For Balladeer’s Blog’s Number One Harry Flashman Novel click HERE . For background info on George MacDonald Fraser’s infamous anti-hero Harry Paget Flashman you can also click that link.
9. FLASH FOR FREEDOM (1971)
Time Period: 1848-1849
Favorite Book Blurb: “Only Harry Flashman, that swashbuckling gremlin in the works of 19th Century history, could start out running for a seat in Parliament but wind up fleeing England over a gambling scandal, extortionately shanghaied onto a criminal slave ship, clashing with one of the African kings selling his own people to slavers, conning the American government, reluctantly working for the Underground Railroad and ultimately facing down a pack of southern slave-hunters side by side with a young Congressman named Abraham Lincoln.”
Synopsis: Wealthy John Morrison, Flashman’s hated father-in-law, still has Harry under his thumb money-wise. Morrison decides he wants a Member of Parliament in his control and figures Harry’s war hero status will make him a can’t-miss candidate.
For his part our scurvy protagonist gleefully anticipates all manner of graft money and getting to vote to send other people off to war for a change rather than being sent himself. With Morrison’s financial backing, Flashman finds himself in the political arena – an arena where other people are more skilled at cheating than he is.
Harry being Harry he also finds himself snogging in the grass with the real-life Fanny Locke (later famous as Fanny Duberly) and trading parlor-room insults with the likes of Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. At length a card-game scandal coupled with a charge of violent assault wind up forcing Flashman to flee the country for a few years.
With very few transportation options open to the on-the-lam scoundrel, Harry ends up on an outbound ship owned by his father-in-law but finds that he has once again gone from the frying pan into the fire. To Flashman’s great shock he learns that the ship he’s stuck on is a slaver – and that the illegal trade is a large part of John Morrison’s shady fortune.
Amid all this bad luck fate at last smiles on our protagonist when a crew-member that he befriends turns out to be an undercover Royal Navy Officer assigned to infiltrate and bring down Morrison’s sizable slaving operation. That officer – Lieutenant Beauchamp Comber – has clandestinely assembled a mound of incriminating evidence against Morrison and his agents. Continue reading
ADI-MAILAGU – This goddess was one of the evil deities driven from the Skyworld by the Fijian demigod Tuilakemba. When Adi-Mailagu first fell from the sky humans witnessed her landing in Uruone, Fiji. She fell into the small Kele Kele River and caused the water to overflow the banks. Embarrassed, the goddess emerged from the water in the form of a large grey rat and fled into the jungle since Fijian deities are vulnerable when in animal form. 
NCCAA Division Two – 1. GREAT LAKES CHRISTIAN COLLEGE CRUSADERS ### 2. RANDALL UNIVERSITY SAINTS ### 3. GRACE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY TIGERS ### 4. KANSAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE FALCONS ### 5. BOB JONES UNIVERSITY BRUINS ### 
6. MANHATTAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE THUNDER ### 7. MARANATHA BAPTIST UNIVERSITY SABERCATS ### 8. ARLINGTON BAPTIST UNIVERSITY PATRIOTS ### 9. JOHNSON UNIVERSITY (TN) ROYALS (Formerly the Preachers) ### 10. KENTUCKY CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY KNIGHTS ### 
The three-day President’s Day holiday weekend is fast approaching. 
JOHN F KENNEDY 
This superhero-hungry world can’t get enough of these looks at the very FIRST superhero team in history: DC Comics’ Justice Society of America. This examination of their World War Two-era stories continues. FOR PART ONE CLICK 
ALL STAR COMICS #20 (Spring 1944) 
The Justice Society of America is called in to stop the Monster’s crime spree. They battle the villain as he robs banks, dynamites factories, steals payrolls, muscles in on the steel industry and threatens to blow up a dam if he is not paid extortion money. 
DOWN GOES NUMBER TWO – The 18th ranked LEWIS-CLARK STATE WARRIORS welcomed the number 2 team in the nation – the CARROLL (MT) COLLEGE FIGHTING SAINTS. The Warriors had the Fighting Saints worried at Halftime with their 35-26 lead, then continued suffocating them with solid defense in the 2nd Half for a 70-55 victory. Dana Abe tossed in 16 points to lead Lewis-Clark State. 
AND NUMBER FOUR CAME TUMBLING AFTER – Meanwhile the WESTMONT COLLEGE WARRIORS (Should be the Guardians) took the court against their guests, the country’s number 4 VANGUARD UNIVERSITY LIONS. A 34-34 tie at the break served to put the Lions on Upset Alert, followed by the Warriors consummating the deal with a 75-70 triumph. Olisa Nwachie led Westmont College with 19 points. 
OTHER UPSETS IN THE TOP TWENTY-FIVE – The MID-AMERICA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY EVANGELS toppled the visiting (12) LANGSTON UNIVERSITY LIONS by a score of 86-77 ### The FAULKNER EAGLES defeated the (13) WILLIAM CAREY CRUSADERS 91-82 ### Meanwhile the OKLAHOMA PANHANDLE STATE AGGIES knocked off the (21) JOHN BROWN UNIVERSITY GOLDEN EAGLES 85-70 in their own house ### And the MONTANA-WESTERN BULLDOGS won a tight 80-79 clash with the (22) ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLLEGE BATTLIN’ BEARS. 