Various poems of pain, loss, suffering, joy, love, and pleasure by poets of ASMSG (Authors' Social Media Support Group). We hope the thoughts and emotions of the poets captures your imagination and your heart as you peruse the deep expressions contained herein.A World of Verse is the first collection of poetry produced by poets of the Authors' Social Media Support Group (ASMSG). Twenty-One poets, representing dozens in the Writer's Circle of ASMSG, pour their hearts, souls, and imaginations into over sixty poems ranging from the anguish of loneliness and the despair of loss to the joy of belonging and the rapture of love. Feel the passion for life within these pages as we celebrate this inaugural collection. More will follow. The poets represented herein are: Alan HardyAndy SzpukB.L. RonanBryan PaulDebra ParmleyIan Bradley MarshallJames AmoatengKarena MarieLaurie KazmierczakLucy PireelMurielle CyrOllie LambertOscar Wager IIPeter Watson JenkinsRegina PuckettShannon McRobertsSteven HarzTeresa Amehana GarciaTeresa Joseph FranklinYelle HughesWe hope you enjoy this labor of love, and pass the passion along.

There are times when honouring a promise can be harder than we expected.Jesse has always been the epitome of integrity and good judgement, until a tragic event pushes her to the brink of moral bankruptcy.During the final weeks before losing her ten-year-long battle with cancer, Leila had one last request. And now, honour binds Jesse to a promise she wishes she had never made.There are times when honouring a promise can be harder than we expected, but it can be a necessary tool in the healing process.Jesse has always been the epitome of integrity and good judgement, until a tragic event pushes her to the brink of moral bankruptcy. An event she had successfully purged from her memory, or so she had misled herself to believe. Now, nine years later, and mere months after the death of her best friend, she once again finds herself caught up in the steely grip of emotional turmoil. During the final weeks before losing her ten-year-long battle with cancer, Leila had one last request. And now, honour binds Jesse to a promise she wishes she had never made.

“Brilliant!” —John Lescroart on *Abandon * For Will Innis and his daughter, Devlin, the loss was catastrophic. Will’s wife, Devlin’s mother, vanished one night during an electrical storm on a lonely desert highway and, suspected of her death, Will took his daughter and fled. Then one night, a hardedged FBI agent appears on their doorstep and says, “I know you’re innocent, because Rachael wasn’t the first…or the last.”

Bumble Jacket Miscellany Volume 2 number 2 (Winter 2011) features poetry from poets Michael Lee Johnson, James G. Piatt, Jerome Brooke, Janine Surmick, Joseph Buehler, Andy Psomopoulos, Rodney Nelson, William Doreski, and Meredith E. Torre and prose from Jennifer York, Joseph Buehler, and M.E. Mitchell.Bumble Jacket Miscellany: a miscellany for poetry and fiction, a biannually published literary magazine, has been created with the purpose of publishing the best poetry and short fiction, regardless of style, genre, or approach. In this Winter 2011 issue of Bumble Jacket Miscellany: Go to the race tracks, have a little wine with your breakfast, and overhear a conversation between the ghosts of Henry the VIII and Anne Boleyn in this winter's issue of Bumble Jacket Miscellany.

Each year, sixth graders at Kinard dive into the world of Mythology. After studying great works of Homer, Ancient Greece and Rome, students write their own myths. This is the compilation of their hard work.Each year, sixth graders at Kinard Middle School dive into the world of Mythology. After studying great works of Homer, Ancient Greece and Rome, and various myths, students write their own myths. Full of adventure, creativity and humor, these myths share what is going on in the minds of middle school students. This anthology is the compilation of their hard work for the year.

Children of the Tide is a short anthology of stories about different creatures of the sea. In each of these stories a unique sea creature faces some daunting task. This book shows that even though the ocean is so vast and still one of the greatest mysteries, even the smallest fish can leave a lasting impact on other creatures.Children of the Tide is a short anthology of stories about different creatures of the sea. In each of these stories a unique sea creature faces some daunting task. Some are looking for a way to fit in in its community, some are looking for adventure or a new life, others are looking for a purpose, and some are looking forward to the end. This book shows that even though the ocean is so vast and still one of the greatest mysteries, even the smallest fish can leave a lasting impact on other creatures. The book is inspired by real life sea creatures. Each story contains elements of truth about the nature of these beautiful creatures of the deep.The stories begin with a mysterious predator that doesn’t have the aggression that others of its kind had. It doesn’t fit in and fears it will never live up to the high standards its father has for it. When an unlikely associate takes this creature on a trip it may find out there is something it has been missing its entire life. Then a jellyfish wants more than just to float around and finds a unique friend. The jellyfish is sick of the same routine day after day and wants to break its monotonous routine. When the jellyfish goes off in search of adventure it may have taken off on a search that will reveal something the jellyfish never realized. The question is will the jellyfish survive to make live out its realization? A small puffer fish goes on an adventure hoping to find there’s more inside than just air. Scared of everything this little fish can hardly swim a couple feet without expanding to the size of a balloon. When presented with a chance to impress one of the most popular fish at school the puffer fish volunteers to go explore a wrecked ship. On the adventure the puffer fish will be tested like it never had been before and must quickly find the courage inside that none believe exist. A strange eel looks for a new challenge and goes to the unknown. The eel does not enjoy the aggressive, stuck up, and grumpy lifestyle of a typical moray eel. Instead this eel has the curiosity of a cat and wishes to find what lies out in the ocean. The eel leaves its family and home to explore the ocean. While exploring the eel meets a young fish that may lead the eel to its greatest adventure.An octopus spent most of its entire life on its own fending for itself. Then the octopus finds itself in a dangerous situation and must rely on the help of another. Still unwilling to rely on others the octopus continues on its own, but problems and dangers continue to present themselves in its life. As much as the octopus tries to refuse accepting any help, it might have to accept another’s help. Finally, a man seeks out his greatest passion on a scuba diving trip. He is on his honeymoon in Hawaii and has several dives plan. A problem occurs when the dive trips are forced to be canceled. Unwilling to miss the dive of his dreams the man hires the help of a shady boat captain to take him out on a dive. The man sneaks away from his wife to go on this dive, but there is more than just a typical dive waiting for him on this exploration.Each story shows a connection between the creatures. Filled with adventure and a thirst for the unknown each creature will find something inside itself that it never knew. The question is if this is something will be something that the sea creature will be happy to learn or will it be something that leads to a fate they never dreamed.

Imagine a book filled with stories and poems written by kids who love animals. Writing gives us the chance to use our imagination, to be creative, to explore our deepest thoughts and feelings, and to discover the gifts and talents we have inside. Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando is proud to present original works that showcase how young authors view the world around them.Imagine a book filled with stories and poems written by kids who love animals. Writing gives us the chance to use our imagination, to be creative, to explore our deepest thoughts and feelings, and to discover the gifts and talents we have inside.Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando is proud to present original works that showcase how young authors view the world around them. The writings and artwork are truly from the heart and strive to portray the hands-on experiences with shelter pets and knowledge gained during Shelter Friends Summer Camps. You will not find these imaginative and creative ideas anywhere else.Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando educates, shelters, places, and heals pets and their families with compassionate, responsible care maintained to the highest professional standards. We create more caring communities by promoting happier, healthier pets and their families.

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award An American Library Association Notable Book Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With The Corrections, Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul. Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says. Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints. Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.

A psychopathic female fugitive provokes a mother’s vengeance in this terrifying thriller by the New York Times–bestselling author of Gone South and Boy’s Life. Back in the 1960s, Mary Terrell shot and killed a man. A former member of the fanatical Storm Front Brigade—a splinter group of the notorious Weathermen—Terrell has stayed one step ahead of the FBI for decades. Living with numerous identities and menial jobs, Terrell’s only constants in life have been LSD, psychotic delusions of motherhood, and murderous rage. The sixties are long gone, but Mary is still out there. Now, provoked by a message she reads in Rolling Stone, she’s convinced that the surviving leader of her old band of radicals wants to build a life with her. So one night, Mary sneaks into the maternity ward of an Atlanta hospital. Laura Clayborne has a successful career and now, a newborn baby. She’s the type of person who is sensitive to suffering and injustice. But the kidnapping of her infant son has brought out a white-hot fury. She’s not going to sit and wait while the FBI investigates. She’s going after Mary herself—headlong and relentless—on a twisting and violent cross-country pursuit to get her child back. But to track a madwoman, Laura will have to think like one . . . A Bram Stoker Award winner, this “expertly constructed novel of suspense and horror” (Publishers Weekly) from the author of Swan Song, Speaks the Nightbird, and other acclaimed works is “feverishly exciting . . . a page-whipping thriller” (Kirkus Reviews).

From the bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant, a comic and life affirming novel of the clash between progress and tradition, science and magic: “*one of the most elegantly philosophical, urgent—yet somehow timeless—novels of these perilous times” (Howard Norman, National Book Award finalist for The Bird Artist*). Vermont is drying up. The normally lush, green countryside is in the grip of the worst drought in years: stunted cornstalks rasp in the hot July breeze, parched vegetable gardens wither and die, the Chittenden River shrinks to a trickle, and the drilling trucks are booked solid as one by one the wells give out. Patience Avery, known nationwide as a gifted "water witch", is having a busy summer, too. Using the tools of the dowser's trade —divining sticks, metal rods, bobbers, and pendulums—she can locate, among other things, aquifers deep within the earth. In the midst of this crisis, Scottie Winston lobbies for permits to expand Powder Peak, a local ski area that's his law firm's principal client. As part of the expansion, the resort seeks to draw water for snowmaking from the beleaguered Chittenden, despite opposition from environmentalists who fear that the already weakened river will be damaged beyond repair.

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question. First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention. As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen. Tender and profound, The Only Story is an achingly beautiful novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.

This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion—an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.

Both Maggie Fortini and her brother, Joey-Mick, were named for baseball great Joe DiMaggio. Unlike Joey-Mick, Maggie doesn't play baseball—but at almost ten years old, she is a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Maggie can recite all the players' statistics and understands the subtleties of the game. Unfortunately, Jim Maine is a Giants fan, but it's Jim who teaches Maggie the fine art of scoring a baseball game. Not only can she revisit every play of every inning, but by keeping score she feels she's more than just a fan: she's helping her team. Jim is drafted into the army and sent to Korea, and although Maggie writes to him often, his silence is just one of a string of disappointments—being a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in the early 1950s meant season after season of near misses and year after year of dashed hopes. But Maggie goes on trying to help the Dodgers, and when she finds out that Jim needs help, too, she's determined to provide it. Against a background of major league baseball and the Korean War on the home front, Maggie looks for, and finds, a way to make a difference. Even those readers who think they don't care about baseball will be drawn into the world of the true and ardent fan. Linda Sue Park's captivating story will, of course, delight those who are already keeping score.

James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet. Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.

Twelve year old Miranda Amelia Harden has lived all her life on her grandfather's ranch in the mountains. All she wants is to stay there, but the rest of the world can't seem to leave her alone. She has only two questions. How young is too young to know what you want? How young is too young to get it?Twelve year old Miranda Amelia Harden has lived all her life on her grandfather's ranch in the mountains. All she wants is to stay there, but the rest of the world can't seem to leave her alone. She has only two questions. How young is too young to know what you want? How young is too young to get it?Nowadays a young person out on a ranch or a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere could easily be as connected – internet-wise – as anybody else in the world. She could be out there all alone and yet still have a social network and manage all of the family finances as long as she had a smart phone and wireless service. How might that change a sort of Anne of Green Gables story? That’s partly what “The Girl in the Trees” is about. It’s also a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy of a young person who just wants to be left alone.