Baker Thief

Adèle has only one goal: catch the purple-haired thief who broke into her home and stole her exocore, thus proving herself to her new police team. Little does she know, her thief is also the local baker. Claire owns the Croissant-toi, but while her days are filled with pastries and customers, her nights are dedicated to stealing exocores. These new red gems are heralded as the energy of the future, but she knows the truth: they are made of witches’ souls. When her twin—a powerful witch and prime exocore material—disappears, Claire redoubles in her efforts to investigate. She keeps running into Adèle, however, and whether or not she can save her sister might depend on their conflicted, unstable, but deepening relationship.

A brilliant mystery series from bestselling author Enid Blyton, perfect for fans of The Secret Seven. There's a mysterious burglar in Peterswood. No one has seen the thief, but there are huge footprints and handprints left behind at every robbery. Who could possibly have feet that big? Fatty, Daisy, Larry, Pip, Bets and Buster the Dog are sure to find out! First published in 1950, this edition contains the original text and is unillustrated.

An undetected thief lurks in America’s classrooms: funding for public education. Dynamic instruction, robust learning, and student futures are stolen when funding for public education is inadequate and inequitable. The devastating impact of this thievery is examined throughout this book. Student engagement with the potential and promise of traditional public education is stolen by funding formulas crafted by state legislatures. Theft in the classroom results when these funding schemes misdirect and disconnect the resources required to educate all US students. Called upon to deal with an ever-changing cascade of mandates, standards, legislation, and counterproductive testing marathons, but provided with funding so inadequate that instruction is often little better than anemic “test prep,” public educators in pursuit of the common good are robbed by insufficient funding. Although funding for public education is a topic unlikely to command frequent public discussion, no topic is more consequential for achievement, adequacy, and social justice in the learning, lives, and futures of America’s children and young people.

The Traders, an alien race, have come to Earth. With them came the collapse of Earth’s world economy. The Traders find little of value here, except manpower. They pass on some technology in exchange for slavery. Those who choose slavery work at tasks the Traders cannot, or will not, perform. One of those tasks is the harvesting of the venom of the red viper of the planet Elsinore. The venom’s purpose is a mystery that divides the Traders themselves. There are those who have learned to extract money and technology from the Traders by playing from two sides. The Traders hire mercenaries to control their slaves, but the supplier of the armed men also sends others to fight the Traders, causing the Traders to hire yet more mercenaries. Aaron Kane, a mercenary officer, crashes on Elsinore, Kane, under the employ of another Trader faction, is rescued by Molly Daniels and organizes a resistance to the Elsinore Traders. Ilya Aleksandrov, an officer of the same band of mercenaries, arrives to oppose Kane – thus maximizing the fees the Traders on both sides of the conflict pay to the mercenary group. Kane, though, has an agenda. He blames the Traders for the deaths of his wife and child. Despite opportunities to end the conflict Kane fights on, driven by his hate. Father Domingo Ramirez, a missionary to the Traders, gains access to the dark, hot, caverns in which the Traders dwell, and finds, to his peril, the answer to the reason for the Venom. The fates of Kane, Daniels, and Aleksandrov hang on the spiral of madness caused by the venom.