Just My Opinion series is one that I'll build upon as time progresses. Now that I am retired I have the time to start going through these old files. If I'd kept every old computer I ever had everything would be readily accessible, but I didn't. Some I will publish with present day comments. Hope you enjoy them!Just My Opinion series is one that I'll build upon as time progresses. My first computer was a TI-99. I have stories and files on cassette tape, 5 1/2 in floppy's, 3.25 floppy's, old hard drives, and on stacks of paper. Now that I am retired I have the time to start going through these old files. If I'd kept every old computer I ever had everything would be readily accessible. When I hit a roadblock on the stories I'm presently writing I go back and look through these old files. Some were so wild I just deleted them. Others I will publish with present day comments. Hope you enjoy them!

Things during the Great Depression of the 1930s were much different than they are today. Men, soon known to everyone as hobos, threw themselves at the mercy of the residents of the towns and villages they traveled through looking for increasingly scarce work. These short stories tell their story through the eyes of one of the rural people who fed them.Hobos became the face of the Great Depression for the people who lived on small family farms in the rural areas of our country. These farms were mostly self-sufficient. The farmers practiced living locally long before it became the fad it is becoming today with things like the hundred mile challenge. They raised their own animals, cows, chickens, pigs; grew their own fruits and vegetables; and heated their homes with woods cut from their own woodlots. For many of them, helping others was the natural thing to do when less fortunate strangers came knocking of their door.These short stories share the events that happened to one family in central Nova Scotia told through the eyes of writer's mother as she remembered and related them forty years later. The stories are presented as fiction, but each contains a kernel of truth as its central theme. These are stories I heard so often, that indeed the characters seem like Hobos I Have Known.

A collection of twenty nine poems about love in war, lost loves, found loves, destructive loves and suicidal loves. Penned by the author over a period of twenty five years in four different countries where he resided.A collection of twenty nine poems about love in war, lost loves, found loves, destructive loves and suicidal loves. Penned by the author over a period of twenty five years in four different countries where he resided. In England during his late teenage and early twenties. In Lebanon during the civil war. In Greece when it was a country free of Brussels and the Troika. In America where the author's son was born. Every poem is based on the authors feelings and environment at the time of writing. None are figments of an overworked imagination.

Drew Morrison and Ashley Emmit’s story As one of the biggest rock stars in the business, Drew Morrison can have anything—and anyone—he wants. Only Ashley Emmit, who has joined his tour to work on a college research project, is completely off-limits. Drew promised her father that, once the tour was over, he would send her home pure and untouched by the rock ’n’ roll world. But he has never been so tempted by anyone in his entire life. How is he going to make it through this tour without giving in to the urge to drag her into his arms and kiss her breathless? Ashley has always lived by the rules. But from the moment she meets Drew, none of those rules make sense anymore. Not only does Drew’s music affect her deeply...but she’s never wanted to kiss anyone so badly. Not that a magnetic star like Drew would ever feel the same way about a brainiac like her, of course. And even if he did, she knows from painful experience that two people as different as they are simply don’t belong together. But when the attraction between Drew and Ashley burns hotter every moment they’re together on the tour bus—and they begin to share their deeply hidden and emotional secrets—will either of them be able to resist temptation? Or could giving in to their feelings lead them straight toward a love they never saw coming...

“A good, old-fashioned love story . . . Alice Hoffman’s writing at its precise and heartbreaking best.” —*The Washington Post* Things have changed in Fisher’s Cove, the Long Island harbor town where Natalie spent her summers as a girl. The water used to be clean, and from her aunt Minnie’s boarding house you could see all the way to Connecticut even on hazy days. Twenty years ago, Minnie never had a problem finding lodgers—but now everyone wants to be in Montauk or the Hamptons. The biggest change of all, though, is the nuclear power plant under construction on Angel Landing. Natalie’s boyfriend, Carter, is leading a protest against the plant, and despite the fact that he is more devoted to his environmental work than he is to her, she has followed him to Fisher’s Cove. During the days, she works as a therapist at a local counseling center; in the evenings, she ignores her aunt’s disapproval as she waits for Carter to call. But after an explosion lights up the night sky above Angel Landing, Natalie’s world is turned upside down. Into her office walks a man with an incredible confession to make, and the more she listens, the more Natalie begins to question the direction of her own life. The conclusions she draws—about passion, commitment, and what her heart truly wants—will lead her to a love she never imagined possible. Told with grace, charm, and wit, Angel Landing is a captivating romance and one of Alice Hoffman’s most delightful novels.  

*Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize *  “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor. Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.  

You jam on the brakes and stop the ute right at your front door. You jump out. Not for the first time you run into a house that could be full of guns, with death waiting for you. * It is a time of profound change for Ellie Linton. Enemies are everywhere. Some come crawling over the hills; others drive in and knock on the front door. Sometimes her friends are at her side and sometimes she is on her own. Ellie is a fighter. She has faith in her own abilities. But she is not Superwoman. Never has she faced enemies so ruthless, so brutal. And not every battle can be won with a gun and bullets. When the ammunition runs out, who will be left standing? Trapped and helpless, Ellie must face the end of life as she knows it...sustained only by strength and imagination.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Collected together for the first time in hardcover, these eighteen classic stories from across John Updike’s career form a luminous chronicle of the life and times of one marriage in all its rich emotional complexity. In 1956, Updike published a story, “Snowing in Greenwich Village,” about a young couple, Joan and Richard Maple, at the beginning of their marriage. Over the next two decades, he returned to these characters again and again, tracing their years together raising children, finding moments of intermittent happiness, and facing the heartbreak of infidelity and estrangement. Seventeen Maples stories were collected in 1979 in a paperback edition titled Too Far to Go, prompted by a television adaptation. Now those stories appear in hardcover for the first time, with the addition of a later story, “Grandparenting,” which returns us to the Maples’s lives long after their wrenching divorce. From the Hardcover edition.

Renowned in her time for being the most beautiful woman in Europe, the wife of two kings and mother of three, Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the great heroines of the Middle Ages. At a time when women were regarded as little more than chattel, Eleanor managed to defy convention as she exercised power in the political sphere and crucial influence over her husbands and sons. In this beautifully written biography, Alison Weir paints a vibrant portrait of this truly exceptional woman, and provides new insights into her intimate world. Eleanor of Aquitaine lived a long life of many contrasts, of splendor and desolation, power and peril, and in this stunning narrative, Weir captures the woman-- and the queen--in all her glory. With astonishing historic detail, mesmerizing pageantry, and irresistible accounts of royal scandal and intrigue, she recreates not only a remarkable personality but a magnificent past era.

The beloved author of the Mystic Creek series gifts readers with a novel of homespun holiday cheer, as two families discover the joy of hope and redemption....   Widow Maddie McLendon has uprooted her life to move to Rustlers Gulch with her son and grandson. But as a brutal Montana winter looms on the horizon, contractors have yet to break ground on their new house, leaving them to live in a makeshift camp of trailers, tents, and sheds.... Since his wife died six years earlier, millionaire rancher Sam Conacher has been content to wallow in his grief alone, while keeping a tight rein on his twenty-six-year-old daughter. But now the girl has gone and fallen in love with his foolish new neighbor’s no-good son.... Maddie and Sam will never see eye to eye on anything, until a near-tragedy gives them a true glimpse into each other’s souls. And as the first snowflakes begin to fall, they’ll discover that an open heart is the biggest gift of all....

In a story of wide and fascinating detail A. J. Cronin tells of Dr. David Morey who tries to atone for his desertion of the woman he loved. Beguiled by the prospect of riches he goes on to marry Dottie, a spoiled but beautiful neurotic who brings him almost constant misery, until a chance remark makes him seek retribution in memories of the past and a return to his native Scotland. In the magnificent narrative tradition of "The Citadel," "The Stars Look Down" and Cronin's other classic novels, "The Judas Tree" is a great book by a much-loved author.

The Man In Her Mirror... He was a financial wizard, a driven rogue with a Midas touch, but Gideon Hughes had no interest in keeping the run-down Wonderland carnival he'd inherited-until an enchantress with spun-silver hair presented him with a puzzle he had just had to solve! Maggie Durant intrigued him, unnerved him--and made him yearn to storm the fortress of her mystery. But he found it almost impossible to conduct a courtship in the midst of clowns, gypsies, and magicians, even when the angelic siren who knew his secrets announced she was in love with him! Maggie hoped it was only chemistry between them, but the brave man who'd entered her sanctuary was destiny's knight. Gideon had always played by his rules, but in Maggie's world he had to feel his way. Would she show him the real woman who'd love him forever, instead of the shimmering reflection she made in his eyes?

Designed for school districts, educators, and students seeking to maximize performance on standardized tests, Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of Lysbeth, A Tale of the Dutch by H. Rider Haggard was edited for students who are actively building their vocabularies in anticipation of taking PSAT¿, SAT¿, AP¿ (Advanced Placement¿), GRE¿, LSAT¿, GMAT¿ or similar examinations.PSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE¿, AP¿ and Advanced Placement¿ are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Digital edition. --This text refers to the Digital edition.