular attention paid to various kinds of narrators; the second, on strategic creation and presentation of character; the third, on some of the roles of the visual, beginning with establishing setting; and the fourth, on structural and organizational issues, from movement through time to the manipulation of information to create mystery and suspense.

У реки, где ветер шумит в камышах, а солнце разбрасывает по воде блики, живут забавные звери. Их жизнь то течет неспешно, как сонный ручеек, то бурлит, как горный поток. У этих зверей вполне человеческие проблемы, и рассказ о них очаровывает, удивляет и веселит. Теперь прочитать об их приключениях могут и те, кто только начинает изучать английский.Серия «Английский в адаптации: чтение и аудирование» – это тексты для начинающих, продолжающих и продвинутых. Теперь каждый изучающий английский может выбрать свой уровень и своих авторов и совершенствовать свой английский с лучшими произведениями англоязычной литературы. Читая и слушая текст, а также выполняя упражнения на чтение, аудирование и новую лексику, читатели качественно улучшат свой английский. Английскую речь станет легче воспринимать на слух, а работа с текстами станет эффективнее. Аудиозапись начитана носителями языка.Книга предназначена для изучающих английский язык на начальном уровне.