Jesus is dying. His last mission pushed Him to the edge. In order to save his life a team must travel through time and fight a train to break out a special prisoner. Does this prisoner hold the key to saving Jesus' life? The only way to find out is to read on...In the aftermath of the fight, Elliot looks back down the road that led to Jaret's election as Mayor. Harlem's Deck goes introspective, with glimpses into the brother's past and a look at the nature of the shallows.For fans of Peter F.Hamilton, Iain M Banks and Jon Courtney Grimwood.(...Back cover write up...)The city of Neppon drifts through the shallows, where the walls circling the mortal realm are thin. Here the daemons gather out of the surrounding night, drawn by its promise of candle flame warmth.As the election for the city's mayoral office approaches, one man stands head and shoulders above the other candidates. His reputation? A bastion for everything that is good and honest, in a world beset from all sides by horrors. But Jaret Roscan carries a secret. A secret that could bring ruin to his political career, and chaos to his beloved city.One person carries the key to his salvation. The question is, will they come forward in his hour of need?Harlem's Deck; a story in instalments. Keep your hand close to your chest...

When Dogs Bark, The Short Story made its debut in 1995 in Story Magazine. Soulfires published it in 1996, the same year it appeared in the iconic and awe-inspiring anthology SHADE. When a man is troubled, he growls, whimpers, or barks his a$$ off.When Dogs Bark, The Short Story made its debut in 1995 in Story Magazine. Soulfires published it in 1996, followed by publication in the iconic and awe-inspiring anthology SHADE, edited by Bruce Morrow and Charles H. Rowell. The writer reissued it in 2000 as part of his personal collection.You may think with a name like Jethro, our story is the tale of a country bumpkin on a visit to New York City. It’s deeper. There’s a rumbling deep in Jethro’s soul. He has the quirky habit of barking when he’s nervous. It starts with a low growl when he’s mildly agitated, to a ferocious bark when he feels endangered.One day after he gets fed up with his wife and her cousin Jethro decides to step out and explore New York on his own. As he rides the subway he’s doing his low growl thing the keep the creeps away (just imagine). He catches the attention of Toni a cross dresser recently released from the army. It becomes a wild weekend of sex and self-discovery until a dangerous encounter with a gang of boys sends Jethro back to the arms of his wife, Eartha Pearl. Is Jethro a changed man? Only time will tell. Harvey captures te flavor of New York with the best of them.Excerpt:I say, “Now wait a minute, Jethro, you ain’t gonna have no cultural experiences stuck scared here on this stoop. Suppose Columbus had just sat on a stoop all his life. Just suppose. Shit. A man must take action!” While I sit debating, this big white dude in chains and leather walks toward me. Now, these chains ain’t dainty little things you get from Spiegel’s catalog. These chains come from the Navy yard. I mean these chains can lift submarines. He wears three around his neck, five on each wrist, and two on each ankle. Now the chains do not bother me. The fact that he has on funky raw uncured leather does not bother me. Even the glass eye--I hope it’s glass--dangling from his left earlobe on a chain does not bother me. What bothers me is when he turns in my direction, and grabs his grapefruit sized crotch and smiles—that’s what bothers ol’ Jethro here. I say, “Uh oh Jethro, somebody wants you to swing a certain way. And I don’t swing that way.” I wonder why he pick on me? So what if I do have on these black high top sneakers, shorts with Texas bluebonnets all over them, and a pink tee-shirt that says, “I BRAKE FOR MOONERS--that don’t mean I’m gay. Shit. I’m just a colorful dude. Well okay if you want to count that time when I was in the eighth grade and me and Johnny Scardino grabbed each other’s rods behind the gym bleachers. I wouldn’t have gone back there with him, but he told me he had two and he would show me if I showed him mine. Okay, it tickled and I got a hard-on when he grabbed me and I grabbed him out of reflexes, but I haven’t seen Johnny since the eighth grade. I dreamed about him once, since I been married to Eartha Pearl. But I woke up and made love to Eartha real quick.So anyway I hang my head and growl softly at the man in leather. He must think I’m calling him to dinner ‘cause he moves a little closer. When I see him step, I bark louder. And not yap yap like a poodle either. I’m Doberman and Great Dane combined. I rattle nearby windows. New York people stare at me as they walk by. And they tell me you’re doing something when you can get a New Yorker to stare at you eye-level on the street. The dude slinks away like he’s carrying a tail between his legs.

Peter has commandeered the Mars Explorer and Earthrise is about to make a fiery plunge into Mars’s atmosphere. What began as an holiday out of this world ends above an alien world.All boys enjoy wandering through the woods or fields.They are attracted to ponds and streams, where there is a whole world of fascinating creatures. This piece is just a short poem about such an encounter between a young boy and . . . a dragonfly. See if perhaps you can relate to your own childhood as you think about some of your own experiences with nature. This is a fun little poem that can be used at school, camp, or a quiet evening at home. Share it with your child and see what ideas he might suggest about such a meeting. Who is more curious -- the boy . . . or the dragonfly?

Episode 13, Nanotroopers.1st Nano has a mission to recon a Chinese base on the Moon. Red Hammer may be there and some furious excavating is going on. But what turns up is something the cartel and the nanotroopers never expected, a direct link to an offworld race of bots called the Old Ones. Johnny Winger faces his greatest challenge and will be changed forever by the encounter.Episode 13, Nanotroopers. Quantum Corps has a new mission: the Chinese are on the Moon at Copernicus Crater and they’re excavating something furiously just outside their base. Johnny Winger and the troopers of 1st Nano are given a recon mission: find out what the Chinese are doing and whether Red Hammer is on site guiding the excavation. But what the troopers find is something they never expected: a direct link to an offworld race of bots called the Old Ones. Red Hammer can’t be allowed to acquire this link. The recon mission evolves into something much more violent as the nanotroopers engage a massive alien formation erupting from below the lunar crust. Johnny Winger faces his greatest challenge and will be changed forever by the encounter.

When Donald Trump becomes President in 2016, nothing seems amiss -- aside from Donald Trump being President. But by the time 2020 rolls around, he's more popular than ever but things are beginning to fall apart. President Trump just doesn't seem to be himself......and the face he shows at his second inauguration is more shocking than anyone could dare dream!When Keegan finally gets away from his brutal mother on his sixteenth birthday, things go from bad to strange as his father picks up a hitchhiker in the desert during their escape. The strangeness of the day gets scary as Keegan notices the hitchhiker’s odd behavior. But with Keegan’s failing memory and bizarre dreams of a red wind, he can’t be sure about what his father’s gotten them in to as they make their way to the creepy Arizona town of Sedonia Falls. This is the first episode of a five-part serial.

The Orpheus Directive: Season 1, Episode 1. Lone Wolf (A 1-hour Bitesize Read) Another rollicking Ethan Gill adventure! Marine Master Sergeant Ethan Gill is a rare breed: a true hero, with skills honed in the bloodiest hellholes on the planet.He’d retired but SecNav has called his squad back to active duty, to go where Special Forces can’t, or won’t. To make the impossible look easy.The Orpheus Directive: Season 1, Episode 1. Lone Wolf (A 1-hour Bitesize Read) Another rollicking Ethan Gill adventure! Marine Master Sergeant Ethan Gill is a rare breed: a true hero, with skills honed in the bloodiest hellholes on the planet.He’d retired but SecNav has called his squad back to active duty, to go where Special Forces can’t, or won’t. To make the impossible look easy. The mission to retrieve intelligence from a drug lord in Bolivia should have been an easy in and out, but no one could have known what it would unearth.An easy gig that’s about to launch our hero into the most dangerous mission of his war-scarred life.Every conflict has a hero. And every battle its casualties.

Since her mother's death, Lila Marie Haran has avoided taking part in the Princess Wars. But some things can't be avoided forever, and whether Lila's ready or not, judgment day is coming. If Lila hopes to survive, she will have to master her powers and become the woman the prophet's wrote about long ago, the woman known as Destiny's Queen.Jonas has just lost wife, so he turns to some comfort of solitude by taking a walk in the forest. The forest is familiar to him, but the creature which he discovers lying on the forest path is not. Jonas, through his grief, is spurred into life as he sets off on a mission to do something for the creature that he couldn't for Jolene, that is save it. As he searches the forest frantically for help, all he finds is setbacks which seems to push him further and further off the track to salvation and redemption. With people unable or unwilling to help him, and even going through a chance meeting with his recently deceased wife, will Jonas be able to save the dolphin?

Julia is a young, whimsical story about an outcast named Elliot who wants nothing more than to have a true friend. When he meets Julia, he feels he has finally found one. But Julia is not all that she seems.Julia is a young, whimsical story about an outcast named Elliot who wants nothing more than to have a true friend. When he meets Julia, he feels he has finally found one. But Julia is not all that she seems.This story is aimed at a young adult readership and deals with themes such as loneliness, desperation and friendship as Elliot struggles to find his place amongst his peers. It attempts to capture the innocence of childhood friendship and the intense emotions children feel in relation to growth and belonging in their own small worlds.I hope it may encourage younger readers to consider the importance of valuing the relationships they have in their lives, and to appreciate the people they have around them as they grow.

Alone in the trenches following a devastating barrage of enemy fire, Robert discovers there is more than just his own innocence at stake in this godforsaken war. Originally published in From the Trenches by Carnifex Press.It was just the driving rain and the liquidity of the mud that made them look like a child’s footprints. Robert had no idea how long he had been following them, or even why. He wondered if he was simply keeping himself busy, distracting himself from the squealing in his ears, the festering wound in his thigh, the cold numbing his face and fingers, the knowledge that everyone was dead, that he was alone and lost in this cemetery, this sewer, this labyrinth. These trenches.

Two never-before-published novellas by one of America's finest living writers, Ray Bradbury. A journalist bearing terrible news leaps from a still-moving train into a small town of wonderful, impossible secrets . . . The doomed crew of a starship follow their blind, mad captain on a quest into deepest space to joust with destiny, eternity, and God Himself . . . Now and Forever is a bold new work from an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape; two bewitching novellas that have never before appeared in print—each distinctly different, yet uniquely Bradbury—demonstrating the breathtaking range of the master's talent and the irrepressible vitality of his mind, spirit, and heart. In Somewhere a Band Is Playing, a writer is drawn by poetry and dreams to tiny Summerton, Arizona, a community hidden in plain view, where no small children play, and where the residents never seem to age. Enchanted by its powerful rural magic—and by a beautiful, enigmatic lady who bears the name of an Egyptian queen—the writer sets out to uncover Summerton's mysteries before the inevitable arrival of a ruthless destruction. With Leviathan '99, the author who once colonized Mars returns to the cosmos to brilliantly reimagine Herman Melville's classic masterwork of obsession and the sea, transforming a great whale into a worlds-devouring comet. In the year 2099, fledgling astronaut Ishmael Hunnicut Jones boards the Cetus 7, placing his fate in the hands of a relentless madman who is blindly chasing the celestial monster's tail. And in the merciless void, a crew of earthborn and alien star-travelers will face a divine judgment, and an "enemy" wielding the most fearsome weapon of all . . . Time. More than a half century into his remarkable career, Ray Bradbury continues to delight and astound with grand visions, lyrical prose, and provocative thought. Rich in poetry, wonder, imagination, and truth, here is proof positive that the words and stories of the inimitable Bradbury will live on . . . Now and Forever.

It’s been several months since Lina and Doon escaped the dying city of Ember and, along with the rest of their people, joined the town of Sparks. Now, struggling through the harsh winter aboveground, they find an unusual book. Torn up and missing most of its pages, it alludes to a mysterious device from before the Disaster, which they believe is still in Ember. Together, Lina and Doon must go back underground to retrieve what was lost and bring light to a dark world. In the fourth Book of Ember, bestselling author Jeanne DuPrau juxtaposes yet another action-packed adventure with powerful themes about hope, learning, and the search for truth. From the Hardcover edition.

Written by celebrated author M. M. Kaye, Death in Zanzibar is a wonderfully evocative mystery ... Dany Ashton is invited to vacation at her stepfather's house in Zanzibar, but even before her airplane takes off there is a stolen passport, a midnight intruder--and murder. In Zanzibar, the family house is Kivulimi, the mysterious "House of Shade," where Dany and the rest of the guests learn that one of them is a desperate killer. The air of freedom and nonchalance that opened the house party fades into growing terror, as the threat of further violence flowers in the scented air of Zanzibar. Richly evocative, Death in Zanzibar will charm long-time fans and introduce new ones to this celebrated writer.

In this most gothic of Robert McCammon's novels, setting is key: the continuing saga of the Usher family (descended from the brother of Roderick and Madeline of Edgar Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher") takes place in the weird and picturesque heart of the North Carolina mountains. The haughty, aristocratic Ushers live in a mansion near Asheville; the poor but crafty mountain folk (whose families are just as ancient) live on Briartop Mountain nearby. At harvest time, when the book's action unfolds, the mountains are a blaze of color. Add to the mixture a sinister history of mountain kids disappearing every year, a journalist investigating those disappearances, a monster called "The Pumpkin Man," moldy books and paintings in a huge old library at the Usher estate, and a secret chamber with a strange device involving a brass pendulum and tuning forks--and you've got a splendid recipe for atmospheric horror. Originally published: New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NEED AND CAPTIVATE People keep changing who they are & defining themselves by their own choices, and that's cool most of the time, but not all the time. No, it's not cool all the time at all. Belle is closing in on her last few months of high school and things are much better than they were before. Well, almost. Belle's not too sure about all the sureness that other people seem to have about things like labels (popular, slut, jock), change (college, real adulthood, new friends, lost friends), and love (oh yeah, that). Not to mention, there's THE BIG PROBLEM with Tom and other-well, unexpected-surprises. If you want to read more about Belle, check out Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend from Flux. Praise for Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend "From the first sentence of Carrie Jones' novel, I could tell that here was a bright new writer who was going to set the world of young adult letters aflame." -Kathi Appelt, award-winning poet and author "Provocative...The author's poetic prose ably captures her heroine's emotional upheavals." -Publishers Weekly "Jones offers an atypical perspective of the coming-out story by legitimizing the love that is not lost, but changed, when young people grow up and apart." -School Library Journal

A governess in a French chateau encounters an apparent plot against her young charge's life in this unforgettably haunting and beautifully written suspense novel. When lovely Linda Martin first arrives at Château Valmy as an English governess to the nine-year-old Count Philippe de Valmy, the opulence and history surrounding her seems like a wondrous, ecstatic dream. But a palpable terror is crouching in the shadows. Philippe's uncle, Leon de Valmy, is the epitome of charm, yet dynamic and arrogant, his paralysis little hindrance as he moves noiselessly in his wheelchair from room to room. Only his son Raoul, a handsome, sardonic man who drives himself and his car with equally reckless abandon, seems able to stand up to him. To Linda, Raoul is an enigma, though irresistibly attracted to him, she senses some dark twist in his nature. When an accident deep in the woods nearly kills Linda's innocent charge, she begins to wonder if someone has deadly plans for the young count.

The author of The Forever War presents a collection of writings ranging from our past in Southeast Asia to our future among the stars. Nebula and Hugo Award–winning author Joe Haldeman burst onto the literary scene with the hugely popular novel The Forever War, but his career also took off on the strength of his short fiction. This brilliant collection brings together examples of his science fiction as well as his writing on Vietnam—and reveals the inexorable connections between the two. The works included in Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds are united by its title essay, in which Haldeman explains how his past informs his envisioned futures. One of these futures is a grouping of four stories from the Confederación universe, which includes his novels All My Sins Remembered and There Is No Darkness. An anthropological expedition goes awry as a research team’s subjects become murderous, and trade negotiations fall apart, comically lost in translation. The collection closes with one of Haldeman’s most affective works about Vietnam—the moving narrative poem “DX.” Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds proves to be an anthology as versatile and multifaceted as the author who wrote it. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joe Haldeman including rare images from the author’s personal collection. 

“if you read this after I am dead It means I made it” -“The Creation Coffin” The People Look like Flowers at Last is the last of five collections of never-before published poetry from the late great Dirty Old Man, Charles Bukowski. In it, he speaks on topics ranging from horse racing to military elephants, lost love to the fear of death.  He writes extensively about writing, and about talking to people about writers such as Camus, Hemingway, and Stein.  He writes about war and fatherhood and cats and women. Free from the pressure to present a consistent persona, these poems present less of an aggressively disruptive character, and more a world-weary and empathetic person.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steven Pressfield's The Profession. I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexander’s extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warrior’s unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories. Whether surviving his father’s brutal assassination, presiding over a massacre, or weeping at the death of a beloved comrade-in-arms, Alexander never denies the hard realities of the code by which he lives: the virtues of war. But as much as he was feared by his enemies, he was loved and revered by his friends, his generals, and the men who followed him into battle. Often outnumbered, never outfought, Alexander conquered every enemy the world stood against him–but the one he never saw coming. . . .

Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans -- running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth -- bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.

"My family name is Yugano. My given name is Yuuki. I have no redeeming qualities." So begins this light novel of a girl corrupted by the Internet, and then summoned to another world. She's jaded from having already read many stories like that - but will that prepare her for what awaits in this world? Of course not! But she's going to plunge ahead anyway, and not slow down for anything! Eliezer Yudkowsky is the author of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" and "Rationality: From AI to Zombies". He is a decision theorist specializing in self-reference and reflection, a fact which unstoppably infects his writing no matter how frivolous.

Daphne Raines was not expecting to wind up Queen of the Underrealm. She knew it was risky to enter the underworld to save the love of her life, Haden, who had sacrificed his own honor as an Underlord for her sake. But she could never have predicted that she’d end up betrothed to Haden’s conniving half-brother, Garrick, new King of the Underrealm—and bound to his dark world. Even worse, Haden is banished to the mortal realm, and has just days to live as poison takes over his body and mind. Only Daphne’s kiss can save him, but how can she escape Garrick and reach Haden in time? Surprises lurk around every corner in the final chapter of this romance story as Haden and Daphne fight to fulfill their destinies, challenging their fates and confronting the reality that they might die in the process.