The Secret Annie Oakley, Talk Down, Jewelled Path, & A Solitary Dance

"The Secret Annie Oakley" by Marcy Heidish In the summer of 1903, a bizarre story was headlined in newspapers across the country. Annie Oakley, the toast of two continents, star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, had been arrested for stealing in order to buy morphine. It wasn't true, of course. Actually arrested was a drug-addicted imposter named Maude Fantenella. But the tabloids spread the story, and Annie's career came to an abrupt halt. Their assignment: to dig into the past life of Little Sure Shot, exposing any secret, hidden places. It was a bitter exercise, made even more cruel by the fact that there was a secret in Annie's past. Something she could not bear to look at in the light of day. All this is true. Here, in this remarkable novel, Marcy Heidish has marshaled the known facts about Annie Oakley: her grim childhood, her spectacular career, and her idyllic marriage to Frank Butler. These the author has fashioned into a brilliant work of the imagination, bringing a legendary heroine to vivid life. "Talk Down" by Brian Lecomber It happens in an instant. Roy Bazzard and Ann Moore have just taken off from Newcastle in a small private airplane. One moment Roy is settling the course that will take them south toward London. The next he is unconscious, comatose, leaving Anne helpless. Terrified, ignorant of even the basics of flying, her only recourse is the microphone. As her cries for help go unanswered, her panic grows - until suddenly the overhead speaker in the plane's tiny cockpit crackles into life. The man who at last comes to Ann's aid is Keith Kerr, a veteran pilot who takes to the skies in a desparate to talk her down. It is an almost impossible task. Night is approaching, Kerr's fuel is running out, and one wrong move will send Ann spinning crazily earthward - out of a cold winter's sky, onto the streets of London. "Jewelled Path" by Rosalind Laker Irene Lindsay has grown up in a loveless Victorian household. Then, at seventeen, she is ready to leave her childhood behind and plunge into the future. For her, this means designing jewelry along the flowing lines of the emerging Art Nouveau, a movement as young and vital as Ireve herself. Her pricnipal obstacle is a dictatorial father, who believes his daughter's spirit - like her unruly red hair - is an inherited taint. But Irene, dauntless in the face of her father's opposition, courageous in the wake of a failed love affair, impetuously follows her chosen path. It is a road that will take her from London's staid showrooms to the salons of the Parisian demimonde and finally to the splendorof Monte Carlo. There Irene will stake her future as a designer... and her heart. "A Solitary Dance" by Robert Lane Mike Harris is only five years old when his is committed to a slate psychiatric hospital. The diagnosis: schizophrenia. For the next three years, therapist after therapist tries to help this everely troubled little boy. But none succeeds. Mike keeps a firm twenty-five feet between himself and any adult, panics at the slightest threat of human contact, and seals himself away in a world of ritualistic gestures and movements - his solitary dance. Hospital psychologists have pronounced him "absolutely untreatable" when young Patick McGarry joins the staff. Pat is certain the boy can be treated - if only the rught approach is found. For Patick glimpses something behind the wary mask of withdrawal - a child who longs not only to be loved, but to be able to love in return. A very special story that will tug at the heartstrings long after the final page is turned.