A young wealthy German playboy finds himself betrayed by family and friends alike. Broke and with no place to turn, he finds himself in the service of the Kaiser as a spy for Germany at one of the most dangerous times in history for a German spy. What will become of this young playboy? Will he survive to old age or pay the price with his life? Only time will tell. A Victorian age story.A young Victorian German aristocrat, Erik, the black sheep of the family, is disowned by his family. Erik finds himself broke, without family, and with few friends. Lost and looking for a place to belong (and an income), Erik finds himself in the service of the Kaiser. At a time of colonial wars with "The War to End All Wars" looming in the future, Erik becomes a spy at a very dangerous time in his country's history. What will become of this young playboy? Will he live long enough to see his thirtieth birthday? Will he spend most of his life rotting in a jail cell on espionage charges? Or, will he be brave enough and lucky enough to survive and die an old man in obscurity? Only time will tell. The story is set at the end of the 19th century.

Sam Smaltz just wants to be left alone. But being sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and Gen X and the Millennials offers him no such comfort. As a Baby Boomer, he leaves behind a stepson, Jack, who instead becomes just one more nameless, faceless hero whose story gets lost in the battle against international terrorism.Born in the placid 1950s, raised in the turbulent 1960s, and come of age in the selfish 1970s, Sam Smaltz just wants to be left alone. But being sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and Gen X and the Millennials offers him no such comfort. As a Baby Boomer, he does not get to be a respected hero by fighting German and Japanese warriors during WW II or North Koreans invading South Korea. Instead, he leaves behind a stepson, Jack, who becomes just one more nameless, faceless hero whose story gets lost in the battle against international terrorism.

September 2008 Issue of Arts and Literary Journal The Battered Suitcase; intelligent and imaginative prose, poetry and art that explores the human experience. Edited by Fawn Neun, Maggie Ward, and Apythia Morges. Fiction by Laury Egan, Ash Hibbert, Aaron Polson and John Carroll. Poetry by Jennifer Viets, Darryl Salach and Kristine Ong Muslim. Lyrics by Paul Jarvis of Slab!Reality and subjective meaning come together in the life of one man. As they spiral around each other, Darrin looks deeper into his life and the world around him, and is challenged by what he sees.Darrin develops a condition where he no longer sees things, but the shaped descriptions of things in this short story (approximately 3400 words). He suffers loss, and confusion, copes with love and family, and looks deep. This edition also contains two bonus items, "Because Love Resists Narrative," a villanelle, and "Meet Ashley's Neighbor," a short-short episode in a serial character sketch.Cover art and design by Stephen Brom.

Beatrice Goldberg doesn't much like Hispanics, biker broads, Franciscan monks, skinheads, or even salt-of-the-earth blue collar types, but she is going to get a double dose of all of the above, when she visits Our Lady of La Salette Shrine in Attleboro, Massachusetts.By the year 2335 many cultures and species were living and working through the known universe. That universe covered numerous planets and many light years of distance and most were only reachable by faster than light (FTL) vessels. This did not hamper travel to and from as faster than light capability had long been acquired and distributed. Any world that had, in any way on their own, already reached into or explored outer space in any fashion had the option of receiving or rejecting this FTL knowledge.It was found that no matter what species was encountered, the problems they experience were present in almost all cultures. Outbreaks of hostility was somehow common to all and the prevention of those hostility fell on the Universal Galactic Governing Board (UGGB). This board was made up of representatives, one from each world that had accepted the FTL capability. This conglomerate of species general had only one conferences every five years to record changes in delegates and address universal problems. On the other hand, an emergency meeting could be called at any time if something problematic was encountered that threatened security and peace. The UGGB was not designed to be the peace negotiators nor were they schooled in that capacity. They, however, did setup an organization with this single purpose. This organization's only duty was to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement between worlds who were, for whatever reason, at war with each other. These brave souls who went into harm's way were called Coordinators.

Kal has always been considered too "fragile" to participate in the village activities. Her lithe stature links her to her father and distance her from everyone else. He left the village to fight in the Teristaque Wars and never returned. She meets Sarge, a strange star species of the human race who seems to know the secret of the patch from her father's uniform.Kal has always been considered too "fragile" to participate in the village activities. Her lithe stature links her to her father and distance her from everyone else. He left the village to fight in the Teristaque Wars and never returned. She meets Sarge, a strange star species of the human race who seems to know the secret of the patch from her father's uniform. Kal has always known she is different than her fellow villagers, and finally she may be closer to finding out why.

You're waiting in your Death Row cell. You've had your last meal and met with the prison preacher. But you've heard about a mysterious train that may free you if its light shines upon you as it passes outside at midnight. You know in your heart that you're innocent so what have you got to lose by staying awake at your cell window tonight? And what more do you have to gain if this train arrives?Most all of us have by now heard the centuries old story of The Midnight Special, the train whose light will free a prison inmate if its light shines upon them as it passes by the prison in the night. But what happens next when the light shines upon the lucky prisoner? Where do they go? Who do they encounter? And who is the mysterious Conductor who pilots this train? All of these questions will be answered if you wait at the window of your own personal cell and ride this short but inspiring tale down the tracks on its heartwarming journey. All aboard!! Let this train shine its light on you! Now out as an audiobook narrated by the author on Amazon, iTunes and the other usual places.

Audrey always thought that family was first and everything else was second or irrelevant, but this new generation was something else. She taught the rule, but they didn't seem to pick it up. To them, the last thing on their mind was taking care of Mama! Still. she continued to lead by example, doing all that she could for them, until one son allowed a woman to come between them. That was a no-no!In her latest book, I'll Always Love My Mama author, Dominique Wilkins, tells the story of Audrey Fitzgerald. Deserted by her husband, Audrey was forced to raise her sons, Erick and Robert, alone. When Erick continued a downward path with the wrong crowd, despite Audrey’s intervention, his luck ran out after he repeatedly disobeyed the law and was sent to jail.Preoccupied with how she could have saved Erick from a life of crime, Audrey stuck by her son, visiting him every week and prayed that he would see the light and clean up his life.She did whatever she could to continue to be the rock and the support that her boys needed. She loved her boys and would do anything for them. Unfortunately, Audrey’s prayers and her intentions to be the best mother she could be to her two sons did not pan out as she had hoped. She lost one son and was then endanger of losing the other when Robert kills his friend by mistake. After lying to the police to save her son from a life in prison, Robert repays her loyalty by living a life of idleness and womanizing.Audrey’s story is a celebration of blind, selfless loyalty, perseverance and victory over adversity. It will be an inspiration to every mother who is struggling to keep her family intact. I'll Always Love My Mama is one of those books every mother should receive for Mother’s Day and everyday.

This Book which has 60 differently titled Poems , is actually volume 1 of the Book titled - The Womb ( 250 pages ) .A flurry of poetic concoctions dedicated to the ever-pervading woman and mother. Profoundly saluting her love, compassion and resolute grit as she evolves a diminutive infant into a powerhouse of talent, into a complete individual. The poems in the collection are humble salutations to the essence of Parenthood, to the unbelievable depths of sacrifice that a mother resorts whilst bringing up her child right since its inception in the womb. Each poem reveres the 'godly womb' as the source of all creation that has ever been. This book in itself is the most befitting tribute to the agonizing odysseys of parents as they nourish their children-and children as they grow up as the most powerful angels of God to stupefy all humanity with their inherent charm. A quintessential read for every parent or parent to be, it brings out the charm of creation since the very first breath. The verses within bountifully poeticize every unbridled mischief of a child with its beloved parents .

The first volume in Hunter S. Thompson’s bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style. Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers” is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style. Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful ‘60s and ‘70s.

What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Stone Gods is one of Jeanette Winterson's most imaginative novels about love. On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet - pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world's story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they - and we - ever find a safe landing place? Jeanette Winterson OBE, whose writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the E.M. Forster Award, is the author of some of the most purely imaginative and pleasurable novels of recent times, from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to her first book for children, Tanglewreck. She is also the author of the essays Art Objects. Visit her website at www.jeanettewinterson.com

*Full of magic and appealing characters, this classic novel takes readers on a remarkable adventure. *It's Omri's birthday, but all he gets from his best friend, Patrick, is a little plastic Indian brave. Trying to hide his disappointment, Omri puts the Indian in a metal cupboard and locks the door with a mysterious skeleton key that once belonged to his great-grandmother. Little does Omri know that by turning the key, he will transform his ordinary plastic Indian into a real live man from an altogether different time and place! Omri and the tiny warrior called Little Bear could hardly be more different, yet soon the two forge a very special friendship. Will Omri be able to keep Little Bear without anyone finding out and taking his precious Indian from him? From the Hardcover edition.

In the dream-Brazil of John Updike’s imagining, almost anything is possible if you are young and in love. When Tristão Raposo, a black nineteen-year-old from the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach, their flight from family and into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil’s phantasmagoric western frontier. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them, yet this latter-day Tristan and Iseult cling to the faith that each is the other’s fate for life. Spanning twenty-two years, from the sixties through the eighties, Brazil surprises with its celebration of passion, loyalty, romance, and New World innocence.

This is a year of reading from home, by one of Britain's most distinguished authors. Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. 'Howards End is on the Landing' charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Harry Hole novels--a fast, tight, darkly lyrical stand-alone novel that has at its center the perfectly sympathetic antihero: an Oslo contract killer who draws us into an unexpected meditation on death and love. This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented "fixer" for one of Oslo's most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has a capacity for love that is as far-reaching as is his gift for murder. He is our straightforward, calm-in-the-face-of-crisis narrator with a storyteller's hypnotic knack for fantasy. He has an "innate talent for subordination" but running through his veins is a "virus" born of the power over life and death. And while his latest job puts him at the pinnacle of his trade, it may be mutating into his greatest mistake. . . .From the Hardcover edition.

Meet Axel Collins… I’ve had my fair share of women. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve sent them all away with a smile on their face. Just one night is all I need to put that spring in their step and leave them begging for more. But more isn’t something I’m willing to give them. I don’t let them stay the night, and I don’t do relationships—not since Lex, not after Lex. But Lex comes barreling into my world like a hurricane, destroying everything in her path as she makes her way back into my life—she never did leave my heart. No, now that Lex is back I’m not letting her go—not out of my world or out of my bed. She’s back and this time I’m determined to keep it that way.

Although the three part serial beginning in the June 1952 issue in collaboration with Cyril Kornbluth had established Frederik Pohl as a formidable contributor, this novelette in the April 1954 issue was his first solo contribution and marked him as an important addition to the growing roster of social satirists enlisted by Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine. The audacious and patchwork concept underlying this story (the richer you are the less you are forced to consume; the greatest poverty is involved with the aggregation of goods) was Horace Gold’s and according to Pohl he had offered it to almost all of his regular contributors, asking for a story centered on the idea. The idea lacks all credibility, everyone (including Pohl) told him and everyone refused to write something so patently unbelievable until, according to Pohl, Horace browbeat him into an attempt and Pohl decided that it was less trouble to deliver something than continue to resist. To his utter shock, the story was received by Gold and his readership with great glee, was among the most popular GALAXY ever published (or Pohl) and one of the most anthologized. Whether this demonstrated the audacity and scope of Gold’s unreason or whether it confirmed Gold’s genius (or both) Pohl was utterly unable to decide. The sculpted consumer-obsessed society was used again by Pohl a few years later in the novelette THE MAN WHO ATE THE WORLD which was far more credible (consumption-obsession as a kind of personal tyranny) and, perhaps for that very reason, much less successful, barely remembered.

The Titus Crow novels are full of acts of nobility and heroism. Titus Crow and his faithful companion fight the forces of darkness--the infamous and deadly Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft--wherever they arise. The powerful Cthulhu and his dark minions are bent on ruling the earth--or destroying it, yet time after time, Titus Crow drives the monsters back into the dark from whence they came. Volume Three contains two full novels, In the Moons of Borea and Elysia.

Sometimes hope for the future is found in the ashes of yesterday. Shane Galantera man ready to put down roots after years of searching. But is he making the right choice? Or is there a woman somewhere who even now remembers as does he those long-ago days . . . and a love that hasn't faded with time? Lauren Gibbs a successful international war correspondent who gave up on happily-ever-after years ago when it was ripped away from her. Since then, shes never looked back. So how come she cant put to rest the one question that haunts her: Why is life so empty? Emily Anderson a college freshman raised by her grandparents, and about to take her first internship as a journalist. But before she can move ahead, she discovers a love story whose tragic ending came with her birth. As a result, she is drawn to look back and search out the mother shes never met. A young woman seeking answers to her hearts deep questions. A man and woman separated by lies and long years. . . yet who have never forgotten each other. With hallmark tenderness and power, Karen Kingsbury weaves a tapestry of lives, losses, love, and faith and the miracle of resurrection.

Alien Ragnarok! A mysterious pyramid appears in Chicago, oozing fantastic creatures and sucking humans into our own mythological past. It's an alien invasion from within! When a special forces team sent to capture an AWOL official gets into deep trouble with a certain one-eyed Norse god, redoubtable comparative mythologist Jerry Lukacs must rescue them, strike a deal with the droll and dangerous Loki, and risk bringing on Ragnarok itself to once again save human myth from alien domination. The rollicking sequel to New York Times best-seller Eric Flint and David Freers's action-packed romp through everything humankind holds sacred begun in the groundbreaking Pyramid Scheme.

I’ve sworn off men. All men. Famous last words, right? You’re expecting some epic tale of reluctant love and my dramatic change of heart? Well, you’re not going to get it. I’m stubborn. And headstrong. And I’ve just survived the worst three years of my life. After escaping an abusive boyfriend to live in hostels and cheap hotels while I worked my way across Europe, I’ve come to two conclusions. The first? Now that I’m back home, I’m going to squander my expensive culinary degree on a food truck that caters to the late night drunk crowd. The second? I’m going to prove to the bastard across the plaza that my street food is better than his fussy five course monstrosities. Killian Quinn might be Food and Wine’s Chef to Watch Out For. He might have a Michelin Star. He might have every food critic in the city wrapped around his too-large fingers. But he’s also pretentious and unbearably arrogant and the very opposite of me. So he can keep his unsolicited advice and his late night visits and his cocky smiles. I want none of it. Or him. I want the opposite.