All her life she's lived in exile, hiding from the traitor who usurped her father's throne. But now she must return to the very kingdom she's always feared. Iníon is the daughter of the last Gardener King, or so she thought. When the king reveals to her that she is not his blood daughter but that he found her in a tree the night that he fled Gàrradh, she begins to wonder what other secrets he's been hiding. She falls for Rían, the king's wild son with Gardener blood in his veins who not only lives in the trees but speaks to them. But Rían is forbidden to marry any woman without kings' blood. Together Rían and Iníon concoct a plan to return to Gàrradh and solve the mystery of Iníon's birth. But what they find when they arrive in the land of their birth turns everything upside down. After what she's learned about the Gardener Kings, will Iníon still want to be a part of this family? This young adult fantasy novel inspired by Celtic myth and fairylore is the first in The Gardener Kings trilogy. Perfect for readers who like plot twist novels and strong female protagonists.

"As gardener to His Majesty, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie is master of his own domain, the royal fruit and vegetable garden. Louis' generals might proclaim the power of France abroad, but La Quintine's espaliers and vegetable plots assert nothing less than man's mastery over nature; a garden that can feed a thousand at a sitting, standards of pruning that in three hundred years have never been surpassed."--Jacket.

Once Upon a Time, there was a prince named Alexander. He went on a secret mission to Patage. But he never made it there. As the only survivor of a shipwreck compounded with his amnesia, he stays at Calisa for three years. His family back home thinks he is dead, and his kingdom is now open to whomever marries his sister. As Chester, another prince, plots and schemes how to take over Alexander's kingdom, Alexander tries to figure out who he is. He stays with Frederico, a master designer of gardens and flowers, until he is 15, under the name of Stephen. Then, empowered with knowledge of how to maneuver out of the dangerous reefs and into the open sea, he journeys outward, with only a vague idea of where to go. Join Alexander, as he goes on his quest to regain his memory, his home, and his kingdom.

Tenali Raman was a court jester, an intelligent advisor and one of the ashtadiggajas (elephants serving as pillars and taking care of all the eight sides) in the Bhuvana Vijayam (Royal Court) of the famed Emperor of Vijayanagar Empire (City of Joy) in Karnataka Sri Krishna Deva Raya (1509-1529), the model ruler par excellence to Ashoka, Samudra Gupta and Harsha Vardhana. Tenali Raman was an embodiment of acute wit and humour and an admirable poet of knowledge, shrewdness and ingenuity. In a short span, the legacy left behind by Tenali Raman attained eternity. All these qualities of Tenali Raman have been fully explored and displayed in this collection of vibrant fables and anecdotes. The book is a marvellous treasury of legends of Tenali Raman and Emperor Raya which evokes a long lost, never-never land: an enchanted world of alert wits and tricky gossips; crafty crooks with biting tongues, valiant brigands and an assorted cluster of uncommon common people. Narrated by the author and superbly illustrated, "Fix Your ProblemsThe Tenali Raman Way" is an engaging blend of earthly wisdom and sparkling humour which deal with concepts that have certain timelessness. Each story is followed by terse moral and incalculable snippets which are usually that little extra that brings the reader a little more closer to his goal on the way to realisation. Every story purveys a pithy folk wisdom that triumphs over all trials and tribulations. The moralistic traits sagaciously portrayed by these stories intend to develop a series of impacts that can reinforce certain key ideas by the rational mind of the readers in all facets of life and propel them to the top in every endeavour. The stories' various layers of meaning educates, informs, advises, enthuses, inspires and amuses and thus have a teaching effect which makes this book a must read for every aspiring individual who wants to race ahead in the world of opportunities and cusses. The book also exposes how richly endowed Bharata Khanda (India before invasions) had been in the east in the field of wisdom and knowledge down the ages of which the west is ignorant.

"This sweeping history of the ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, Iran) takes readers on a journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquest of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to bricklayers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that they faced over time are explored through their written words and the archaeological remains of the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived. Rather than chronicling three thousand years of kingdoms, the book instead creates a tapestry of life stories through which readers come to know specific individuals from many walks of life, and to understand their places within the broad history of events and institutions in the ancient Near East. These life stories are preserved on ancient cuneiform tablets, which allow us to trace, for example, the career of a weaver as she advanced to became a supervisor of a workshop, listen to a king trying to persuade his generals to prepare for a siege, and feel the pain of a starving young couple who were driven to sell all four of their young children into slavery during a famine. What might seem at first glance to be a remote and inaccessible ancient culture proves to be a comprehensible world, one that bequeathed to us many of our institutions and beliefs, a truly fascinating place to visit"--