24 Hours

      Greg Iles
     24 Hours

24 HOURS --- that's how long it takes a madman to pull off the perfect crime. He's done it before, he'll do it again, and no one can stop him. But this time, he's just picked the wrong family to terrorize. Because Will and Karen Jennings aren't going to watch helplessly as he victimizes them. And they aren't going to let him get away with it.

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    The Journeys of Bumbly Bear

      Jacqueline Kinnie
     The Journeys of Bumbly Bear

A charming children's story (ages 2-10) about astuffed bear and his friends who have been abandoned by their original owner. Slightly illustrated, this is an exciting and scary adventure for the toys as they find a new owner and a new home.John DoeJohn Doe is a killer. Fourteen children in the last twenty six years. Teddy tells him to and he listens. He has to listen. He is parked across the street from the elementary school in Payne, North Dakota, waiting for Teddy to tell him the name of the next child. He hasn’t yet, but he will… Matthew Mills God is good. It's the only truth Matthew Mills needs. But, pain is still pain. It has only been a week since his wife had her second miscarriage in the last three years. She has become a shell of who she was. Only his daughter Marcy is a light in his life.What would happen if she was taken away?

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    Social satire in Swift's Gulliver's Travels

      Serban Mihai Popa
     Social satire in Swift's Gulliver's Travels

The topic under discussion is “Social satire in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”. Although Swift was considered by many a misanthropist, a work like Gulliver's Travels could have been produced only by a man who cared deeply about humanity. Paradoxically, his care shines throughout his work.This paper takes a look at a book enjoyed by generations of readers, a multi-sided book which is still relevant to today’s society. The topic under discussion is: “Social satire in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”. Swift’s masterpiece is a sophisticated satire on human nature, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. Each of the four books has a different theme, but they are all meant to deflate human pride. Some of the critics consider this unique work to be a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.Swift is one of the most complex personalities in English letters whose disillusionment took an indignant turn. He wrote his satires to point out faults, to chasten, and to educate in an attempt to give the public a new moral lens and to "shame men out of their vices."In the growing polish and decency of society, Swift saw only a mask for hypocrisy and he used his huge talent to point to the ugliness which he discovered under every beautiful exterior. Although Swift was considered by many a misanthropist, a work like Gulliver's Travels could have been produced only by a man who cared deeply about humanity. Paradoxically, his care shines throughout his work.

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    Telegraph Avenue

      Michael Chabon
     Telegraph Avenue

Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet. As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland. When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life. An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet.

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    Selected Stories

      E. M. Forster
     Selected Stories

Although he is best known for his exquisite novels, E.M. Forster also wrote remarkable short stories. He referred to his stories as ‘fantasies’ and his attraction to myth and magic is apparent in many of them. Like his novels, the stories – whether they are set in Italy, Greece, India, and other places Forster visited, or in England itself – contrast the freedom of paganism with the restraints of English civilization, the personal, sensual delights of the body with the impersonal, inhibiting rules imposed by society. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds, the stories often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings that throw the characters’ perceptions and beliefs off balance. This volume includes all twelve stories published during Forster’s lifetime.

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    John's Story: The Last Eyewitness

      Tim LaHaye
     John's Story: The Last Eyewitness

Together again with the only books they are coauthoring since the bestselling Left Behind series. Before there was the tribulation, before the rapture, before there was a legacy that could be left behind, there was Jesus. John's Story tell His glorious, dramatic story. John's Story: The Last Eyewitness is told by the one whom Jesus called beloved. John, a once-broken man, was forever changed the moment he met the mysterious stranger from Nazareth, his heart opened by the One whom he discovered to be the Son of God. At ninety years old, John is the last of the original twelve apostles still alive, the only one who was not martyred. Committed to spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ, he is called by God to write a gospel in order to set the record straight-as others were teaching that Jesus wasn't the Son of God. Recalling his time with Jesus, John brings to life the miracles and messages of the Man who would change the course of history. The first in a series, John's Story: The Last Eyewitness is a remarkable and thrilling account of the life of the Man who came to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament and to save all of mankind. To bring deeper understanding to the story, each of the four books nclude the text of the corresponding gospel as an appendix. John's Story illuminates the times of Jesus, His life, and His messages like never before. Using cutting-edge historical and academic research, as well as biblically based themes, they are first and foremost page-turning novels that could come only from the pens of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

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    Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

      Sarah Dunant
     Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

Marla’s best friend, Elly, left England two years ago on a soul-searching trip through South America. Except for receiving a few postcards, Marla has not heard from her since. Then, Marla receives a strange letter from Elly begging her to fly to New York. But the person Marla meets at the airport is a very different woman from the strong, carefree friend she remembers. Elly, now well-dressed and thin, has acquired a park-view apartment, a house in the Hamptons, and a charismatic, manipulative, cocaine-smuggling boyfriend named Lenny. As Marla tries to free her friend from the dual addictions of love and cocaine, she unravels a story of seduction and power in Columbia and of desire and betrayal in California. Caught in a web of deceptions, the threat of violence mounting around them, Marla decides to take on Lenny and his empire. But Lenny–like the drug he peddles–has no intention of letting Elly go.

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  • 573

    From Fame to Shame

      Veronica Blade
     From Fame to Shame

When good-girl Maddie switches places with her famous bad-girl twin Jackie, she has some pretty high stilettos to fill. Despite the danger of tabloid drama if their identity swap is discovered, Maddie has to save her sister's butt. When Jackie’s ex-boyfriend shows up with a rekindled spark for “Jackie,” his deep gray eyes and sweet kisses make Maddie's heart thumpety thump. But dating the guy who dumped her sister is a no-no. Too bad Dallas isn’t used to girls saying no. What will happen when he discovers Maddie’s deception?

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    Vigilante

      Kady Cross
     Vigilante

A brutally honest, uncompromising story about a teen girl who decides to take matters into her own hands. It's senior year, and Hadley and her best friend, Magda, should be starting the year together. Instead, Magda is dead and Hadley is alone. Raped at a party the year before and humiliated, Magda was driven to take her own life and Hadley is forced to see her friend's attackers in the classroom every day. Devastated, enraged and needing an outlet for her grief, Hadley decides to get a little justice of her own. Donning a pink ski mask and fueled by anger, Hadley goes after each of the guys one by one, planning to strip them of their dignity and social status the way they did to Magda. As the legend of the pink-masked Vigilante begins to take on a life of its own, Hadley's revenge takes a turn for the dangerous. Could her need for vengeance lead her down a path she can't turn back from?

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    The Woman Sent to Tame Him

      M. S. Parker
     The Woman Sent to Tame Him

Resistance is futile! Serena Scott knows that Finn St George is trouble with a capital T. Gorgeous? Yes. World-class racing driver? Yes. Shameless lothario bent on self-destruction? Definitely! But Finn has finally caused one scandal too many and Serena is charged with getting him back on track! Finn loves his playboy lifestyle; after all, immersing oneself in beautiful women is much more pleasurable than raking over the bitter truths of the past. Serena's unheard of–and infuriating–resistance to his charms begins a battle of wills. Can she tame this bad boy, or will Serena become entangled in the sensual power of his hedonistic temptation?

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    Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady

      Kate Summerscale
     Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady

"I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman--bodily and morally the husband's slave--a very doubtful happiness." --Queen Victoria to her recently married daughter Vicky. Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh's elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies. No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts - and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane - in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted-passionate, sensual, suggestive. One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella's intimate entries. Aghast at his wife's perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of "a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal. Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert's Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s. As she accomplished in her award-winning and bestselling "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher," Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality.

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    Fallout

      Todd Strasser
     Fallout

What if the bomb had actually been dropped? What if your family was the only one with a shelter? In the summer of 1962, the possibility of nuclear war is all anyone talks about. But Scott's dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst. As the neighbors scoff, he builds a bomb shelter to hold his family and stocks it with just enough supplies to keep the four of them alive for two critical weeks. In the middle of the night in late October, when the unthinkable happens, those same neighbors force their way into the shelter before Scott's dad can shut the door. With not enough room, not enough food, and not enough air, life inside the shelter is filthy, physically draining, and emotionally fraught. But even worse is the question of what will—and won't—remain when the door is opened again. Internationally best-selling author Todd Strasser has written his most impressive and personal novel to date, ruthlessly yet sensitively exploring...

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  • 573

    Bang

      E. K. Blair
     Bang

They say when you take revenge against another you lose a part of your innocence. But I’m not innocent. I haven’t been for a very long time. My innocence was stolen from me. Taken was the life I was supposed to have. The soul I was born with. The ruby heart embedded in a life full of hopes and dreams. Gone.Vanished. I never even had a choice. I mourn that life. Mourn the what-ifs. Until now. I’m ready to take back what was always meant to be mine. But every plan has a fatal flaw. Sometimes it’s the heart. *Due to the dark and explicit nature of this book, it is recommended for mature audiences only as some scenes may be particularly disturbing.*

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    The Lion's Brood

      Duffield Osborne
     The Lion's Brood

From the intro: "Centuries come and go; but the plot of the drama is unchanged, and the same characters play the same parts. Only the actors cast for them are new. It is much worn,—this denarius,—and the lines are softened and blurred,—as of right they should be, when you think that more than two thousand years have passed since it felt the die. It is lying before me now on my table, and my eyes rest dreamily on its helmeted head of Pallas Nicephora. There, behind her, is the mint-mark and that word of ancient power and glory, "Roma." Below are letters so worn and indistinct that I must bend close to read them: "—M. SERGI," and then others that I cannot trace. Perhaps I have dozed a bit, for I must have turned the coin, unthinking, and now I see the reverse: a horseman, in full panoply, galloping, with naked sword brandished in his left hand, from which depends a severed head tight-clutched by long, flowing hair. The clouds hang low over the city, as I peer from my tower window,—driving, ever driving, from the east, and changing, ever changing, their fantastic shapes. Now they are the waving hands and gowns of a closely packed multitude surging with human passions; now they are the headlong rout of a flying army upon which press hordes of riders, dark, fierce, and barbarous—horses with tumultuous manes, and hands with brandished darts. Surely it is a sleepy, workless day! It will be vain to drive my pen across the pages. I do not see the cloud forms now—not with my eyes, for they have closed themselves perforce; but my brain is awake, and I know that the eyes of Pallas Nicephora see them, and grow brighter as if gazing on well-remembered scenes. Why not? How many thousand clinkings of coin against coin in purse and pouch, how many hundred impacts of hands that long since are dust, have served to dim your once clear relief! Surely, Pallas, you have looked upon all this and much more. Shall I see aught with your eyes, lady of my Sergian denarius? Shall I see, if, with you before me, I look fixedly at the legions of clouds that cross my window an hour—two—three—even until the night closes in? Grant but a grain of this, O Goddess, and lo! I vow to thee a troop of pipe-players upon the Ides of June."

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    Sixfold Poetry Summer 2016

      Sixfold
     Sixfold Poetry Summer 2016

Sixfold is an all-writer-voted journal. All writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the highest-voted $1000 prize-winning manuscripts and all the short stories and poetry published in each issue.Sixfold is an all-writer-voted journal. All writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the highest-voted $1000 prize-winning manuscripts and all the short stories and poetry published in each issue.In Sixfold Poetry Summer 2016:Sarah Sansolo | Bedtime Stories & other poemsMiranda Cowley Heller | Things the Tide Has Discarded & other poemsAlexa Poteet | Escobar's Hacienda Napoles & other poemsCynthia Robinson Young | Triple Dare & other poemsNicole Lachat | Of Infidelities & other poemsAmy Nawrocki | Bad Girls & other poemsLawrence Hayes | Winter Climb & other poemsAJ Powell | God the Baker & other poemsGisle Skeie | Rearranging & other poemsBruce Taylor | Always Expect a Train & other poemsRicky Ray | They Used to Be Things & other poemsS. E. Ingraham | Storm Angels & other poemsLaura Gamache | Outing & other poemsKeighan Speer | It Rained Today & other poemsEmma Atkinson | Grocery Stores Make Me Feel Mentally Ill & other poemsErin Lehrmann | Block & other poemsD. H. Turtel | Margaret, Again & other poemsChris Haug | Bovine Paranoia & other poemsKimberly M. Russo | Definitive Definition & other poemsHolly Walrath | A Tourist of Sorts & other poemsAngel C. Dye | Beauty in Her Marrow & other poems

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