Girl Overboard A Rose Among The Thorns

Dear Diary, Life in New York was looking great. Summer vacation was around the corner, and I’d FINALLY turned 13! Then Mom announced we’d be moving halfway around the world to Singapore, where she grew up. Now it feels like my life is SO over. I don’t know anyone here, my family’s totally weird and everything seems to go wrong at my new international school. How do I express myself when we have to wear UNIFORMS? How do I avoid the mean girls and keep cool around my crush? One thing’s for sure—I’m gonna figure this out! Things aren’t easy for Rosie Smith. Peek into her diary for tales about her spider-obsessed little brother, EMBARRASSING episodes at school and making friends—and enemies—in her new home, Singapore. Narrated with honesty and charm, and peppered with humorous illustrations, Girl Overboard! is a fresh new series whose heroine you’ll find yourself rooting for.

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages explores the richness and variety of life-writing from late Antiquity to the threshold of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, writers from Bede to Chaucer were thinking about life and experimenting with ways to translate lives, their own and others', into literature. Their subjects included career religious, saints, celebrities, visionaries, pilgrims, princes, philosophers, poets, and even a few 'ordinary people.' They relay life stories not only in chronological narratives, but also in debates, dialogues, visions, and letters. Many medieval biographers relied on the reader's trust in their authority, but some espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible. Others still professed allegiance to evidence but nonetheless freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The first book devoted to life-writing in medieval England, The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages covers major life stories in Old and Middle English, Latin, and French, along with such Continental classics as the letters of Abelard and Heloise and the autobiographical Vision of Christine de Pizan. In addition to the life stories of historical figures, it treats accounts of fictional heroes, from Beowulf to King Arthur to Queen Katherine of Alexandria, which show medieval authors experimenting with, adapting, and expanding the conventions of life writing. Though Medieval life writings can be challenging to read, we encounter in them the antecedents of many of our own diverse biographical forms-tabloid lives, literary lives, brief lives, revisionist lives; lives of political figures, memoirs, fictional lives, and psychologically-oriented accounts that register the inner lives of their subjects.

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages' explores the richness and variety of life writing in the Middle Ages, ranging from Anglo-Latin lives of missionaries, prelates, and princes to high medieval lives of scholars and visionaries to late medieval lives of authors and laypeople.

From an acclaimed "master of suspense"(New York Times Book Review) comes a thriller in which Thorn must confront an assassin whose victims and methods are taken directly from the script of a popular TV show April Moss writes obituaries for the Miami Herald. Her son, Sawyer, also a writer, has been scripting a cable TV series called "Miami Ops" and has been using his mother's work as a central element of the show's storyline. In "Miami Ops," a serial killer is using obituaries published in the local paper as a blueprint for selecting his next victims. But midway through the season, a copycat appears off-screen, a real-life killer who is using the same strategy to select victims. When this serial killer crosses paths with the reclusive Thorn, he has no choice but to leave his sanctuary in Key Largo and join forces with a young policewoman from Oklahoma who is investigating the murders. In addition to the show's head writer, April's other son, Sawyer's twin brother, works on "Miami Ops" as the lead actor. Could one of them be involved in the killings? Or are they orchestrated by the director of the TV series, an aging mogul who badly needs a hit? And what about the female star of the show, a deliciously strange young woman who seems willing to do anything to promote her career. Thorn walks into this hotbed of entertainment business intrigue totally unprepared for the life-altering shocker he's about to face. This loner from Key Largo has brought down his share of killers, but he's never confronted one that was his own flesh and blood. With the pacing of a thriller, and the lyrical prose for which Hall is renowned, this story pits Thorn against a killer—or killers—whose motives are as elusive as their identities.

Combining the sorcery of The Night Circus with the malefic suspense of A Secret History, Thorn Jack is a spectacular, modern retelling of the ancient Scottish ballad, Tam Lin—a beguiling fusion of love, fantasy, and myth that echoes the imaginative artistry of the works of Neil Gaiman, Cassandra Clare, and Melissa Marr. In the wake of her older sister’s suicide, Finn Sullivan and her father move to a quaint town in upstate New York. Populated with socialites, hippies, and dramatic artists, every corner of this new place holds bright possibilities—and dark enigmas, including the devastatingly attractive Jack Fata, scion of one of the town’s most powerful families. As she begins to settle in, Finn discovers that beneath its pretty, placid surface, the town and its denizens—especially the Fata family—wield an irresistible charm and dangerous power, a tempting and terrifying blend of good and evil, magic and mystery, that holds dangerous consequences for an innocent and curious girl like Finn. To free herself and save her beloved Jack, Finn must confront the fearsome Fata family . . . a battle that will lead to shocking secrets about her sister’s death.