Books with author Daniel Manning

When the tide turns in the war between the Southern Confederacy and the Imperial Alliance, more than a stalemate is broken. To ensure victory, there must be sacrifices... sacrifices that break the faith of Captain Richardson's battalion. What happens when a soldier gets caught between his duty toward his army, and the people he cares most about: his soldiers, his friends, and the woman he loves? There's a storm brewing on the horizon, and revolution is in the air, but what chance do a few soldiers have against the might of an empire?You will like FIELDS OF FIRE if three or more of the following apply to you:1. You like paintball.2. You like fire-fights.3. You like paintball fire-fights.4. You are, or have ever been, a guy who has a crush on a female friend, but don't know what to do about it.5. You are a teenager, and you're trying to figure life out, or an adult who wishes they were a teenager again, because you never figured life out.6. You like paintball fire-fights.7. You find girls who like shooting to be attractive.8. You are a girl who likes shooting (PS: Guys find you attractive).9. You are a guy who, from time to time, wonders what his best female friend looks like naked.10. You are a girl who, from time to time, messes with your best male friend's head by hinting about how good you look naked.11. You like paintball fire-fights.12. You like books that can make you laugh because the humour is smart.13. You also laugh at crude jokes about tampons, butt cracks, and tampons shoved into butt cracks.14. If you just laughed because you read the term 'butt crack,' and wish more books contained this particular term.15. You enjoy books that have characters you just love to hate.16. You enjoy paintball fire-fights.17. You sometimes wish that paintball fire-fights contained more explosions.18. You like conspiracies, and are possibly wearing a hat made out of tin foil at this moment to prevent the government from reading your thoughts.19. You are a teenage guy whose parents and teachers are always harping on to read more, but you don't really want to because you've found all of the books you've read since Fox in Socks to be incredibly boring, but those same parents and teachers keep trying to convince you that you'd find reading interesting if you just give it a try, which just goes to show how little they know you because you read all the time online, and while gaming, and in those magazines of your dad's that you found in the attic, but they don't consider that to be real reading because it isn't in the form of a book (*gasp*), and you keep trying to tell them that if there were actually books out there that were about shooting and battle strategy and recon missions and all of the other stuff you're into right now because you're a teenage guy, then maybe you would give reading a chance, but they never listen to you so now to please them you're on Amazon with them looking over your shoulder, and if you don't choose a novel to read then they're going to kick you out of the house!20. You like paintball fire-fights.If you like books where the action begins on the very first page and doesn't ever stop, FIELDS OF FIRE is for you!

The only light that Jeddy sees when he wakens on his board bunk in the one room cabin that he shares with his parents and sister is the dim glow from a single window. Life is simple and often hard for the Proudfoot family, but Jeddy loves the animals that live in hills and deserts that surround their land in Southern California and longs for one of his own. Not one of his father's hunting dogs, but a friend that he can raise and train, a friend that needs him.However, Jeddy's father makes a living for his family by killing varmints. He's a hunter by trade and shoots any animal that he sees with an instinct as strong as the hounds who chase it. Animals are meant to be killed ― that's the only view he knows. He is therefore bewildered by a son who is distressed by the savagery of the hunt and the suffering of the animals that he slaughters. Jeddy would prefer to live without harming anything and he sees his father as a hard and unyielding man ― strict and sometimes cruel. It is on a seal hunt with his father and a family friend that Jeddy stumbles upon a seal pup who has drifted away from his colony and is now alone, abandon and vulnerable. In an inexplicable instant, the pup and boy bond. At long last Jeddy has found the friend he's longed for, and, fighting fiercely against the wishes of his father, he brings the seal pup home. Although the story is alight with information about animals, the author's striking insight and warmly humorous observations as well as the excitement and action of a frightening wild boar hunt and a jaguar hunt in Mexico, it is also a story about a father and son, who through hardship and near-tragedy, are awakened to the value of the other's perspective. Drifter was a Newberry Medal nominee in 1974 ― an honor richly deserved.

Twelve year old Mary Ellen has been expelled from St. Agatha's for smoking pot ― although she swears she was not ― and is subsequently whisked off by her half-sozzled father and vain stepmother to spend an extended Easter vacation at the Elms ― a gigantic Victorian-Gothic mansion belonging to her Grandmother. No mansion the size of a castle is complete without a screeching peacock, marble fireplaces, an ancient housekeeper, and a haunted nursery ― and the Elms comes fully stocked.As they drop her off at the stone porte cochére big enough to contain a small house, Mary Ellen's parents also inform her that she will be joined by Grandmother's other two granddaughters ― a get together deliberately contrived in order to decide which deserving heir will be left the family fortune. No pressure there.Although the three cousins are at first suspicious of each other, in no time at all they are deep in hair-raising (or shall we say, heir-raising?) mystery and adventure. Together they unravel the family secret, survive an enchanted snow storm, and even enter Hobbit in a gala horse show. Grandmother, by the way, hates horses, so when Mary Ellen falls in love with a miniature horse called Hobbit, she sneaks him into the nursery where he promptly chews on the Chippendale chairs and leaves other, more organic, remnants of his presence. (Won't that make grandmother happy.)A great read for young adults full of ghosts and family secrets, coming of age, and friendships that empower the discovery of mutual strength, courage and self-acceptance.

Eleven year old Dana Martin faces relentless ridicule by a new group of students at his school who make fun of his name and take advantage of his small stature. The group of boys called the Green Street Counts are also thought to be responsible for vandalism in Dana's neighborhood and have killed trees and torn loose some of the old wrought-iron railings around the steps of the old brownstone houses. When the teasing escalates and the taunting comes to blows, Dana must defend himself and returns home battered by his opponent's knuckles. Fed up with the fights and the change in their neighborhood, Dana's parents have been searching for a country home they can afford. So when the opportunity comes to move to the huntsman's residence on an old estate, the family eagerly leaves the city. Dana is immediately entranced by the old house made of red brick, its tall chimney and thick ivy, the kennels for dogs and stalls for horses, and, most of all, the great trees and acres of woods and fields waiting to be explored. Late one afternoon Dana is trying to find his way home when he is surprised by a stranger ― a stranger with lush black fur and two broad white stripes running down his back. As the the small animal stares at Dana with black-button eyes, he raises his bushy tail and beats a little tattoo on the ground with his forefeet. Dana hasn't a clue what to do and as he steps toward the harmless, kitten-like creature, he is summarily and thoroughly, skunked! In spite of their malodorous introduction, Dana later rescues the skunk from a leg-hold trap and a rapport between the two outcasts is forged. Charmingly and insightfully told, their story bears witness to the power of friendship ― a bond that has the capacity to heal and to reveal the hidden potential inherent in each.