A boy is being bullied. But that happens all the time, doesn't it? For this boy, however, life takes an unexpected turn, and he will discover what he is really made of.A boy is being bullied. But that happens all the time, doesn't it? For this boy, however, life takes an unexpected turn, and he will discover what he is really made of when he finds that which was hidden a long time ago.A short story suitable for all ages, from young adult and upwards.

A simple, easy read about a poor girl whose parents die in a fire in which she is the only witness of. It's quite moving! I aimed it at 10 year olds, I (the author) am 10 and I think I would like to read it, as would my friends. because her parents die, the girl in the story has to stay at her Aunt's house. It's quite a short story of 7 short chapters and 7000 words.Detective Franklin Monroe isn't easily disturbed by much and always finds the thread of logic in every case. He is certainly less prone to superstition than his partner, Hugo. When they follow up on a lead from an aging DCS case after an elderly caregiver dies, they don't expect much based on her mental condition. Her final days were spent raving of demonic activity. But inside the home, every inch of her dilapidated house challenges Franklin's unshakeable faith in the empiric. As they discover room after room filled with bodies, the detectives are compelled to investigate and discover answers for two questions. What happened to Kayla Adams? And what kind of hell was unleashed inside the old Woodson mansion? Father of the Esurient Child was originally published in Fear & Trembling Mag (Feb 2008) and was revised/expanded into a novelette in 2016

In this short story by acclaimed Washington writer Arthur Bliss, six college freshman face an unexpected crisis in the forest ahead of the 2016 American presidential election. Will what they discover change how they view themselves and their country?Beneath the towering sand dunes that hug the coastline of Lake Michigan is a world that gives a young brother and sister the experience of a lifetime. The Sands of Singapore is a story based on a lost city under the shifting sands. Singapore, Michigan was a bustling lumber town in the early 1900's and was essential in helping to supply the lumber that was used to re-build Chicago after it's historic fire.After the lumber industry died, so did Singapore and it was only a matter of time before the sands were to bury the town and remove it from sight. the only images are those of found in local historical societies which show ghostly images of Singapore before time, wind and sand buried removed it from existence.Jeff and Amber are a brother and sister that discover a hidden world beneath the sand dunes which is home to many animals that help them to return to the surface, but not before they are taken to the lost city of Singapore which is abandoned, but is home to the squirrels, birds, butterflies, raccoons, skunks, chipmunks, ants, owls and others that show them a colorful feast for the senses with the candied tulips, licorice tasting grass, cotton candy flavored clouds, sweet smelling air and the one human that creates the environmental delicacies they encounter before returning to the surface.

British actress Jenny Lyme is having a pretty decent career. Though she may not have become an international movie star, she’s well loved in England for a role on British TV and continues to work regularly. Now her hometown community center is in danger of being sold. The only hope for its salvation is if Jenny can film the Christmas Revels production she’s directing and sell it for television broadcasting. For that she needs a really good cameraman—and she just happens to know one…. Greg Marino has worked hard for his success as a Hollywood cinematographer, and he has an Oscar sitting by his coffee maker to prove it. But he still has fond memories of the fling he had with Jenny Lyme ten years earlier when they worked together on a disastrous movie. When she calls and asks if he’d film her community Christmas show, he decides it would be a fun break in his dmanding life. And it would be really, really nice to see Jenny again. The show is a delight, and Jenny and Greg find the old attraction is still there. But is it possible to build a life together when both have demanding careers thousands of miles apart? Special Bonus Short Story! “Seduced by Sloth” was written for an internet experiment that failed, but the theme of finding a balance in life and work echoes that of “A Christmas Fling.” (The following reviews are for the original collection, Christmas Revels. Three of the other four novellas have been e-released as Christmas Mischief.)

In the brief golden years of King Edward VII’s reign, Rosie McCosh and her three sisters are growing up in an idyllic and eccentric household in Kent, with their ‘pals’ the Pitt boys on one side of the fence and the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood innocence and adventure are destined to be followed by the apocalypse that will overwhelm their world as they come to adulthood. For Rosie, the path ahead is full of challenges: torn between her love for two young men, her sense of duty and her will to live her life to the full, she has to navigate her way through extraordinary times. Can she, and her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities and devastations that follow the Great War? Louis de Bernières’ magnificent and moving novel follows the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters as the Edwardian age disintegrates into the Great War, and they strike out to seek what happiness can be salvaged from the ruins of the old world.

Billie's Kiss

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

CAN TESSA POSE AS MADISON . . . AND STOP A KILLER BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE?Tessa is a Variant, able to absorb the DNA of anyone she touches and mimic their appearance. Shunned by her family, she’s spent the last two years training with the Forces with Extraordinary Abilities, a secret branch of the FBI.When a serial killer rocks a small town in Oregon, Tessa is given a mission: she must impersonate Madison, a local teen, to find the killer before he strikes again.Tessa hates everything about being an impostor—the stress, the danger, the deceit—but loves playing the role of a normal girl. As Madison, she finds friends, romance, and the kind of loving family she’d do anything to keep.Amid action, suspense, and a ticking clock, this super-human comes to a very human conclusion: even a girl who can look like anyone struggles the most with being herself.About the AuthorSusanne Winnacker lives with her husband, a dog, and four rabbits in Ruhrgebiet, Germany. She loves coffee (in every shape and form), traveling, and animals. Check out her website at http://susannewinnacker.com

Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun (1928) is a moving, delicately observed coming-of-age novel––one that brilliantly exemplifies the cultural, social, and creative ferment of the Harlem Renaissance. Its heroine, the young, talented, light-skinned Angela Murray, hopes for more from life than her black Philadelphia neighborhood and her middle-class upbringing seem to offer. Seeking romantic and creative fulfilment, and refusing to accept racist and sexist obstacles to her ambition, she makes a radical choice: to pass as white, and study art in New York City. Against the vivid, cosmopolitan backdrop of Harlem and Greenwich Village in the Roaring Twenties, her subsequent journey through seduction, betrayal, protest, and solidarity is ultimately a journey toward self-understanding. Along the way, Fauset includes fictionalized portraits of leading Harlem Renaissance figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois (for whom she edited The Crisis) and the sculptor Augusta Savage,...