A harrowing array of scary stories that all have one thing in common: each either begins or ends with a scream!R.L. Stine—the godfather of Goosebumps—and some of the most popular authors today bring an unrivaled mastery of all things fearsome, frightening, and fantabulous to this terrifying anthology of all-new scary short stories.Scream and Scream Again! is full of twists and turns, dark corners, and devilish revenge. Collected in conjunction with the Mystery Writers of America, this set includes works from New York Times bestselling authors telling tales of wicked ice-cream trucks, time-travelling heroes, witches and warlocks, and of course, haunted houses.Read it if you dare! With twenty never-before-published scary stories from some of the most popular authors today—including Chris Grabenstein, Wendy Corsio Staub, Heather Graham, Peter Lerangis, R.L. Stine, Bruce Hale, Emmy Laybourne, Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Morton,...

Award-winning Australian author tells a remarkable story guaranteed to appeal to young readers. Noah's world is shattered when a tsunami sweeps his home away and he and his grandmother escape in a small boat. Lost at sea they rescue three animals, finally landing in a deserted cove surrounded by mountains. A month later Noah meets an ancient man and is given clues to help them return home.The universe of "Battlestar Galactica" and "Caprica" has gotten larger and the story of the "Lords of Kobol" isn't over yet.In "Book One," we saw the gods in their golden age. In "Book Two," we learned of their coming to Kobol. In "Book Three," their dominion ended and mankind fled their presence. Here, in "Prelude," we find them at their creation, the children of Titans.Zeus and the Olympians are just one part of a world populated by Cronus and his brethren, a Caesar bent on power and longer life, and metal Cyclops who cast off their shackles in the name of freedom. And unknown to any of them, The One True God and its Messengers seek to preserve humanity in the face of doom.This is the stunning prequel to all that has happened before and all that will happen again. There is a Plan and questions will be answered.

Ever felt as if your life is just going round in circles? Sarah Dessen's thought-provoking short story about moving on will resonate with teens everywhere. A Pocket Money Puffin for young adults by New York Times #1 author.

The Black Book whisks its characters away from their serene life into the middle of an ancient dispute!When Matthew Quentin finds an old book in their attic, he doesn’t know he’s about to turn his world upside down. After his classmates and adopted senior sister make fun of him, he angrily writes down every offender’s name in the book, intent on using it as a black book like his British head teacher, who uses one in school to list the names of pupils to be punished. However, something very strange begins to happen in the quiet little suburb of Sleepy Lake after Matthew writes his list. Neighborhood kids start disappearing . . . one by one. The book Matthew found is an extraordinarily mysterious one fashioned by an unearthly being in 315 A.D. Many have killed and died for it before several unfortunate events landed it in their attic. So, when Matthew eventually writes down his name and his adopted younger sister’s as the book’s owners, they wake up in a tunnel, cold and confused. Matthew realizes they are in France during World War II and what he has done now dawns on him. How on Earth is he going to fix the problem he had unleashed on almost everyone he knows? The boy and his adopted siblings must swing across space and time with the mysterious book’s help through many historical events, adapting to the various cultures they encounter and dodging unsavory entities eager to seize the book along the way. And when they finally meet a greedy former priest in Napoleon’s 19th century France, whose sole desire is to wield the book as a weapon, the stage is set for a hilariously dramatic showdown of world-shattering proportions! One that has profound implications for the world at large, and might as well save a secretive old man, whose chance rescue could change a small boy’s life forever!

A miracle weed, to cure all ailments, revitalizes dormant genes ...An agent for the Afterworld’s Bureau of Investigation, Ben Parker spent decades undercover on earth, searching for the wife he left behind when he died. Just when he decides to give up hope, and move on with his existence, he learns his soul mate was found. Now, reviewing her case file, he understands what she endured those years without him. More importantly, he knows what the future has in store for her... but there’s nothing he can do to change it.

A middle aged man must come to grips with his loneliness as a widower while trying to reestablish a relationship with his estranged son. This in the context of his old neighborhood being lost to urban renewal.The Pike is long and perilous, patrolled by Catholic knights and the nationalist biker gang that calls themselves the Order of the Coming Dawn. Bayle might have stayed in Pittsburgh, which is doing better than most of the country--but he made a promise, and to keep it he has to cross the battered remains of Pennsylvania. With winter rapidly descending, Bayle sets own alone to keep that promise.Toll Road is a short story of approximately 4,000 words (16 pages).

Mirror, mirror … who’s the fairest of them all? I still cringe when I hear that line. A fairy tale that had girls pretending *they* were the fairest, the most beautiful, and the most entitled. A fairy tale most couldn’t grow out of turned my haunted childhood memories into a living nightmare. Girls who grew up believing that pile of garbage became the meanest of all ‘mean girls.’ And those mean girls were right – it was a line meant for all the beautiful people in the world – and I knew the answer would never be *me*. The women with long legs, flat stomachs, and perfect chests. The type of women Kane Masters gravitated toward. Well, that’s definitely not Willow Tate. No. That will *never* be me. Because I’m completely imperfect. And … I hate myself. I have no idea what Kane could possibly see in someone like *me* when he could have *them*.

Tom Clancy's latest love-letter to the military-industrial complex focuses on the Army--and Fred Franks, a general who helped smash Iraq in the Gulf War. In this first volume of a series on the intricacies of military command, Clancy traces the organizational success story of the U.S. Army's rise from the slough of Vietnam to the heights of victory in the Persian Gulf. In 1972, the Army lacked proper discipline, training, weapons, and doctrine; all these would be overhauled in the next 15 years. For those readers keen on such nuts and bolts, the book will be fascinating. But the book truly sparkles when Franks tells his story. A "tanker" who lost a foot in the invasion of Cambodia, he is a man of great courage, thoughtfulness, and integrity. One cannot help but wince when a civilian tells him, "You and those boys did that for nothing." And for all the acronyms and military history, that is what this book is about: healing the wounds Vietnam inflicted. "But this time [the Gulf War], it was going to end differently. They all would see to that."In his brilliant, bestselling novels, Tom Clancy has explored the most dramatic military and security issues of our time. Now he takes readers deep into the operational art of war with this insightful look at one of America's most important military engagements in recent years: the Gulf War. Never before has the art of maneuver warfare been explored so incisively and in such rich, provocative detail. Clancy and General Frederick M. Franks, Jr.-commander of the main force that broke the back of the Republican Guard-take us deep inside the war councils and command posts and up to the front lines. They give us a war that few people really knew-and that television never showed.

"Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening," the saying goes. When did the world stop wanting to hear? When did society become so thoughtless? It's a topic that has been simmering for years, and Lynne Truss says it's now reached the boiling point. Taking on the boorish behavior that for some has become a point of pride, Talk to the Hand is a rallying cry for courtesy. Like Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Talk to the Hand is not a stuffy guidebook, and is sure to inspire spirited conversation. Why hasn't your nephew ever thanked you for your carefully selected gift? What makes your contractor think it's fine to snub you in the midst of a major renovation? Why do crowds spawn selfishness? What accounts for the appalling treatment you receive in stores (if you're lucky enough to get a clerk's attention at all)? Most important, what will it take to roll back a culture that applauds those who are disrespectful? In a recent U.S. survey, 79 percent of...

Koba the Dread is the successor to Amis's celebrated memoir, Experience. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of twentieth-century thought: the indulgence of communism by Western intellectuals. In between the personal beginning and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible. The author's father, Kingsley Amis, was 'a Comintern dogsbody' (as he would come to put it) from 1941 to 1956. His second-closest, and later in life his closest friend, was Robert Conquest, whose book The Great Terror was second only to Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago in undermining the USSR. Amis's remarkable memoir explores these connections. Stalin said that the death of one person was tragic, the death of a million a mere 'statistic'. Koba the Dread, during whose course the author absorbs a particular, a familial death, is a rebuttal of Stalin's aphorism.

Deputy sheriff Tom Lord knows by now that far-west Texas is the place he'll always call home. He's spent too much time in the region's small towns to adapt to another place. And that's all right with him. What's not all right is being a deputy sheriff, where if it weren't for family misfortune, he might have been a doctor instead. Lord's got one ace-in-the-hole--the land deed that makes him the biggest landowner in the county, just as the oil companies have started to move in. When Tom's approached by Aaron McBride of Highlands Oil and Gas with a contract to set up pipelines on his property, he's more than happy to sign on the dotted line with barely more than a cursory glance at the paperwork--it just might be Lord's way out of a life he never wanted in the first place. But when Lord finds out just what that contract entailed, things start to go sour for Aaron McBride--and fast. Because in this Texas town, Lord's the law--and there's nothing more dangerous than a cop with nothing left to lose.

Living in the present days of peace and tranquillity it is difficult to picture the life of our ancestors in the days of King Alfred, when the whole country was for years overrun by hordes of pagan barbarians, who slaughtered, plundered, and destroyed at will. You may gain, perhaps, a fair conception of the state of things if you imagine that at the time of the great mutiny the English population of India approached that of the natives, and that the mutiny was everywhere triumphant. The wholesale massacres and outrages which would in such a case have been inflicted upon the conquered whites could be no worse than those suffered by the Saxons at the hands of the Danes. From this terrible state of subjection and suffering the Saxons were rescued by the prudence, the patience, the valour and wisdom of King Alfred. In all subsequent ages England has produced no single man who united in himself so many great qualities as did this first of great Englishmen. He was learned, wise, brave, prudent, and pious; devoted to his people, clement to his conquered enemies. He was as great in peace as in war; and yet few English boys know more than a faint outline of the events of Alfred’s reign—events which have exercised an influence upon the whole future of the English people. School histories pass briefly over them; and the incident of the burned cake is that which is, of all the actions of a great and glorious reign, the most prominent in boys’ minds. In this story I have tried to supply the deficiency. Fortunately in the Saxon Chronicles and in the life of King Alfred written by his friend and counsellor Asser, we have a trustworthy account of the events and battles which first laid Wessex prostrate beneath the foot of the Danes, and finally freed England for many years from the invaders. These histories I have faithfully followed. The account of the siege of Paris is taken from a very full and detailed history of that event by the Abbe D’Abbon, who was a witness of the scenes he described...

Hijackers, representing a Palestinian faction, take over an airliner flying between New York and Frankfurt. But nothing is straightforward. The author also wrote Schindler's Ark, The Playmaker and Towards Asmara. This book was shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.

Nadine, a sixteen-year-old runaway new to London, is set up in a decaying Georgian house by her Finnish lover, Kai. Slowly, she begins to suspect that Kai's plans for her have little to do with love. 'Be careful,' warns Enid, the elderly sitting tenant in the house, who knows all about survival and secrets. And when Nadine discovers Kai's true intentions, Enid's warning takes on a terrible and prophetic quality.