Luna Stone's life is far from normal. She's working two jobs as a barista and dances at a night club. A old friend from her past show's back up and she's about to start a internship at a law firm. The work wasn't hard. But what was hard was trying not to fall in love with her new over-achieving, young, polar opposite boss Mr.Ian Hanson.At first glance, Luna Stone seems to have a normal nineteen year old girl’s life. She goes to college, studying for psychology. Works at a coffeehouse. But Luna’s life is far from normal. In addition to her coffeehouse job, she also works nights at a strip club. Dancing and waitressing to keep up with her mother’s hospital bills. More recently, a old friend of Luna’s decides to pop up and beg for forgiveness. And to top it all off, her teacher recently offered her a internship at a law firm. Which is a opportunity she could not pass up.Twelve weeks, personal assistant, no pay, but a good recommendation. Seemed easy enough. But what Luna didn’t know was the job wasn’t going to be the hard part. The hard part wasn’t even her new over-achieving, young, polar opposite boss Mr. Ian Hanson. The hard part, was not falling in love with him.In the first book of the Live by the Sun, Love by the Moon Trilogy, we meet Luna at a time in her life when her world gets turned upside down and seems to be falling apart. But it isn't her world she's worried about breaking, it’s her heart.

Poems deal with writing, death and immortality, literature, city life, illness, war, and the past.

Three trees stood in a forest: one was rushed through his life, forced to play the roll he didn't want. The other was scarred, abused, and stained always living with the memory. Finally, their was the youngest who was insulted and never given the chance to be someone. All three represent some part of us--rushed, abused, insulted, yet who we are is never determined by our circumstance, but by JesusNot all of us are scarred, abused, and stained, but some of us, because of a decision we made early in life, are destined to play a part of life we do not wish to play. Then again we might be living a life of contradiction. A life that we live only because we were never given a chance. We were called names and told we would never amount to anything. We were told this so often that we finally believed it was true and have given in to the lie. Then there is the life that shows the marks of anger, bitterness, and rage. This life does not diminish the other two lives, this life simply shows the scars, the battle wounds, and the ugliness of life. All three lives are scarred and abused. All three carry with them the hurt and anger of years. All three touch each of us in some way. But it need not end there.

The winter issue of Writer's Muse Magazine. The Writer's Muse Page is a group started by Richard Cotton where writers can share with and support one another. Any writers are welcome to join this group. The Writer's Group Smashwords Account was set up by Sumiko Saulson for the group to create a place to publish the quarterly free periodicals by the members of the Facebook Group.The winter issue of Writer's Muse Magazine. The Writer's Muse Page is a group started by Richard Cotton where writers can share with and support one another. Any writers are welcome to join this group. The Writer's Group Smashwords Account was set up by Sumiko Saulson for the group to create a place to publish the quarterly free periodicals by the members of the Facebook Group. There are over 800 writers on the Writer's Muse page. Individual writers whose work appears in the Writer’s Muse Group publication retain all individual rights to their works and have agreed to allow Writer’s Muse Magazine to publish their works at no charge.Discover other issues of Writer’s Muse Magazine at Smashwords.com:Writer’s Muse Group https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/writersmuseCover Photography by Kathleen ChambersInterior Photography by Kathleen Chambers(except where noted and author photos)Layout: Sumiko SaulsonEditing and Proofreading: Sumiko SaulsonFounder of Writer’s Muse Group: Richard Cotton

The title reveals a tight association with painting, and one must refer to Rothko to see what is truly going on. Reading the chapbook proves helpful as well.John Marchant and Pavel Tomeckova, first introduced in contemporary thriller Viennese Waltz, take centre stage to tell stories of their own.In Scorpion Dance John describes little job in which, for once, he upstages his flamboyant partner, whilst in Hook in the Heart Pavel has another opportunity to explain, as he once explained to Kathryn Blake, how a certain raw recruit first came to the attention of his arm of the service.

Sherrill Cameron's wedding ends with another bride walking down the aisle...and a mysterious stranger walking into her life. But for better or for worse?

Dylan Sullivan's story (Seattle Sullivans #4) Dylan Sullivan, a renowned boat builder, has spent his entire life sailing around the world. But while he’s always enjoyed the freedom of the ocean, when Grace Adrian shows up at his Seattle boathouse to interview him for a magazine, it’s love at first sight. Love for both Grace and her ten-month-old son, Mason, with whom Dylan has an immediate bond. And every moment they spend together makes Dylan more and more certain that a love like theirs is worth risking everything for. A year and a half ago, Grace’s entire world turned upside down. Not only did she learn that she was pregnant, she also found out that she was nothing but a dirty little secret to her boyfriend and his elite Washington D.C. family. Since then, Grace has been rebuilding her life in Seattle, giving one hundred percent of her attention to her son and her freelance writing career. Believing she can never risk her heart—or her son’s—again, especially to a man like Dylan who could sail away at any moment, Grace tries desperately to guard her heart from the charismatic and sexy sailor. For as sweet and protective as Dylan is during the day, at night when one incredibly hot kiss turns into so much more, Grace simply can’t find a way to keep from tumbling into his arms again and again. But can she ever learn to trust in love again?

The fatal and desperate politics of Eastern Europe collide with the comparative innocence and complacency of suburban Australian life in this powerful and disturbing love story about two families and the madness that invades their lives. Terry Delaney leads a relatively satisfying life as a security guard and as a passionate rugby player with a shot at pro-team success. But Terry's life is shaken beyond recognition when he falls obsessively in love with Danielle Kabbel, the daughter of his employer, Rudi Kabbel. Rudi, a half-mad/half-charming immigrant from Eastern Europe, suffers from visions of an impending apocalypse and from the demons of a tormented childhood. The family madness runs deep, from the Kabbel family patriarch, Stanek, a Nazi collaborator who betrayed his wife to save his own neck, to Rudi's traumatic childhood in which he was a pawn between the Nazis and the Russians. It is into this maelstrom of devastating history and present day insanity that Terry is drawn--to his own desperate peril.

If there be characters and scenes that seem drawn with too bright a pencil, the reader will consider that, after all, there are many worse sins than a disposition to think and speak well of one's neighbors. Following the great success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe made three tours to England and Europe, which inspired Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, a two-volume work. The books are a series of letters, some written on the spot, some after the author's return home, of impressions as they arose, of her most agreeable visits to England, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium during the first half of the 19th century. They are truly what its name denotes, "Sunny Memories." HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) was an American writer best known for her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which helped frame slavery as a moral issue. Born in Connecticut, this daughter of a Congregationalist minister later moved to Cincinnati where she married, began writing, and had seven children. All told, Stowe wrote more than two-dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for a staid academic life are put on hold when he’s driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties, and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart’s desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art, and beauty.  Witty yet elegant, Territorial Rights is a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.

New York Times bestselling author of The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, wry, satirical tale—inspired by an unsolved American true-crime mystery. "Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto 'survivors.'" So begins the unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an "infamous" American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell. Likely to be Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial novel to date, as well as her most boldly satirical, this unconventional work of fiction is sure to be recognized as a classic exploration of the tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of "celebrity." In My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, the incomparable Oates once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of our contemporary culture.

On a hot summer night in a Midwestern town, a high school teenage prank goes horrifically awry. Alcohol, guns, and a dare. Within minutes, as events collide, innocents becomes victims—with tragic outcomes altering lives forever, a grisly and unfortunate scenario all too familiar from current real-life headlines. But victims can also become survivors, and as we come to know each character through his/her own distinctive voice and their interactions with one another, we see how, despite pain and guilt, they can reach out to one another, find a new equilibrium, and survive. Told through multiple points of view in naturalistic free verse and stream of consciousness, this is an unforgettable, haunting tale.

A magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare’s love life, following young Will’s maturation into sex and writing. A playful romp, it is at the same time a serious look at the forces that midwife art, the effects of time and place, and the ordinariness that is found side by side with the extraordinariness of genius.

This book describes six fatal mistakes that Circuit City made along the way that eventually drove the company out of business.To Robin Bartlett, men were nothing more than violent users. After a hair-raising childhood, Robin and her two younger half sisters battled simply to survive. Determined to give her sisters a very different life from that of their mother; to never have to rely on a man for anything, she worked two jobs and put them both through college, while accepting help from no one. Her heart had turned to ice and she had no use for men or God.Antonio “Tony” Viscolli had grown up on the streets, homeless. At seventeen, he entered a downtown church with the intent of casing it, but found himself on his knees at the altar. After being fostered by the youth minister, Tony followed God’s leading and eventually became a very successful and powerful businessman. In a fallen world, he was a gem.When Tony bought the restaurant where Robin bartended, she immediately resented his intrusion into her well ordered, but exhausting, life. She suspected his offering her special attention and constant kindness was merely his way of expecting something from her in return, something she wasn’t willing to give.Tony knew God had led him to Robin. Would she ever allow herself to trust him? Could she ever allow herself to trust God? Or would the winter of their tragic youth rise from the shadows of the past and freeze any chance at happiness?

When Neil shoots zombies in his imagination, they’re horrible and awful and they don’t have names. And then he meets Max, a zombie on the run from even worse zombies. Max is pretty nice, though.The thing is, Max isn’t just a zombie...Max is a girl zombie.These seven short stories cover such topics as family, injuries and illness, journalism, war, and business. Based on real-life incidents, they are meant to provoke reflections on such character issues as integrity, friendship, prejudice, courage, and respect. Those who enjoy these stories might like the trilogy, The Manifest Destiny Network Chronicles, to appear in summer, 2012. The following stories are included:The Baseball Practice gives us a glimpse of father-son expectations and relations through the prism of sports; The Reporter and the Counselor is the story of a high-school journalist confronted with a serious issue of integrity;Like a Finger Poking me in the Back is the story of life and death issues in the era of modern medicine;Union Man portrays friendship, loyalty, and respect across a philosophical divide;I know what to do is a look at life in a large company where things are never quite what they appear to be;The Random Walk dissects a scary traffic accident which happens to more than just the apparent victim;A Walk in the Past is a description of how, in the face of prejudice, honor and respect can sometimes be gained through creativity and courage.