A business trip that is not really a business trip at all. Disinterested youth. Transgressions. An old car on the open road. This is a story of discovery and regret, set against the backdrop of a discontent home and things unspoken.A wound-up businessman, a demanding wife, and a crooked cop...three people caught up in a dastardly plan to commit murder, but when the plan goes awry a battle of wits ensues. David T. Fenton's literary debut presents a short story of suspense about quirky characters and their attempts to outsmart the other. Donovan is an upcoming businessman who considers himself clever. Meriam is a waitress who wishes to be a calculating mastermind. Officer Jermaine is more criminal than cop. It's a game of wits as they try to goad each other into making the first move. Who will be the last person standing?

Mouser is done. Now what? A story of transition, acceptance, and forgiveness8 Short Stories. Most of them are science fiction and some of them are humorous.Proper Care & Feeding of a Gort - Be careful adopting alien pets.Just To See What Happens - Quantum theories come to fruitionAdmirals & Dreadnoughts - The Kingdom has too many AdmiralsA Boy on a River Bank - A time of no heroesThe Devil & King Midus - Maybe you shouldn't listen to advice from demonsThe Good Doctor Stutz - Time traveling (medical) doctor, but no boxWhat Time Is It? - At least an ostrich will remove its head from the sand eventuallyTae Ga-Ku - A boy has strange dreams of a girl getting closer, then she arrives.

In every fairytale there's a heroine, a bad guy who makes her life a misery and one who comes to her rescue. Tradition dictates them as literary myths of afflicted love where good always triumphs over evil. This story isn't any old fairytale, but a modern one with a twist. One in which possession is nine tenths of the story.At forty-something, Brigitte Anders still dreams of happy endings. She lives in the flatlands of the East Anglian Fens, in a village which is built around the grounds of an old monastery. Its a place where the ghosts refuse to lay to rest. Strange and inexplicable things are happening to Brigitte and she undertakes past life regression to help unravel the mysteries which surround her. For Brigitte, life just keeps getting more confusing and it isn't until she meets Jack Jamieson, an Irish medium visiting the area for an Holistic fair, she realises she's being visited by phantoms from the past. Her ghostly visitors? A displaced pagan princess and her legendary lover who have a story they are determined to tell.Jack looks all set to be Brigitte's hero. With him she begins to discover a world she never knew existed. But nobody is perfect and least of all Jack. His obsession with the fifth century historical figure of St Patrick leads Brigitte to discover life with Jack is no fairytale. Legend has it, Rapunzel let her hair down to escape confinement. Brigitte needs to resort to more drastic measures when she finds herself in a similar situation. Realising she's only got herself to rely on, she lets loose more than a few flowing locks to escape from the man she thought would be her knight in shining armour.

Stumps of Mystery: Stories from the End of an Era is a novel of stories set in Woodhill, a fictional Willamette Valley town, in the year before the 2008 presidential election. These stories explore such contemporary and relevant Western themes as land use, immigration, same-sex marriage and environmental issues. These issues seemed insurmountable at the time, and some still are today.If you believe the New York Times and the indie television show “Portlandia,” you might think Oregon is a magical place where people ride their bikes to the gourmet food carts, dine on organic quinoa, then make their way to the alternative film festival. Of course those of us who live here know that Oregon is a great place to live, but not everyone is happy with change---or interlopers. Stumps of Mystery: Stories from the End of an Era is a novel of stories set in Woodhill, a fictional Willamette Valley town, in the year before the 2008 presidential election. These stories explore such contemporary and relevant Western themes as land use, immigration, same-sex marriage and environmental issues. These issues seemed insurmountable at the time, and some still are today.The range of characters includes a former logger, a California vintner starting a new winery, treesitters, an illegal Mexican college student, a forest ranger, a meth freak and a retired short-order cook. The book culminates in the untimely death and aftermath of one of Woodhill’s leading citizens that brings the residents together in unexpected ways.

From E. Lockhart, author of the highly acclaimed, New York Times bestseller We Were Liars, which John Green called "utterly unforgettable," comes The Treasure Map of Boys, the third book in the uproarious and heartwarming Ruby Oliver novels. Ruby is back at Tate Prep, and it’s her thirty-seventh week in the state of Noboyfriend. Her panic attacks are bad, her love life is even worse, and what’s more: Noel is writing her notes, Jackson is giving her frogs, Gideon is helping her cook, and Finn is making her brownies. Rumors are flying, and Ruby’s already-sucky reputation is heading downhill. Not only that, she’s also: running a bake sale, learning the secrets of heavymetal therapy, encountering some seriously smelly feet, defending the rights of pygmy goats, and bodyguarding Noel from unwanted advances. In this companion novel to The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book, Ruby struggles to secure some sort of mental health, to understand what constitutes a real friendship, and to find true love—if such a thing exists. From the Hardcover edition.

The “master storyteller” (Publishers Weekly) and bestselling author of Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign, and Killing Rommel returns with a stunning, chillingly plausible near-future thriller about the rise of a privately financed and global military industrial complex. The year is 2032. The third Iran-Iraq war is over; the 11/11 dirty bomb attack on the port of Long Beach, California is receding into memory; Saudi Arabia has recently quelled a coup; Russians and Turks are clashing in the Caspian Basin; Iranian armored units, supported by the satellite and drone power of their Chinese allies, have emerged from their enclaves in Tehran and are sweeping south attempting to recapture the resource rich territory that had been stolen from them, in their view, by Lukoil, BP, and ExxonMobil and their privately-funded armies. Everywhere military force is for hire.  Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.  Even nation states enlist mercenary forces to suppress internal insurrections, hunt terrorists, and do the black bag jobs necessary to maintain the new New World Order. Force Insertion is the world's merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former United States Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East.  A grandmaster military and political strategist, Salter deftly seizes huge oil and gas fields, ultimately making himself the most powerful man in the world.  Salter's endgame is to take vengeance on those responsible for his exile and then come home...as Commander in Chief. The only man who can stop him is the novel's narrator, Gilbert "Gent" Gentilhomme, Salter's most loyal foot soldier and as close to him as the son Salter lost. As this action-jammed, lightning fast, and brutally realistic novel builds to its heart-stopping climax Gent launches his personally and professionally most desperate mission: to take out his mentor and save the United States from self destruction. Infused by a staggering breadth of research in military tactics and steeped in the timeless themes of the honor and valor of men at war that distinguish all of Pressfield’s fiction, The Profession is that rare novel that informs and challenges the reader almost as much as it entertains. From the Hardcover edition.

*How can you make someone love you when they won’t? And what if that person happens to be your mother?* Sayre Bellavia grew up knowing she was a mistake: unplanned and unwanted. At five months shy of eighteen, she’s become an expert in loneliness, heartache, and neglect. Her whole life she’s been cursed, used, and left behind. Swallowed a thousand tears and ignored a thousand deliberate cruelties. Sayre’s stuck by her mother through hell, tried to help her, be near her, be important to her even as her mother slipped away into a violent haze of addiction, destroying the only chance Sayre ever had for a real family. Now her mother is lying in a hospital bed, near death, ravaged by her own destructive behavior. And as Sayre fights her way to her mother’s bedside, she is terrified but determined to get the answer to a question no one should ever have to ask: Did my mother ever really love me? And what will Sayre do if the answer is yes?

In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable -- and curiously touching -- adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel -- a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.