I wasn't afraid of death. How could I be? I lived under death's shadow every day. When you swallow eighty Vicodin, twenty sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you. When you continually use drugs with the kind of reckless determination that I did, the limit to how much heroin or crack you can ingest is not defined in dollar amounts, but in the amounts your body can withstand without experiencing a seizure or respiratory failure. Yet at the end of every binge, every night of lining up six, seven, eight crack pipes and hitting them one after the other bam! bam! bam! every night of smoking and snorting bag after bag of heroin . . . after all of that, when you still wake up to see the same dirty sky over you as the night before, you start to think that instead of dying, maybe your punishment is to live---to be stuck in this purgatory of self-abuse and misery for an eternity. Sometimes you start to think that death would come as a blessed relief. Toward the end, I found myself contemplating death again. Only this time I wasn't going to leave it to chance. I was going to buy a gun, load the thing, place the barrel in my mouth, and blow my fucking brains out. I sat on my parents' sofa as I pondered this. All I needed was a gun. And then all-- of my problems-- would be solved.

Some illustrations. An inspiring dramatic account of the colorful and courageous life and death of the martyr, St. Edmund Campion, "hero of God's underground" during the persecution of Catholics in England in the 1500's.

Learn how Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and led others to freedom on the underground railroad.

A timely and powerful time-slip story inspired by the author's family in Budapest during the Holocaust Louie lives with her brothers, Bert and Teddy, in a hotel run by their grandparents. It is one of Sydney's grand old buildings, rich in history ... and in secrets. When a rose-gold locket, once thought lost, is uncovered, it sends Louie and her brothers spinning back in time. Back to a world at war: Budapest in the winter of 1944, where their grandparents are hiding secrets of their own ... From bestselling author Susanne Gervay comes a heart-racing timeslip story inspired by her own family's escape from Budapest during the Holocaust. AWARDS Longlisted - ARA Historical Novel Prize 2021 (Children's and Young Adult Category) PRAISE 'Impossible to stop reading' -- Jackie French 'A story of light and love and exceptional courage' -- Ursula Dubosarsky 'Riveting, encouraging, and authentic, Heroes of the Secret Underground introduces the topic of World War II in a fresh and enlightening way. My heart was left racing after each page turn, and I'm sure you'll feel the same way too.' --Better Reading

Ever since becoming an IWP—Individual with Powers—Marvin Maywood has dreamed of joining the Core, a group of gifted heroes who save lives and stop crimes. But because he’s a homeless teenager who is forbidden to use his amazing powers, wanting and achieving that dream are two very separate things.

The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but careful; reflective but determined. As he becomes increasingly and chillingly alienated from other people, the reader is drawn into complicit acquiescence. We are forced to consider what it means to be heroic and how we ourselves would behave in the same circumstances. Written in 1961, this is the masterpiece of one of the great Polish writers of the twentieth century.