Books with author Richard Stead

The Outfit was organized crime with a capital O. They were big. They were bad. They were brutal. And no crook ever crossed them and lived to enjoy it. Except Parker. So they wanted Parker dead, and a hit man proved they meant business. Too bad for the Outfit he missed. Ripping off the Outfit was the easy part of Parker's game. Going one-on-one with Bronson, the Outfit's Big Boss, was the hard part.

Calling all young explorers!Join Harriett the Hippo as she travels the far corners of the world to see some of the worlds most incredible countries! From the chilling icebergs of the Arctic to the searing heat of the African Desert, this book will see you explore some of the largest, most unique and wackiest countries in the entire world!Each page travels to a different country, exploring the unique cultures, landmarks, scenery and people, complemented with beautiful illustrations and funny facts providing an extremely engaging experience for both reader and listener. Learn and laugh with this exciting and colorful book and explore the wonders our little blue and green planet has to offer. Buy the paperback and get the ebook for free!

Calling all animal lovers!Join Harriett the Hippo as she travels the far corners of the world to see some of the worlds most exciting animals! From the chilling icebergs of the Arctic to the searing heat of the African Savannah, this book will see you explore some of the cutest, weirdest and wackiest animals in the entire animal kingdom!Each page explores a different animal from a different country, with beautiful illustrations and funny facts providing an extremely engaging experience for both reader and listener. Learn and laugh with this colorful book to explore the magnificence our animal kingdom has to offer.Buy the paperback and get the ebook for free!

The “Great Recession” of 2008 has struck the United States. Calista Snipe’s family is adversely affected by the recession. Her father loses his job as a college professor and although Calista’s mother continues to work part time, the family’s income has been greatly reduced. Now her father is faced with the probability that his unemployment checks will cease if Congress does not vote to extend them. When a very rare monkey, a gibbon, escapes from the local zoo, Calista decides she will catch the gibbon and give the reward money to her father. In her search for the escaped gibbon, Calista enlists the help of her best friend, Skyler McCray. Skyler and Calista joined forces when they were in fourth grade to solve the mystery of the lost purse. Now, two years older, they believe they are up to the task of finding and capturing Papillon, the missing gibbon. However, the challenge of catching the little monkey soon becomes more difficult than they had anticipated as Papillon continually travels from one city park to another, and Cali and Sky discover that they do not have the best of equipment to capture a gibbon. To complicate their task, they discover that other parties are interested in capturing the monkey, and these parties are not happy to find that Cali and Sky are in the competition to win the reward money.To Catch A Monkey explores the impact of the 2008 recession on a middle class family, peer bullying, beginning awareness of puberty for later elementary grade children, and the strengthening friendship between a sixth grade boy and girl.

A compact, profoundly inspiring book that captures the spirit of Nelson Mandela, distilling the South African leader’s wisdom into 15 vital life lessonsWe long for heroes and have too few. Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013 at the age of ninety-five, is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint. He liber­ated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite oppressor and oppressed in a way that had never been done before. Now Richard Stengel, the editor of Time maga­zine, has distilled countless hours of intimate conver­sation with Mandela into fifteen essential life lessons. For nearly three years, including the critical period when Mandela moved South Africa toward the first democratic elections in its history, Stengel collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and traveled with him everywhere. Eating with him, watching him campaign, hearing him think out loud, Stengel came to know all the different sides of this complex man and became a cherished friend and colleague. In Mandela’s Way, Stengel recounts the moments in which “the grandfather of South Africa” was tested and shares the wisdom he learned: why courage is more than the absence of fear, why we should keep our rivals close, why the answer is not always either/or but often “both,” how important it is for each of us to find something away from the world that gives us pleasure and satisfaction—our own garden. Woven into these life lessons are remarkable stories—of Mandela’s child­hood as the protégé of a tribal king, of his early days as a freedom fighter, of the twenty-seven-year imprison­ment that could not break him, and of his fulfilling remarriage at the age of eighty.This uplifting book captures the spirit of this extraordinary man—warrior, martyr, husband, statesman, and moral leader—and spurs us to look within ourselves, reconsider the things we take for granted, and contemplate the legacy we’ll leave behind.From the Hardcover edition.

The Story of Switzerland by Lina Hug and Richard Stead hor Hug, Lina Author Stead, Richard Title The Story of Switzerland Language English Category Text For many reasons, some of which are obvious to the least thoughtful, the history of Switzerland is peculiarly interesting, and not least so to English-speaking peoples. In the first place, the "playground of Europe" is every year visited by large numbers of British and Americans, some of whom indeed are familiar with almost every corner of it. Then to the Anglo-Saxon race the grand spectacle of a handful of freemen nobly struggling for and maintaining their freedom, often amidst enormous difficulties, and against appalling odds, cannot but be heart-stirring. To the citizen of the great American republic a study of the constitution of the little European republic should bring both interest and profit—a constitution resembling in many points that of his own country, and yet in many other respects so different. And few readers, of whatever nationality, can, we think, peruse this story without a feeling of admiration for a gallant people who have fought against oppression as the Swiss have fought, who have loved freedom as they[Pg x] have loved it, and who have performed the well-nigh incredible feats of arms the Switzers have performed. And as Sir Francis O. Adams and Mr. Cunningham well point out in their recently published work on the Swiss Confederation, as a study in constitutional history, the value of the story of the development of the Confederation can hardly be over-estimated.

The Go Between would appeal to teens between thirteen and sixteen. In the story, the protagonist is fifteen, almost sixteen, his girl friend is fourteen, and his sister who plays a major role in the story is thirteen. Parents may also find this book helpful as a springboard for discussion with teen children on risky sexual behavior encountered in the early teen years.Bill McCoy believes that his major winter challenge will be surviving two weeks of being the wrestling "dummy" for Blake Proper. Bill, a sophomore at Lionwood High, is committed to helping prepare his senior teammate for making a run at the state wrestling championship. On a daily basis, Bill knows he will be pummeled and pinned when the two boys work together after school on the school's wrestling mats. However, a bigger challenge for Bill arises when his thirteen-year-old sister, Diana, is accused of coercing younger brother, Jack, into an inappropriate sexual act. Bill's overbearing dictatorial father reacts to the news about his son and daughter in a characteristically irrational fashion. He refuses to allow Diana to reside any longer in the McCoy home and blocks Mrs. McCoy's desire to visit Diana when Diana is temporarily assigned by the juvenile court system to a juvenile detention center. When Diana disavows her involvement with her younger brother to Diana's court appointed therapist, Carrie Thompson, Bill becomes the go-between. He seeks help in his role of diplomatic liaison between his parents and Carrie and his sister from Susan Myers with whom he has developed a tentative, budding romance. Susan's and Bill's relationship, rapidly strengthening by their respect and concern for each other, is juxtaposed with the debilitating and gradually disintegrating relationship of Bill's father and mother. Bill's maturation is evident as he struggles to assist in the healing of his sister, to deal with his difficult father, and to manage his own romance. The Go Between also reveals both a family whose unstable relationships are exposed and shattered by the ill conceived behavior of daughter with son and the processes followed by social services in their attempts to remedy the emotional damage that results from the family's incest. The story also tactfully illuminates a current trend in the sexual experimentation of high school students.

The Story of Switzerland by Lina Hug and Richard SteadPREFACE.For many reasons, some of which are obvious to the least thoughtful, the history of Switzerland is peculiarly interesting, and not least so to English-speaking peoples. In the first place, the "playground of Europe" is every year visited by large numbers of British and Americans, some of whom indeed are familiar with almost every corner of it. Then to the Anglo-Saxon race the grand spectacle of a handful of freemen nobly struggling for and maintaining their freedom, often amidst enormous difficulties, and against appalling odds, cannot but be heart-stirring. To the citizen of the great American republic a study of the constitution of the little European republic should bring both interest and profit—a constitution resembling in many points that of his own country, and yet in many other respects so different. And few readers, of whatever nationality, can, we think, peruse this story without a feeling of admiration for a gallant people who have fought against oppression as the Swiss have fought, who have loved freedom as they have loved it, and who have performed the well-nigh incredible feats of arms the Switzers have performed. And as Sir Francis O. Adams and Mr. Cunningham well point out in their recently published work on the Swiss Confederation, as a study in constitutional history, the value of the story of the development of the Confederation can hardly be over-estimated.Few of the existing accounts of Swiss history which have appeared in the English language go back beyond the year 1291 a.d., the date of the earliest Swiss League, and of course Switzerland as a nation cannot boast of an earlier origin. But surely some account should be given of the previous history of the men who founded the League. For a country which has been occupied at different periods by lakemen, Helvetians, and Romans; where Alamanni, Burgundians, and Franks have played their parts; where Charlemagne lived and ruled, and Charles the Bold fought; where the great families of the Zaerings, the Kyburgs, and Savoy struggled; and whence the now mighty house of Habsburg sprang (and domineered)—all this before 1291—a country with such a story to tell of its earlier times, we say, should not have that story left untold. Accordingly in this volume the history of the period before the formation of the Confederation has been dwelt upon at some little length. It should be mentioned, too, that in view of the very general interest caused by the remarkable discovery of the Swiss lake settlements a few years ago, a chapter has been devoted to the subject.Mindful, however, of the superior importance of the formation and progress of the Confederation, an endeavour has been made to trace that progress step by step, showing how men differing in race, in language, in creed, and in mode of life, combined to resist the common enemy, and to build up the compact little state, we now see playing its part on the European stage. The whole teaching of the history of the country may be summed up in Mr. Coolidge's words, in his "History of the Swiss Confederation" (p. 65). "Swiss history teaches us, all the way through, that Swiss liberty has been won by a close union of many small states." And Mr. Coolidge adds an opinion that "it will be best preserved by the same means, and not by obliterating all local peculiarities, nowhere so striking, nowhere so historically important as in Switzerland."