Off The Mark

Short on life lessons, precious moments, and pearls of wisdom, Tony Carrillo's F Minus takes on life's serious issues by pinning them to the ground and stealing their lunch money. (Then it feels a little bit guilty and gives some of the money back.)Author's web site: www.fminus.net

Lighten up your holidays with award-winning syndicated cartoonist, Mark Parisi's favorite Christmas Cartoons.Have a merry and bright season with this collection of Off the Mark Christmas cartoons from over the years. Santa gets therapy. Christmas trees go on social media. Elves have second thoughts. Reindeer chug caffeine. And starfish become concerned. Curl up with these award-winning cartoons, and stay warm and warped for the holidays..

The perfect murder is a work of art In one catastrophic instant, Haley Warren's estranged father was taken from her. She never got the chance to reconnect with him, so now she's doing it the only way she's got left: by proving the explosion that killed him was no accident. When Tyler Brodie, the provocative and handsome P.I. hired by Haley, discovers that her father was investigating a suspected art theft, he knows his death is no coincidence. After all, tens of millions of dollars worth of stolen art could motivate a thief to go to any lengths—including getting rid of anyone poking around where they don't belong. As Haley and Ty get closer to the truth, the truth gets ugly: Did Haley's dad know too much…or was he in on the take? And although Ty's a consummate professional, he's having trouble focusing on the facts of the case, and not the figure of his gorgeous client. The two are determined to get to the bottom of the case, even if it means they die trying.

CIA Agent Michael Osbourne stars in this suspenseful series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gabriel Allon novels. When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off the east coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body is discovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: the calling card of a shadowy international assassin. Only agent Michael Osbourne has seen the markings before—on a woman he once loved. Now, it’s personal for Osbourne. Consumed by his dark obsession with the assassin, he’s willing to risk his family, his career, and his life—to settle a score… A PEOPLE PAGE-TURNER OF THE WEEK

A fairy bounty hunter stumbles into a vampire conspiracy and gets more than she bargained for… Olympia Carter is the fourth-best bounty hunter in the supernatural town of Mayfair, Missouri, which isn’t exactly an accomplishment she’s proud to take home to her Unseelie fairy parents. Enter Leandra, a vampire who’s high up on the vampire food chain. She has a proposition for Olympia that could make her a ton of money, if the target is even real… And if it isn’t, what is Leandra plotting? This F/F fairy/vampire urban fantasy is the first in a new trilogy by indie author Lila Gwynn.

A humorous rite of passage novel set in 1960s Norfolk in the days before computers, but in an era of glorious soul music Off the Mark charts the progress of Mark Barker, who at sixteen years old leaves an all boys’ Grammar School with absolutely no experience of girls or, indeed, the world as a whole. Mark’s first foray into the world of work is at an office in a time before computers or modern photocopiers or calculators. His first job also launches him into the presence of girls. As a very shy youth who lacks confidence in his ability to attract the opposite sex, he ends up forming attractions to all the wrong girls – for all the wrong reasons. He wavers between the waspish Karen, who breaks his heart with her lack of compassion, the beautiful Pauline and painfully shy Debbie. Unsuccessful blind dates and foursomes only serve to exacerbate the loneliness of this sensitive teenager, as he scrapes through to manhood – luckily his sense of humour pulls him through.Off the Mark brings life in the sixties for a working class family in a small Norfolk town vividly to life and will be a stroll down memory lane for many readers.

Sarah Lotz, internationally acclaimed author of The Three, and Day Four, describes The Mark as: "An entrancing, truly original novel packed with twists you won't see coming and a heroine that breaks the mould. Unputdownable." In the future, the world has flipped. Ravaged by the Conflagration, the State of Mangeria is a harsh place where the sun beats down, people's lives are run by a heartless elite and law is brutally enforced. A mark at the base of the spine controls each person's destiny. The Machine decides what work you will do and who your life partner will be. Juliet Seven - "Ettie" - will soon turn 15 and her life as a drudge will begin, her fate-mate mate will be chosen. Like everyone else, her future is marked by the numbers on her spine. But Ettie decides to challenge her destiny. And in so doing, she fulfills the prophecy that was spoken of before she even existed.

Collecting the best of Bogart Creek, Derek Evernden's laugh-out-loud funny, single-panel comics of absurd and dark humour. Similar in style to The Far Side, Bogart Creek is a perfect book for bathroom reading.

Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, rather than compromise, learning. Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child’s report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. But that’s not all. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies—grading, rating, and ranking—don’t actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. Worse, they distort student and educator behavior in ways that undermine learning and exacerbate inequality. Yet despite widespread dissatisfaction, grades, test scores, and transcripts remain the currency of the realm. In Off the Mark, Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt explain how we got into this predicament, why we remain beholden to our outmoded forms of assessment, and what we can do to change course. As they make clear, most current attempts at reform won’t solve the complex problems we face. Instead, Schneider and Hutt offer a range of practical reforms, like embracing multiple measures of performance and making the so-called permanent record “overwritable.” As they explain, we can remake our approach in ways that better advance the three different purposes that assessment currently serves: motivating students to learn, communicating meaningful information about what young people know and can do, and synchronizing an otherwise fragmented educational system. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience, Off the Mark is a guide for everyone who wants to ensure that assessment serves the fundamental goal of education—helping students learn.

Further Off the Mark is the amusing sequel to Off the Mark, the humourous novel set in 1960s Norfolk In this latest book, we rejoin Mark Barker, now aged nineteen and moving on from his youthful awkwardness, but still seeking to expand on his paltry experience of girls of the opposite sex. He pursues a variety of young women, including the lovely Sandy who shares his love of soul music; as does her equally attractive and flirtatious mother, causing Mark much anguish and confusion, but as with most of his encounters, he often confuses love with lust! As he tries to establish a new career, Mark makes enemies; wrecking his chances of advancement, but there is a consolation in his new attractive female assistant, Della. However, nothing with Mark goes according to plan so after all this time will he manage to get further off the mark? The novel is set in Norfolk in the late sixties and is a nostalgic journey to a simpler time when a ‘discotheque evening’ was a new concept and when unreliable cars could be coaxed into action by jumping up and down on their door sills!