You won't find Grubtown on any maps. The last time any map-makers were sent anywhere near the place they were found a week later wearing nothing but pages from a telephone directory & calling for their mothers. It's certainly a town & certainly grubby
- except for the squeaky clean parts
- but everything else we know about the place comes from Beardy Ardagh town resident & author of these tales. As Beardy Ardagh reports when the local lighthouse is plunged into darkness & a ship runs aground
- flattening The Rusty Dolphin
- it's hard to imagine things can get much worse in Grubtown. But then there's a jail-break & the Police Department (all three of them) need all the help they can get from the (often bonkers) townsfolk. No wonder more trouble is waiting just around the corner.



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As daughter of the blacksmith in her tiny Irish village fifteen-year-old Kitty Doyle knows little of the ways of the world but she has to grow up fast when her widowed father re-marries & she has no choice but to leave the family home. Luckily theres work to be found over the water in 1920s Liverpool & soon Kitty has a job in a grocers where she also catches the eye of the owner. With Kittys input the business is soon thriving -- but tragedy lies ahead & she must endure many trials & tribulations before she can find true happiness! ...

It is 1940 & Staff Nurse Polly Brown has been granted a posting at Cliffehaven Memorial Hospital on the south coast to be near her badly injured husband Adam. But her decision has meant that she has had to part with their beloved five-year-old daughter Alice who is travelling to safety in Canada. Polly's heart is torn in two as she says goodbye to Alice & heads to the Beach View boarding house in Cliffehaven where she throws herself into her work. But as she confronts the fact that Adam may not survive his injuries a telegram arrives at Beach View. The boat Alice was on has been torpedoed by a German U-boat... ...

A moving family drama of one young womans fight to survive & to find a place to call home 1938: Sixteen-year-old Kate Monroe is living in Birmingham far away from her family in Irel&. Her parents have always doted on her siblings Sally & James leaving no time for her. Kate harbours a dark secret a deep longing for her cousin. Feelings she must suppress in this deeply staunch Irish-Catholic community -- even if they are reciprocated. Crazed by her infatuation Kate is left with no option other than to up-roots once more & seek out a new life far away from the temptation of Tim Monroe. Will Kate find true love or will distance make the heart grow fonder? ...

When Georgiana Gregory & her maid Kitty make the long sea journey from their native Hull for New York they are expecting to begin a new life in the heady freedom of the newly-formed United States of America. Georgiana wants to escape from the confines of English life & to savour a land of emancipation & opportunity. But in New York she encounters a man passing himself off as her brother-in-law Edward Newmarch a local mill-owners son who has abandoned Georgianas sister & fled to America. Georgiana recognises the man standing before her as Edward Newmarchs valet Robert Allen
- Edward himself appears to have vanished. But Edward having escaped from a disastrous marriage in England is now in further trouble with women having agreed to marry the difficult daughter of a powerful landowner & businessman while pursuing his beautiful wife Sofia. As Georgiana & Kitty pursue the adventures of the frontier & Edward tries to flee his enemies the dangers of this new country seem too much to cope with.
...

If you currently employ knowledge workers who do most of their work on computers or with computers access the Internet utilize internal & external databases use e-mail or other new messaging technology then this book is for you. Quite simply this handbook is for any organization with a lot of Web DNA that wishes to cut costs improve performance & stay perpetually competitive. It is for change agents or managers within those organizations who work with information & want to leverage the latest crop of tool sets to deliver on the promise of Lean for the modern information-rich office...packed with new ideas.. .breaks new ground in so many directions.. .- John Bicheno Director Lean Enterprise Research Centre Cardiff Business School.. .excellent.. .on several levels.. .teaches us how to visualize the depth of hidden wastes in our complex information flows & the large opportunity for improvement that this suggests.
- Keith Russell Ph D Global Continuous Improvement Leader R&D Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals Very interesting view on operational excellence helpful to readers without a background in this area of expertise.
- Bert Nordberg President & CEO. Sony Ericsson Congratulations to all the readers holding this book!.. . These Lean ideas must be an integral part of the daily operations of your business. I am going to get each & every one of my management team a copy of this brilliant book at the start for our own Lean journey.
- Lennart Kall CEO Wasa Kredit Its one thing to develop a concept. Its another to make it sing. This is the hymnal.
- Dr. Don V. Steward CEO Problematics Professor Emeritus Sacramento State University inventor of DSM.. .a must read for CIOs everywhere.
- Julian Amey Principal Fellow Warwick University"




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Far from the Madding Crowd" was Thomas Hardys first major literary success & it edited with an introduction & notes by Rosemarie Morgan & Shannon Russell in " Penguin Classics". Independent & spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy & the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each in contrasting ways unsettles her decisions & complicates her life & tragedy ensues threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex Hardys novel of swift passion & slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life & landscapes & with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships. This edition based on Hardys original 1874 manuscript is the complete novel he never saw published & restores its full candour & innovation. Rosemarie Morgans introduction discusses the history of its publication & the Biblical & Classical allusions that permeate the novel. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) born Higher Brockhampton near Dorchester originally trained as an architect before earning his living as a writer. Though he saw himself primarily as a poet Hardy was the author of some of the late eighteenth centurys major novels: " The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886) " Tess of the DUrbervilles" (1891) " Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874) & " Jude the Obscure" (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by " Jude the Obscure" he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems & his epic drama in verse " The Dynasts". If you enjoyed " Far from the Madding Crowd" you might also like Elizabeth Gaskells " Mary Barton". " Wonderful...a landscape which satisfies every stir of the imagination & which ravishes the senses". (Ronald Blythe)." ...

'I shall do one thing in this life
- one thing for certain
- that is love you & long for you & keep wanting you till I die.'

...

This is the Penguin English Library Edition" of " Far From the Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy. 'I cannot allow any man to
- to
...

Harper Collins is proud to present its new range of best-loved essential classics. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Beautiful impulsive & spirited Bathsheba Everdenes fortunes are changed forever when she inherits her own farm & becomes a woman of independent means. Set in Hardys evocative Wessex countryside Bathsheba is pursued by three very different suitors. The reliable & humble Gabriel Oak the vain & impetuous Troy & the reserved yet determined Boldwood. With the morals of rural society weighing heavily upon her it is through these relationships that Bathsheba experiences the torture of unrequited love & betrayal & discovers how random acts of chance & tragedy can alter the pathway of a life dramatically. ...