The problem with everyone, Perrin concluded, was that they couldn't see what he did. Shem said his mind was confusing him. Mahrree said it was nightmares. His children said nothing. But he knew he was surrounded by Guarders, masquerading as cats. But an army is also assembling--in the forests and wearing green and brown--because they have their own plans for the wounded falcon in the barn.The problem with Shem, Mahrree--with everyone, Perrin concluded--was that they couldn't see what he did. Shem said his mind was confusing him. Mahrree said it was nightmares. His children said nothing. But he knew the truth: he was surrounded by Guarders, masquerading as cats. Perrin is right: the Guarders are closing in. But on the edges of the forests another army is assembling, wearing green and brown mottled clothing. Because they have plans of their own for the wounded falcon in the barn.

Larco and Poo Poo organise a meeting of Snubs, and arrange a move from the jungle to the great city of Snub Nubbin, deserted for millions of palliums. The Snubs welcome the return of the Wizard, his wisdom, and his knowledge.Larco and Poo Poo have called a meeting of Snub Nubbins, and some attend. They soon realise there is a Wizard in their midst, the Wizard has great knowledge, and speaks of teaching and schools. Larco becomes a member of the new grand council. In the great move from the jungle back to the city of Snub Nubbin, Larco discovers an emotion, and he's confused, but he likes it.

Wonka presents our very last surprise tale of the year, The Crossing Time, lying forgotten in a drawer. We must tell it, said Owner and who better to see in the New Year whilst the old one goes over, than Wonka telling this haunting tale. Meet Alice Snood and her cold ways, and the shadows that stay with her. Set in the old town of Hull, once again on this final eve, draw up a chair and enjoy!xWonka has one last surprise for the end of the year! He is to present a story for New Year’s Eve, a story that Owner had forgotten, lying in a drawer untold. It is a haunting tale for one night only, but is warmed up by what Wonka calls the soppy bits! All about Ms Alice Snood, a cold hearted woman alone in her smart town house, expecting no one on this eve. It is set in the city of Hull, where Owner once lived and like the Halloween story, sees us in the old town again. Dare to read it! And enjoy our last tale of the year, The Crossing Time.x

A Tales Of Correndrum Short Story - Amund is the sheriff of the frontier mountain town Barrindal. After a band of vicious bandits wipes out nearby farming families, Amund has no choice but to round up a few reliable men and hunt the killers down. Armed with their swords and their courage, they pursue the deadly gang into the forest, heading to a terrible confrontation at Frostveil Mountain.A Tales Of Correndrum Short Story (6800 words) - Amund, Sheriff of the frontier mountain town Barrindal, finds himself left to his own resources when the town's garrison is called away. After a new band of vicious bandits takes advantage of the moment to wipe out nearby farming families, Amund has no choice but to round up the few reliable men in town and hunt the killers down. Armed with their swords and their courage, Amund and his men pursue the deadly gang into the forest, heading to a terrible confrontation at Frostveil Mountain.

A story of family, faith, love, and adventure.Melody and Duncan are best friends who spend every summer vacationing at their families’ lake houses in the Northwoods of Minnesota. Their plan for this summer is to have as much fun in the sun as they can before they head off for their first year of college at the U in the fall. Everything changes when Duncan’s father announces he’s been promoted and the family will be moving to Florida. Secretly, both Mel and Duncan are harboring feelings for each other, but both are holding back. With only one week before the life-long friends are separated by two thousand miles, can the budding romance find a way to blossom? The Summer We Believed is told in alternating points of view and the first installment of Denim Days, a friends-to-lovers series by Shel Delisle.

Ben loves Cath. Ben's psychiatrist is a nosy meddler. Ben's psychiatrist has got to die.Cath doesn't know Ben's real name. She doesn't know what he's done. She certainly doesn't know about his precise control over every one of the providential coincidences that make their relationship so special. Ben's psychiatrist does know, and as it happens, Ben's psychiatrist is Cath's Psychiatrist too. Ben has decided - the man has hypnotized his last patient."Snap" is a horror story with crime and psychological elements. It runs the gamut from bizarre romance to murder procedural to Edgar Allen Poe.

Fantasies are spawned by the volcanic Greek island of Santorini in this collection "On the Island of Fire" - four fantasies for children - from the dream of Alizides, a donkey who thinks he is Pegasus fighting the Chimaera, to harpies swooping through as they move home - unlikely happenings emerging from the island's black sand and simmering core.The volcanic Greek island of Santorini evokes an eerie potential for fantasy. Chunks of solidified lava turn into a strange bestiary, the deep caldera might mask a multitude of monsters. "On the Island of Fire" comprises four improbable tales for children set on the island, and opens with "The White Wings" - in which Alizides, a donkey, dreams he is Pegasus, helping to defeat the Chimaera. Eruptions and earth tremors are endemic and In "The Earthquake" a bored boy tangles with Typhon, the monster trapped within the volcano. Mysterious waters lap the black sand and in "Falling Stars", two children meet Atlas, taking a break under the waves from holding up the world, while weird mythology is recalled in "The Harpies Move Home" with disgruntled harpies causing chaos on Santorini, on their way to a zoo.

It was just a normal night, after a normal day when the Grelflin appeared. His head in a cupboard and his enormous backside stuck up in the air, he was not a pretty sight.His excuse was that he was trying to find his way home, but with his backside still expanding and obviously far too big for a bedside cupboard, what three and a half year old, even one with superpowers, is going to believe that?This is a short story, based upon the Daisy Weal series, and if you wanted to insert it chronologically, it would go somewhere between chapters three and Four of book one.If you are anywhere over ten years of age, and like superhero fantasy then you are going to enjoy this.There are five books in the series, with the first also being available from Audible and iTunes as an audiobook.It was just a normal night, after a normal day when the Grelflin appeared. His head in a cupboard and his enormous backside stuck up in the air, he was not a pretty sight.His excuse was that he was trying to find his way home, but with his backside still expanding and obviously far too big for a bedside cupboard, what three and a half year old, even one with superpowers, is going to believe that?Fearing that he might explode at any minute, Daisy has to race against time to find out where he comes from, and get him back there before he does.

Go back to when it all started, the first time Everly Hilton realized her entire world had changed on the night of the Event. How did the children react? How did she cope with seeing all those dead people? How did she protect her sister?Please note: This is a novella. Shorter fiction is a fun and quick read, not a full length novel.One year ago the Event swept through the world and wiped out the entire adult population. Now all the children are alone and fending for themselves.Go back to when it all started, the first time Everly Hilton realized her entire world had changed on the night of the Event. How did the children react? How did she cope with seeing all those dead people? How did she protect her sister?In this exciting prequel to the Never Series, find out the background to Everly’s struggle for sanity in this insane world.The full Never Series:All the Dead ArisingAll the Pretty GhostsI am Never AloneWe are Always Forever

Set in ancient Greece, Daughter of Sparta follows Gorgo, the real daughter of King Cleomenes I of Sparta, and the events leading up to the Ionian Revolt. In Chapter Six, Gorgo is introduced to a treasure Aristagoras of Miletus brings to woo King Cleomenes to commit to his war campaign. This is the sixth installment to this series; Chapters One through Five are available for free.Historic Heroines is pleased to release the sixth installment to the original fiction series: Daughter of Sparta by Kristen LePine. Set in ancient Greece, Daughter of Sparta follows Gorgo, the real daughter of King Cleomenes I of Sparta, and the events leading up to the Ionian Revolt. In Chapter Six, Gorgo is introduced to a treasure Aristagoras of Miletus brings to woo King Cleomenes to commit to his war campaign. This is the sixth installment to this series; Chapters One through Five are available for free.Historic Heroines is an independent publisher of historical fiction and nonfiction that champions the female perspective.

Following the success of Scotfree Tales From Scotland, Scotfree2 is now available for downloading. However, instead of nine tales, this time only six. How mean is that?Alice Reaver is not her real name but that's who she'll have to be at yet another new school in another new town that her fugitive father has dumped them in for her safety. It's been like this for eight long years, ever since they came home to find her mother brutally murdered. It was probably a message to her father, an almost reformed assassin. Maybe it was payback from the shady, quasi-government jokers he used to work for and betrayed or from one of his victims' families. Whatever. After spending half her life lying to everyone she meets, discarding identities and hair colors like dirty socks, and learning how to kill in dozens of different ways, "Alice" is done. She's made some friends at Oxford High - her first ever. One of them needs the help of her lethal skill sets to stay alive. And maybe she's met a boy - or two. Her father can let her have a life or he can kill her for breaking curfew and their survival protocol. But she's not leaving without a fight that will test everything he's ever taught her.

Tabitha teaches English in Japan. Or she did, but after losing her job on Christmas Eve, insecurity overcomes her. Just as nothing is going well in her life, Tabitha meets a dubious girl at a Shinto shrine. Her advice can change Tabitha’s life but only if she has the courage to take it.At thirty, Tabitha is a self-defined failure. Japan was supposed to be the chance for her to reinvent herself, but her insecurities continue to plague her. Recently fired from her teaching job and facing an uncertain future, Tabitha makes a wish at an Inari shrine.The encounter with an eccentric shrine maiden keeps Tabitha on her toes. Then a mysterious man transports her to a hidden village in Nagano. As she grows aware of the supernatural forces surrounding her life, she realizes that the opposite of accepting fate is choosing it.

Larry McMurtry has done more than any other living writer to shape our literary imagination of the American West. With The Last Kind Words Saloon he returns again to the vivid and unsparing portrait of the nineteenth-century and cowboy lifestyle made so memorable in his classic Lonesome Dove. Evoking the greatest characters and legends of the Old Wild West, here McMurtry tells the story of the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Opening in the settlement of Long Grass, Texas—not quite in Kansas, and nearly New Mexico—we encounter the taciturn Wyatt, whiling away his time in between bottles, and the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc, more adept at poker than extracting teeth. Now hailed as heroes for their days of subduing drunks in Abilene and Dodge—more often with a mean look than a pistol—Wyatt and Doc are living out the last days of a way of life that is passing into history, two men never more aware of the growing distance between their lives and their legends. Along with Wyatt's wife, Jessie, who runs the titular saloon, we meet Lord Ernle, an English baron; the exotic courtesan San Saba, "the most beautiful whore on the plains"; Charlie Goodnight, the Texas Ranger turned cattle driver last seen in McMurtry's Comanche Moon, and Nellie Courtright, the witty and irrepressible heroine of Telegraph Days. McMurtry traces the rich and varied friendship of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday from the town of Long Grass to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, then to Mobetie, Texas, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, culminating with the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rendered here in McMurtry's stark and peerless prose. With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains being enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears. As harsh and beautiful, and as brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of our most original American writers.

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

Das berühmte Bild einer Frau, lange verschollen, taucht plötzlich wieder auf. Überraschend für die Kunstwelt, aber auch für die drei Männer, die diese Frau einst liebten - und sich von ihr betrogen fühlen. In einer Bucht an der australischen Küste kommt es zu einem Wiedersehen: Die Männer wollen wiederhaben, was ihnen vermeintlich zusteht. Nur einer ergreift die Chance, der Frau neu zu begegnen, auch wenn ihnen nicht mehr viel Zeit bleibt

Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life-his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour-as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security. With Europe frozen in the "phoney war," when will Basil's big chance to fight finally arrive?

Do you love alpha warriors haunted by dark pasts? Do vampires, shifters and fae make your night? Meet vampire Border Patrol Officer Eric Fergus, a hunky alpha wolf in desperate need of a worthy woman. Against his alpha wolf principles, Eric Fergus, seduces a beautiful fae woman in the dreamglide and soon discovers she’s the only woman who can save his life… Fergus has been without an alpha-mate for three years, from the time his wife was murdered. He’s failed repeatedly to bond with the female wolves of the Gordion Pack. When he rescues a fae woman from a sex club, his need to bond with her goes into overdrive. But how can an alpha bond with a fae? Can his pack ever accept her as his bonded mate? Mary has lived a solitary fae life in Revel Territory. As a veterinarian, she’s established a thriving small animal practice. Having survived a recent abduction, she’s leery of entanglements of any kind. But when Fergus contacts her through a dreamglide, asking her to save his life, she hurries to the Graveyard and rescues him from certain death. But when she discovers that for the past month he’s been her lover in the dream-world, she’s appalled. Mary doesn’t like wolves or anything to do with Savage Territory. She wants him out of her life, but soon realizes if she doesn’t serve as his bodyguard the whole territory will go to war and hundreds of innocent wolves will die. But how can she align herself with the wolves of Five Bridges? AMBER FLAME is a standalone story with no cliffhangers. It’s a passionate, sensual, paranormal romance, featuring a wolf and a fae set in the urban world of Five Bridges.

Five months ago, Camryn and Andrew, both dealing with personal hardships, met on a Greyhound bus. They fell in love and proved that when two people are meant to be together, fate will find a way to make it happen. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel to The Edge of Never, Camryn and Andrew are pursuing their love for music and living life to the fullest as they always swore to do. But when tragedy befalls them, their relationship is put to the ultimate test. As Camryn tries to numb her pain, Andrew makes a bold decision: To get their life back on track, they'll set out on another cross-country road trip. Together they find excitement, passion, adventure-and challenges they never could have anticipated.

Strange things are happening at Biehl's Academy when this elite school opens its doors to a group of orphans and reform-school rejects, kids at the end of the system's tether. The school is run by a peculiar set of rules by which every minute is regimented and controlled. Soon, they suspect they are guinea pigs in a bizarre social experiment and that their only hope of escape is to break through a dangerous threshold of time and space. Peter Høeg's "brilliant" and dystopian Borderliners is a "uniquely philosophical thriller" (Boston Sunday Globe) and a haunting story of childhood travail and hope.

Thornton Wilder’s renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material. In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.****

A Viking to bed, not to wed! Medana Elsadottir, known as the Sea Scourge, never planned to become a pirate, but there’s no denying her talent. Her female-only tribe has an island hideaway, food aplenty, goods to trade…everything except the means to breed. That’s where the strapping Norsemen tied up in her ship’s hold comes in handy. Eight godly specimen—and Thork Tykirrson is the most virile of them all. Once their, eh, work is done, they’ll be free to leave. Medana had naught to due with this gods-awful plan, but she wouldn’t mind reaping the benefits. Wed or bed…this Viking has plans of his own. Renowned as the wildest Viking of his time, Thork was returning home to regain his father’s favor. Mayhap even (shudder) marry. His brazen—and very beautiful—kidnapper has likely done him a favor in preventing such an irksome fate. That doesn’t mean he’ll let her off easy. No one takes anything from a Viking that he’s not willing to give…not even a violet-eyed vixen who sets off the wildest fantasies.