This is a story of the casual criminality that is required to navigate the bureaucracy and business in general. Sometimes this is necessary for the system to operate, sometimes a mere convenience, sometimes for financial gain or even just a helping hand for another human being. The story covers the sloth, incompetence and pure evil of the Civil Service and their interaction with private business. It tells of what really happens in the inner workings...

Oliver the tortoise looks back on his happy life as he wonders why his pet human, Ike, who he has had for eighty years, has stopped visiting the garden.

Set in 1930's Japan, a young girl who is sold to a geisha house works her way up to become one of the most desirable geishas of her time.

"A pet hamster is enticed by the family cat to venture outside his well-equipped cage to the sunroom only to very quickly discover life outside his cage is not the best for him."--

From acclaimed thriller writer Jack Higgins-the story of a young man, just out of the army, embarking on his next great adventure as a writer, teacher, and legendary lothario  Oliver Shaw leaves the army as a young man eager to embrace the possibilities that life on a British military base in Germany have denied him. He intends to be a writer, a man with a passionate existence, whose triumphs-and failures-will make his life and work great. And he...

Susie King Taylor was born a slave in 1848, but learned to read and secret schools. She taught others to read and write, and served as a laundress, nurse, and teacher with an Army troop of African-American soldiers. Taylor's own words are supplemented by facts about the events she witnessed, the people she met, and the places to which she traveled.

Remembered by history as the first modern general, William Tecumseh Sherman wrote his Memoirs ten years after the end of the Civil War. It served as a personal account of his experiences as a powerful Union general, and also as a history of the events that had taken place since the beginning of the Mexican War in 1846. He later reflected on his intentions in writing these Memoirs, stating his wish "to be a witness on the stand before the great tribunal...

Elise Marquette likes dead people but digging up the dead doesn't pay. Consulting Archaeology does. Her desperate need for money has biological anthropologist Elise stuck in a mundane job working for greedy, callous oil companies. It's a soul-sucking existence and she can't see a way out. As if that wasn't enough, Elise's family is a disaster, and she's given up on love and romance. Just when she'd resigned herself to torturous family dinners,...