7 stories by 7 authors: These stories are a mixture of fantasy, horror, and other weird and unusual tales.7 stories by 7 authors, contents: Field of Yellow Poppies…Nicole J. Persun..www.NicoleJPersun.com The Loneliness of Left Field…alex kimmell...www.alexkimmel.weebly.com Taking Care of Things…Susan Wingate...www.SusanWingate.comAs Yet Undecided…Steven Luna...www.joevampire.blogspot.comPandora…Elise Stephens...www.EliseStephens.com The Return of the King…Christopher Turkel...www.cturkel.wordpress.comJeremy’s World…Terry Persun...www.TerryPersun.com

From the acclaimed author of Cut comes this new novel that explores the anguish of living with divided loyalties and the cost of keeping family secrets, as a young teen struggles to keep his family together when his father abandons them.

This funky, rude, unpretentious first novel traces the short, funny, and furious career of a group of working-class Irish kids who form a band, The Commitments. Their mission: to bring soul to Dublin!

Passion and betrayal, violent desperation, ambivalent love that hinges on hatred, and the quest for acceptance by those who stand on the edge of society-these are the hard-hitting themes of a stunningly crafted first collection of stories by the bestselling author of House of Sand and Fog*. *A vigilant young man working in a halfway house finds himself unable to defend against the rage of one of the inmates in the title story. In "White Trees, Hammer Moon," a man soon to leave home for prison finds himself as unprepared for a family camping trip in the mountains of New Hampshire as he has been for most things in his life. And in the award-winning "Forky," an ex-con is haunted by the punishment he receives just as he is being released into the world. With an incisive ability to inhabit the lives of his characters, Dubus travels deep into the heart of the elusive American dream.

Originally published in French in 1867, Michael Strogoff, or, the Courier of the Czar, is regarded as one of Jules Verne's greatest novels. This intriguing tale set in Russia tells the story of one man, Michael Strogoff, the Czar's courier, who is set out on an impossible mission to save his country. A traitor inspires the dangerous Feofar Khan to invade Siberia and form a rebellion, leading to a plot to kill the czar's brother, the Grand Duke. As a result, Strogoff is sent out to warn the Duke, serving as the nation's last hope to cease the rebellion. Along the way he meets new people, makes new friends and gets capture by the enemy, only to make a grand escape. Readers are sure to be at the edge of their seats as they follow the courier's adventures through Siberia. Though this book is not one of the many science-fiction books that Verne is so highly regarded for, it utilizes the scientific phenomenon as a major plot device, allowing readers to nevertheless enjoy his profound literary voice and follow the protagonist on an unforgettable adventure. Jules Verne was a French novelist known for his adventure novels and his influence over the science fiction genre. He was considered the most literary author of his time in France and throughout most of Europe, and is regarded as the second most translated author since 1979. His more famous works include, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. He lived in France until his death in 1905.

This gripping and chillingly realistic novel from New York Times bestselling author Sharon Draper shows that all it takes is one bad decision for everything to change. Diamond knows not to get into a car with a stranger. But what if the stranger is well-dressed and handsome? On his way to meet his wife and daughter? And casting a movie that very night—a movie in need of a star dancer? What then? Then Diamond might make the wrong decision. It’s a nightmare come true: Diamond Landers has been kidnapped. She was at the mall with a friend, alone for only a few brief minutes—and now she’s being held captive, forced to endure horrors beyond what she ever could have dreamed, while her family and friends experience their own torments and wait desperately for any bit of news. From New York Times bestselling author Sharon Draper, this is a riveting exploration of power: how quickly we can lose it—and how we can take it back.

Published in 1917, "Light and Dark" is unlike any of Natsume Soseki's previous works and unique in Japanese fiction of the period. What distinguishes the novel as "modern" is its remarkable representation of interiority. The protagonists, Tsuda Yoshio, thirty, and his wife O-Nobu, twenty-three, exhibit a gratifying complexity that qualifies them as some of the earliest examples of three-dimensional characters in Japanese fiction. O-Nobu is quick-witted and cunning, a snob and narcissist no less than her husband, passionate, arrogant, spoiled, insecure, naive — yet, above all, gallant. Under Soseki's scrutiny, she emerges as a flesh-and-blood heroine with a palpable reality, dueling with her husband, his troublemaking friend, Kobayashi, and her sister-in-law, O-Hid?. Tsuda undertakes his own battles with Kobayashi, O-Hid? and the manipulative Madam Yoshikawa, his boss's wife. These exchanges explode into moments of intense jealousy, rancor, and recrimination that will surprise English-speaking readers who expect indirectness, delicacy, and reticence in Japanese relations. Echoing the work of Jane Austen and Henry James, Soseki's novel achieves maximal drama with minimal action and symbolizes a tectonic shift in literary form.

Uptown Local features eleven long and short works from the last decade and beyond, including: In The Company of Heroes -- A billionaire "living the dream" goes on a desperate quest for the one thing he needs to make his life perfect: a very special comic book... The Rizzoli Bag -- A sad young man in a Roman cafe is offered a once-in-a-lifetime bargain... Out of the Frying Pan -- The life of a part-time witch working in a shopping mall is turned upside down in a day... The Queen and the Thief and the Dragon -- A (fairy) tale of the True West, and a young monarch's solution to a thorny diplomatic problem... Bears -- An ancient sorrow (with a modern twist) wanders through the tumult of a pre-Lenten street carnival... The Fix -- In the dark guts of Rome's Colosseum, a slave boy with an impossible dream becomes entangled in the machinations of immortals... Herself -- In the heart of Dublin, something is killing the People of the Hills -- and it's going to take Ireland's only superhero to stop it... Hopper Painting -- Desolation and redemption in a midnight diner... The Back Door -- Two terrorists meet in Zurich to carry out a very unusual heist with a confederate who's more dangerous than they imagine... ...And of course, the title story, beloved and sought after for a quarter century by Young Wizards fans, and finally available in an ebook -- along with the only other Young Wizards short story, Theobroma.

An inventive, thought-provoking and characteristically bold collection of short fiction and essays from Hanif Kureishi, centered around the vexed relationship between love and hate. In the story of a Pakistani woman who has begun a new life in Paris, an essay about the writing of Kureishi's acclaimed film Le Week-End, and an account of Kafka's relationship with his father, readers will find Kureishi also exploring the topics that he continues to make new, and make his own: growing up and growing old; betrayal and loyalty; imagination and repression; marriage and fatherhood. The collection ends with a bravura piece of very personal reportage about the conman who stole Kureishi's life savings - a man who provoked both admiration and disgust, obsession and revulsion, love and hate.

From Michael Thomas Ford, the critically acclaimed author of Last Summer and Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me, comes this sizzling collection of fantasies culled from more than a decade of his best erotic work. These stories of heat, lust, desire, need, and transformation-an Olympian bacchanal, a chance meeting in the men's room, an S&M-fueled "coaching" session, a police officer who'll do what it takes to get a confession-are as incredibly hot as they are exquisitely crafted. There's "Becoming Al," an "X-rated Flannery O'Connor story" that takes place on the stage at a male peep show. The mosh pit of an underground club brings two punks to the edge and over in the adrenaline-charged "Diving the Pit." A gorgeous window washer gives a worker drone some high-rise sex in "Washing Up." And the power of a young man's first sexual awakening-and the reunion it inspires twenty years later-lies at the heart of the achingly sensual "The Boys of Summer." Along the way, Ford turns up the heat by confessing the naughty personal thoughts that inspired his steamiest erotica. A visit to his incredibly sexy dentist led to Ford's delicious story of one explosive oral exam in "The Check Up." The summer sounds drifting up from the New York City streets on a hot summer night influenced Ford's sinfully sexy voyeuristic fantasy, "Wednesday, 2 A.M." A hunky conductor on a commuter train gave Ford lustful thoughts and a whole new meaning for the term "Riding the Rails." And the discovery of anonymous nude Polaroids gave birth to the no-holds-barred "Dirty Pictures." Hard-core, tender, imaginative, candid, and just plain hot, these stories prove that when it comes to erotica that's down-and-dirty AND intelligent, nobody does it better than Michael Thomas Ford.

Alex Mackenzie was born in 1754 in the Scottish lowlands on the border between Scotland and England. Alex, his father, and his two older brothers were members of the last band of Reivers (outlaws) that operated along the border. A few years before the start of the American Revolutionary War, Alex ran afoul of the British authorities. His only alternative was to leave Scotland for America.Alex Mackenzie was a Scottish lad born in 1754 in the Scottish lowlands on the border between Scotland and England. Alex, his father, and his two older brothers were members of the last band of Reivers (outlaws) that operated along the border. A few years before the start of the American Revolutionary War, Alex ran afoul of the British authorities; they were on his trail and wanted him dead. His only alternative was to leave Scotland for Ireland and then from there to sail to America. The colonies in America were supposed to be a place where people could get a new start in life and explore new opportunities. America was supposed to be a place where people could put down stakes and put old feuds behind them, or was it?“Och, that tears it; it’s all gang agley” said Alex’s father. “Ye are going to hae to set aff from Scotland for a wee bit, Alex, laddie.”“Where should I go?”“Ireland,” said John. “Ye can find wark at the Plantation of Ulster and get back on yer feet there. Ye might hae t’ stay in Ireland quite a spell until this all blows oer.”“How am I going to get there?”“Weel,” Hugh chimed in, “the distance from Scotland to Ireland is less than fourteen miles at the closest point, we can probably swim o’er there, just like swimming across a loch,” said Hugh with a grin and a gleam in his eye.“We,” said Alex. “Who invited you along?”“Ye don’t think Robber and I would let ye go o’er the Sheuch alane, do ye, laddie?” replied Hugh.

A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment, “Black” and “White,” as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men–though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life. Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, *The Sunset Limited* is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time. *From the Trade Paperback edition.*

"America's nerviest journalist" (* Newsweek* ) trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this "masterpiece" (* The Washington Post* ) Wolfe's style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).