International Bestsellers

One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout his fiction: the diabolical role of chance in determining the course of a life. As Alexander Theroux asserts in his Introduction, Hardy was "committed to the deep expression of [nature's] ironic chaos and strange apathy, even hostility, toward man." ISBN:2147483647 Author:Thomas Hardy

A pulse-pounding thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling phenomenon Vince Flynn, as Mitch Rapp heads to Afghanistan to track down a missing CIA agent. The four dead guards didn’t concern Mitch Rapp as much as the absence of the man they’d been paid to protect. Joe Rickman wasn’t just another foot soldier. For the last eight years Rickman had ran the CIA’s clandestine operations in Afghanistan. It was a murky job that involved working with virtually every disreputable figure in the Islamic Republic. More than a quarter billion dollars in cash had passed through Rickman’s hands during his tenure as the master of black ops and no one with a shred of sense wanted to know the details of how that money had been spent.At first glance it looks as if Rickman has been kidnapped, but Rapp knows certain things about his old friend that cause him to wonder if something more disturbing isn’t afoot. Irene Kennedy, the director of the CIA, has ordered Rapp to find Rickman at all costs. Rapp must navigate the ever-shifting landscape of Afghanistan as the Taliban, Iranians, Pakistanis and Russians all plot to claim their piece of the war torn state.With Afghanistan crumbling around him, Rapp must be as ruthless as his enemies and as deceitful as people in his own government if he has any hopes of completing his mission. ISBN:2147483647 Author:Vince Flynn

Vibrant Maureen Matthews has always been a 'deep one' and dreams of a life beyond the Potteries. Then, just like a scene from one of her beloved movies, she meets handsome, charming Trevor Mountford. He seems to be everything Maureen ever hoped for and when he asks her to marry him she has no hesitation in saying yes. When married life doesn't turn out to be the ideal Maureen thought it was she starts to question both her life and her love. Then she meets Greg Barlow. He's completely different from what she thought she wanted - but everything she ever needed. Can she put aside her past and finally find true happiness? ISBN:2147483647 Author:Margaret Kaine

In the tradition of Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed and Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, this groundbreaking manifesto focuses on the critical school years when parents must learn to allow their children to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from life’s inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adultsModern parenting is defined by an unprecedented level of overprotectiveness: parents who rush to school at the whim of a phone call to deliver forgotten assignments, who challenge teachers on report card disappointments, mastermind children’s friendships and interfere on the playing field. As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children’s well-being, they aren’t giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.Overparenting has the potential to ruin a child’s confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important life skills children carry with them long after they leave the classroom. Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help their children succeed. ISBN:2147483647 Author:Jessica Lahey

From ancient times to the Bay of Pigs and the Falklands War, military history has been marked as much by misjudgements and incompetence as by gallantry and glory. Such blunders have sometimes ended in tragedy, sometimes in farce - such as the English troops, supposedly marching on Cadiz in 1625, who instead got drunk in a salt marsh. And sometimes they have ended in triumph, despite all the odds. In this fascinating and entertaining collection, author Geoffrey Regan not only recounts some of the staggering stories, but also highlights the kinds of difficulties that can lead to military disaster. His anecdotes encompass every aspect of warfare from the insanity of commanders to the provision of inadequate supplies. This entertaining and instructive book will appeal to the military buff and general reader alikethis entertaining and instructive book will appeal to the military buff and general reader alike. ISBN:2147483647 Author:Geoffrey Regan

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time, the men and women among an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas -- about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race: the Black Death. ISBN:2147483647 Author:Ken Follett

Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill were two totally opposite leaders - both in what they stood for and in the way in which they seemed to lead. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts examines their different styles of leadership and draws parallels with rulers from other eras. He also looks at the way Hitler and Churchill estimated each other as leaders, and how it affected the outcome of the war. In a world that is as dependent on leadership as any earlier age, HITLER AND CHURCHILL asks searching questions about our need to be led. In doing so, Andrew Roberts forces us to re-examine the way that we look at those who take decisions for us. ISBN:2147483647 Author:Andrew Roberts