Charlie Moon's Auntie Jean runs a joke shop at the seaside. Charlie loves to go and stay there and try out the comic hats, masks, rubber spiders, fake flowers that squirt water, and cushions that squeak when you sit on them...even when his clever cousin Ariadne is staying, too.

Charlie gets into all sorts of sticky situations when his seaside summer holiday turns into a missing jewellery mystery - and detective Charlie finds himself in the middle of a muddle once again when a gang of bungling burglars threatens to spoil the Big Library Bonanza . . .

Home is where the heat is for disgraced British spy Charlie Muffin, “a marvelous creation” from the multimillion-selling author (The Daily Mail). Charlie Muffin has come back to England. The ex-spy, a veteran of twenty-five years’ service to the Crown, was last seen in Berlin, where an attempt on his life by his own organization led to international embarrassment. They had expected Charlie—a disheveled, middle-aged survivor of every double cross in the book—to die easily. Instead, he disappeared. But after months on the run, dulling his instincts with alcohol and laziness, the strain of life in the shadows finally gets to Charlie. By now the heat back home must have died down, and he shouldn’t have any trouble sneaking across the Channel. Now, he expects, he can finally be safe in England. Charlie Muffin is dead wrong. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Brian Freemantle including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

The last thirty years have witnessed one of the most fertile periods in the history of children's books: the flowering of imaginative illustration and writing, the Harry Potter phenomenon, the rise of young adult and crossover fiction, and books that tackle extraordinarily difficult subjects. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature provides an indispensable and fascinating reference guide to the world of children's literature. Its 3,500 entries cover every genre from fairy tales to chapbooks; school stories to science fiction; comics to children's hymns. Originally published in 1983, the Companion has been comprehensively revised and updated by Daniel Hahn. Over 900 new entries bring the book right up to date. A whole generation of new authors and illustrators are showcased, with books like Dogger, The Hunger Games, and Twilight making their first appearance. There are articles on developments such as manga, fan fiction, and non-print publishing, and there is additional information on prizes and prizewinners. This accessible A to Z is the first place to look for information about the authors, illustrators, printers, publishers, educationalists, and others who have influenced the development of children's literature, as well as the stories and characters at their centre. Written both to entertain and to instruct, the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to Children's Literature is a reference work that no one interested in the world of children's books should be without.

With his Southwestern series, bestselling author James D. Doss and his dryly humorous, no-nonsense Native American sleuth, Charlie Moon, have brought law and what's going to have to pass for order to Charlie's Columbine Ranch and the nearby Ute reservation. Now the seven-foot rancher and part-time tribal investigator wants to carve out a little more space for himself alongside FBI Special Agent Lila Mae McTeague. That's right: Charlie has it in his head that he's going to get hitched. That is, unless Charlie's irascible aunt, her sixteen-year-old niece, and their visions of a dead woman—her throat slit from ear to ear—have anything to say about it. With a bit of romance and full measure of murder, Snake Dreams, the thirteenth in James D. Doss's widely loved Charlie Moon series, is a haunting tale best told under a full moon and beside a crackling fire.

Strange things are happening near Granite Creek, Colorado, all in the space of less than twenty-four hours. A Ute shaman dreams of being buried alive and hears the hooting of an owl, signaling impending death. A man walks into Spirit Canyon and disappears, leaving his battered wife both relieved and devastated. A private museum is burgled. An Apache is arrested for assaulting a police officer. And a sniper takes a shot through an antique store window, wounding the proprietor. Part-time Ute tribal investigator Charlie Moon would rather be tending to his duties on the Columbine Ranch than playing detective with this puzzling collection of seemingly unrelated events. But when the local police and the FBI-including the beguiling Special Agent Lila McTeague-can't seem to put it all together, Charlie must connect the dots before anyone else dies. In The Witch's Tongue, James D. Doss's complex and absorbing crime novel set on the Ute reservation in Southern Colorado, Charlie Moon's cleverness and his aunt Daisy Perika's intuition-not to mention the spellbinding story behind this hell of a day-share the limelight with the vibrant details of Native life and custom.