Flight Of A Starling

Best friends and sisters Lo and Rita have spent their lives flying through the air on the trapeze under the lights in the big top. The nomadic circus community is a close-knit family, but those bonds are threatened as secrets and lies surface and Lo finds forbidden love with a boy from outside the circus. The two sisters find themselves at odds with each other for the first time as they both search for love and test the limits of family loyalty. Lo must face up to a family member's deception and navigate her newfound love. Will she manage to land on her feet?

Eric Starling shot to fame landing a two-seater bi-plane on a Calais street in darkness. From this inauspicious start he became one of that select breed who pioneered commercial flying in Scotland. This is his story.

Princess Lily thought of fairies the way some girls think of "bad boys." If a fairy had shown up at Castle Starling wearing a motorcycle jacket and a disrespect for authority, Princess Lily would have been head over heels before he spoke a word with his pouty, mutinous mouth. So when two fairies ask for help escaping their master, Prince Alexander, who has come to court her, Lily is forced to rescue herself along with them. Fleeing to Queen Persephone's halfway castle for Lost Girls, Lily follows the cryptic advice of a magical Book, befriends a dragon with a knight bodyguard, and hides from the bounty-hunting gang of princes chasing her hand in marriage. As The Knightly Times' coverage of her flight gets more and more sensational, Lily starts to doubt her choices. How can she sort out her own opinion from the tabloids, gossip, and fairy tales?

June's life at home with her stepmother and stepsister is a dark one--and a secret one. Not even her dad knows the truth, and she can't find the words to tell anyone else. She's trapped like a butterfly in a net. Then June meets Blister, a boy from a large, loving, chaotic family. In him, she finds a glimmer of hope that perhaps she can find a way to fly far, far away. Because she deserves her freedom. Doesn't she?

POWERLESS? For Amy Sturgess, life in the big city comes with even bigger problems. Her marketing career is being derailed by a conniving coworker stealing her accounts. Her family crises range from her down-and-out brother running afoul of the law to her mother’s growing affections for the house cats. And Amy’s love life just flatlined thanks to an unexpected reunion with the one that got away—who’s now engaged. When Xanax and therapy fail to relieve her stress, Amy does what any young woman in her position would do: She uses her superstrength, speed, flight, and ability to generate 750 volts from her hands to fight crime as the mysterious masked vigilante Starling. But while Starling is hailed as a superhero, will Amy remain a super-zero?

On May 27th, 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met a flirtatious little starling in a Viennese shop who sang an improvised version of the theme from his Piano Concerto no. 17 in G major. Sensing a kindred spirit in the plucky young bird, Mozart bought him and took him home to be a family pet. For three years, the starling lived with Mozart, influencing his work and serving as his companion, distraction, consolation, and muse. Two centuries later, starlings are reviled by even the most compassionate conservationists. A nonnative, invasive species, they invade sensitive habitats, outcompete local birds for nest sites and food, and decimate crops. A seasoned birder and naturalist, Lyanda Lynn Haupt is well versed in the difficult and often strained relationships these birds have with other species and the environment. But after rescuing a baby starling of her own, Haupt found herself enchanted by the same intelligence and playful spirit that had so charmed her favorite composer. In Mozart's Starling, Haupt explores the unlikely and remarkable bond between one of history's most cherished composers and one of earth's most common birds. The intertwined stories of Mozart's beloved pet and Haupt's own starling provide an unexpected window into human-animal friendships, music, the secret world of starlings, and the nature of creative inspiration. A blend of natural history, biography, and memoir, Mozart's Starling is a tour de force that awakens a surprising new awareness of our place in the world.

Avian Flight covers all the main aspects of aerial locomotion by birds including sections on the history of thinking about bird flight, aerodynamics, functional morphology, evolution, kinematics, physiology, energetics and the cost of flight. The subject is complex and still not yet fully understood, and the author argues a convincing case for rethinking or even abandoning some of the old, well-established concepts.

Darling is a small isolated town, made up of small-town people who have small-town kids who rarely leave; it is the last place anyone would expect to find a visitor from another world, but that is what Starling Rust claims to be, and the town-folk, led by their corrupt mayor, are terrified--the Wilding sisters, Delta and Bee, are determined to protect Starling from the town's escalating xenophobia but the growing feelings between Starling and Delta may prove to be the greatest threat of all.