It's a long hot summer. Temperatures are soaring and a strange creature has been spotted on Dartmoor. Connie Lionheart and her friends soon discover that the creature is a chimera. When it attacks Connie, leaving her gravely wounded, Col and Rat must rescue her from hospital: she needs treatment beyond the knowledge of mortals. But a weakened Connie is easy prey for the evil shapeshifter Kullervo. He believes that, finally, the time is ripe for him to seize her Universal power, gather his army of mythical beings, and wipe out humanity. The battle between him and Connie will be a fight to the death. And the prize will be the future of mankind.

Cyrano de Bergerac is a flamboyant character and a skilled swordsman, not in the least afraid of drawing attention to himself in public — for he can be highly amusing, even at his own expense, with jokes about his enormous nose. But he has a weakness: he has fallen in love with his beautiful cousin Roxane, and because of his own appearance is too ashamed to declare his love. Meanwhile Roxane is besotted with a handsome, but foolish young man, Christian, in the same company of guards as Cyrano. Cyrano is devastated by this, and horrified by her request that he should protect the young man and encourage him to write her love letters. Writing letters is something Christian can't do — but Cyrano generously offers to help, even if it means breaking his own heart. Soon Cyrano pours out his feelings in the most romantic letters ever. The question is will Roxane discover the truth? And if she does will it be too late for Cyrano?

The Shepherd family have set off on their usual summer holiday under a cloud of gloom at the predictability of it all. When the car breaks down, they are forced to stay the night at the nearest B&B. To their dismay they find themselves at a place where Christmas comes every day of the year, complete with turkey and Santa Claus. And they discover it's even stranger than that, with the girl in the elf costume, the mysterious Mr Angel and the police seeking a fugitive. Stranded in this bizarre environment, unusual friendships develop and the relationships that have been so set in their ways are turned upside down. Full of comic moments, tension and drama, this is a highly satisfying read.

My quest to find THE ONE starts right now! This year I will utterly not snog random posh boys with congenital acne but will save myself for long-haired creative type with interest in tragicness and with musical potential i.e. Justin Statham. Though am not sure Justin has realized yet that I am THE ONE for him. Maybe he has heard I am rubbish at snogging. I need to learn to snog properly — and fast. Though perhaps I am just generally unlovable. As well as tongue technique issues I have hopelessly untragic relatives and a dog who eats furniture. Plus I am practically a medical midget and my hair is mental. Maybe I should just give up on boys altogether...

When Sebastian is chosen as the High Priest's apprentice at the Temple of Ora, everyone's shocked. But Sebastian soon discovers that as apprentice, he can have anything he wants... limitless cream cakes, training sessions with Golden United, even zip-wires and donkeys to liven up ceremonies at the Temple. He can pass entertaining new laws to annoy teachers, as well. But then there are strange explosions, falling objects, whispered threats. Sebastian realizes the Temple, with its all-seeing golden statue, holds many secrets. Can he ignore it all? Or should Sebastian and his pet rat, Gerald, risking life and whisker, try to out-fox the most powerful mob in the city?

Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses — if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man's world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence. She learns that love brings misery, pain, and violent passions that can destroy lives...

Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health. Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the housework. Her bright smile and laughing voice bring light and hope into the Fromes' house — and into Ethan's lonely life. But poverty is a prison from which few people escape...

Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he's not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy's tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any time.

It is hay-making time on the Wookey farm. Two brothers are building the haystack, but thinking about other things — about young women, and love. There are angry words, and then a fight between the brothers. But the work goes on, visitors come and go, and the long hot summer day slowly turns to evening. Then the sun goes down, covering the world with a carpet of darkness. From the hedges around the hayfield comes the rich, sweet smell of wild flowers, and the hay will make a fine, soft bed...

I'm afraid to look in the storeroom. All our food for the winter — where is it now? Inside those hungry guests! They never stop eating! And they never say thank you! And those children — my God, they eat more than their parents! Izzet Efendi and his family are afraid that their guests are never going to go home, but what can they do? Bookworms World Stories collect stories from around the world. This volume has stories by Turkish writers Huseyin Rahmi Gurpinar, Ayse Kilimci, Sait Faik, and Yalvac Ural.

Examines how formulaic language (lexical chunks) is used in a variety of real-life situations. Presents a framework for examining the existence and function of formulaic language and tests it extensively against language data within a wide variety of language samples. Formulaic language is a fast-growing area of applied linguistic research, and the author is a key figure in this field.

A two-level introductory series for kindergarten and early elementary students studying English for the first time.

A two-level introductory series for kindergarten and early elementary students studying English for the first time.

The practical importance of auction theory is widely recognized. Indeed, economists have been recognized for their contribution to the design of several auction-like mechanisms, such as the U. S. Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions, the 3G auctions in Europe and beyond, and the auction markets for electricity markets around the world. Moreover, auction theory is now seen as an important component of an economist's training. For example, some of the more celebrated results from the single-object auction theory are now usually taught in advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate courses on the economics of information. The techniques and insights gained from the study of auction theory provide a useful starting point for those who want to venture into the economics of information, mechanism design, and regulatory economics. This book provides a step-by-step, self-contained treatment of the theory of auctions. The aim is to provide an introductory textbook that will allow students and readers with a calculus background to work through all the basic results. Coverage includes: the basic independent-private-model; the effects of introducing correlation in valuations on equilibrium behaviour and the seller's expected revenue; mechanism design; and the theory of multi-object auctions. The paperback edition of the text includes a new chapter which acts as a guide to current developments in auction theory.

As technology has opened new windows into the brain, it has clarified what happens there when people make decisions about money. This clarity has produced a new science called neuroeconomics, which addresses diverse questions, such as why people save, buy stocks, steal, and overspend. The many different methods used in neuroeconomics have, however, often yielded unclear findings about the quality of these decisions, primarily because the field has lacked both guidelines for categorizing the different aspects of quality, and guidelines for selecting methods to study these aspects. Before this book, in which Peter Politser guides the reader through the different regions of study, there was no scientific guide for those interested in neuroeconomics. Politser shows how to evaluate specific elements of choice, such as regret, expectation, risk, ambiguity, time preference, and learning, and surveys economic and behavioral models of decision making skills. He reviews the neural correlates of decisional impairments and inconsistenciesclarifying, for example, why we do not recall what we experience, experience what we expect, or like what we want, and provides detailed tables of decision-making skills, their neural correlates, and possible impairments. Politser also considers what the field of neuroeconomics may add to future conceptions of decision making, and outlines the limitations of various studies of different capacities. He then introduces a broader field for the design and interpretation of neuroeconomic studiesa neuroepidemiology of decision making. Everyone who wants to understand the research in neuroeconomics or use its methods should read this book. Its accessible text, along with an extensive glossary, will guide those with little economic or neuroscience background, and make the book an excellent supplement for courses on neuroscience and decision making.

This book is the first systematic account of the syntax and semantics of names. Drawing on work in onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics, John Anderson examines the distribution and subcategorization of names within a framework of syntactic categories, and considers how the morphosyntactic behaviour of names connects to their semantic roles. He argues that names occur in two basic circumstances: one involving vocatives and their use in naming predications, where they are not definite; the other their use as arguments of predicators, where they are definite. This division is discussed in relation to English, French, Greek, and Seri, and a range of other languages. Professor Anderson reveals that the semantic status of names, including prototypicality, is crucial to understanding their morphosyntax and role in derivational relationships. He shows that semantically coherent subsets of names, such as those referring to people and places, are characterized by morphosyntactic properties which may vary from language to language.

The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944-the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Tec reveals that this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families-hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather-managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis. Herself a Holocaust survivor, Nechama Tec here draws on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans-including Tuvia Bielski himself-to reconstruct here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight. The saga of the Bielski partisans is one of the most elevating and inspiring stories in the chronicle of death and despair that is the Holocaust... Defiance is an accomplished and startling work of Holocaust documentation. Los Angeles Times Powerful and meticulous. This story is like almost no other.

To know a word means to know a great deal about it-including its meaning, collocations, grammatical features, derivations, register and appropriateness. This book presents useful and practical strategies to help readers identify learner errors, provide helpful feedback and recognize features that may be problematic. It also offers techniques for encouraging students to become independent word learners.

A four-level course with a strong emphasis on grammar, reading, and vocabulary.

A four-level course with a strong emphasis on grammar, reading, and vocabulary.