This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Visiting Liverpool? Doing the Beatles thing? Then check into the Hard Day's Night Hotel. Chances are you'll come across the one and only Billy Shears, be able to share the dreams he had twenty years ago today. There's one thing for sure, he's guaranteed to raise a smile... and maybe one or two tears.A sampler of short stories taking place before and connected to SCALE-BRIGHT in chronological order. Chinese mythology retold from the time of humanity's creation to contemporary Hong Kong. "The Crows Her Dragon's Gate" (first published in BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES, 2013. Ed. Scott H. Andrews). The story of Xihe, the mother of suns, when she was young and the world was new: how she met her husband, lost herself, and found it again. "Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon" (first published in GIGANOTOSAURUS, 2012. Ed. Ann Leckie). Houyi rose in heaven, bow and arrow in hand: the hunt was her joy, the slaying of demons her delight. But most delightful was a serving girl called Chang'e. "Chang'e Dashes from the Moon" (first published in EXPANDED HORIZONS, 2012. Ed. Dash). Chang'e has been a prisoner on the moon while the world turns and cities rise. For centuries Houyi has looked for a way to free her wife, and now she has found it in a distant grand-niece: a young mortal woman named Julienne.

As the Titanic sinks, an English playboy aristocrat is murdered. Professor Axelson and his assistant Agnes investigate - and discover a dark conspiracy among the most powerful nations on earth. The quest becomes a breakneck life-and-death chase across an ocean and two continents - and Agnes finds she has the power to save a world on the brink of war. Or to destroy it.Yi is a retired warrior of the World Kingdom who has lost everything he loves—his home, his wife, and his daughter. Tulip is an abused child of a prostitute with a special ability—a secret that will put her life at risk if the wrong person learns of it. As war and political intrigue threaten their home, fate brings Yi and Tulip together. This novella is an excerpt from first novel in the series. Enjoy this free introduction to the Asian-inspired fantasy world of 3 Kingdoms!

Leonard is sat on a solitary beach, having escaped a life that nearly destroyed him. Opposite him is sat Burt, dressed in a black suave suit despite the searing heat. He gives Leonard a glare straight from Hell itself. An exploration of the psyche, masculinity, ego and the conquering of oneself. A gripping short story that will make you ponder on your own demons, insecurities and way of living.Leonard is sat on a solitary beach, having escaped a life that nearly destroyed him. Opposite him is sat Burt, dressed in a black suave suit despite the searing heat. He gives Leonard a glare straight from Hell itself. "Why did you runaway from everything we built to sit here like a self righteous pilgrim? Why did you deny everything we created for...this?" pleads Burt. Leonard is here to kill Burt. Why? The mystery will unravel as the battle lines are drawn for the redemption of a soul. An exploration of the psyche, masculinity, ego and the conquering of oneself. A gripping short story that will make you ponder on your own demons, insecurities and way of living.

Five derelicts on New York's waterfront clash in a slice of life social comparison.Five derelicts on New York's waterfront clash in a slice of life social comparison. Through five derelicts on New York's waterfront, man's humanity to his fellow man is compared, contrasted and tested. Neil and O'Looney are the barroom/bishop who brings booze and religion to sinners on the waterfront. Doc is the peace-maker and Conductor the faulted hero. Deacon, a symbol of all religions, remains in his cardboard box pulpit coming out only to fight, collect money or preach. And finally... Sharkey and Hoey, the predators.

An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, from the incomparable, bestselling author Haruki Murakami.While simply training for New York City Marathon would be enough for most people, Haruki Murakami's decided to write about it as well. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit. From the Trade Paperback edition.

*NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • From the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House,* a spectacular new volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings. Features “Family Treasures,” nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted. As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson’s landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children’s games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space. For the first time, this collection showcases Shirley Jackson’s radically different modes of writing side by side. Together they show her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist. This volume includes a Foreword by the celebrated literary critic and Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin. Praise for *Let Me Tell You* “Stunning.”*—O: The Oprah Magazine “Let us now—at last—celebrate dangerous women writers: how cheering to see justice done with [this collection of] Shirley Jackson’s heretofore unpublished works—uniquely unsettling stories and ruthlessly barbed essays on domestic life.”—*Vanity Fair* “Feels like an uncanny dollhouse: Everything perfectly rendered, but something deliciously not quite right.”—NPR “There are . . . times in reading [Jackson’s] accounts of desperate women in their thirties slowly going crazy that she seems an American Jean Rhys, other times when she rivals even Flannery O’Connor in her cool depictions of inhumanity and insidious cruelty, and still others when she matches Philip K. Dick at his most hallucinatory. At her best, though, she’s just incomparable.”—*The Washington Post* “Offers insights into the vagaries of [Jackson’s] mind, which was ruminant and generous, accommodating such diverse figures as Dr. Seuss and Samuel Richardson.”—The New York Times Book Review “The best pieces clutch your throat, gently at first, and then with growing strength. . . . The whole collection has a timelessness.”—*The Boston Globe* “[Jackson’s] writing, both fiction and nonfiction, has such enduring power—she brings out the darkness in life, the poltergeists shut into everyone’s basement, and offers them up, bringing wit and even joy to the examination.”*—USA Today “The closest we can get to sitting down and having a conversation with . . . one of the most original voices of her generation.”—*The Huffington Post*

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova. With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

From New York Times bestselling author Penelope Ward, comes a new, sexy standalone novel. Growing up, the three of us were friends. He was the nerd. I was the playboy. She was the beauty. Deep down, I only ever wanted her. I kept it inside because Rory and I made a pact that our friend, Amber, was off-limits. He lied. I went off to college, and he got the girl. Amber never knew how I felt. They were together for years—before he broke her heart. Through it all and across the miles, she and I casually stayed in touch. When my job sent me to Boston for a three-month contract position, Amber let me stay in her spare room. Still reeling from her breakup, she’d sworn off men. One night, I opened her computer to find the shock of my life. She’d hesitantly contacted a male escort company. Afraid to date and get her heart broken again, she was looking for sex with no strings. Every emotion imaginable ran through me: protectiveness, jealousy—curiosity. Amber had chosen Gentleman Number Nine and sent him a message. She opened up to him, confessing, among other things, her physical attraction to her friend—me. But she considered me off-limits—and she thought I was a manwhore. (Ironic, considering the circumstances.) Eventually, she set up a date to meet Gentleman Nine at a hotel. When she showed up several nights later to meet him, she was stunned to see me standing there—with an offer I hoped she wouldn’t refuse.

Published in 1967, we return to Port William during the Second World War to revisit Jayber Crow, the barber, Uncle Stanley, the gravedigger, Jarrat and Burley, the sharecroppers, and Brother Preston, the preacher, as well as Mat Feltner, his wife Margaret, and his daughter-in-law Hannah, whose son will be born after news comes that Hannah's husband Virgil is missing. "The earth is the genius of our life," Wendell Berry writes here. "The final questions and their answers lie serenely coupled in it."

Light meets dark. Secrets meet truth. It's been three years, twenty-five weeks, and five days since Isis Blake fell in love, and if she has it her way, it'll stretch into infinity. After a run-in with her mom’s ex-boyfriend, she scrabbles to remember what she’s lost to amnesia. Her ex-nemesis Jack falls deeper into a pit of despair, and his girlfriend Sophia does all she can to keep him to herself. But as Isis’ memories return, she finds it harder and harder to resist what she felt for Jack, and Jack finds it impossible to stay away from the only girl who’s ever melted the ice around his heart. As the dark secrets surrounding Sophia emerge, Isis realizes Jack isn’t who she thought he was. He’s dangerous. But when Isis starts receiving terrifying emails from an anonymous source, that danger might be the only thing protecting her from something far more threatening. Her past. ***This book contains language and sexual scenes, some of which may be unsuitable for younger readers. ***This is the second book in the Lovely Vicious series.

"Tucker, I want to tell you a secret." Miss Ella curled my hand into a fist and showed it to me. "Life is a battle, but you can't fight it with your fists. You got to fight it with your heart." An internationally famous photographer, Tucker Mason has traveled the world, capturing things other people don’t see. But what Tucker himself can’t see is how to let go of the past and forgive his father. On a sprawling Southern estate, Tucker and his younger brother, Mutt, were raised by their housekeeper, Miss Ella Rain, who loved the motherless boys like her own. Hiring her to take care of Waverly Hall and the boys was the only good thing their father ever did. When his brother escapes from a mental hospital and an old girlfriend appears with her son and a black eye, Tucker is forced to return home and face the agony of his own tragic past. Though Miss Ella has been gone for many years, Tuck can still hear her voice—and her prayers. But finding peace and starting anew will take a measure of grace that Tucker scarcely believes in.

The Billionaire Boys Club is a secret society of six men who have vowed success—at any cost. Not all of them are old money, but all of them are incredibly wealthy. They’re just not always as successful when it comes to love… As a member of the royal family in a small European country, Griffin Verdi’s presence is requested at the wedding of the century. The scholarly billionaire feels out of his depth in social situations, so a good assistant is required—especially when dealing with royal etiquette. Unfortunately for Griffin, he’s stuck with Maylee Meriweather, a pretty, charming, and thoroughly unsuitable woman who doesn’t know a thing about high society—but she sure can kiss. Her lack of polish may sink Griffin, because after all, even his money can’t buy class. But through Maylee’s eyes, he’s starting to appreciate the simple things in life—if simple means the most complicated woman he’s ever met. Maylee is everything Griffin isn’t—and everything he wants—if he can let down his guard and step outside his sheltered world… The Billionaire Boys Club is breaking all the rules. Don’t miss other novels in the series from InterMix.