Welcome to the magical town of Cottontail Pines, where animals talk, and there is always a friend around the corner. A huge kangaroo has come to town, but she may be too big for the small animals who live there. Will they be able to accommodate her before she makes a mess? Find out in this cute new story by T.K. Wade!Welcome to the magical town of Cottontail Pines, where animals talk, and there is always a friend around the corner. In this new story called “A Kanga-tastrophe,” the animals of Cottontail Pines come across a new very large visitor. A kangaroo named Ptooie has come to see the town that she had heard so many wonderful things about. However, she is so big, that she may be too big for the quaint little animals of the town. Can she pay a visit without stomping everything under her giant feet? Find out what happens in this cute new story by T.K. Wade!

Every woman Ernie Summers dated possessed a fatal flaw, which is why he is taking an indefinite sabbatical from the opposite sex. Well, maybe not.Over a hundred years in the future, Earth has fallen under the invasion of a hostile alien race—the Drevi. Half the population has been captured as specimens, while the rest are fighting for their lives in a resistance movement that has achieved more defeats than victories.Ted Anderson, a 42-year-old information specialist from the American States, thought nothing could save him from his new life. In spite of being an aide to a leading Drevi scientist who treats him well, he is reminded every day what he truly is. A specimen. An Inferior with no future.Then two strange new aliens arrive as representatives of their government, wanting to free humanity from the invading force. And all of Ted’s dreams come true. He’s on a starship, shooting through space at speeds he had never before imagined. And most of all, he is free again.Now Ted is drawn into a dangerous conflict to save all he knows and loves. But the fate of more than just humanity might rest on his shoulders.In this stunning new science fiction epic, author Karen Lofgren weaves a tale of the human condition, and how even in the darkest of times, it can shine through into the future.Cover image courtesy of NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI AURA)-ESA Hubble Collaboration. This publication is in no way endorsed by NASA.

These are the stories of three boys living in Texas: one growing up, one dreaming, and one fighting to stay alive in the face of destitution. There is second-grader William, 15-year-old Sam, and 21-year-old Seff, all trying to make their way on their own terms. These stories are told with heart, humor, and an uncompromising look at what it meant to grow up in Texas during the 80s and 90s.These are the stories of three boys living in Texas: one growing up, one dreaming, and one fighting to stay alive in the face of destitution and adversity. There's second-grader William, a shy yet imaginative boy who schemes about how to get back at his school-yard bully, Randy. Then there's Sam, a 15-year-old boy who dreams of getting a 1980 Mazda RX-7 for his sixteenth birthday but has to work at a Greek restaurant to fund his dream. Finally, there's Seff, a 21-year-old on the brink of manhood, trying to survive along with his roommate, working as waiters and barely making ends meet. These three stories are told with heart, humor, and an uncompromising look at what it meant to grow up in Texas during the 1980s and 1990s.The writing of Scott Semegran has been praised by bestselling author / Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Davy Rothbart as "Hilarious, poignant, and twisted." Award-winning cartoonist Emily Flake described the fiction of Scott Semegran as "Funny, sweet, dark, and sad, Scott Semegran's stories create a wholly convincing world of love, loss, and fear. His light touch with heavy subjects is a gift, and his forays into silliness are a delight."Scott Semegran lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, four kids, two cats, and a dog. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English. He is a cartoonist and a writer. He can also bend metal with his mind and run really fast, if chased by a pack of wolves. His comic strips have appeared in the following newspapers: The Austin Student, The Funny Times, The Austin American-Statesman, Rocky Mountain Bullhorn, Seven Days, The University of Texas at Dallas Mercury, and The North Austin Bee. His short story "That Little Devil (Que Un Diablito)" appeared in the The Next One Literary Journal from the Texas Tech University Honors College. He is a Kindle bestselling author. Other novels and books by Scott Semegran include The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood, Modicum, The Spectacular Simon Burchwood, and Mr. Grieves the Book.

James returns to Addieville to finish what Mr. Turner started years ago when the old boneshaker burned his books and set half the town aflame. James returns to recover Mr. Turner's runes and so link his bloodline to that of a cursed family whose study of an ancient and lost alphabet doomed them to suffering and pain. But to James, such a curse is a small cost to pay to bury a dead town’s bones.Addieville offers no friendship to James Frost’s family. James’ father refuses to remove that vile book of Mr. Turner’s poetry from the town library, and so the residents of Addieville view the Frosts as a family undeserving of their trust. Mr. Turner doesn’t allow the kindness the Frosts show him go unreturned, and as Addieville begins to torment the Frosts to drive them out of town, that old poet unravels captivating magic to their son James. Mr. Turner and James learn they share much more in common than their ugliness, and the young boy and old man begin a last ritual for Addieville when they burn books upon a great pyre and spread a cleansing blaze through town.

Emma, who lives in Cornwall with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, wakes one morning to find that the world has apparently gone mad: no post, no telephone, no radio, a warship in the bay and American soldiers advancing across the field towards the house. The time is a few years in the future. England has withdrawn from the Common Market and, on the brink of bankruptcy, has decided that salvation lies in a union - political, military and economic - with the United States. Theoretically it is to be an equal partnership; but to some people it soon begins to look like a takeover bid. Daphne du Maurier is concerned not only with what would happen to this country under what is virtually occupation, but also with the effect on human relationships. In Emma, looking at it all with clear young eyes, Daphne du Maurier has drawn one of her most enchanting heroines; and this engrossing book shows once again what a versatile and perceptive writer she is.

New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris has created a phenomenon with her Sookie Stackhouse novels, which are the basis for the smash hit television program True Blood. In this companion piece to her wildly popular series, Harris explains the fate of a character shrouded in mystery. Sookie's cousin Hadley ran away years earlier and hasn't been heard from since. When Mr. Cataliades visits on behalf of the vampire queen of Louisiana, Sookie finally learns that Hadley was murdered during a cemetery ritual. Now, the queen has an unusual request of Sookie that will force the telepathic cocktail waitress into a difficult situation. "One Word Answer" can be enjoyed on its own, but devotees of the series will find the story especially enjoyable, as it helps bridge the gap between Dead as a Doornail (Book 5) and Definitely Dead (Book 6). **

From New York Times & USA Today bestselling author, Kendall Ryan, comes the third book in the Filthy Beautiful Lies series. Pace Drake loves sex. He knows where to get it, what to say, what to do, and he makes no apologies for satisfying his needs. But when he meets single mom, Kylie Sloan, he's enthralled by her, and begins to question his standard operating procedure. After all, there's no chase, no mystery when banging a woman in a nightclub bathroom. Kylie's depth and determination make the sloppy, drunken hookups that fill his weekends seem empty and shallow. She's the opposite of the desperate, clingy women he's used to. She doesn’t want or need anyone to take care of her and that only makes him want to care for her more. Kylie's trust in men has vanished. The last guy she was with played ding-dong-ditch-it with her uterus and left her with a baby to raise. Now her infant son is the only man she has time for, even if she misses sex and intimacy more than she'd ever admit. Opening her heart up to a younger man who's best known for no-strings-attached sex and his casual lifestyle is probably the worst idea she's ever had. But Pace wants to prove to her there are still a few good guys left, and watching the sweet way he interacts with her baby makes her want to try…but she can really trust that his days of hitting it and quitting it are in his past? Filthy Beautiful Lust is the third book in the Filthy Beautiful Lies series, however it can be read as a standalone novel (no cliffhanger). To understand the full growth and development of the characters, it is recommended that you begin with book 1, Filthy Beautiful Lies.

In these hilarious stories of perverse meetings, casual dates and romantic encounters, we are enthralled, saddened, inspired and surprised by the encounters we’re made privy to. McCall Smith, a master of the unexpected and a seamless storyteller, revels in offering us the quirky complications inherent in entanglements which human beings engineer for themselves – entanglements that can be shocking, edifying, compulsive, complicated and sometimes, completely disastrous. This is an exceptional collection of stories from an author whose rapidly growing audience delights in his extraordinary imagination and delicious insights into the endlessly fascinating peculiarities of the human condition.

Although his father had been reluctant to become a field operative, Jack Ryan Jr. wants nothing more. Privately training with a seasoned Special Forces drill instructor, he’s honing his skills to transition his work within The Campus from intelligence analysis to hunting down and eliminating terrorists wherever he can—even as Jack Ryan Sr. campaigns for re-election as President of the United States. But what neither father nor son knows is that the political and the personal have just become equally dangerous. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately funded vendetta to discredit him by connecting the presidential candidate to a mysterious killing in the past by John Clark, his longtime ally. A shadowy mercenary team is dispatched to capture the former Navy SEAL.With Clark on the run, it’s up to Jack Ryan Jr., along with Ding Chavez, Dominic Caruso, and the rest of the Campus team, to stop a threat emerging in the Middle East: A corrupt Pakistani general has entered into a deadly pact with a fanatical terrorist to procure nuclear warheads, which can be used to blackmail any world power into submission.With the breakneck speed and military action scenes that have made him the premier thriller writer of our time, Tom Clancy delivers a novel of high-tech warfare in which the enemy within may be even more devastating than the enemy without.

Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create. Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."

Heartbroken over the death of her fiance, Ragweed, Poppy, a deer mouse, journeys west through the vast Dimwood Forest to bring the sad news to Ragweed's family. But Poppy and her prickly porcupine pal, Ereth, arrive only to discover that beavers have flooded the serene valley where Ragweed lived. Together Poppy and Ragweed's brother Rye brave kidnapping, imprisonment, and a daring rescue to fight the beavers. At the same time, Rye -- who has lived in Ragweed's shadow -- fights to prove himself worthy of Poppy's love.

Rebecca Robbins has pulled the rink she inherited off the market. She's decided to stay in Indian Falls for good. Rebecca is certain that if she can get her maid of honor duties fulfilled and Thanksgiving dinner cooked, life will finally settle down to normal. But when Rebecca is hired to look into a string of home invasions and a dead body turns up at the bridal shower, she is forced to put aside her hopes for a quiet holiday season. With the help of her Elvis-loving grandfather and her sexy, commitment-seeking large animal vet boyfriend, Rebecca has to track down thieves that have eluded the cops for years, solve a murder, get her friend safely married, and somehow cook dinner for an ever expanding guest list without getting herself killed. Boasting the drama of both madcap wedding hijinks and the infamous Thanksgiving dinner, a puzzling murder, and a wonderful cast, Skating Under the Wire is Joelle Charbonneau's most exciting mystery yet!

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife’s twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent lover, and another must administer her father’s death. Bourgeois comforts and youthful convictions are tenderly seen as certain to erode: “Man,” as one of these stories concludes, “was not meant to abide in paradise.”

A new volume of three novels–previously published separately by Anchor–by Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Together with The Beggar, The Thief and The Dogs, and Autumn Quail* *(published by Anchor in December 2000), these novels represent a comprehensive collection of Mahfouz’s artful meditations on post-revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique, they render a nuanced and universally resonant vision of modern life in the Middle East. Respected Sir, “a latter-day Bleak House in Arabic” (The New York Times), revisits a familiar theme–vaulting ambition–in a powerful and religious metaphor. Wedding Song, “one of Mahfouz’s most enjoyable works” (The Chicago Tribune), is a psychological drama, focusing on how four very different kinds of minds apprehend and reckon with the realities that surround them. The Search is a powerful, lurid, and compelling story of lust, greed, and murder.

From the blockbuster bestselling author comes the dramatic conclusion to the saga that began with Emma Harte and A Woman of Substance. Four women at a crossroads. A family in crisis. And an enemy planning for his long-awaited chance at revenge. Who will have their Just Rewards? Linnet O'Neill, great-granddaughter of Emma Harte, finds herself following in the footsteps of the original woman of substance as she battles to modernize the family business. Returning from her honeymoon full of fresh ideas for bringing the Harte empire into the new century, Linnet locks horns with her mother, Paula, in a battle about the future. But due to unexpected circumstances, Linnet finds herself alone at the helm, just as her great-grandmother once was. Tesse Fairly is ready to start a new life after an acrimonious divorce -- which might include rivaling her sister Linnet for the top spot in the Harte business. India Standish, in the midst of planning her glamorous summer wedding in Ireland, is thrown off balance when her fianc�'s daughter Atlanta comes to live with them -- closely followed by his unstable ex-girlfriend, intent on trouble. And Evan Hughes, their American cousin, unwittingly brings an enemy into their midst! Evan's sister Angharad, who tries to infiltrate the quartet of young women, meets Jonathan Ainsley, the deadly enemy of the Hartes. Together, they spin a web of vengeance whereby no Harte is safe. Just Rewards brings the story of Emma Harte and A Woman of Substance full circle.

An alien starfish and a human man must learn to live in each other’s bodies in Piers Anthony’s ingenious sequel to the science fiction gem *Aliena* Along with fellow members of her sapient starfish race, Aliena traveled many light-years to Earth. There, in the host body of a human woman, the inquisitive extraterrestrial learned how to exist as a member of this perplexing earthborn race. Now Piers Anthony, the New York Times–bestselling maestro of science fiction and fantasy, continues the story in Aliena Too, as the males of two markedly different species must somehow adapt to one another. Lida Fisher knows that her beloved husband, Quincy, will die soon as the result of a rare and terrible brain rejection syndrome. But there is one hope. If Quincy consents to switch brains with one of the alien beings that have arrived from the other side of the galaxy, he will live on—albeit in the body of a starfish. And that means Lida must agree to let a new man into her life and her bed, one with the face and body of her adored husband but with the mind of an alien stranger. More difficult still, Lida must somehow teach this star man how to love. And many miles above the earth, Quincy also will have to make extreme adjustments to a body and an existence he never dreamed would be his. But luckily, both Fishers will have someone to guide them through the perils, pitfalls, and traumas that must invariably accompany their strange new reality—a truly remarkable creature who has already been there and back again: Aliena.

I'm the hopeless romantic in the family and I don't care who knows. My brothers make fun of me for it, calling me "Princess" and "Cinderella" every chance they get, but I couldn't care less. I'm done with one night stands and women who mean nothing to me. My dating for the sake of dating days are over. I know what I want and I refuse to settle for less. I'm ready to find "the one." You know exactly what I'm talking about. Single mom Sofia can't stand me. I want to get to know her better, but she keeps pushing me away. I just need one chance to show her that I'm not the guy she thinks I am, but she won't let me get anywhere near her. Being a single mom has made her heart guarded. Being a single guy has made my heart determined. I wonder who's heart is going to give in first? The Fisher Brothers is a series of standalone novels that can be sipped one at a time, or binged in order. Each book is aptly named after one of the popular drinks at their bar. Enjoy! No Bad Days- Nick's story Guy Hater- Frank's story Adios Pantalones- Ryan's story

Widow Kate Blakely knew nothing of love - but she knew plenty about unhappiness. She'd married young, hoping to put down roots in a safe haven, but her husband had shattered her naiveté, and made her fear for her beloved daughter's safety until the day he died. When she first met her new neighbor, Zachariah McGovern, all she saw was danger. But Zach saw much more. He saw beauty, he saw tenderness. He knew he could rescue Kate Blakely from her past - if only she would let him. What Zach couldn't know, however, was the price that had to be paid to save the woman he loved.

The year is 1897, and gifted violinist Reuven Bloom is fifteen years old. Life for the Jews in Russia is very hard. First Reuven's best friend is captured to serve in the Tsar's army, and then his parents and older sister are murdered. Reuven's dreams of music must be set aside. Now he has only one goal: escape. With his baby sister strapped to his back, Reuven sets off toward an unknown freedom. His journey takes him first across Russia, and then ultimately to America. Readers will remember Reuven as the revolutionary who helped Sashie and her family flee from Russia in "The Night Journey." In "Broken Song, " Reuven's own powerful story unfolds.

Continuing from Count to a Trillion, Menelaus Illation Montrose—Texas gunslinger, idealist, and posthuman genius—has gone into cryo-suspension following the discovery that, in 8,000 years, a powerful alien intelligence will reach Earth to assess humanity's value as slaves. Montrose intends to be alive to meet that threat, but he is awakened repeatedly throughout the centuries to confront the woes of an ever-changing and violent world, witnessing millennia of change compressed into a few years of subjective time. The result is a breathtaking vision of future history like nothing before imagined: sweeping, tumultuous, and evermore alien, as Montrose's immortal enemies and former shipmates from the starship Hermetic harness the forces of evolution and social engineering to continuously reshape the Earth in their image, seeking to create a version of man the approaching slavers will find worthy.

What do you do when you’ve got a hillbilly tiger by the tail? Or maybe the question should be: what wouldn’t you do… Nikolai Vorislav likes his single life just as it is. Simple, relaxing and quiet. What he doesn’t need is some foul-mouthed Texan hellcat living in his house, eating his food, flirting with his idiot brothers and shooting holes in his home with his granddaddy’s gun. But those long legs, dark eyes and lethal tongue are making Nik insane and he fears he may be caught in the sexiest animal trap ever. Angelina Santiago doesn’t know how she got from Texas to North Carolina in a night or how she ended up in some hillbilly tiger’s house wearing only a sheet. What she does know is that she doesn’t like good ol’ boys with slow, sexy drawls who can’t seem to stop rubbing up against her. Yet in order to protect her friends, Angie has to stay with a cat who seems hellbent on finding all sorts of delicious ways to make her purr.