The second of the Land Taking Records of Palsenz, Hunted is a gripping tale set on an alien planet, where not only are the lives of the three survivors from the Argoss mission in jeopardy, but the entire future of humanity in that section of space hangs in the balance.Following directly on from the events in Salvage, the crew of the Shuttle Heimdal face a whole new series of ordeals. Forced to make an emergency landing on Palsenz, they discover they are in the infamous Badlands, but, worst of all, they are being hunted by the same things that had infested the Argoss III.With nothing between them and certain death other than their cunning, can Stephanie Chu keep them alive long enough to be rescued?

This month we have a few trips into the surreal, with a workplace fight, a shape-shifting shopper, and an unidentified no-longer-flying object. There are plenty of great ideas and storylines to enjoy, so have a seat in the shade and get started.A retired MLB pitcher finds love and redemption via a hurled can of humble soup. Refusing to obey signals cost him his career, once--but this time--a beanball is exactly what's called for, and the signs all make sense. Making a hero often requires a "zero" to balance the equation. Seeing life from both sides of the fence, the protagonist reconciles his past, finds humility, and creates a new beginning. This story isn't about about baseball, though it makes significant commentary on contemporary status, thereof, and incisively nails what's wrong with the sport...where greed has driven it awry. This narrative is primarily about what's truly important in life--what's solidly pure and what's vacuously hollow--what's important when looming largely in front of us, but insignificant in the rear-view mirror with distance applied. Dreams and aspirations loudly drive us when young, while wisdom softly chuckles from the quiet perch of maturity. Each has its time and purpose.

Some are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them, others seek the receipt of greatness in the hopes of returning it for something a little less save the worldy. Susan doesn't know how to save a world, especially one she has just been magically transported to, no one seems to want to listen to her though and she soon finds herself wishing destiny had called someone else.Like many Susan is a little lost, unfortunately the world doesn't seem to pull the car over so she can make up her mind about which direction to head in. Stuck in a dead end job she didn't want in the first place she wishes to be anywhere else doing anything else. Through no fault of her own she finds herself in the world of Mach B'alif, tasked with saving their entire world from its dark ruler, and today was supposed to be just another day of filing.These are the opening chapters to Susan's tale of prophecy and power struggles, destiny and denial and one lost girl trying to find her way home with no intent on being anyone's chosen savior.

In a treasured storybook, an invincible – or so he would’ve liked to think – hero faces challenges beyond his narrative...Ca 2,280 words. _____________________________________________________________Erik Boman is a writer from Oxford. He is the author of "Short Cuts" and was awarded the A.M. Heath literary prize in 2011.Sixteen year old Ricky Chavez is in trouble. Suspended from school, he has to face his older brother and legal guardian, Frank. Trouble is, Frank meets him with a belt. Bruised and depressed, Ricky drags himself to his evening job. His co-worker, Maria de Leon, reaches out to him, and he falls in love. Trouble is, she belongs to a gang. Being in love with Maria means hanging around Locos 18, her gang. Trouble is, that means ditching school and ending up with a report card full of C's, D's, and an F. But a bad report card is the least of Ricky's troubles. Maria's gang, Locos 18, comes in conflict with another gang, Westside Raza, when a Locos girl flirts with a Westside boy. When he beats her up, Locos goes looking for him. In the violent showdown, Ricky recognizes the conseequences of his association with Maria and Locos 18. He's left with a decision. Trouble is, he doesn't like either one.

A short story collection that travels from the depths of space to the realms of fantasy. Young and New Adults struggle against inner demons, outer hardships, and seek to defeat the darkness which surrounds them.Tired of repairing her old house, Bobette and her nephew Scrotty and Blimp, his ginger cat, go in search of a house that will look after itself. But in "The Dipsy Dream House" they are pitched by the estate agent into the past and instead of finding a house, are joined by three ghost children and their strange pets. On magically returning home, children and animals are restored to life and they all decide that living in the old house, is not such a bad idea after all.In "The Fleeting Fame of Benjamin Sprockett" Benjie is brought up in the hills by the grey fairies. He flies away, becomes Clown Number One in a circus and has several misadventures before being promoted to Star Turn, as he flies round the Big Top. But when claimed by his fairy mother and Mrs Sprockett, he chooses his real mum and becomes an ordinary boy again.

A small collection of poetry that covers Loss, love, confidence, war and... err... zombies.The Lunar Tales anthology is a collection of five speculative short stories set on Earth's Moon. Discover what happens when you die in a dream. Examine the mystery of a murderous thief at a well-established lunar colony. Explore one man's conflict as he struggles to save his moon base from annihilation. Find out what happens when explorers enter a sort of lunar Bermuda Triangle. And find out what it really felt like to take man's first step on another celestial body. Includes Dream Soldiers, Philatelist's Gold, Old Wounds, OtherPlace, and Tag-Alongs. BONUS: Read the first three chapters of the moon-centered action-adventure novel RUFUS QUINCE: BOUNTY HUNTER - DREAMS OF A FOOL, included at the end of this entertaining volume.

Trapped. Hunted. And all alone. The nightmare begins…Fourteen-year-old Sam McKinley and his kid sister, Amy, are left unprotected in a dying world. After the alien invasion, there’s no one to turn to. No one to help. Or so they thought. When Sam hears a voice on the other end of their shortwave radio offering salvation, it ignites a tiny spark of hope.Will they make it?Trapped. Hunted. And all alone. The nightmare begins…Fourteen-year-old Sam McKinley and his kid sister, Amy, are left unprotected in a dying world. After the alien invasion, there’s no one to turn to. No one to help. Or so they thought.When Sam hears a voice on the other end of their shortwave radio offering salvation, it ignites a tiny spark of hope.This may be a story about survival. But it’s only the beginning.

The East Anglian Bombardiers And Grenadiers, we first met them in Sid and Arthur's Steampunk Adventure. Now they are in a story of their own, with a few new or newish characters. Can they regain the code book before the Hoo (who?) use it to take over the world of Thera?Pirates! Aliens! Cannibals! Brain-squid-things-whatever-the-hell-they-are! Mythological vaginas! Psychopomp brings you a festering sack of seasonal genre fiction in time for Hallowe'en! Your ebook reader will literally putrefy as you load this file, your throat will fill with vomit, your excrement turn to water.* You will find yourself losing the will to live as you thumb through these eighteen tales of pure gonzo oddity and you will not thank us for it.You will wish you had downloaded a haunted Pokemon ROM, you will wish you had thought about Slender Man too much. You will wish you had not downloaded this ebook - and that's a Psychopomp promise.Make yourself miserable this Hallowe'en, download Psychopomp Volume Eight today!* actual reader experience may vary.

Ekaterina wants to be taken seriously by the men of her village, so she sets out to hunt the greatest prey of all, the legendary Firebird. On the way she encounters three strangers who give her the gifts she needs- for a price. This short novella, inspired by Slavic folklore, also includes the short stories British Gods and Saturday's Child.This book features three complete stories and one poem from Strange Matters, a collection of short fantasy stories by Bret Allen.About the Firebird:Ekaterina wants to be taken seriously by the men of her village, so she sets out to hunt the greatest prey of all, the legendary Firebird. On the way she encounters three strangers who give her the gifts she needs- for a price.This short novella, inspired by Slavic folklore, is a symbolic fable about the importance of choosing wisely and keeping sight of the things that truly matter.About British Gods:Two strange figures watch the violence of the London riots unfold and do what they can to help, as only forgotten gods can.A humble nod to my favourite author, Neil Gaiman. This short story is based on British folklore in the modern-day style of American Gods.About Thornback:A poem about the humble hedgehog, seen through my eyes.About Saturday’s Child:Henri discovers that his afterlife is going to be even more dangerous than his first life, when he meets a predatory and beautiful stranger.This very short story is set in the world of ‘Sleepwalkers’, a setting of my own creation. In this case, I give a glimpse of the plight of a newly deceased spirit.Feel free to read these stories before checking out the full collection- Strange Matters- 20 stories and poems of fantasy, myth and magic!These stories contain some mature themes.

An old local legend makes me suspect that the angels of Viana do Castelo are not splitting the souls of the newly dead as mandated by law. This is the story of my attempt to discover and stop them.Heaven, Purgatory and Hell, the three realms of the afterlife. Agents from each side try to manipulate Man, making it do things it wouldn't normally do, to influence its final destination. All to get more souls and gain an advantage in the Eternal War.I can't accept it. It isn't fair for the place of eternal rest (or torment) of a person to be determined by what a third party led it to do. And I fight to prevent it.An old local legend makes me suspect that the angels of Viana do Castelo are not splitting the souls of the newly dead as mandated by law. This is the story of my attempt to discover and stop them.This is one of the short stories included in the anthology "The Saga of Me - Divine Justice" by the same author. You can find it in all major eBook retailers.

Not only are other's grass always greener, another's spouse is also often sexier. That's all I'll tell you. Click the blue below to see why. Here it suffices to say that the story is short and free. Why read a summary when with little more effort you can read the whole thing? If you can't spare a moment more, you shouldn't be wasting time reading fiction anyway. Go back to work!"One can not judge a book by its cover." So we are told. But a cover is usually the only thing a reader has to base a judgment on. Smashwords tries to aid readers by providing summaries, one short, one long, for each book it distributes. For non-fiction this works well. But this, it seems to me, defeats the whole purpose of fiction. After all, one reads a story to find out what will happen. It’s the uncommon twists and turns that make a story interesting. But if a summary has told all this beforehand, what fun is to be had in the reading? Therefore, no summary of the present short story is given. It's short and it’s free! So read the whole thing and see if you like it. I ask you to do this because I think it is the best book judging method. To find fiction you like you must first read around enough to learn something of the style and stories of different authors. Then you can judge books, not by their cover, but by the your opinion of the writer. I'd like to help you do this. The present short story is one of several which I will make available free at Smashwords. Read a few (or all of them) and decide if you like them. It won't cost you a dime. If you like them, you can then purchase some of my not free (but still inexpensive) longer stories. All these stories are of one particular kind. To reflect this similarity all have the same cover picture, the Kitty & Rose shown above. So after you’ve read a few, you can, in fact, judge them by their cover. The common theme of the Kitty & Rose stories is human sexuality. This is not unusual. Most fiction concerns sex in one way or another; ranging from romances so sedate and demure an extraterrestrial could never know sex is at the root of everything described, to erotica so unrestricted even an extraterrestrial might blush. Kitty & Rose stories are in the middle of this range. All deal with human sexuality, but none do so explicitly. Rather, they are seemly. The dictionary gives three meanings for seemly: Attractive or agreeably fashioned; Decorous or conventionally proper; and Appropriate or suited to its purpose. With respect to appropriateness, seemly sex stories range from the humorous to the inspirational, but all concern human sexuality. So they are clearly appropriate. These stories are also seemly in the decorous and conventionally proper sense. For, while they treat sex candidly, they do not do so graphically. There is nothing pornographic nor erotic in any seemly sex story. Of course, different persons’ opinions about this may differ. A few consider frank pornography decorous. At the opposite extreme are those like the abbot of the monastery where the great biologist Gregor Mendel did his epochal research. This abbot thought Mendel’s studies were decidedly indecorous because they involved the sex of pea plants! Finally, there is the principal sense of seemly, attractive and agreeably fashioned. Like every author I exert my every effort and ability trying to make these stories seemly in this regard. But like every author, I must await your determination of the degree of my success. Since both of us will be pleased if you find them attractively seemly, I very much hope you do.Happy reading!BobbyBP.S. This is free Kitty & Rose short story #11, uploaded 2-28-17.

A PRESIDENTIAL DYNASTY. AN ARAB TERRORIST ATTACK. DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE. Mario Puzo envisioned it all in his eerily prescient 1991 novel, The Fourth K. **President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in large part, thanks to the legacy of his forebears– good looks, privilege, wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon, however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabused of his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has been before. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot, Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’ assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series of violent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world and those closest to him look on with both awe and horror. From the Paperback edition.

What's wrong with calling a burglar brave? Why are people so f***ing hung up about swearing? Why do the asterisks in that sentence make it okay? Why do so many people want to stop other people doing things, and how can they be stopped from stopping them? Why is every film and TV programme a sequel or a remake? Why are we so reliant on perpetual diversion that someone has created chocolate toothpaste? Is there anything to be done about the Internet? These and many other questions trouble David Mitchell as he delights us with a tour of the absurdities of modern life - from Ryanair to Downton Abbey, sports day to smoking, nuclear weapons to phone etiquette, UKIP to hotdogs made of cats. Funny, provocative and shot through with refreshing amounts of common sense, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse celebrates and commiserates on the state of things in our not entirely glorious nation.

Cara is so ugly, mirrors would rather break than show her reflection. Not even her own parents can deny her ugliness, and nothing can make up for the cruelty of her schoolmates. Tormented and tortured by the shallow people of Flock's Rest, Cara's life is miserable. Then Cara receives a shimmering note from some exotic place suggesting that there's more to her than meets the eye. Cara wonders if her destiny has something to do with her recurring dreams of a beautiful green valley where the people are so accepting, her ugliness doesn't matter. Soon, Cara discovers that her valley of dreams is real. It's a place where the ugliest of ducklings can become swans. A swan, however, can have a serious taste for revenge . . . deadly revenge.

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets—her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son. What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him—as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes. And when the scene is discovered—a pool of blood on the floor, the smell of gunpowder in the air—the most shocking revelation of all is that the grim clues point directly to Clara Hudson. Or rather to Clarissa, the woman she was before Baker Street. The key to Russell’s sacrifice lies in Mrs. Hudson’s past. To uncover the truth, a frantic Sherlock Holmes must put aside his anguish and push deep into his housekeeper’s secrets—to a time before her disguise was assumed, before her crimes were buried away. There is death here, and murder, and trust betrayed. And nothing will ever be the same.

The passionate and turbulent story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine. A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson's charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health. Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph: Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. (Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)

The school year is almost at an end, and the chocolate sale is ancient history. But no one at Trinity School can forget the Chocolate War. Devious Archie Costello, commander of the secret school organization called the Vigils, still has some torturous assignments to hand out before he graduates. In spite of this pleasure, Archie is troubled that his right-hand man, Obie, has started to move away from the Vigils. Luckily Archie knows his stooges will fix that. But Obie has some plans of his own.

Brace yourself for a thrilling high-seas adventure and dare to set sail for the "Isle of Fire." ""A great explosion rocked the crowded harbor. Flaming debris screamed into the sky and then rained down into the burning water below. The ferocious blaze engulfed ship after ship expanding the circle of destruction in mere heartbeats. The fire rain had been unleashed."" As Cat s memory returns, he realizes that he has lived two very different lives: One as the son of the ruthless Bartholomew Thorne; the other as the recipient of friendship and kindness from Declan Ross and the crew of the Robert Bruce. Now Cat must choose whether to return to the ways of his notorious father and join the evil Merchant, or defy the Merchant and risk his life to save his friends. The best-selling "Isle of Swords" adventure continues in "Isle of Fire" as ancient mariners rise from legend and cut an all-too-real swath of destruction across the Atlantic. The newly formed Wolf Fleet scours the Caribbean, hunting the pirates they once called comrades. And in the pitiless winds of a monstrous hurricane, whole fleets will be blasted apart and devoured."

Readers of I Am Number Four, The Maze Runner, and Legend will love this exciting new adventure series by the co-creator of the groundbreaking television show Twin Peaks, with its unique combination of mystery, heart-pounding action, and the supernatural. Will West is careful to live life under the radar. At his parents' insistence, he's made sure to get mediocre grades and to stay in the middle of the pack on his cross-country team. Then Will slips up, accidentally scoring off the charts on a nationwide exam. Now Will is being courted by an exclusive prep school . . . and followed by men driving black sedans. When Will suddenly loses his parents, he must flee to the school. There he begins to explore all that he's capable of--physical and mental feats that should be impossible--and learns that his abilities are connected to a struggle between titanic forces that has lasted for millennia.

This story picks up exactly where book one left off. The Talbot family is evacuating their home amidst a zombie apocalypse. Mankind is on the edge of extinction as a new dominant, mindless opponent scours in search of food, which happens to be non-infected humans. In these pages are the journal entries of Michael Talbot, his wife Tracy, their kids Nicole, Justin and Travis. With them are Brendon, Nicole's Fiancee and Tommy previously a Wal-Mart door greeter who may be more than he seems. Together they struggle against a ruthless, relentless enemy that has singled them out above all others. The Talbots have escaped Little Turtle but to what end, on the run they find themselves encountering a far vaster evil than the one that has already beset them. As they travel across the war torn countryside they soon learn that there are more than just zombies to be fearful of, with law and order a distant memory some humans have decided to take any and all matters into their own hands. Can the Talbots come through unscathed or will they suffer the fate of so many countless millions before them. It's not just the brains versus the brain-eaters anymore. The stakes may be higher than merely life and death with eternal souls on the line.

Out of This World interweaves the history of a blighted family with the tragic and ludicrous history of the twentieth century. Its alternating narrators are a father and daughter--each obsessed with the other and irrevocably estranged--surveying their losses and grievances on opposite sides of the Atlantic. "A moving, ingenious and often very funny tale that takes us deep into his characters' wounded, resilient hearts with breathtaking virtuosity...rich, complicated, joyful, arresting."--USA Today