The Love Bandits

I stole his heart...necklace. Now he wants to return the favor. Lainey My mother’s dream was for me to marry a rich man. So I got engaged to one…and he was a no-good, cheating so-and-so. Now, I’m pursuing my dream, running a business helping people who’ve been through messy breakups. When a woman comes to me after her ex refuses to hand over her heirloom heart necklace, I know exactly what to do. I go undercover and cozy up to her ex to steal it back. Jake is a smooth talker with good game, but so am I. So it doesn’t take me long to return the necklace to its rightful owner. Except it turns out it was never hers…or his… Jake I know better than to be taken in by a pretty face, but Lainey got me good. I guess I shouldn't be complaining that her client stole the necklace from me, since I stole it from someone else. But if I don’t get it back, I’m toast. So Lainey agrees to help me. True, her motivations don’t match up with mine, but I’m not about to complain. Because suddenly the necklace isn't the only thing I want; I want to make her mine. **An interconnected standalone in the Unlucky in Love series**

Raccoons wreak havoc on a town during the night, rummaging through garbage cans, stealing food, and then running off into the hills to enjoy their loot.

Ralph Raccoon looks perfectly normal. But he doesn't act normal at all. He's disturbingly well behaved, clean and tidy, shockingly polite, and he even brushes his teeth! Mr. and Mrs. Raccoon are worried—how will Ralph ever become a great raccoon bandit like Grandpa Cutlass or Uncle Whiskers? It's time Ralph learned some bad manners . . . at Bandit School. Ralph has no chance of winning the "Best Bandit in School" competition—he's not very bandit-like at all. But sometimes good manners can be useful, and Ralph just might surprise everyone--including himself.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Grade level: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, e, i, s, t.

Fern lives in a colourless, lifeless city and has only ever seen trees as pictures in her books. Fern is told that the bandits who come in the middle of the night to steal from the city dwellers are bad guys, but when she follows them back to their home she discovers a land of colour, life, friendship and a future she believes in. BANDITS is the second picture book from Sydney-based artist Sha'an d'Anthes, whose career has seen her travel, show and sell her work all over the world. 'Sha'an's vibrant illustrations transport the reader to a world full of colour and joy.' - Marc Martin, author and illustrator 'D'Anthes' beautifully painted and intelligently prosed book is all about the environment, diversity and hope.' The Australian Women's Weekly 'enchanting adventure' Country Style

A study of banditry in Republican China, describing the cycles whereby banditry spread from the impoverished margins (geographically and socially) of late Qing society into entire provinces by the 1920s.

The Bandits from Rio Frio appears here for the first time in English in a translation that captures all the warmth and vitality of the original Spanish. All of Mexico in the mid nineteenth-century parades through the pages of Manuel Payno's classic novel. Landscapes painted with the clear light and shadows of the Mexican valleys and mountains, portraits of Indians and presidents in the teeming capital and in the humble indigenous pueblos; these provide the background as the author develops a romantic history of the impossible love between the Countess Mariana del Sauz and Lieutenant Colonel Juan Robreno. An illegitimate son results from a brief union of these lovers, and this star-crossed child is kidnapped and abandoned by Aztec witches. Wrongly accused of theft and murder, he must pursue the truth of his birth through staggering misfortunes. Another thread traces the criminal career of the notorious Evaristo, an artisan who becomes involved with the Countess' family and becomes a murderer and a bandit of national and even international fame. Yet another thread follows the lawyer Lamparilla's schemes for the love of the beautiful and independent Cecilia, a fruit vender and captain of a trajinera, the ancient Mexican freight canoe. The lives of these and many other memorable characters are swept up in a great web of organized crime spun by the fabulous Relumbron, presidential assistant, wealthy aristocrat, church stalwart, family man, and former associate of the great Santa Ana. Payno has lovingly preserved these portraits and landscapes of a Mexico and a society now long gone, yet somehow still familiar, still recognizable within the modern republic. He has defined what it means to beMexican, and his themes resonate today as powerfully as they must have a hundred years ago. Praise for Manuel Payno and Los Bandidos de Rio Frio ... a sweeping epic vision of a country... Payno's novel is an immense fresco of [Mexico], depicting members of all social classes... By presenting a wide spectrum of characters, Payno covers every aspect of popular life in Mexico... while sketching the political, rural, provincial, urban, military, religious, and economic problems of the country during times of anarchy. Jose Tomas de Cuellar, author of The Magic Lantern: Having a Ball and Christmas Eve (Library of Latin America) Manuel Payno's Los Bandidos de Rio Frio [is] the only Mexican novel of the nineteenth-century to approach an adequate and persuasive portrayal of the tragi-comedy of national politics and life in the decades after the Reformation. D. A. Brading, author of The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State 1492 - 1866 (Cambridge University Press) [Payno's] consistent refusal to assume a fixed and fervid loyalty to any one party left his judgment clear for objective evaluation of forces at play around him... Doris Sommer, author of Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (University of California Press) Los Bandidos de Rio Frio is the most ample study of customs that exists in Mexican literature... nobody in Mexico has so completely covered the entire society of an epoch within the pages of a single book... Frank E. Warner, author of Historia de la novela mexicana en el siglo XIX (Editorial Porrua) ... a wild ride through tumultuous times... hang on to your hats (and wallets)! from the Preface