Puppy Love Tales Drayton Beauchamp Series Hardback

Life is never dull in Drayton Beauchamp but for Zoe it feels as though her world has been turned upside down. As her elderly employer is rushed off to hospital and the dog rescue centre is set to close, she doesn't think it can get much worse... Until a city developer and his girlfriend turn up and threaten to build a new housing estate on the beloved allotments. With the village up in arms and the tensions rising, Zoe finds herself plunged into the centre of the controversy with some dramatic unforeseen consequences. Everything falls apart but, luckily, it turns out a dog really is a girl's best friend.

Whoever said life in the country was boring... Alicia's a smart sassy lawyer who won't stand for any nonsense. She lives for payday, Prada and becoming a Partner of the firm. Having shaken the proverbial rural dust of Drayton Beauchamp off her Jimmy Choos, she knows exactly what she wants out of life. At least, until one disastrous summer, she thinks she does. Then, stuck back in the village she grew up in things start to get complicated as she rediscovers old friends, Matty the farmer's wife with a passion for fashion and Chloe, the eternal romantic. As she clashes with her mother's favourite gardener, deals with aggressive clients and sees her friend's marriage fall apart, she finds that she becomes inexplicably bound to the village. However much she tries to leave it appears fate has other plans. Whoever said life in the countryside was boring couldn't have been more wrong; there's always a rural affair.

#1 bestselling author Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels are: “irresistible” (Houston Chronicle), “stunning” (Booklist), “outrageous” (Publishers Weekly), “brilliantly evocative” (The Denver Post), and “making trouble and winning hearts” (USA Today). New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is certain of three truths: People don’t just vanish into thin air. Never anger old people. And don’t do what Tiki tells you to do. After a slow summer of chasing low-level skips for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds agency, Stephanie Plum finally lands an assignment that could put her checkbook back in the black. Geoffrey Cubbin, facing trial for embezzling millions from Trenton’s premier assisted-living facility, has mysteriously vanished from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. Now it’s on Stephanie to track him down. Unfortunately, Cubbin has disappeared without a trace, a witness, or his money-hungry wife. Rumors are stirring that he must have had help with the daring escape . . . or that maybe he never made it out of his room alive. Since the hospital staff’s lips seem to be tighter than the security, and it’s hard for Stephanie to blend in to assisted living, Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur goes in undercover. But when a second felon goes missing from the same hospital, Stephanie is forced into working side by side with Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, in order to crack the case. The real problem is, no Cubbin also means no way to pay the rent. Desperate for money—or maybe just desperate—Stephanie accepts a secondary job guarding her secretive and mouthwatering mentor Ranger from a deadly Special Forces adversary. While Stephanie is notorious for finding trouble, she may have found a little more than she bargained for this time around. Then again—a little food poisoning, some threatening notes, and a bridesmaid’s dress with an excess of taffeta never killed anyone . . . or did they? If Stephanie Plum wants to bring in a paycheck, she’ll have to remember: No guts, no glory.

When a group of friends formed 'Ferguson's Gang' they had no idea of the notoriety their antics would produce. Society was astounded by the daring tricks the Gang used to raise money but these were no common robbers. They presented the booty in the carcass of a goose or wrapped round a cigar; pledging undying support to the National Trust. Their greatest feat was preserving their anonymity; now almost a century later the fascinating story of Ferguson's Gang is finally revealed in this book. It is a world now forgotten; of genteel tea parties, debutantes' balls and stately homes with armies of servants. Yet amongst this wealth and splendour lurked a group of rebels. The personal stories of the masked maidens are startling; mixing with Royalty, they belonged to the leading political dynasties and rubbed shoulders with the literary elite. It is no wonder these women kept their identities so heavily concealed.

This landmark book of essays examines the development of women's letter writing from the late fifteenth to the early eighteen century. It is the first book to deal comprehensively with women's letter writing during the Late Medieval and Early Modern period and shows that this was a larger and more socially diversified area of female activity than has generally been assumed. The essays, contributed by many of the leading researchers active in the field, illustrate women's engagement in various activities, both literary and political, social and religious.

This study focuses on fibre skirts (liku) and associated tattooing (veiqia) worn by indigenous Fijian women in the nineteenth century, highlighting the link between clothing and the adorned human body and the ongoing relevance of museum collections and archives.

“A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences