An extraordinary ghost story from a modern master, published just in time for Halloween. In the apartment of Oliver's old professor at Cambridge, there is a painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. On this cold winter's night, the old professor has decided to reveal the painting's eerie secret. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it. To stare into the painting is to play dangerously with the unseen demons it hides, and become the victim of its macabre beauty. By the renowned storyteller Susan Hill--whose first ghost story, The Woman in Black, has run for eighteen years as a play in London's West End--here is a new take on a form that is fully classical and, in Hill's able hands, newly vital. The Man in the Picture is a haunting tale of loss, love, and the very basest fear of our beings.

Fourteen-year-old Stark McClellan (nicknamed Stick because he's tall and thin) is bullied for being "deformed" – he was born with only one ear. His older brother Bosten is always there to defend Stick. But the boys can't defend one another from their abusive parents. When Stick realizes Bosten is gay, he knows that to survive his father's anger, Bosten must leave home. Stick has to find his brother, or he will never feel whole again. In his search, he will encounter good people, bad people, and people who are simply indifferent to kids from the wrong side of the tracks. But he never loses hope of finding love – and his brother.

Dear Universe, Is anyone out there? Thinking no one is reading, a blogger who calls herself LBH writes about her most personal feelings, especially her overwhelming loneliness. She goes from day to day showing a brave face to the world while inside she longs to know how it would feel if one person cared about her. Alex Bartlett cares. He’s reading her posts in Daytona Beach, Florida. Nursing his own broken heart and trust issues, he finds himself falling for this sensitive, vulnerable woman whose feelings mirror his own. Following a trail of clues LBH has inadvertently revealed, he discovers that she lives in the small town of Midway, Utah. He makes his way there just after Thanksgiving, determined to find LBH. Maybe she’s a Lisa, Lori, or a Luanne. Instead, he finds a woman named Aria, a waitress at the Mistletoe Diner, who encourages Alex in his search while serving his pie along with some much-needed sympathy and companionship. Alex finally finds his LBH, a woman who is as beautiful and kind as he imagined she would be. How can he tell her that he knows her secret? What’s holding him back? Could it be his feelings for Aria?

Narrate your very own Dork Diary with this write-in journal, filled with questions for every day and complete with art and quotes from Nikki Maxwell herself! As Nikki Maxwell knows, keeping a journal is a great way to get to know the most important person in your life: YOU! This special Dork Diaries guided journal features questions for every day of the year. If you could swap places with anyone for a day, who would it be and why? What song could you listen to 100 times? What TV show are you totally obsessed with right now and why? What’s the fiercest outfit in your closet? Put your personal spin on these questions and many more—and since this is an authentic Dork Diary, Nikki chimes in with her answers and artwork as well!****

In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

Mason Starling is a champion fencer on the Gosforth Academy team, but she's never had to fight for her life. Not until the night a ferocious, otherworldly storm rips through Manhattan, trapping Mason and her teammates inside the school. Mason is besieged by nightmarish creatures more terrifying than the thunder and lightning as the raging tempest also brings a dangerous stranger into her life: a young man who remembers nothing but his name—the Fennrys Wolf. His arrival tears Mason's world apart, even as she feels an undeniable connection to him. Together, they seek to unravel the secrets of Fenn's identity as strange and supernatural forces gather around them. When they discover Mason's family—with its dark allegiance to ancient Norse gods—is at the heart of the mystery, Fennrys and Mason are suddenly faced with a terrifying future. Set against the gritty, shadowed back-drop of New York City, this first novel in award-winning author Lesley Livingston's epic Starling Saga is an intoxicating blend of sweeping romance and pulse-pounding action.

Why does disaster so often follow success? This is the question that Philippa Talbot asks herself repeatedly in the dark days that follow her triumph at Covent Garden. On that evening she sees her husband in conversation with Elizabeth Rusman, a young violinist from the orchestra. She discovers that they were once lovers, and she and Nicholas have a jealous quarrel. But by morning Elizabeth is dead and Nicholas in custody, accused of her murder. As the evidence builds up against him, Philippa begins the fight to prove his innocence - a fight which gradually exposes her to terrible danger . . .

*I used to think that I was doing pretty well for myself, especially considering the tragedies of my past. I was on a fast track to a promising career. Then my world imploded. * When twenty-two-year-old Rona Quick finds her plans for her future destroyed, her world goes into a tailspin. Five months later, she’s found a tentative home and a simple life as a private investigator, but when a case brings handsome billionaire Jalen Larsen into her life, she discovers that things aren’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped.

I wasn't entirely sure why I'd accepted Brock's invitation to be his date for his sister's wedding. A wedding to a man who'd confessed that he didn't love his wife-to-be. All I knew was that I didn't belong in that world. When Piper Black returned to Philadelphia to attend the wedding of the man who'd broken her heart, she never imagined that she'd end up falling for her date...who just happened to be Reed Stirling's new brother-in-law. Will Brock Michaels be able to heal Piper's heart or will her connection to Reed tear apart more than one relationship? The second volume in M.S. Parker's sizzling Sinful Desires series isn't to be missed.

There is nothing like a birthday to give Hamilton Dinger something to look forward to in his busy life. With his new job as a part-time intern at the Mayor’s office, being a full-time high school student and Starlight Warrior has its challenges. And although he has the full support of his girlfriend, Gwen, and his best friend, Mikey, and even a tentative partnership with Starry Knight, his ally against the Seven Deadly Sinisters, he has definite cause for concern. The arrival of SWORD, the growing demonic activity in Apollo City, and the increasingly negative media attention has sparked ongoing unrest among the city and its inhabitants. But Hamilton has some additional help in Aletheia, a new supernatural ally, who has come to equip Hamilton for his calling to be a Starlight defender. With the help of the crew of the Meallán and its captain, St. Brendan the Navigator, and Aletheia’s sister, the Star of Time, Elysian and Hamilton set off for the Celestial Kingdom to deepen his commitment through learning, new landscapes, and cosmic surfing. As evil forces continue in their quest for power and control, Hamilton finds uncertainty and distrust between his two worlds. Can he find the answers that will help him? Will he find the strength he needs to carry on? Will Wingdinger realize the importance of his choices, and more importantly–make the right ones?

Booker Gatto is done. Done with women, his old life, all of it. Only the love of his friends in Port Fare keeps him going as he leaves the MET in exchange for the quiet life his new law practice will provide. Tess Selleck, once as ambitious and determined as she is smart and beautiful, had to leave everything and everyone she loves in San Diego to escape the man who destroyed her dreams and now wants her dead. Together Booker and Tess find love when they least expect it, until their pasts drive them apart. Is there a happily ever after for these damaged lovers? Or is the thought of loving and trusting again simply Unbearable? Unbearable is the exciting conclusion to the Port Fare Series. Join Booker as he struggles to find his happily ever after.

Golden Umbria is home to breathtaking scenery and great art; it is also where Hannibal and his invading band of Carthaginians ambushed and slaughtered a Roman legion, and where the local place-names still speak of that bloodshed. Unsworth's contemporary invaders include the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity among the Umbrian hills, who are bilked out of their savings by the corrupt English "building expert" Stan Blemish; the Chapmans, a British property speculator and his wife, whose dispute with their neighbors over a wall escalates into a feud of nearly medieval proportions; Anders Ritter, a German haunted by the part his father played in a mass killing of Italian hostages in Rome during the Second World War; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. And at the center of all these webs of deceit and greed is the cunning lawyer Mancini, happy to aid the disputants--and to exploit to the fullest the faith that these "innocents abroad" have placed in him. 

He vowed he′d never marry. To Vane Cynster, Bellamy Hall seems like the perfect place to temporarily hide from London′s husband hunters. But when he encounters irresistible Patience Debbington, Vane realises he′s met his match ... She vowed no man would catch her. Patience isn′t about to succumb to Vane′s sensuous propositions. Yes, his kisses leave her dizzy and his caresses made her melt; but Patience has promised herself she′ll never become vulnerable to a broken heart. Is this one vow that was meant to be broken?

The first in a massive five-volume collection of the complete shorter fiction of the author. It includes stories written in a nine-month period in 1951 and 1952, when Dick was in his early twenties and making his first impact as a writer.

H. Beam Piper was a prolific science fiction. He is well known for both his Terro-Human Future History series, and his Paratime series.

After discovering that vampires populate her town, college student Claire Danvers knows that the undead just want to live their lives. But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble. There's a new extreme sport getting picked up on the Internet: bare- knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against each other-or humans. Tracking the remote signal leads Claire- accompanied by her friends and frenemies-to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville. . .

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

This book was written while Wollstonecraft’s experience as school-mistress and governess was still fresh in her memory. As she explained in the preface, her object was to make up, in some measure, for the defective education or moral training which, as a rule, children in those days received from their parents. In addressing a youthful audience, Mary was as deeply inspired by her love of goodness, per se, and her detestation of conventional conceptions of virtue, as she was afterwards in appealing to older readers. She represents, in her book, two little girls, aged respectively twelve and fourteen, who have been sadly neglected during their early years, but fall, fortunately, at this period of their life, under the care of a Mrs. Mason, who at once undertakes to form their character and train their intellect.

PART I THE CUBHOOD OF WAHB [Illustration:] I. He was born over a score of years ago, away up in the wildest part of the wild West, on the head of the Little Piney, above where the Palette Ranch is now. His Mother was just an ordinary Silvertip, living the quiet life that all Bears prefer, minding her own business and doing her duty by her family, asking no favors of any one excepting to let her alone. It was July before she took her remarkable family down the Little Piney to the Graybull, and showed them what strawberries were, and where to find them. Notwithstanding their Mother's deep conviction, the cubs were not remarkably big or bright; yet they were a remarkable family, for there were four of them, and it is not often a Grizzly Mother can boast of more than two. [Illustration] The woolly-coated little creatures were having a fine time, and reveled in the lovely mountain summer and the abundance of good things. Their Mother turned over each log and flat stone they came to, and the moment it was lifted they all rushed under it like a lot of little pigs to lick up the ants and grubs there hidden. It never once occurred to them that Mammy's strength might fail sometime, and let the great rock drop just as they got under it; nor would any one have thought so that might have chanced to see that huge arm and that shoulder sliding about under the great yellow robe she wore. No, no; that arm could never fail. The little ones were quite right. So they hustled and tumbled one another at each fresh log in their haste to be first, and squealed little squeals, and growled little growls, as if each was a pig, a pup, and a kitten all rolled into one. They were well acquainted with the common little brown ants that harbor under logs in the uplands, but now they came for the first time on one of the hills of the great, fat, luscious Wood-ant, and they all crowded around to lick up those that ran out. But they soon found that they were licking up more cactus-prickles and sand than ants, till their Mother said in Grizzly, "Let me show you how." She knocked off the top of the hill, then laid her great paw flat on it for a few moments, and as the angry ants swarmed on to it she licked them up with one lick, and got a good rich mouthful to crunch, without a grain of sand or a cactus-stinger in it. The cubs soon learned. Each put up both his little brown paws, so that there was a ring of paws all around the ant-hill, and there they sat, like children playing 'hands,' and each licked first the right and then the left paw, or one cuffed his brother's ears for licking a paw that was not his own, till the ant-hill was cleared out and they were ready for a change. Ants are sour food and made the Bears thirsty, so the old one led down to the river. After they had drunk as much as they wanted, and dabbled their feet, they walked down the bank to a pool, where the old one's keen eye caught sight of a number of Buffalo-fish basking on the bottom. The water was very low, mere pebbly rapids between these deep holes, so Mammy said to the little ones: "Now you all sit there on the bank and learn something new." [Illustration: ] First she went to the lower end of the pool and stirred up a cloud of mud which hung in the still water, and sent a long tail floating like a curtain over the rapids just below....

Every wish has a price.This short story is also available in "Infinite Dimensions," a new anthology by Derek Powell.Tom Swanson, new owner of a genuine magic lamp, learns the hard way that every wish has a price.This short story is also available in "Infinite Dimensions," a new anthology by Derek Powell.

For her entire life, Dawn has struggled with epilepsy and viewed it as a curse. Never once did she ever think that her disease would give her a gift beyond measure, the perfect goodbye.Hiding under the china hutch, she tries her best to ignore him. Her body is tormented by her shape-changing, and her heart tormented by their changing relationship. But the man she once loved has a final kindness to offer.