From the 2013 upcoming "Insights" anthology of short stories come a Christmas tale. One of a family fractured, of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.From the 2013 upcoming "Insights" anthology of short stories come a Christmas tale. One of a family fractured, of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.NOTE: I have changed the cover image to this one after the review below. I had no idea it was from a movie (which I haven't seen) so I have changed it. Cheers

A love triangle snaps during a midnight frog hunt...Mitchell and Jake both love Gina, and they work out their differences on the dark river.A canoeing novice, Mitchell listens intently as Jake tells him, "The drop over the dam ain't very high, but don't ever underestimate the power of the river. Seems like every year someone goes over for one reason or another. Most of the time they get drunk and fall asleep and drift too close. By the time they wake up there's nothing they can do. "There's a hell of an undertow beneath the dam, and anything that goes over ends up getting pounded to pulp. Usually they never even find the body. It just disintegrates. Once in a while the river spits up a corpse, and it turns up near Kansas City, all tangled up in fishin' line." Jake crushed his beer can, and dropped it into the bottom of the canoe. "Gimme another."

Who knows what treasures lurk when the family finally comes to grips with selling the family farm. The patriarch and matriarch are long deceased, but it takes the grown children some time to put closure on their grief and move forward with the inevitable. But to their surprise, they find an old relic that rekindles the memories of their deceased siblings.The book can not be easily described, it is a collection of stories and each one is different. I believe the world needs more humor, optimism and relaxation through creative thinking. This book is my small contribution – you have to read it to see.Hope you’ll like it! If you do, look for more books from my ‘Intergalactic Stories’ series.If you prefer a novel, check the book ‘Cloud Whale’ – might change your view of the world.

Flagrant Misconduct is based on the true story of one of the greatest high school athletes you never heard of, narrated by his best friend and teammate. It takes place in the late 1970s against the backdrop of school desegregation. The author tastefully addresses the darker side of family relations, race relations, bullying, and the pursuit of absolute dominance in high school sports at any cost.Ol’ Man Wickleberry is a man of legend – or is he a legend of a man? With a scruffy beard and a dislike for humanity, how long has it been since he met his demise, and what is he doing in his ghostly afterlife? The stories may differ, but all of them are true. We swear. So if you’re ever wandering alone in the woods at night, and find you’re not really alone, it just might be Ol’ Man Wickleberry.Enjoy eight tales by seven talented authors including:Vendetta by Chris Harris: Mr. Baker is on his way to steal a deal when he’s snowed in. Stuck waiting at a rustic tavern, he’s ambushed by an old man with a strange story – a story that’s beyond belief. Or is it?Evil Animals and Automobiles by Mark R Hunter : Ol’ Man Wickleberry hates so much he sometimes prompts them to an untimely end, with the help of those newfangled automobiles. But the next victim might be Ol’ Man Wickleberry, himself.The True Story of Ol’ Man Wickleberry by Jonathan Harvey: Jonathan Harvey puts the Terrible Turtle spin on the Wickleberry legend. He names himself Papa Harvey and weaves a tale that is strange and bizarre, but still interesting. If only he wasn’t constantly being interrupted.Out Walking by Joleene Naylor: The mysterious carnivorous white rabbits sound too strange to be true, but Ol’ Man Wickleberry can’t stand the thought of missing some rare game. It seems a walk is in order…Body Swap by Ruth Nordin: A teenage boy makes a trade with a man who was thought to be dead.Weirdly Normal - The Hike by Simon Goodson: Vincent hates hiking. But more than anything else, he hates their guide's endless wittering about the horribly scary myth of Ol' Man Wickleberry. Just when Vincent is certain the night can't get any worse... Ol' Man Wickleberry himself makes an appearance!Wickleberry Elixir by Terry Compton: Rick and his two fellow college students just wanted a few extra college credits and the money from the work study. Then the professor demanded more details. But details sometimes lead to answers no one really wants or believes.Ol’ Man Wickleberry (The Other True Story) by Jonathan Harvey: Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O, and next to this farm lived Ol’ Man Wickleberry, E-I-E-I – Oh. It seems Ol’ Man Wickleberry doesn’t like these kind of goings ons. A short story that’s rhyming good fun.

AMERICA'S MELTING POT BOILS OVER...Possibly the most controversial story yet from best-selling author, D.W. Ulsterman.A young black man shot dead on the streets of Chicago by an off-duty white police officer leads to civil unrest and outright terror throughout America as government cowers and private citizens are left to defend themselves from those who would do them harm.AMERICA'S MELTING POT BOILS OVER...Possibly the most controversial story yet from best-selling author, D.W. Ulsterman.A young black man shot dead on the streets of Chicago by an off-duty white police officer leads to civil unrest and outright terror throughout America as government cowers and private citizens are left to defend themselves from those who would do them harm.RACE WARS is a SHTF thriller delivered to readers in weekly "episodes" that detail the spread of brutality across the United States as a once-proud nation is ripped apart by racial division and self-serving politicians unwilling to quell the violence they themselves helped to create.It is a frightening tale many believe could happen, and some believe WILL happen.If so, are you fully prepared to defend family and friend from a world gone mad?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "[A]n extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall."--Newsday From Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. "Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A summer road trip changes everything in this unforgettable new tale from acclaimed author Katie McGarry For new high school graduate Echo Emerson, a summer road trip out west with her boyfriend means getting away and forgetting what makes her so... different. It means seeing cool sights while selling her art at galleries along the way. And most of all, it means almost three months alone with Noah Hutchins, the hot, smart, soul-battered guy who’s never judged her. Echo and Noah share everything — except the one thing Echo’s just not ready for. But when the source of Echo’s constant nightmares comes back into her life, she has to make some tough decisions about what she really wants — even as foster kid Noah’s search for his last remaining relatives forces them both to confront some serious truths about life, love, and themselves. Now, with one week left before college orientation, jobs and real life, Echo must decide if Noah's more than the bad-boy fling everyone warned her he'd be. And the last leg of an amazing road trip will turn... seriously epic.

Restless souls and empty hearts Brooklyn can't sleep. Her boyfriend, Lucca, died only a year ago, and now her friend Gabe has just died of an overdose. Every time she closes her eyes, Gabe's ghost is there waiting for her. She has no idea what he wants or why it isn't Lucca visiting her dreams. Nico can't stop. He's always running, trying to escape the pain of losing his brother, Lucca. But when Lucca's ghost begins leaving messages, telling Nico to help Brooklyn, emotions come crashing to the surface. As the nightmares escalate and the messages become relentless, Nico reaches out to Brooklyn. But neither of them can admit that they're being haunted. Until they learn to let each other in, not one soul will be able to rest.

When Alexandra Bo Fuller was in Zambia a few years ago visiting her parents, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known as being a tough bugger. Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him: Curiosity scibbled the cat, he told her. Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendhip with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian War. A man of contradictions, K is battle-scarred and work-weathered, a born-again Christian and given to weeping for the failure of his romantic life and the burden of his memories. Driven by K's these memories of the war, they decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way, by travelling from Zambia through Zimbabwe and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. The result is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of life in Africa.

Prentis, the narrator of this nightmarish novel, catalogs "dead crimes" for a branch of the London Police Department and suspects that he is going crazy. His files keep vanishing. His boss subjects him to cryptic taunts. His family despises him. And as Prentis desperately tries to hold on to the scraps of his sanity, he uncovers a conspiracy of blackmail and betrayal that extends from his department and into the buried past of his father, a war hero code-named "Shuttlecock"--and, lately, a resident of a hospital for the insane.

Georges Bataille presents the case of the most infamous villain of the Middle Ages: Gilles de Rais. Fascinated with the depths of human experience the meeting points of sexuality, violence, ritual, spirituality, and death Bataille examines with dispassionate clarity the legendary crimes, trials and confessions of this grotesque and still-horrifying 15th-century child-murderer, sadist, alchemist, necrophile and practitioner of the Black Arts. Gilles de Rais began his remarkable career as lieutenant to the devout martyr and saint Joan of Arc; after her execution, he fled to his estates in the countryside of France, where he began to ritually slaughter hundreds of children. After his arrest and subsequent trials, he was hanged and burned at Nantes, France on October 25, 1440. The latter section of The Trial of Gilles de Rais consists of the actual ecclesiastical and secular trial transcripts, annotated by Bataille, and translated from the ecclesiastical Latin by Pierre Klossowski."

The unlikely heroine of this Lisa Scottoline thriller (which follows 2006's Dirty Blonde), mousy University of Pennsylvania assistant law professor Natalie "Nat" Greco, finds herself in way over her head when an unintended visit to a minimum-security prison in nearby Chester County puts her in the middle of a deadly uprising -- and places her at the center of an elaborate plot that involves an incarcerated crime boss and more than a few improbable conspirators. Greco's classes at Penn Law -- the History of Justice, for example -- aren't nearly as well attended as those taught by charismatic and handsome prof Angus Holt. Greco herself is far from immune to Holt's charm, so when he asks her to accompany him to Chester County Correctional Institution to lecture to inmates involved in an externship program, she quickly agrees. But the professors' visit soon turns deadly; a riot erupts, and amid the chaos Greco finds herself alone with a dying correctional officer who has been stabbed through the heart with a metal shank. His last words are a cryptic message to his wife: "It's under the floor." Soon thereafter, Greco is inexplicably set up for the murder of a state trooper and is forced to become a fugitive from justice while she tries to unravel the mystery of the dying man's words. While not as sexually supercharged or frenetically paced as Dirty Blonde, Daddy's Girl derives its power from the subtle and compelling coming-of-age of protagonist Greco, a sheltered and socially naive woman who, when faced with the ultimate adversity, discovers herself.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash, comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. “In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things—obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.” So begins Susan Faludi’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father’s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful—and virulent—nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi’s struggle to come to grips with her father’s metamorphosis self takes her across borders—historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you “choose,” or is it the very thing you can’t escape?

The story continues...An eagle and an angry grizzly bear. Can they work together to help an injured boy who once saved them?The myth continues with a lonely eagle and a soulful boy. Reunited, but unable to help one another. Only the surly grizzly can help the boy become a hunter. But will he?A middle grade short story.A sequel to The Boy Who Flew With Eagles.