Open Very Carefully

The reading of a story is interrupted by a crocodile falling into the book.

Cobwebs hung in weird, grotesque festoons from the vaulted roof. There was a strange odour in the ancient cellar. A bent figure crouches over forbidden books and mixes indescribably strange ingredients in a cauldron. The cauldron bubbles and foul fumes arise. The alchemist transfers the secret formula to a flask. It travels carefully and ceremoniously from flash to retort and back again. Unnatural things happen in the flask... terrifying things. Suddenly a human figure appears, yet it is not human in all respects. Has the alchemist made this strange, frightening thing, or has it come from realms beyond? The alchemist finds himself involved in a series of breathtaking psychic adventures such as he had never imagined possible even in his wildest dreams.

In Little Amish Lizzie, the first book in the Buggy Spoke series, five-year-old Lizzie moves to a new home with her family and must adjust to a new school, new house, and lots of new people. But some things stay the same, including her spunky, sensitive, and mischievous personality. It feels like her big sister Emma is just the opposite—she is sweet, respectful, and good at just about everything that Lizzie isn’t. When Lizzie and Emma begins, Lizzie is eight years old and it’s not that she wishes she weren’t the kind of girl who loves hiding for hours to read a good book or racing down too-steep hills on her sled or eating lots of doughnuts. But she does wish she could make herself walk instead of running once in awhile so she wouldn’t get in trouble at school, and she knows no one thinks she’s as pretty or as good as Emma is. Times are hard for the Glick family—Dat’s business is still not doing well and his cheerful optimism is beginning to wear thin. Lizzie and Emma are young, but they begin to understand that Dat and Mam don’t have enough money and their family might be in trouble. Will the sisters be able to put aside their differences to support each other through their family’s financial struggles, tragedy in their community, and yet more changes? This is the second book in the Buggy Spoke series, which follows Lizzie through her tumultuous teenage years as she struggles to mesh her hot temper and willful ways with her Amish faith. These books are the prequels to Linda Byler’s bestselling Lizzie Searches for Love Trilogy, geared to a younger audience (ages 8-10). Reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, these books are delightful accounts of another way of life; each chapter is filled with vivid descriptions of Amish food, farms, and traditions. The series explores themes of respecting parents, not fitting in, sibling rivalry, recognizing your own shortcomings and gifts, and reconciling a strong personality with an abiding faith.

Introduction by A. S. Byatt Illustrations by John Tenniel Includes commissioned endnotes Conceived by a shy British don on a golden afternoon to entertain ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have delighted generations of readers in more than eighty languages. “The clue to the enduring fascination and greatness of the Alice books,” writes A. S. Byatt in her Introduction, “lies in language. It is play, and word-play, and its endless intriguing puzzles continue to reveal themselves long after we have ceased to be children.” Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

Mike Jeffers is a young cowboy trying to make a living off a tumbledown, rock-strewn piece of land he bought because he liked the views. An orphan, Mike grew up as a ward of the state. Living with different families he has learned what hard work is and isn't afraid of it. What does scare him is losing some of his steers or heifers to the cattle rustlers who are working the area. One evening on his way to visit another rancher who has lost some steers, his horse is spooked by stepping on a dead body lying in the path and Mike is caught up in a murder mystery he must solve before he loses some of his own cattle. But while Mike and the Sheriff team up to find the killer some complications arise involving a little boy lost in the wilderness across the road from Mike's ranch and an old abandoned mine there Meantime, Mike marries and settles down to a happy and prosperous life. He buys more land and hires cowboys, but despite how rosy the future looks, suspicion keeps on growing inside Mike that something weird is going on in the old mine. When he investigates, he learns that old ghosts cast long shadows, a lesson that nearly costs him his life.

Six total strangers with dark pasts are all summoned on the same night to the same location--an old, mysterious mansion. Guided by the need to seek answers for their pasts, they blindly agree. But they quickly discover they aren't alone in the seemingly abandoned manor. An ancient evil has trapped them inside. With no way of escape and no way of communicating with the outside world, the strangers are at the mercy of the evil that haunts them with their pasts. It won't stop until it gets what it wants--destruction!

A journey of life with stoppages in variegated platforms covering different places in India and abroad namely Delhi, Meerut, Gujarat, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Dubai, Vienna and Uraba (Colombia) to name a few. Bhoomi used to be Raghu, Abhaya as situation demanded. Couple of disguises are not without a purpose. To unearth, to restore, to rehabilitate and give solace to ‘once lost souls’, which have remained her prime mission to live life henceforth. The protagonist, Bhoomi is undaunted, undeterred by life’s extreme challenges. Love defeats her, but remains undefeated and eventually wins the battle of life. Using lucid words in style, it is a whole lot of intelligible text. The readers are well aware of the presence of coronavirus during this course of the entire story, but its allpervading influence is hardly visible throughout the pages, giving a sense of ‘life within life’ and a lesson that we need to survive even the deadly virus with a courage that is hitherto unknown. Creating or portraying a life in words have been the most complex task ever. Delineating a slice of human Life is synonymous with making a newer face altogether unknown. Life’s perfections and imperfections abound, but without allowing one to surpass the other, it enhances the beats of life in a way far more ennobling. Thinking varies from a shallow plane to a higher one, affixing multiple challenges. Life is nothing but an accumulation of experiences, a mixture of happy and poignant events, some so worth remembering that the remaining periods of life can be lived and relived, recollecting and recalling those beautiful hours of life.