Buckingham Palace is one of the most familiar buildings in the world, but who knows the real tales hidden behind its ceremonial gates? Who was the witch that once lived in the royal courtyard? How could courtesans once have plied their trade in front of the present royal windows? How dare a prime minister call the palace a monstrous insult to the nation? This text presents a detailed exploration of the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary people who owned or lived on the l...

I Am England is an epic historical novel that sweeps across 1,500 years of English history, capturing the passion, struggles, and triumphs of generations. Set in a single village in the Sussex Weald, this masterfully woven tale follows warriors, artisans, and dreamers who shaped England's destiny. From ancient forest dwellers to the ironmasters who forged England's weapons, their lives unf...

The book addresses two key barriers to school improvement that are currently impacting educators and school leaders. The first is the churn of constant change in the form of multiple initiatives and compliance overload experienced by today’s educators. It is not uncommon to hear a teacher say, “I can’t focus on the kids; there are just too many things to do. I’m overwhelmed.” Has change itself become a distraction? Has it forced educators to move not toward but away from their primary focu...

Folk tales around the world, observes the author, often contain similar narratives, providing, perhaps, yet another example of the universal brotherhood of man. This volume of West African folk tales includes a number of such tales, among them, "The Cricket and the Toad," "The Greedy Hare," "The Tortoise and His Broken Shell," "The Story of a Farmer and Four Hyenas," "The Man with Seven Dogs," and "The Boy in the Drum." Animals, both natural and magical, play large roles in these stories. ...

Sweeping through fifteen centuries of life in the heart of southern England, this epic novel records the lives of the ordinary folk of Britain from the end of the Roman occupation through to the late 16th century. The author has brought to life a colorful range of characters, from serfs to kings, from slave girls to bishops and from honest working families to murderers, to illustrate what it must have been like to live through some of the most challenging periods of English history, includ...

Before primatologist Patricia Chapple Wright became the world's foremost expert on lemurs, she was enchanted by another primate—Aotus, the owl monkey, or "monkey of the night." But along her journey to discover the behavior of these unique nocturnal creatures, Wright finds more than she expected about family, human nature, and herself. It all starts in a New York City pet shop when Wright and her husband buy an owl monkey whose lively and rambunctious ways soon lead the young couple to South ...