On a night more than two thousand years ago, a prince was born in India. He could have been the most powerful rajah in all the world. But instead, the prince chose to become a common beggar, seeking a way to end the suffering he saw around him. He knew riches could not end suffering. He learned that deprivation could not end suffering. Then, under an enormous spreading fig tree, deep in concentration, he found Enlightenment. He understood Dharma, the law governing all things. He had achieved Nirvana, the peace that triumphs over suffering. And he found this knowledge and understanding inside his own mind, nowhere else. He became the Buddha, and taught his way of ending suffering to all who wished to learn.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words—featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death NAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN • NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to the book’s images. This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image—his undying gift to the world.

Colonel Storton has set his mind on his beautiful daughter, Alvina, marrying a man with money and a grand title. When Lord Hillborough became their next door neighbour in the country, the Colonel considered him to be an excellent husband for Alvina, but she found him repulsive and could not bear even to be touched by him. She therefore decided to leave her home and run away to avoid having to marry a man she did not love and could never love. When she saw a large and impressive yacht at a nearby Port, she went aboard and hid as a stowaway. She hoped that the yacht was going to France where she had a friend from school who she could stay with. When the owner of the yacht, the Earl of Penwood, came aboard, he found her in his Master cabin, but instead of being angry and throwing her off at the next stop, he told her that he also was being forced to marry someone and perhaps they could both assist each other. Alvina helped the Earl in solving his problem by successfully pretending to be his wife and he was delighted. It was while they were anchored at the quay in the Port of Gibraltar that Alvina mysteriously disappeared. How she found herself in Morocco on the other side of the Mediterranean. How the Sultan was attracted by her fair hair and blue eyes and sent men to kidnap her and then she was in his Palace where he intended to marry her and join his many other wives. And how she was saved and found the love that she had been seeking is all told in this exciting and romantic novel by BARBARA CARTLAND.

The Woman Who Ran Away is a mystery of sorts. Jack Waldek, the protagonist, is a senior tax manager with an obscure public accounting firm in New Jersey. He meets Fran Zetzmann when she occupies the next seat to him on an O’Hare to LaGuardia flight. Fran presumably holds a regional sales management position with an advertising representative firm and impresses Jack as an independent traveling lady. They develop a relationship which blooms into a comfortable weekend lover arrangement at Jack’s country place in a Pocono Mountains gated community called Knight Estates. Fran is a runner. She runs every weekend morning a distance of 1.8 miles regardless of weather. She leaves one Saturday morning shortly after seven in the morning and does not return, Jack sets out to look for Fran, locates the rental car in the parking lot next to the running trail and her purse is in the back seat. There is no sign of Fran. A search of her purse produces an odd looking cell phone and a wallet without credit cards. He reports her absence the next day to the Knight Estates Public Safety Department and continues to search for Fran. Jack finds that the address on her business card is nothing more than a New York City mail drop, and that Fran’s company ceased to exist three years before. He continues to probe and suddenly becomes aware that Fran is not the first person to disappear from Knight Estates. Jack then learns that the woman he had known as Fran was an operative of a Middle East industrial intelligence firm called SHALIMAR. It appears that the woman called Fran was assigned to cultivate Jack to learn about his principal client, Gianni Companies. Jack Waldek, the charming tax manager, finds himself enmeshed in a web of threats, violence, imposters. loutish public safety officers, a corporate control fight, and professional assassins. Everything is linked to Fran, the woman who ran away. Dwight Foster’s previous books include the Shattered Covenants series, (Present & Past Imperfect, The Road to McKenzie Barber, The Consultant, The Chairman, The Partner, The House of Harwell, and Twilight & Endgame) and NEW YORK FOLKS. His writings have a strong business flavor nurtured during his lengthy executive search consulting career in addition to his current role as Chairman of Foster Partners Asia, a human capital consulting firm serving clients in China, Malaysia, and Viet Nam.

If you love the danger and sword-fighting of MERLIN, you'll like this! In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point - he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. As Sage's journey continues, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally a truth is revealed that proves more dangerous than all of the lies put together.

A sister and her younger brother, Prue and Ricky, have been orphans for five years, living in the London house of their father's friend. Now Mr. Chichester is coming back to London after his travels abroad, so Prue is looking for another place for them to live.