Recommendations based on "The Hardknocker's Luck"

Frankie and his soccer team travel to fantastic lands to play some of the wildest soccer matches ever!Frankie and his friends get transported to ancient Egypt, and they're in for a surprise. Will they be able to beat the menacing mummies?

Dandelion Wine is a 1957 semi-autobiographical novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois — a pseudonym for Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.

Felix, a Jewish boy in Poland in 1942, is hiding from the Nazis in a Catholic orphanage. The only problem is that he doesn't know anything about the war, and thinks he's only in the orphanage while his parents travel and try to salvage their bookselling business. And when he thinks his parents are in danger, Felix sets off to warn them--straight into the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland. To Felix, everything is a story: Why did he get a whole carrot in his soup? It must be sign that his parents are coming to get him. Why are the Nazis burning books? They must be foreign librarians sent to clean out the orphanage's outdated library. But as Felix's journey gets increasingly dangerous, he begins to see horrors that not even stories can explain.Despite his grim suroundings, Felix never loses hope. Morris Gleitzman takes a painful subject and expertly turns it into a story filled with love, friendship, and even humor.

WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR 'A major work of mounting tensions in which the human mind is the guinea-pig... Mr Fowles has taken a big swing at a difficult subject and his hits are on the bull's eye' Sunday Times On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of human complexities. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, The Magus is a feast for the mind and the senses.

Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer ("A great chronicler of our times." -San Francisco Chronicle) showcases his wit, sophistication and deep knowledge of focaccia in this magical and madcap tale of a young man who takes an unspecified job with a charismatic elderly Baronessa at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills Broke and directionless, our young man (the chosen moniker of Villa Coco's narrator) takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant (technically, the employment ad asked for "adjutant") to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco, a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown. Technically, our young man is an archivist, charged with cataloguing Coco's extensive and eclectic collection of art and artifacts, but what are his actual duties? He is charged with ridding the house of a marten, whatever that is, locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn, and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco's great and final plan--to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it's too late. Told with the signature wit, insight, and deeply felt humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself--a romp through a youthfully self-constructed emotional obstacle course, a meditation on what we give and take from others, and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who you've always wanted to be.

Dazzling, enchanting and epic, The Bells is the confession of a thief, kidnapper and unlikely lover — a boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing becomes both his life's tragic curse and its greatest blessing.Moses Froben was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps, the bastard son of a deaf-mute woman banished to the church tower to ring each day the Loudest and Most Beautiful Bells in the land. His life is simple but he is content, until the day his father recognizes Moses's singular sense of hearing and its power to expose his sins. Cast into the world with only his ears to protect and guide him, Moses finds refuge in the choir of the great Abbey of St. Gall and becomes its star singer, only to endure the horrifying act of castration meant to preserve his angelic voice and turn him into a musico.In a letter to his son, Moses recounts his humble birth in eighteenth-century Switzerland and his life as a novice monk, and tells of the two noble friends — and a forbidden lover — whom he cherished during his chaotic years in Mozart's Vienna as apprentice to the great Gaetano Guadagni, and even as he ascended Europe's most celebrated stages as Lo Svizzero. But in this letter he will also reveal the astonishing secrets of his past and answer the question that has shadowed his fame: how did Moses Froben, world-renowned musico, come to raise a son who by all rights he could never have sired?

"For most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn't decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure." "As he recollects the events that led to his father's demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries - about his infamous outlaw uncle, Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin's constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It's a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a wild roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings." "A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores, and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz." --Book Jacket.

Muffy is so sure that Francine cannot be nice for an entire week that she bets her Princess Peach watch on it, and now it is up to Francine to keep her temper.

Nothing goes right for Jack all day long. He can't find his favorite sneakers, he spills milk on his math homework, and worst of all, he gets tuna fish for lunch. Will things ever get better?Readers will learn how to tell when something is certain, more likely, less likely, or impossible as Jack keeps hoping his streak of bad luck will break. Maybe, just maybe, pistachio ice cream for dessert will do the trick. But will it happen? Considering how Jack's day has been going, PROBABLY NOT!

The second short story set in Peter Newman’s incredible world of THE VAGRANT. 'It's a story that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and refused to let go...' Fantasy Faction