Chad is a wagon master and he thinks he is a coward. He still manages to deliver supplies to the frontline, rescue wounded, befriend the young Princess Asmara and inspire respect in his enemies. A story from Harrhein, set five hundred years ago in a fictional world, of a different sort of soldier.Chad is a soldier - but not your normal soldier who is good with weapons and kills enemies. Chad is one of the 80% of soldiers that we ignore, part of the support staff who keeps men on the front line. He is a transport soldier, getting supplies to the soldiers at the front. His weapon is his wagon and horses, and his wars still take him to the frontline. He thinks he is a coward, yet he exhibits incredible bravery by simply doing his job in the face of enemy action. This is the story of his life, little chapters of it, from resupplying a fort to rescuing wounded. A man who can inspire respect in his enemies without fighting. He is a different soldier, and though this story is fantasy set in Harrhein, it equates to a time in our world perhaps five hundred years ago. I was inspired to write it by a friend of mine, whose uncle died and he discovered the uncle had been in the Royal Corps of Transport yet he knew nothing about his life. I do not pretend that Chad's life in any way reflects that of the real Chad, nor that Paul is as uncaring as Nephew Paul, but I hope I have managed to show the very different courage of the unsung heroes of an army. I was a soldier, and I remember how we looked down on the comfortable life of the truck drivers, secretly envious, and I could never show the type of courage they showed so frequently. Keeping on doing your job in highly dangerous situations. Leaving your personal defence to others. That last is the key to why I cannot comprehend their courage. Gentlemen and scoundrels of the Transport Corps of All Armies, I salute you.

Adrift in his new world of leisure and searching desperately for Enlightenment, a recently retired school teacher finds his life turned inside out by some new acquaintances, including his wife of 25 years, a crusty and menacing ex-cop, a coven of knitters, the Girl Upstairs, and a hyperactive canine.It was chilly in the room despite the heat of the rest of the house. I took my finger and traced it along the cold slab of cement. I inhaled deeply, to see if a recognized the smell in there. Nothing. I walked in circles around the room several times, then I turned to London with sadness.“I don’t remember anything. Are you sure this is where I lived for years?”London nodded.“It’s not doing a thing for me. I really thought it would.” I noticed the room had a mustard yellow aura. A shiver went down my back. I did not like the way the aura made me feel.London came over to me and put her thick arm around my shoulders. “I am so sorry, Alora. Maybe it is for the best.”I couldn’t believe that. Even if they had tortured me there, didn’t I deserve to know it? I tried to stop the tears, but they came anyways. I was so disappointed.“How about we forget this place and go get ice cream?” London said.I wasn’t ready to leave. I desperately wanted answers and had expected to find them there. Glum, I sat on the floor. I would stay there until my memories returned. Unsure of what to do, London lowered her large body onto the ground next to me. She pulled me into her and held me for over an hour. Her warmness softened my sorrow, but not by much. My bottom eventually got sore from the hard cement, but I wanted my memories.Finally, London said, “Alora, please. Let’s go. There is a bad spirit in this home. I can feel it. I am ready to leave, and you should be too.”She was right. I could sense something dark and negative there. I let her pull me up. I was upset I had failed to retrieve my memories. I had been convinced I would find them there. We walked out of the house, and I could feel the negativity melt off my shoulders.“Let’s get ice cream,” London said as she held my hand and led me across the street to her waiting car.I didn’t want ice cream. I didn’t want anything. I was so disappointed I hadn’t figured out who I was. The house was the only clue to my past. No one else knew a thing about me. If I couldn’t find my past at the house, then I concluded I would never know who I was.

Kendra Ryder just gave fifteen year old Frankie Dexter a slab of fresh-cut tulipwood along with the advice, "When you’re feeling bad, just scuff the wood with 120-grit sandpaper, grab a whiff and you're guaranteed to feel a whole lot better!”When journalist Kevin Lee first meets retired academic Frank Peters and hears about an intelligent alien virus that has invaded the Earth, he is naturally very skeptical. However, when Peters is murdered, his skepticism soon turns to a real concern for the future of the planet and the survival of mankind. Kevin joins a group of liked-minded people in Edinburgh dedicated to eradicating the virus. Returning to London, he rescues his colleague Sandi from a London hospital. Finding himself a wanted man, he seeks refuge with members of the group on a remote Scottish island. There he gains a new understanding of Frank Peters – who turns out to be much more than he first appeared. Together, the group make a final bid to eradicate the virus from humanity – and from the Universe.

Larco and Poo Poo organise a meeting of Snubs, and arrange a move from the jungle to the great city of Snub Nubbin, deserted for millions of palliums. The Snubs welcome the return of the Wizard, his wisdom, and his knowledge.Larco and Poo Poo have called a meeting of Snub Nubbins, and some attend. They soon realise there is a Wizard in their midst, the Wizard has great knowledge, and speaks of teaching and schools. Larco becomes a member of the new grand council. In the great move from the jungle back to the city of Snub Nubbin, Larco discovers an emotion, and he's confused, but he likes it.

Fantasies are spawned by the volcanic Greek island of Santorini in this collection "On the Island of Fire" - four fantasies for children - from the dream of Alizides, a donkey who thinks he is Pegasus fighting the Chimaera, to harpies swooping through as they move home - unlikely happenings emerging from the island's black sand and simmering core.The volcanic Greek island of Santorini evokes an eerie potential for fantasy. Chunks of solidified lava turn into a strange bestiary, the deep caldera might mask a multitude of monsters. "On the Island of Fire" comprises four improbable tales for children set on the island, and opens with "The White Wings" - in which Alizides, a donkey, dreams he is Pegasus, helping to defeat the Chimaera. Eruptions and earth tremors are endemic and In "The Earthquake" a bored boy tangles with Typhon, the monster trapped within the volcano. Mysterious waters lap the black sand and in "Falling Stars", two children meet Atlas, taking a break under the waves from holding up the world, while weird mythology is recalled in "The Harpies Move Home" with disgruntled harpies causing chaos on Santorini, on their way to a zoo.

Set in ancient Greece, Daughter of Sparta follows Gorgo, the real daughter of King Cleomenes I of Sparta, and the events leading up to the Ionian Revolt. In Chapter Six, Gorgo is introduced to a treasure Aristagoras of Miletus brings to woo King Cleomenes to commit to his war campaign. This is the sixth installment to this series; Chapters One through Five are available for free.Historic Heroines is pleased to release the sixth installment to the original fiction series: Daughter of Sparta by Kristen LePine. Set in ancient Greece, Daughter of Sparta follows Gorgo, the real daughter of King Cleomenes I of Sparta, and the events leading up to the Ionian Revolt. In Chapter Six, Gorgo is introduced to a treasure Aristagoras of Miletus brings to woo King Cleomenes to commit to his war campaign. This is the sixth installment to this series; Chapters One through Five are available for free.Historic Heroines is an independent publisher of historical fiction and nonfiction that champions the female perspective.

Following the success of Scotfree Tales From Scotland, Scotfree2 is now available for downloading. However, instead of nine tales, this time only six. How mean is that?Alice Reaver is not her real name but that's who she'll have to be at yet another new school in another new town that her fugitive father has dumped them in for her safety. It's been like this for eight long years, ever since they came home to find her mother brutally murdered. It was probably a message to her father, an almost reformed assassin. Maybe it was payback from the shady, quasi-government jokers he used to work for and betrayed or from one of his victims' families. Whatever. After spending half her life lying to everyone she meets, discarding identities and hair colors like dirty socks, and learning how to kill in dozens of different ways, "Alice" is done. She's made some friends at Oxford High - her first ever. One of them needs the help of her lethal skill sets to stay alive. And maybe she's met a boy - or two. Her father can let her have a life or he can kill her for breaking curfew and their survival protocol. But she's not leaving without a fight that will test everything he's ever taught her.

Larry McMurtry has done more than any other living writer to shape our literary imagination of the American West. With The Last Kind Words Saloon he returns again to the vivid and unsparing portrait of the nineteenth-century and cowboy lifestyle made so memorable in his classic Lonesome Dove. Evoking the greatest characters and legends of the Old Wild West, here McMurtry tells the story of the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Opening in the settlement of Long Grass, Texas—not quite in Kansas, and nearly New Mexico—we encounter the taciturn Wyatt, whiling away his time in between bottles, and the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc, more adept at poker than extracting teeth. Now hailed as heroes for their days of subduing drunks in Abilene and Dodge—more often with a mean look than a pistol—Wyatt and Doc are living out the last days of a way of life that is passing into history, two men never more aware of the growing distance between their lives and their legends. Along with Wyatt's wife, Jessie, who runs the titular saloon, we meet Lord Ernle, an English baron; the exotic courtesan San Saba, "the most beautiful whore on the plains"; Charlie Goodnight, the Texas Ranger turned cattle driver last seen in McMurtry's Comanche Moon, and Nellie Courtright, the witty and irrepressible heroine of Telegraph Days. McMurtry traces the rich and varied friendship of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday from the town of Long Grass to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, then to Mobetie, Texas, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, culminating with the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rendered here in McMurtry's stark and peerless prose. With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains being enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears. As harsh and beautiful, and as brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of our most original American writers.

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

Das berühmte Bild einer Frau, lange verschollen, taucht plötzlich wieder auf. Überraschend für die Kunstwelt, aber auch für die drei Männer, die diese Frau einst liebten - und sich von ihr betrogen fühlen. In einer Bucht an der australischen Küste kommt es zu einem Wiedersehen: Die Männer wollen wiederhaben, was ihnen vermeintlich zusteht. Nur einer ergreift die Chance, der Frau neu zu begegnen, auch wenn ihnen nicht mehr viel Zeit bleibt

Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life-his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour-as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security. With Europe frozen in the "phoney war," when will Basil's big chance to fight finally arrive?

Five months ago, Camryn and Andrew, both dealing with personal hardships, met on a Greyhound bus. They fell in love and proved that when two people are meant to be together, fate will find a way to make it happen. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel to The Edge of Never, Camryn and Andrew are pursuing their love for music and living life to the fullest as they always swore to do. But when tragedy befalls them, their relationship is put to the ultimate test. As Camryn tries to numb her pain, Andrew makes a bold decision: To get their life back on track, they'll set out on another cross-country road trip. Together they find excitement, passion, adventure-and challenges they never could have anticipated.

Strange things are happening at Biehl's Academy when this elite school opens its doors to a group of orphans and reform-school rejects, kids at the end of the system's tether. The school is run by a peculiar set of rules by which every minute is regimented and controlled. Soon, they suspect they are guinea pigs in a bizarre social experiment and that their only hope of escape is to break through a dangerous threshold of time and space. Peter Høeg's "brilliant" and dystopian Borderliners is a "uniquely philosophical thriller" (Boston Sunday Globe) and a haunting story of childhood travail and hope.

Thornton Wilder’s renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material. In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.****

"Just remember," Yoshio said quietly to his grandsons. "Every day of your lives, you must always be sure what you're fighting for." It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers are growing up with their loving grandparents, who inspire them to dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows unusual skill at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of creating hard-carved masks for actors in the Noh theater. Across town, a renowned sumo master, Sho Tanaka, lives with his wife and their two young daughters: the delicate, daydreaming Aki and her independent sister, Haru. Life seems full of promise as Kenji begins an informal apprenticeship with the most famous mask-maker in Japan and Hiroshi receives a coveted invitation to train with Tanaka. But then Pearl Harbor changes everything. As the ripples of war spread to both families' quiet neighborhoods, all of the generations must put their dreams on hold---and then find their way in a new Japan. In an exquisitely moving story that spans almost thirty years, Gail Tsukiyama draws us irresistibly into the world of the brothers and the women who love them. It is a world of tradition and change, of heartbreaking loss and surprising hope, and of the impact of events beyond their control on ordinary, decent men and women. Above all, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a masterpiece about love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers.