Books with author Stephen Bland

'We're dancing ducks - can you feel the beat? Help us move our dancing feet!' Join Steve Bland's bright, cheerful, groovy ducks as they dance on the beach. These delightful little books have bouncy legs and funny feet, for hours of loopy, zany fun! The elastic loop at the top allows you to hang the books from your shelves or walls, once you have finished enjoying the fun action rhymes inside.

‘Is there anything that’s puzzled you? Something you’ve never been able to find an answer for?’This simple question prompts insecure teenager Levi Hardy to step through a curious door in an ancient abbey. From there he goes on an astonishing journey. A journey to a distant land; a land in peril. A land where he must forget all that he knows in order to deal with his bizarre new surroundings. Befriended by a kindly community, he will be forced to rapidly learn new skills and call on hidden strengths if he is to provide them with much needed aid. For in the sleepy village of Skenmarris its small population is in immediate danger and in fear of their lives from a new and ruthless threat. But in providing vital assistance Levi must risk dire consequences, and quickly rise to his full potential if he is to survive the brutality of this strange and hostile world.________________Book one of an exciting new fantasy adventure series. Join Levi and Poppy as their journey continues in:FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW

San Francisco, until the mid-1940s, was a city that lived by its own rules, fast and loose. Formed by the gold rush and destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, it served as a pleasure palace for the legions of men who sought their fortunes in the California foothills. For the women who followed, their only choice was to support, serve, or submit.Inez Burns was different. She put everyone to shame with her dazzling, calculated, stone-cold ambition.Born in the slums of San Francisco to a cigar-rolling alcoholic, Inez transformed herself into one of California's richest women, becoming a notorious power-broker, grand dame, and iconoclast. A stunning beauty with perfumed charm, she rose from manicurist to murderess to millionaire, seducing one man after another, bearing children out of wedlock, and bribing politicians and cops along the way to secure her place in the San Francisco firmament.Inez ruled with incandescent flair. She owned five hundred hats and a closet full of furs, had two small toes surgically removed to fit into stylish high heels, and had two ribs excised to accentuate her hourglass figure. Her presence was defined by couture dresses from Paris, red-carpet strutting at the San Francisco Opera, and a black Pierce-Arrow that delivered her everywhere. She threw outrageous parties on her sprawling, eight-hundred-acre horse ranch, a compound with servants, cooks, horse groomers, and trainers, where politicians, judges, attorneys, Hollywood moguls, and entertainers gamboled over silver fizzes.Inez was adored by the desperate women who sought her out-and loathed by the power-hungry men who plotted to destroy her.During a time when women risked their lives with predatory practitioners lurking in back alleys, Inez and her team of women, clad in crisp, white nurse's uniforms, worked night and day in her elegantly appointed clinic, performing fifty thousand of the safest, most hygienic abortions available during a time when even the richest wives, Hollywood stars, and mistresses had few options when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy.Inez's illegal business bestowed upon her power and influence-until a determined politician by the name of Edmund G. (Pat) Brown-the father of current California Governor Jerry Brown-used Inez to catapult his nascent career to national prominence.In The Audacity of Inez Burns, Stephen G. Bloom, the author of the bestselling Postville, reveals a jagged slice of lost American history. From Inez's riveting tale of glamour and tragedy, he has created a brilliant, compulsively readable portrait of an unforgettable woman during a moment when America's pendulum swung from compassion to criminality by punishing those who permitted women to control their own destinies.