It just may be impossible to exhaust the creative potential of LEGO bricks. With an active imagination as your guide there are endless possibilities-provided you follow the LEGO Companys official (and sensible) rules. This means no cutting or tampering with bricks creating models that shoot unapproved projectiles or using non-standard parts with any LEGO product. After all those little precision-molded ABS bricks can be dangerous in the wrong hands! Well toss those rules out the window. Forbidden Lego introduces you to the type of free-style building that LEGOs master builders do for fun in the back room. Using LEGO bricks in combination with common household materials (from rubber bands & glue to plastic spoons & ping-pong balls) along with some very unorthodox building techniques youll learn to create working models that LEGO would never endorse. Try your hand at a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates a candy catapult a high voltage LEGO vehicle a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher & other useless but incredibly fun inventions. Once you get into the spirit youll want to try inventing your own rule-breaking models. Forbidden Legos authors share tips & tricks that will inspire you & help you turn your visions into reality. Nothings against the rules in this book! ...

A spellbinding novel from Sunday Times Number One bestseller Penny Vincenzi: ' Seductively readable' The Times Forbidden Places is about love & marriage families & secrets & about wartime & how it affects social values. It is a story of three women & one family. One is married & widowed within five years. She is free to start again. Or is she? The second has a perfect husband she thinks she loves. He becomes a grotesque parody of what he once was. Is that love real? The third becomes trapped in a nightmare marriage. Can the war free her? ...

From Las Vegas to Dubai from Shanghai to London the fatal pull of the gambling world stretches... Savannah pleasure-loving It Girl wants to prove herself to her powerful ruthless father Michael Hudson
- until a terrible tragedy forces her to re-think her life. Lois an ex-cop from the wrong side of the tracks is now running the gambling business of Michaels greatest rival Roberto Enzo
- & torn between the glamour & wealth of the casinos & the needs of her vulnerable young daughter. Both women have to confront their pasts discover new loves & find out the really important things in life before the greed & corruption of their worlds consume them.

...

Librarian Justine is given a chance to acquire La Coste": an unpublished story that is supposedly the most disturbing work written by the Marquis de Sade. Alleged to contain details of his most twisted indulgences " La Coste" is being put up for sale to anyone who can prove themselves worthy of owning this long lost catalogue of excess & depravity. Justines quest will bring her face to face with extremes of punishment & pleasure. Certain to face sacrilege sadism & subversion she knows there are no limits in the pursuit of forbidden reading." ...

I had every reason to hate her my forbidden sister. She was like someone who had died but wouldn't stay buried.. . Emmie Wilcox was only six when her older sister Roxy was thrown out of their New York City apartment. Their stern father's military-style rules left no room for rebellion & Roxy was as defiant as Emmie-now an outstanding student at a private school-is compliant: a perfect daughter une fille parfaite as her Parisian-born mother lovingly calls her. Two sisters total opposites-yet Emmie is secretly obsessed with the mystery surrounding Roxy: What had she done? Where is she now? & is there a hidden side to Emmie that resembles Roxy's spiteful nature? Knowing only that Roxy is a highly paid escort to the city's wealthiest men Emmie goes behind her father's back to track down the sister she fears despises & inexplicably clings to.. .and whose influence might run deeper than Emmie ever imagined. ...

Joe Pickett's outlaw companion Nate Romanowski faces the battle of his life: one he may very likely lose. Nate knows too much about Special Forces Black Ops in Afghanistan
- & he must be silenced. Nate's former comrades know the time has come to end the threat once & for all. & they do it by incorporating many of the same tactics that served their unique & secret unit well in the Middle East: recruiting locals. Nate can trust no one except Joe Pickett who is constrained by his oath & duty to the law & the state. But Nate must involve Joe because he knows his enemy will strike at his friends in order to draw him out. The entire Pickett family will be a target. Nate can only fight back outside the law & Joe must make a choice: help his friend or keep the peace?
...

Force on Force" brings the drama & action of modern warfare to the tabletop using miniature soldiers. The rules cover all aspects of modern warfare from the confidence & supply level of troops to air-strikes & off-board artillery & accommodates scenarios set anywhere from the end of World War II to the conflicts on today's news without sacrificing either character or playability. From infantry & armour to artillery & air support " Force on Force" presents everything that players need to recreate post-World War II warfare between conventional combined-arms forces. The book also contains the Ambush Alley rules that allow players to recreate intense counterinsurgency actions in an urban environment." ...

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; & more recently that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. But there's so much more to this remarkable Movement. Over 200 000 women in the UK belong to the WI & their membership is growing. They cross class & religion include all ages -from students & metropolitan young professionals such as the Shoreditch Sisters to rural centenarians -with passions that range from supporting the 1920s Bastardy Bill (in response to a wartime legacy of illegitimate babies) to the current SOS for Honey Bees campaign. It was founded in 1915 not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country including suffragettes academics & social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood changing women's lives & their world in the process. Certainly its members boiled jam & sang ' Jerusalem ' but they also made history. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are
- & always were
- a force to be reckoned with.

...

Everyone knows three things about the Womens Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; & more recently that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. 215 000 women in the UK belong to the WI. Their membership crosses class & has recently begun to recruit huge numbers of young women (eg Shoreditch Sisters (check))/ It was founded in 1915 not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country including suffragettes academics & social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood changing womens lives & their world in the process. Certainly its members made jam & sang Jerusalem but they did & do much more besides. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are
- & always were
- a force to be reckoned with.

...

The tragedy of the loss in 1941 of two Royal Navy capital ships HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse the core of Churchills deterrent Force Z stunned the world. Churchill had hoped that sending a small powerful squadron of ships to Singapore would deter a threatened Japanese invasion of Malaya & Thail&. He was to be proved tragically wrong. Denuded of aircraft cover Force Z was left disastrously exposed to air attack. Within eight days of their arrival at Singapore both ships were sunk with huge loss of life in a mass attack by 85 Japanese bombers. It was the Royal Navys greatest loss in a single engagement & the first time a modern battleship had been sunk by air power. With the naval force at the bottom of the sea & the RAF almost wiped out in Malaya on day one Singapore was left with no air or sea protection & fell two months later. This is the first book to explore in detail the wrecks of these two vessels & grippingly narrates a summary of the Japanese threat Fortress Singapore & the subsequent Japanese invasion. Today the wrecks of these two famous British warships lie on the bottom of the South China Sea 200 miles north of Singapore & 50 miles offshore. The author was invited as a civilian expert on a military expedition to dive & survey these wrecks & now for the first time the wrecks are revealed as they are today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned artists illustrations of the wrecks each one is looked at in detail. The story of the loss of these two ships & of the sacrifice of the men who served in them is remembered. This has been a personal quest for the author whose grandfather was serving in Singapore when Force Z arrived. His wife & the authors father & two brothers were among the last civilians evacuated from Singapore before the final siege. His grandfather was taken into internment at Changi Gaol by the Japanese & suffered there for three years until Singapore was reoccupied by the British in 1945. Had the Fall of Singapore not happened the way it did the author would not be here to write this truly remarkable book. ...