Because no one has ever written a comprehensive checkering course before, learning to checker has always been the most difficult-to-acquire skill-set in in the area of gun craftsmanship. Not anymore. This book teaches gunstock checkering beginning with essential basics, such as proper lighting, cradle design, selecting the proper tools, and all the other steps that lay the groundwork for a successful outcome before you ever pick up a tool. All aspects are covered, beginning with the design and layout of checkering patterns, both point patterns and Fleur-de-lis. The book is richly illustrated with more than 230 full color photographs, guiding the student through each step of the checkering process, thereby avoiding the confusion that has always been a part of the mystique of checkering. In addition, there is a section which deals with the various types of Walnut used in the making of gunstocks, detailing the relative qualities of each as to the suitability for checkering, such as hardness, pore size, and grain structure. Lastly, there is a section labeled "Random Thoughts and Miscellaneous Tips and Techniques", which contains some of the most valuable information in the course. These are lessons learned by the author over the span of a career. Covered are repair of mistakes, such as bad lines or broken diamonds, techniques for keeping lines straight, working with problem wood, proper tool selection for different types of wood, proper diamond proportions, and the list goes on. The information contained in these seventeen chapters will teach you everything you need to know to successfully checker gunstocks. All you need to add is experience.

Charity thought she had it all—marriage to respected consultant Tyco van der Brons and being a mother to his two children. So why did her heart yearn for his love, too? She had known from the start that theirs was a marriage of convenience—so it would be foolish to wish for anything more...wouldn't it?

I felt like I’d lost everything and would never find someone to love me… While working as a nurse in London, Charity falls hard for a visiting physician from the Netherlands. She decides to follow him to Amsterdam when his training term ends, but she soon discovers that he is a playboy who isn’t ready to settle down. Though heartbroken, Charity ends up meeting handsome and kindhearted Dr. Tyco van der Brons. He invites her to meet his twin daughters and soon Charity grows to love them. She wonders how such an amazing man could care for a dull woman like herself, so she is shocked when Tyco asks her to marry him!

This highly readable volume tells the true story of a venture that achieved more than 400,000% return for its founders and investors. The book follows one of the principals in the startup as he navigates a series of extraordinary twists and turns becoming an entrepreneur and building a company. The turbulent journey educates and entertains as the author recounts his own learning experiences—providing a practical education on the fundamentals of customer discovery, sales, marketing, business development and entrepreneurship. This personal story conveys the substance of content taught in the classroom in a compelling and easy to read style. With learning experiences ranging from opportunity identification to customer acquisition and raising money and exiting a company, the book presents a collection of topics carefully curated to answer fundamental questions about innovation, entrepreneurship, and career success. The book serves as an essential guide for those who wish to innovate to create value and wealth for themselves and others. Readers will gain a gritty, yet inspiring, view of the trials and tribulations inherent in any entrepreneurial endeavor, and will walk away from the book with practical tools and techniques for career success, whether it is with a brand-new startup or an established corporation.

Minutes before her rock-star mother is to marry her once-estranged father and make her life complete, sixteen-year-old Shaley is kidnapped, and she must stay strong and rely on God to help her save herself.

“Some of the best and most moving Vonnegut.”—San Francisco Chronicle Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut’s pen into hilarious farce—a final slapstick that may be the Almighty’s joke on us all. “Both funny and sad . . . just about perfect.”—Los Angeles Times “Imaginative and hilarious . . . a brilliant vision of our wrecked, wacked-out future.”—Hartford Courant

THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS AWARD FOR BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL "The first great thriller of 2017 is here: Final Girls, by Riley Sager. If you liked Gone Girl, you'll like this."--Stephen King Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie-scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to--a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls: Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet. Now, Quincy is doing well--maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fianc , Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won't even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past. That is until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit; and Sam, the second Final Girl, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.