In this re-imagining of the classic fairy tale “Puss In Boots,” Andie is a little girl on a mission to deliver a message for a friend with the help of her magic boots.In this re-imagining of the classic fairy tale “Puss In Boots,” Andie is a little girl on a mission to deliver a message for a friend with the help of her magic boots. But when things go horribly wrong and her boots trap her in the form of a cat, she must use her quick wit to reunite her friend and his beloved while also overcoming her own fears that show up in the form of a shape-shifting sorcerer.

Patti discovers her Grandfather's model train set in the attic. Sadly, it is without the red caboose. When the train set goes missing, Patti fears she may be in big trouble.Patti investigates the attic one day while the babysitter isn't paying attention. She discovers many things but her most delightful discovery is her Grandfather's model train set, Old '49. It is missing the little red caboose, but she admires and plays with it anyway. Until one day the train set itself goes missing. Little does Patti realize there is a wonderful surprise in store for her.

In Book 1 of the Council of Three series, Amy, Paul and Frank rescue an old priest. Believing that the One Who Tests, God’s name on other planets, sent them to him, the priest asks them to take something to his home planet. On nearby planets they find spiders, aliens, bandits and slavers. Safer on Earth? They were being followed, and their off-planet watchers have instructions to kill them if…Book 1 in the Council of Three series starts when Amy, Paul and Frank rescue an old priest from rocks thrown by children. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Believing that the One Who Tests, God’s name on other planets, has sent them to him, the priest shows them how to travel to nearby planets, but there is a condition. They must deliver his staff and journals to his home planet. Their first trip to other planets has them talking to huge intelligent spiders, and running from a dangerous alien and bandits. The local planets are more dangerous than they were told. A friendly alien guides them to the safety of a fortified village where they learn the galactic language and local customs.On their next trip they have to rescue the villagers, the ones who sheltered and taught them, from slavers armed with swords and spears. Using the sidearms and shotgun they carry with them this trip is the only way they can survive the overwhelming odds they face. Back on Earth they feel safer, but they don’t know that more than one group on Earth is aware of their travels to other planets. Each of these groups wants that knowledge for themselves. They watch them, and plan their next moves. On other planets, their so-called friends have instructions to kill all three of them if…

When the statue of Santa Claus from StoryWorld's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas set goes missing, owner Ashling Cleary has to figure out whodunit and why. The answers will surprise her.Ashling Cleary, owner and manager of a storybook park in California, is finally recovering from the events of last summer. Katrina Irvine's killer has been locked up, and Ashling's best friend, Donna, is no longer a murder suspect. Ashling and her boyfriend are getting along swimmingly, and the relentless hot days of summer are giving way to cool temperatures and rain. Yes, things are going great, and Ashling is looking forward to the holidays. That is, until the Santa Claus statue--the centerpiece of StoryWorld's Holiday Festival and a valuable and beloved remnant from one of StoryWorld's original sets--goes missing. Now Ashling has to figure out whodunit and why. The answers will surprise her.This is a short story that takes place after the events of The Princess and the Poison.

There's something odd about 12 year old Toby, and it's not just his purple eyes or his amazing friendship with Klel, the dragon tied up in the castle courtyard.Then Toby learns a terrible secret that Blaise holds in a stone pendant and the prince's deadly plans for Klel. But Toby finds he has amazing skills that might just be able to help...Shortlisted for the New Zealand Post AwardsThere's something odd about 12 year old Toby, and it's not just his purple eyes or his amazing friendship with Klel, the dragon tied up in the castle courtyard.He's been sacked from every job at the castle and his new job as page to the mysterious Prince Blase is his last chance to avoid a cold winter in the poorhouse.Then Toby learns a terrible secret that Blaise holds in a stone pendant and the prince's deadly plans for Klel. But Toby finds he has amazing skills that might just be able to help...Shortlisted for the New Zealand Post Awards

A barren land of salt and snow; a castle where underground paths twist and turn in endless circles and a reclusive king has not shown his face in years; a forest where few things are what they seem. An unnamed hero must navigate through these places as he takes on the task of tracking down a supposed witch, in a story that blends dream and reality, rumor and truth, danger and hope.A barren land of salt and snow; a castle where underground paths twist and turn in endless circles and a reclusive king has not shown his face in years; a forest where few things are what they seem. An unnamed hero must navigate through these places as he takes on the task of tracking down a supposed witch, in a story that blends dream and reality, rumor and truth, danger and hope."The End of the Trail" by author Louis Rakovich is a magic realism / dark fantasy novelette that would appeal to fans of those two genres, as well as those who enjoy dark literary fiction, fairy tale horror, and all things strange and magical -- where beauty is found in the terrible, the unpleasant, the vast and lonely and dangerous. It's a story about a physical and spiritual journey in a peculiar, harsh land.

Aliens don’t exist. Travelling around the galaxy using wormholes only happens in stories. They're facts. In all the years that humans have travelled in space, they've never happened. But today's facts are about to become yesterday's stories for brothers Alexander, Pete and Nick Daniels when their spaceship is pulled into a black hole and lost. Now the question is, can they ever get back home?When love is crime, who will save the guilty?EPISODE 1: After falling in love and fathering a child, a young criminal refuses to voluntarily throw himself into a lake of fire to gain his community's forgiveness. So he's sentenced to death and sold to the owner of a spaceship that buys criminals like him. But the ship and its crew are not quite what they appear to be.MEET THE LONGVIEW - An Ancient Spaceship Resurrected To Transport ConspiracyInhabited by a crew of misfits fleeing nightmare pasts, with a cargo of Condemned slated to die at the hands of the highest bidders, and with a passenger roster made up exclusively of people NOT who they claim to be, The Longview serves the hidden agenda of an eccentric recluse bent on playing puppetmaster to all of Settled Space.

My bloodline has been nearly extinguished by the humans and the only way to restore my race is the pendant. My father went in in search of it, abandoning me. Now to restore my kind and find my father I'll have to continue his work.Short Story. Keiranna is the last of her clan cursed to survive in a hellish land of exile. When a mysterious messenger offers a way to lift the sorcerer’s curse in exchange for her protection, Keiranna must decide if risking her life is worth his dubious promise of freedom. After all, the messenger’s magic stone might indeed prove strong enough to break the curse, but it is also powerful enough to attract the attention of every twisted fae creature in the Split. And Keiranna is only the first to catch the relic’s scent.

A short story, about 2000 words.Strange is when a passing tornado drops an antique Westinghouse refrigerator in the backyard of your trailer.Stranger still is what is inside when Dad opens it, and what the contents mean for two rambunctious boys who often pay too little attention to their surroundings.John Beach's fifth collection of poetry. The 35 terzanelle poems in this collection are about identity: both the secret identity and the public persona. I have chosen 26 characters from classic literature, theater, the Pulps, comic books, and radio programs, each of whom uses a hidden identity (or identities) for heroic and less-than-heroic purposes. The real question is why they do so, why any of us do.The terzanelle is a French/Italian adaptation of the terza rima to the villanelle form. Each terzanelle is meant to be 19 lines long (ten syllables each), composed of five triplets with a concluding quatrain, and are written in iambic pentamater. I don't pay much attention to where my metrical feet are stepping, but I enjoy the puzzle-like nature of this form and the subtlety of the repeating lines, the variations in meaning. I also enjoy breaking the lines and changing punctuation.

Salai is the foster son of Leonardo da Vinci. A true hellion, he grows to understand his foster father's patience with him.Many do not know the story of Leonardo da Vinci's early years and even fewer know of his foster son. What made an artist take interest in a peasant boy? History says it was for modeling or even, a sexual relationship. I have taken my research and allowed my imagination to take flight on the real relationship. Learn more about the great artist - and his foster son - and how a Great Master changed a life forever.

Fathers: A collection of Three Flash Fiction stories consist of three short stories, "Teddy", "He never Came", "His Truth". All shining a lot of the lack in-home issues many families face regarding an empty father presence.3 Fathers: A collection of Three Flash Fiction stories consist of three short stories, "Teddy", "He never Came", "His Truth". Teddy; it's been three years since young Brittney saw her daddy. He died on a very long journey but according to Brittney, He's been on a very strong journey. She misses him dearly, but is constantly reminded whenever she has a tea party with her teddy bear. The teddy was assigned by Brittney's daddy as a guardian angel to Brittney so she can continue to grow and never forget. He Never Came; fifteen-year-old Ahmad finally gets to se his father again. He lives with his mother who knows his father all too well and constantly has to remind Ahmad but he loves his father. He stands anxiously at the door, reacting to every headlight as he waits, and waits, and waits... His Truth; Bob and Paula have been married for nearly 20 years, filled with golden memories of raising their son. But there's a grey between them now as if marriage is a job they share. Bob has held on for as long as he could but he can no longer bear the secret inside him.

It's 2328 and in Brighton, England, they call their society Audric -- a place where crime is non-existent and bad financial decisions are met with a bracelet shock and a mind-altering dream. Pierre na, the only seventeen year old with no shocks, known by his friends as Pure Pierre, wakes up in an infirmary and is told he fell thirteen stories and lived. Pierre is agreed by all to be an Audricsuccess, but is he really the success everyone supposes? With no memory of the thirteen floor fall, he'll have to find out what happened, who would want to kill him, and why. His quest will lead him to infiltrate a rogue group that lives among them called Gamblers, and to befriend a beautiful mysterious girl who seems to possess some of the answers he needs. For the first time in his life, he will question everything about the society he's always taken for granted.

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it. Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others. So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the-moment decision to look after this woman – and her nine-year-old daughter, and her dog – will lead Willa into uncharted territory. Surrounded by new and surprising neighbours, she is plunged into the rituals that make a community and takes pleasure in the most unexpected things. A bittersweet novel of hope and regret, fulfillment and renewal, Clock Dance brings us the everyday life of a woman who decides it’s never too late to change direction, and choose your own path.

"We should expect this young woman to be more powerful than our average novice, possibly even more powerful than the average magician." This year, like every other, the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city of undesirables. Cloaked in the protection of their sorcery, they move with no fear of the vagrants and miscreants who despise them and their work--until one enraged girl, barely more than a child, hurls a stone at the hated invaders . . . and effortlessly penetrates their magical shield. What the "Magicians' Guild "has long dreaded has finally come to pass. There is someone outside their ranks who possesses a raw power beyond imagining, an untrained mage who must be found and schooled before she destroys herself and her city with a force she cannot yet control.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Colum McCann's TransAtlantic. A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature. Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened by the world of books, which is often frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the poster girl for a brave new world. As she shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced by the Gypsy people and savored by a young English expatriate, Stephen Swann. But Zoli soon finds that when she falls she cannot fall halfway–neither in love nor in politics. While Zoli’s fame and poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own favor. Cast out from her family, Zoli abandons her past to journey to the West, in a novel that spans the 20th century and travels the breadth of Europe. Colum McCann, acclaimed author of Dancer and This Side of Brightness, has created a sensuous novel about exile, belonging and survival, based loosely on the true story of the Romani poet Papsuza. It spans the twentieth century and travels the breadth of Europe. In the tradition of Steinbeck, Coetzee, and Ondaatje, McCann finds the art inherent in social and political history, while vividly depicting how far one gifted woman must journey to find where she belongs.

A heart-warming tale of courage and warmth, set against the backdrop of the second world war, about an abandoned village, a lifelong friendship and one very adventurous cat! ‘Classic Morpurgo brilliance’ – Publishing News "Something's up. Something big too, very big. At school, in the village, whoever you meet, it's all anyone talks about. It's like a sudden curse has come down on us all. It makes me wonder if we'll ever see the sun again." It's 1943, and Lily Tregenze lives on a farm, in the idyllic seaside village of Slapton. Apart from her father being away, and the 'townie' evacuees at school, her life is scarcely touched by the war. Until one day, Lily and her family, along with 3000 other villagers, are told to move out of their homes – lock, stock and barrel. Soon, the whole area is out of bounds, as the Allied forces practise their landings for D-day, preparing to invade France. But Tips, Lily's adored cat, has other ideas – barbed wire and keep-out signs mean nothing to her, nor does the danger of guns and bombs. Frantic to find her, Lily makes friends with two young American soldiers, who promise to help her. But will she ever see her cat again? Lily decides to cross the wire into the danger zone to look for Tips herself… Now, many years later, as Michael is reading his Grandma Lily's diary, he learns about The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips – and wonders how one adventurous cat could still affect their lives sixty years later.

The phone messages waiting for Henry Pierce clearly aren't for him: "Where is Lilly? This is her number. It's on the site." Pierce has just moved into a new apartment, and he's been "chasing the dime"--doing all it takes so his company comes out first with a scientific breakthrough worth millions. But he can't get the messages for Lilly out of his head. As Pierce tries to help a woman he has never met, he steps into a world of escorts, websites, sex, and secret passions. A world where his success and expertise mean nothing...and where he becomes the chief suspect in a murder case, trapped in the fight of his life.

True Grit is his most famous novel--first published in 1968, and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory. True Grit is eccentric, cool, straight, and unflinching, like Mattie herself. From a writer of true cult status, this is an American classic through and through. This new edition, with a smart new package and an afterword by acclaimed author Donna Tartt, will bring this masterpiece to an even broader audience.

In the raw was how the world felt now. My feelings were raw, my thoughts were raw and hurtful like knife blades. . . . In the blue had been my place to hide, now In the raw there was nowhere to hide. Jenna Abbott separates her life into two categories: before the wreck and after the wreck. Before the wreck, she was leading a normal life with her mom in suburban New York. After the wreck, Jenna is alone, trying desperately to forget what happened that day on the bridge. She's determined not to let anyone get close to her -- she never wants to feel so broken and fragile again. Then Jenna meets Crow. He is a powerfully seductive enigma, and Jenna is instantly drawn to him. Crow is able to break down the wall that Jenna has built around her emotions, and she surprises herself by telling him things she hasn't told anyone else. Can Jenna bring herself to face the memories she's tried so hard to erase?

Can Nancy solve this chilling mystery? Who wears a blue scarf and old rubber boots, and has broccoli for a nose? It's Sherlock -- Nancy, Bess, and George's snowman! The girls are thrilled to be on winter vacation and take part in all of the season's activities! Nancy's friend Deirdre has even transformed herself into Madame Chocolata, a fortune-teller who predicts the future by reading hot cocoa marshmallows! But the wintry days get a little too chilly after many of Deirdre's visions come true. Sherlock even goes missing -- just as predicted! Can the Clue Crew put a freeze on this mystery before it snowballs out of control?