Search Results for: the dip

The Preserves You Love, SWEETER THAN EVER After years of addressing questions reducing sugar, substituting sugar, and leaving it out altogether, accomplished canner and author Marisa McClellan began to rejigger her recipes, helping her home canners enjoy the flavors of the season without the refined sugars. The result is Naturally Sweet Food in Jars , preserving in the tenor of today’s health-conscious audience. . The inventive spreads, dips, pickles, and whole fruits in McClellan’s third preserving book use only unrefined sweeteners like maple sugar and syrup, coconut sugar, dates, agave, honey, and dried fruits and juices,and less of them. The book is organized by sweeteners, and includes recipes like Sriracha-style Hot Sauce (using honey), Date Pancake Syrup (with maple), Cantaloupe Basil Jam and Marinated Multicoloured Peppers (both sweetened with agave), and Fennel and Parsley Relish (sweetened with fruit juice). Her trademark flavor combinations, seasonal awareness, and manageable small batches are here, too, for her longtime readers and a whole new audience, and are just as sweet.

This book will show you how you can use it to whip up the most velvety, vitalising smoothies and drinks, even using tough, fibrous raw vegetables. You will be able to quickly make AND heat up nutritious soups and sauces and, amazingly, produce perfectly frozen, fabulous, ice creams and sorbets in minutes.
It will also show how you can use your blender as a food processor, too, for chopping or mixing ingredients and making – to name but a few – fresh, vibrant salsas; fast-kneaded doughs; light, airy batters; even-textured minced mixtures; quick-mix cakes and bakes; effortless ground spice pastes; and even your own flours. if you want a gadget that’s amazingly versatile, stunningly efficient and easy to clean, then why not make it a high-speed blender? You’ll be able to whiz up drinks, sustaining soups, dips, and spreads, omelettes, bakes, desserts, in fact just about everything you need to make in next to no time, using the freshest ingredients with very little effort.

Sugar is everywhere. Do your children beg you to buy unhealthy sugary snacks at the supermarket, and kick up a tantrum if you refuse? Perhaps you crave sweet treats, bread, pasta and sauce-laden food yourself. Do you notice lethargy and mood swings in your children as a result of blood glucose spikes and dips?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your family’s health is at risk. Dr Val Wilson can help. Having lived with Type 1 diabetes for more than four decades, her relationship with sugar has at times been very unhealthy, but today she is well in control of her sugar intake.

How to Reduce Your Child’s Sugar Intake is packed with recent scientific research and nutritional information to help you understand addiction to sugar and conquer it. It provides simple, actionable advice and delicious recipes to help you break free from the mental, physical and emotional traps of old eating patterns.

This book shows the way to a sustainable, healthy lifestyle. It will enable you and your family to enjoy dramatically improved health and mood, increased energy levels and weight loss.

Magical Places is for armchair-voyagers and pilgrimage-makers alike. This beautiful volume will take readers on a charmed journey around the world, dipping into some of the most storied destinations in the farthest flung corners of the globe. With chapters like Places of Healing, Haunted Places, Magic in Nature, Fairy Tale Locales, The Past in the Present, and Ley Lines — the arcing lines that traverse the planet, where magical phenomena frequently occur — wanderlust is sure to be stoked for frequent travelers and the magic curious alike.

With an eye towards the mystical, Magical Places will explore well-known sites like Stonehenge and Uluru, as well as lesser-known destinations like The Knucker Hole in England, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye, and the pink lakes Retba in Senegal and Hillier in Australia. Many of these sites will be accompanied by sacred rituals, mystical incantations, and more inspired by the energy and history of these magical locations.

Featuring beautiful illustrations with a smattering of lush, full-color photography, this book will entice readers who long for adventure and enchantment in the world, who want to visit or at least learn about places where magic is real — or once was.

You can’t keep a good (or bad) corpse down, and they rise up in spectacular form in this new collection.

The mindless, shambling zombies of yesteryear are rapidly being replaced by sprinters and runners with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. These days zombies are the rock and roll of horror monsters.

Presenting a mix of voodoo victims, creepy somnambulists, and flesh eating, rock n roll deadheads, The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics brings you the best the graveyard can give. From film sources and literary sources to some very strange sources, here over 20 of the best zombie comics ever produced.

They include the first Vince Locke Deadworld comic, Scott Hampton’s awesome adaptation of RE Howard’s Pigeons From Hell, plus stories from Steve Niles, Darko Macan, and many, many more.

If it’s dead, moving and hungry, you’ll find it here!

Praise for Mammoth Book of War Comics

‘Whether read cover-to-cover or dipped into at random, it is exactly what anthologies should be: rich, varied and endlessly rewarding.’ Irish Times

‘… an admirable and enlightening collection.’ The List

SCRAPS, WILT & WEEDS features 100 recipes by Mads Refslund, one of the initial partners at Noma, the world-renowned Danish restaurant, using local ingredients in a sustainable, no-waste fashion. Using scraps from vegetables, fruits and animal proteins–food that would normally go to waste–Refslund creates beautiful and accessible recipes for the home cook without sacrificing anything to flavor. He uses 100% of the ingredient or as close as possible, like potato peels, cauliflower stems, or fish skins, but also ingredients that are passed over as too young, like green strawberries, or too old, like stale bread, wrinkly potatoes or bolted herbs.

Refslund shares easy-to-follow recipes like: Carrot Tops Pesto, Roasted Cauliflower Stalks with Mushrooms and Brie, Pork Ribs Glazed with Overripe Pear Sauce, Crispy Salmon Skin Puffs with Horseradish-Buttermilk Dip, and Beer and Bread porridge with Salted Caramel Ice Cream. In addition to delicious ingredient-focused recipes, the book contains informational sidebars and stories, insight into the parts of food we often waste, and a section on how to use leftovers, plus 100 beautiful photographs that express Refslund’ passion and respect for ingredients, nature and the land.

WINNER OF THE BEST START-UP INSPIRATION BOOK AWARD AT THE 2019 BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS

‘A book to devour from start to finish – easy to do as it is accessibly-written and oh so fascinating – and then to dip into later for reference.’ – Joanna Reeves

Do you have a passion for making beautiful objects? Are you wondering whether you can take the next step and turn your creativity into a career?

This inspirational guide offers easy-to-follow advice from talented and creative industry experts. There are practical exercises that will help you sell your creations, choose the right time to start your business, and guide you through as you do so.

With The Creative’s Guide to Starting a Business, you will discover the best way to:

Create pieces that sell
Write a business plan
Identify and reach customers
Research the competition
Price products and test the market
Promote the business successfully

Packed with interviews, encouraging real life stories, and tips from successful entrepreneurs who started with a passion and turned it into their own successful, creative business, this practical guide will take you through the very first steps of defining creative and financial success to ultimately establishing a rewarding start-up.

When Dionysus the Renegade faked a Sophocles text in 400BC (cunningly inserting the acrostic ‘Heraclides is ignorant of letters’) to humiliate an academic rival, he paved the way for two millennia of increasingly outlandish literary hoaxers. The path from his mischievous stunt to more serious tricksters like the controversial memoirist and Oprah-duper James Frey, takes in every sort of writer: from the religious zealot to the bored student, via the vengeful academic and the out-and-out joker.

But whether hoaxing for fame, money, politics or simple amusement, each perpetrator represents something unique about why we write. Their stories speak volumes about how reading, writing and publishing have grown out of the fine and private places of the past into big-business, TV-book-club-led mass-marketplaces which, some would say, are ripe for the ripping.

For the first time, the complete history of this fascinating sub-genre of world literature is revealed. Suitable for bookworms of all ages and persuasions, this is true crime for people who don’t like true crime, and literary history for the historically illiterate. A treat to read right through or to dip into, it will make you think twice next time you slip between the covers of an author you don’t know…

From Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, published in 1936, which has sold over 30 million copies to date, to the mind management programme of Professor Steve Peters’ The Chimp Paradox, a concise and insightful guide to seventy of the most influential self-help books ever published

An entertaining, accessible companion, for readers of self-help books and sceptics alike. The titles include classics on achieving success, confidence and happiness, mindfulness, how to change your life, self-control, overcoming anxiety and self-esteem issues and stress relief.

The chronological arrangement of the titles reveals the intriguing story of how early self-improvement titles were succeeded by increasingly personality-based, materialistic titles and shows how breakout classics often influenced other titles for decades to come. Each book is summarised to convey a brief idea of what it has to offer the interested reader, while a ‘Speed Read’ for each book delivers a quick sense of what each writer is like to read and a highly compressed summary of the main points of the book in question.

This is a work of reference to dip into, that acknowledges that some of the most powerful insights into ourselves can be found in texts that aren’t perceived as being ‘self-help’ books, and that wisdom and consolation can be found in the strangest places.

Bring It! is the ultimate source for potluck, picnic, or dinner party-worthy dishes that combine simple prep with big taste!

The word “potluck” may inspire memories of church dinners and mystery covered dishes. But today’s potlucks are essentially outsourced dinner parties, which make gathering around a shared table a cinch. Inside Bring It!, you will find dozens of impressive-looking recipes that come together easily, and are perfect for carrying to any occasion.

Author Ali Rosen has put a long career in the food world to use, drawing on chef and restaurant secrets for easy dishes that will have friends begging for the recipe. Must-have dishes include:

* Pimento Cheese and Crab Dip
* Snap Pea Salad with Parmesan and Bacon
* Pistachio and Anchovy Pasta
* Short Ribs with Quick Pickled Shallots
* S’mores Bars

Each recipe includes a note called “How to Bring It,” for make-ahead, reheating, and transport instructions. Flavors are designed for maximum impact, but won’t take hours to cook, or require special ingredients. Have dinner with the neighbors, sit down to a picnic in the park, or bring a dish to the school luncheon. They come together easily, hold well, and travel beautifully. They’ll have you rethinking the potluck.

Best-selling author Theodore Gray is back with all-new, spectacular experiments that demonstrate basic principles of chemistry and physics in thrilling, and memorable ways. For nearly a decade, Theodore Gray has been demonstrating basic principles of chemistry and physics through exciting, sometimes daredevil experiments that he executes, photographs, and writes about for his monthly Popular Science column ‘Gray Matter.’Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home, But Probably Shouldn’t, published by Black Dog in 2009, collected Gray’s Popular Science columns, along with hundreds of photographs, many of which were not published with the original columns.Now comes the second volume of mad-scientist experiments, which includes more dramatic, enlightening, and sometimes daring demonstrations in which Gray dips his hand into molten lead to demonstrate the Leidenfrost effect; crushes a tomato between two small magnets to demonstrate the power of neodymium-iron-boron magnets; and creates trinkets out of solid mercury to demonstrate how the state of matter depends very much on the temperature at which it exists.Other experiments include:A foil boat floating on an invisible sea!DIY X-ray photos!A bacon lance that cuts steel!Charging a smart phone with apples and pennies!And dozens more!

‘A joy to read: fresh, funny, moving and always surprising’ Kate Atkinson

‘Fresh, beguiling and laugh-out-loud funny on every page, this must be the most enjoyable Irish novel since Skippy Dies‘ Guardian</font>

They’d sit around in a steamy kitchen circle like four mad witches, and dip ginger-snaps into Maxwell House until they went wobbly-warm, and take turns at saying, Jahear about so-and-so, Lord rest his soul, only thirty years old, poor creature?! They were brilliant at it. Scaring the shite out of each other, grinning inside.

Jim Finnegan is thirteen years old and life in his world consists of dealing with the helter-skelter intensity of his rumbustious family, taking breakneck bike rides with his best friend, and coveting the local girls from afar – until one day when everything changes.

The Fields is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character: Jim’s voice leaps off the page and straight into the reader’s heart as he grapples with his unfairly interrupted adolescence.

Praise for The Fields:

‘Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measures’ Stylist

Funny and heart-warming’ Daily Mail

‘The Fields is crazy mad, lyrical and unforgettable’ Red

‘Exquisite moments of comedy that anyone with a whiff of Irish heritage will immediately recognise’ Sunday Express

When it comes to feeding your family, you want meals that are tasty, nutritious, and easy to prepare. But choosing healthier food options can be a challenge, especially with a special diet, since most store-bought gluten-free and meat-free foods are low in protein and high in simple carbs and sugars. Now, gourmet cook and healthy-eating coach Susan O’Brien has developed easy dishes the whole family can enjoy: 150 breakfasts, soups, salads, entrees, sides, snacks, and desserts made with complex-carb, high-protein ingredients for well-balanced nutrition. Recipes include:Delightful Teff WafflesProtein Breakfast BarsButternut Squash BreadJicama and Fruit SlawSloppy JunesTeriyaki Tofu FajitasEasy Spaghetti CasseroleStuffed Green Bell PeppersCinnamon Buckwheat Crepes with Raspberry SauceBest-Ever Orange Oatmeal CookiesSpicy Black Bean DipParmesan Kale ChipsYou’ll also find quick-and-easy meals and simple recipes for homemade staples like nondairy milks, nut butters, and even Mock Parmesan cheese. With allergy-friendly and vegan options and kid-approved favourites, The gluten-free Vegetarian Family Cookbook will help you satisfy your family’s tastebuds and support their wellness.

Are you a sugar addict? Do you crave sweet treats, bread, pasta and sauce-laden food? Do you experience lethargy and mood swings as a result of blood glucose spikes and dips? Does your weight seesaw unmanageably?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, your health is at risk. Where fat used to be the enemy, scientists now point to the huge amount of sugar we consume as making us unhealthy.

Sugar Free is packed with recent scientific research and nutritional advice to help you understand addiction to sugar and carbohydrates, including a chapter by Dr Nicole Avena, research neuroscientist, author and expert in nutrition, diet and addiction. It provides eight weeks of meal plans, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, by nutritionist Emily Macguire, and includes journal exercises to help you break free from the mental, physical and emotional traps of old eating patterns.

Sugar Free shows the way to a sustainable sugar-free lifestyle. Its simple and effective eight-week programme to quit sugar will enable you and your family to enjoy dramatically improved health, increased energy levels and weight loss.

Author Karen Thomson is living in recovery from addiction to sugar and carbohydrates so has been there and understands exactly what you need to know to break the cycle of addiction and find your way to radically improved health.

Recommended by Toe by Toe

‘This is by far the best resource I have found as the parent of two dyslexic children. Out of all the documentaries, websites, seminars, podcasts and of course other books I have studied trying to educate myself on how best to support my little ladies, this provides the most relevant and necessary information in the clearest format. It has been great sharing snippets of the book with the girls, especially the view points of other people with dyslexia. Thank you for a great book!’ – Amazon review

This book will empower parents by giving them the tools and strategies to deal with dyslexia, making them confident and knowledgeable in the process.
It offers:
– a guidebook that is visually appealing, including bullet points, illustrations and short chapters, making it an easy to follow reference book for the busy (and often dyslexic) parent;
– practical and emotional support at home from primary to secondary school years, as well as how to deal with school and the education system;
– chapters that can be dipped into for useful day to day advice and tools to help at home , and for overall encouragement and reassurance;
– parents and children sharing their personal experiences and advice in their personal accounts – the challenges of dyslexia, possible solutions and successes are openly discussed and woven throughout the chapters, giving the guide an authentic voice.

Central to this guide is language of acceptance and celebration, emphasising a learning ‘difference’ rather than a ‘disability’, and a genuine encouragement of dyslexic abilities and strengths.

‘Ghoulishly entertaining’ Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement

‘This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events.’
Kim Fleet, Crime Review

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences – such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks – as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era.

The tales include murders and violent crimes, but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians. These include the story of a teenage man who married an actress, only to be shipped off to Australia by his disgusted parents; and the Italian ice-cream man who only meant to buy his sweetheart a hat but ended up proposing marriage instead. When he broke it off, his fiancée’s father sued him and the story was dubbed the ‘Amusing Aberdeen Breach of Promise Case’. Also present is the gruesome story of the murder of Patrick O Connor who was shot in the head and buried under the kitchen flagstones by his lover Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick. The couple’s subsequent trial caused a sensation and even author Charles Dickens attended the grisly public hanging.

Drawing on a range of sources from university records and Old Bailey transcripts to national and regional newspaper archives, Michelle Morgan’s research sheds new light on well-known stories as well as unearthing previously unknown incidents.

Whether you’re hopping between microbreweries or hiking the Appalachian Trail, get to know this charming hub of the American South with Moon Asheville & the Great Smoky Mountains. Inside you’ll find:

*Flexible, strategic itineraries, from a weekend in Asheville to five days in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, designed for outdoor adventurers, foodies, history buffs, and more
*The best local flavour: Indulge in award-winning cuisine on a food tour, discover the microbreweries that earned Asheville the title of “Beer City USA,” and catch a live show from a local band. Admire the art deco architecture downtown, gallery-hop in repurposed warehouses, or check out an indie bookstore
*Unique outdoor experiences: Hike through the mountains and meadows along the Appalachian Trail, take a dip in the hot springs dotting the hillsides, or break out the binoculars for some top-notch wildlife-watching. Set up camp in the Pisgah National Forest, peep the changing leaves in autumn, or go rafting, kayaking, or canoeing on the French Broad River
*Honest advice on when to go, where to stay, and how to get around from North Carolina local Jason Frye
*Full-colour photos and detailed maps throughout
*Thorough background on the culture and history, wildlife, and geography
*Helpful tips for hikers and campers, LGBTQ+ travellers, and travellers with disabilities

Find your adventure with Moon Asheville & the Great Smoky Mountains.

Exploring more of the American South? Try Moon Carolinas & Georgia. Looking for more Southern city charm? Try Moon Charleston & Savannah.

Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is, there are people out there – a lot of them – who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job.One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people’s offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn’t wait until it happens to take action. Levin’s approach is defined by the three M’s: minimizing risk, monitoring your identity, and managing the damage. The book is also organized around the different problems caused by identity theft: financial, criminal, medical, familial, etc., enabling readers to dip into the sections most relevant to them. Swiped is a practical, lively book that is essential to surviving the ever-changing world of online security. It is invaluable not only for preventing problems but helping cope when they arrive.

Whether you’re hopping between microbreweries or hiking the Appalachian Trail, get to know this charming Southern hub with Moon Asheville & the Great Smoky Mountains. Inside you’ll find:

Flexible, strategic itineraries, from a weekend in Asheville to five days in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, designed for outdoor adventurers, foodies, history buffs, and more

The best local flavor: Indulge in award-winning cuisine on a food tour, discover the microbreweries that earned Asheville the title of “Beer City USA,” and catch a live show from a local band. Admire the art deco architecture downtown, gallery-hop in repurposed warehouses, or check out an indie bookstore

Unique outdoor experiences: Hike through the mountains and meadows along the Appalachian Trail, take a dip in the hot springs dotting the hillsides, or break out the binoculars for some top-notch wildlife-watching. Set up camp in the Pisgah National Forest, peep the changing leaves in autumn, or go rafting, kayaking, or canoeing on the French Broad River

Honest advice on when to go, where to stay, and how to get around from North Carolina local Jason Frye

Full-color photos and detailed maps throughout

Thorough background on the culture and history, wildlife, and geography

Find your adventure with Moon Asheville & the Great Smoky Mountains.

Expanding your trip? Try Moon North Carolina. Looking for more Southern city charm? Try Moon Charleston & Savannah.

In this fun and honest romp about friendship, puberty, and growing up, a debut author gives modern-day readers their own version of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, for fans of Pixar’s Turning Red.

Twelve-year-old Tahlia Wilkins is ready to kick off the perfect summer, starting with an invitation to a pool party being thrown by the most popular kid in school. But when the Red Goddess of Panties, aka her first period, arrives twenty-four hours before the party, it messes up all her plans. To make matters worse, her mom is out of town, and there’s no way she’s going to ask her awkward dad for help! Tahlia always feared that growing up would be tough, but this is just not fair.

In order to save herself from total embarrassment, it will take all of Tahlia and her best friend Lily’s scheming to keep her reputation-and her favorite jeans-from being ruined. Sneak off to the grocery store only to have the clerk price-check your tampons over the loudspeaker? Check. Trick your mature teenage neighbor into letting you use some of her tampons? Check. Take a dip into a fountain to get quarters for a bathroom period product dispenser? Check, check, check!

With the hilarious and heart-warming tone of Dork Diaries, Grow Up, Tahlia Wilkins! is a coming-of-age middle-grade novel about growing up, in all of its awkward glory.

Dive in to warm Caribbean waters, soak up the sunshine, and discover the vibrant culture and spirit of Jamaica. Inside Moon Jamaica you’ll find:
*Flexible, strategic itineraries with ideas for backpackers, beach-lovers, adventure travellers, honeymooners, wellness-seekers, and more
*Top activities and unique experiences: Watch hummingbirds flit about tropical flowers, take a dip in a crystal-clear spring on a hot day, or relax on soft white sands. See beloved local bands perform at a Negril nightclub and move to the beat of Kingston’s legendary music scene. Savour sweet Jamaican rum and coffee, chow down on authentic jerk chicken, or have a romantic beachfront dinner
*Outdoor adventures: Cliff-jumping into azure waters, surf the waves, climb the Blue Mountains, or hike through lush jungle
*Find the best beaches for surfing, sunsets, seclusion, and more
*Insight from Kingston local Oliver Hill on how to experience Jamaica like an insider, support local and sustainable businesses, avoid over-tourism, and respectfully engage with the culture
*Full-colour photos and detailed maps throughout
*Background information on Jamaica’s landscape, history, and cultural customs
*Handy tools including a glossary of Jamaican Patois terms, packing suggestions, and tips for women travelling alone, families with kids, seniors, and LGBTQ travellers
Experience the best of Jamaica with Moon.

Exploring more of the Caribbean? Check out Moon Bahamas, Moon Aruba, or Moon Dominican Republic.

Rather than providing a dictionary of superstitions, of which there are already numerous excellent, exhaustive and, in many cases, academic works which list superstitions from A to Z, Bainton gives us an entertaining flight over the terrain, landing from time to time in more thought-provoking areas. He offers an overview of humanity’s often illogical and irrational persistence in seeking good luck and avoiding misfortune.


While Steve Roud’s two excellent books – The Penguin Dictionary of Superstitions and his Pocket Guide – and Philippa Waring’s 1970 Dictionary concentrate on the British Isles, Bainton casts his net much wider. There are many origins which warrant the full back story, such as Friday the thirteenth and the Knights Templar, or the demonisation of the domestic cat resulting in ‘cat holocausts’ throughout Europe led by the Popes and the Inquisition.
The whole is presented as a comprehensive, entertaining narrative flow, though it is, of course, a book that could be dipped into, and includes a thorough bibliography.

Schoenberg, who developed the twelve-tone technique in music, was a notorious triskaidekaphobe. When the title of his opera Moses und Aaron resulted in a title with thirteen letters, he renamed it Moses und Aron. He believed he would die in his seventy-sixth year (7 + 6 = 13) and he was correct; he also died on Friday the thirteenth at thirteen minutes before midnight.


As Sigmund Freud wrote, ‘Superstition is in large part the expectation of trouble; and a person who has harboured frequent evil wishes against others, but has been brought up to be good and has therefore repressed such wishes into the unconscious, will be especially ready to expect punishment for his unconscious wickedness in the form of trouble threatening him from without.’

Lately, Marla Jean Bandy has been feeling dried up, dustier than a ghost town in an old western movie. Her no-good husband just dumped her for another woman. Now if this woman had been a young bimbo, it would’ve been embarassing but Marla Jean would’ve accepted it but he left her for the 54-year old never-been-married librarian who drove the Bookmobile. That will show her for encouraging him to read more! The absolute last thing she needs in her life right now is Abel Jacobson – aka Jake – with a sexy, lazy smile spread across his face like an angel in a cowboy hat. Ages ago, Jake was her brother’s best friend and now that she’s dipping a toe in the dating pool, he’s popping up everywhere, keeping an eye on her. The only trouble is she can’t erase the memory of that hot summer night years ago and the one hungry kiss they shared. But she’s not the same dumb girl who’d been sweet on him years ago and she won’t ever let herself be that girl again…

One look at Marla Jean, newly divorced and out on the town, is enough to make any red-blooded man sit up and take notice – Jake can’t help himself. He should steer clear of her and let her make her own mistakes but old habits die hard. He owes it to her brother to look after her, even though she fights him at absolutely every turn. But will he be able to resist her himself?

We’ve heard of Alexander the Great. We’ve heard of Ivan the Terrible. But what was so Great about Alexander? What was so Terrible about Ivan? Spanning centuries of history in a culturally diverse framework-from ancient India to nineteenth-century Hawaii, and with a balanced focus on notorious women rulers as well as male, The Great and the Terrible takes a humorous look at some of the most glorious and notorious figures in history through the lens of the nicknames they’re remembered by.

While some of the characters mentioned here are more prominent in world history (Cyrus the Great introduced the world’s first human rights charter), others are well known only within their own cultures. The Great and the Terrible gives middle-grade readers an opportunity to dip into the breadth of world history, sampling its cultural diversity and its stranger-than-fiction historical exploits, with a mix of the sensational and the serious. It helps to correct the imbalance in many history books that currently only focus on Western Civilization, shining the spotlight on achievements (and foibles) in many different cultures.

The Great and the Terrible sketches portraits of each of 25 figures and their worlds, focusing on the sensational and the superlative in each of their fascinating stories.

The list of rulers included are:

* Alexander the Great
* Hatshepsut
* Cyrus the Great
* Ashoka the Great
* Empress Suiko
* Pacal the Great
* Good King Wenceslas
* Sejong the Great
* Askia the Great
* Lorenzo the Magnificent
* Sulyman the Magnificent
* Nur Jahan
* Good Queen Bess (Elizabeth I)
* Nanyehi
* Kamehameha the Great
* Attila the Hun
* Bad King John
* Vlad the Impaler
* Bloody Mary Tudor
* Ivan the Terrible
* Catherine De Medici
* Mad Ibrahim I
* Sultan Ismail the Bloodthirsty
* Queen Ranavalona the Cruel
* Mad King Ludwig