She’s free from confinement—and ready to tell her secrets before it’s too late.She finds a willing audience in journalist Mick Anders, who is reeling after his suspension from a Boston newspaper and in town, reluctantly, to investigate a mysterious portrait of Eula that reportedly sheds tears. He crosses paths with Dr. Paloma Vega, who’s visiting Puerto Pesar with her own mission: to take care of her ailing grandmother and to rescue her rebellious younger sister before something terrible happens. Paloma and Mick have their reasons to be in the hot, parched border town whose name translates as “Port of Regret.” But they don’t anticipate how their lives will be changed forever.Moving and engrossing, this dual story alternates between Della’s dark ordeals of the 1940s and Paloma and Mick’s present-day search for answers―about roots, family, love, and what is truly important in life.

    She returns to her hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia, to help her mother save the family antique business, content to stay focused on her work. However, when a chance encounter with an adorable five-year-old leads her to befriend an attractive single dad, Melody begins to realize she's been putting her life on hold, something her father would've never wished for her. Will she learn to hear the song in the falling snow again? Reid has recently moved to Charles Town to start over after his wife walked out, leaving him alone to raise their son, Michael. When Michael decides he needs Melody Murphy in his life, Reid needs to find out what it is that has his son drawn to the young woman like a magnet. The closer he gets to Melody, the more he begins to believe he might get a second chance at love after all. This is a sweet contemporary romance with Christian themes, perfect for holiday reading.

     You may have liked the book, but not be a fan. You may call yourself a fan, but few truly are. Are you a fan? Trivia-on-Books is an independently curated trivia quiz on the book for readers, students, and fans alike. Whether you're looking for new materials to the book or would like to take the challenge yourself and share it with your friends and family for a time of fun, Trivia-on-Books provides a unique approach to A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles that is both insightful and educational! Features You'll Find Inside: • 30 Multiple choice questions on the book, plots, characters and author • Insightful commentary to answer every question • Complementary quiz material for yourself or your reading group • Results provided with scores to determine "status" Promising quality and value, come play your trivia of a favorite book!!

    There are also keen and comical observations on life, a roadrunner pace, and a hardy but humane protagonist.

    Maybe, just maybe, I could carry someone’s bags without the porter taking notice. And then there was the even bigger maybe: Maybe I could get enough money to at least buy a crust of bread for Trevor and Tabitha to share. I hid behind the boxes in the freight yard and kept one eye on the porter, and the other on the second class passenger car. The porter had his attention on the first class car, so I slipped into the gathering crowd. Titus Hines has always taken care of others. First in protecting his brother and sister from the men his mother entertained. Even more so after her death, when the townspeople refused to help the orphans of a town prostitute. He’s been protector and provider, despite the hardships. He’s learned that no one will help, no one cares and if he wants to survive he’ll have to rely on his own strength not just for himself but his family as well. Then a stranger shows him the kindness and help no one else seems willing to. Between her kindness and the lecture she gives the Christian Leaders, Titus’s life takes an unexpected turn for the better. With help and provision from the local believers things should be easier, his burdens are lifted. So why does it feel like life is spinning out of control? Can Titus learn that while man may fail him there is One who will never fail? Can he learn to allow God to be the Shepherd of his life and lead him? Or will life continue to push him every which way?

    . .   Sparkling lights, sugar cookies, a fragrant tree—Emily McCreedy is checking off her list for a perfect holiday with a new baby on her hip, two adorable stepsons hunting for presents, and her husband’s love shoring up the life she rebuilt after the unbelievable tragedy of losing her young daughter to abduction seven years ago.    But the merriment dims when Emily receives a strange note alluding to her daughter’s disappearance. Emily’s sure Christmas miracles are only for TV movies, but with each new communication, she finds herself face to face with the one thing that matters most—hope.     PRAISE FOR STACY FINZ“Stacy Finz is a unique new voice. Nugget, California, is a charming small town filled with inventive characters and sweet romance.” —Jill Shalvis, New York Times bestselling author“Tender and touching, Stacy Finz writes romance with heart.” —Marina Adair

    Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God's will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief. In her moving, insightful portrait, Joyce Carol Oates fully inhabits the perspectives of two interwoven families whose destinies are defined by their warring convictions and squarely-but with great empathy-confronts an intractable, abiding rift in American society. A Book of American Martyrs is a stunning, timely depiction of an issue hotly debated on a national stage but which makes itself felt most lastingly in communities torn apart by violence and hatred.

    In this striking, enormously affecting novel, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different and yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God's will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief. In her moving, insightful portrait, Joyce Carol Oates fully inhabits the perspectives of two interwoven families whose destinies are defined by their warring convictions and squarely-but with great empathy-confronts an intractable, abiding rift in American society. A Book of American Martyrs is a stunning, timely depiction of an issue hotly debated on a national stage but which makes itself felt most lastingly in communities torn apart by violence and hatred.

    Hitler invades France, a move that threatens all of Europe, and three lives intersect at Wickwythe Hall, an opulent estate in the English countryside—a beautiful French refugee, a take-charge American heiress, and a charming champagne vendeur with ties to Roosevelt and Churchill, who isn’t what he seems. There, secrets and unexpected liaisons unfold, until a shocking tragedy in a far off Algerian port binds them forever… Wickwythe Hall is inspired by actual people, places and events, including Operation Catapult, a sea action in which Churchill launched a bloody attack on the French fleet to keep the powerful ships out of Hitler’s reach. Over 1,000 French sailors, who just days before fought side-by-side with the British, perished. Humanizing this forgotten piece of history, Wickwythe Hall takes the reader behind the blackout curtains of upper-class England, through the bustling private quarters of Churchill's Downing Street, and along the tense back alleys of occupied Vichy, illustrating what it took to survive in the dark, early days of World War II.

    ~Jorge Luis Borges~ Levi thought he was making this journey alone. But when he meets an eight-year-old girl at the train station, that plan is turned on its head. Casey is running away and finds out that Levi is too. They decide to journey together and their lives are suddenly bound together in a journey they will not soon forget. Both children come from abusive situations and are running from the dangers of their previous life. Levi is confident he can handle this on his own, but when Casey is injured on the journey, he must seek help from the first person that comes into his path, or rather people. Mr. and Mrs. Bellworth are simple farm folk with a heart for kids and a passion for serving God. When their unconditional love and gentle care surrounds Levi and Casey, the troubles of their previous lives melt away and they start to flourish. But when Casey is dragged back into the abusive world she came from, the emotional trauma, pain and distrust resurfaces. Will they be forever bound by their past? Or will God answer their prayers?

     The Finley women's lives, while rich and full, aren't easy. rejecting electricity and many other modern conveniences, they live purposefully and intentionally--alone and isolated from the world around them. When Willow Finley awakes on a hot summer morning, she is unprepared for the grief that awaits her. Jerked from a life of isolation with her mother, Willow learns what alone really means when she finds her mother dead. From the moment Willow arrives in the police station with her startling announcement, Chad Tesdall fights the friendship he knows he can't avoid. Volume 1: This collection of Past Forward opens with Willow's life-changing discovery and gently guides the reader through aspects of her life--the past weaving through the present and into the future. Experience her first morning in church, her first movie, and the culture shock of her first trips to the city. A birthday party and a street faire add welcome diversion from butchering, canning, and the beating of area rugs. Disaster strikes. Will she be able to continue her life, or will an offer in the city change it all? Find out in this first volume. Volume 2: In this volume. Willow, battling grief and anger, drives Chad from the farm, but he finds himself drawn back, despite her determination to keep a wall between them. An accident and the chance of a lifetime threaten everything she thought she held dear. As the walls crumble, Chad and Willow's friendship deepens into something truly special, but to what end? Everyone around him pushes Chad into a relationship he both wants and fights, knowing that Willow simply is not ready. Volume 3: In this volume, Chad and Willow's engagement doesn't stay a secret for as long as they expected. Willow is initiated in the sport of shopping, attends her first ball, and a week with Marianne and Chad at her house is followed soon after by a week of Aggie's children. This volume introduces her to weddings and ends with a surprise twist. This collection boasts over 980 pages and over 250 5-star reviews for the first three books. Find out why thousands of readers have fallen in love with the engrossing Past Forward series. "Buy the first collection to get three books you won't be able to put down."

    Linked by a common voice, these thirteen stories introduce us to a cast of uniquely Southern characters.

    Strangelove" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" got together and had a litter of puppies you'd get "Dog Logic", a duck-and-cover fable and love story. Funny, inflammatory, and weirdly propheticHertell Daggett is the divorced and damaged caretaker of a failing pet cemetery on the outskirts of Bakersfield, and he's just discovered a lost civilization. Well not lost so much as just, misinformed -- they've been living beneath the pet cemetery due to some bad information they got back in 1963 about the end of the world, and were completely unaware that the world had wobbled on without them. Hertell leads the duck-and-cover civilization into our world, our glorious, mystifying, and often dismaying world, and in the process, finds a love he never quite lost and a future he never quite imagined.Silver Winner Foreword INDIES Book Of The Year Award - Science FictionBronze Winner Readers' Favorite Award - Literary FictionFinalist National Indie Excellence Awards - Contemporary Novel

    Spanning eight hours, the novel follows a squad of six AWOL soldiers as they attempt to cross war-torn Baghdad on foot to attend the funeral of their leader, Staff Sergeant Rafe Morgan. In an inhospitable landscape, these men recall the most ancient of warriors while portraying a cross section of twenty-first century America—sometimes strong, sometimes weak, but subject to the same human flaws as all of us.Drew is reliable in the field, but unfaithful at home. Cheever, overweight and whining, is a friend to no one—least of all, himself. Specialist Olijandro, or O, is distracted by dangerous romantic thoughts of his ex-wife. Fish’s propensity for violence is what drew him to the military and could be a catalyst for the day’s events. Park is the quiet one, but his quick thinking may make him the day’s hero. And platoon commander Dmitri “Arrow” Arogapoulos, is stalwart, yet troubled with questions about his own identity and sexuality. As the six march across Baghdad, their complicated histories, hopes, and fears are told in a chorus of voices that merge into a powerful portrait of the modern war zone and the deepest concerns of us all, military and civilian alike. Moving, thoughtful, funny, and smart, Brave Deeds is a gripping story of combat and of brotherhood, and an important addition to the oeuvre of contemporary war fiction.

    World War I was raging and America had just declared its intent to help the British and the French. Not everyone was convinced this was a good idea but God help you if spoke your mind, especially if you were German. Otto Lutz fell into this category. He and his family were like most ranchers in central Montana in 1917. They were struggling to make a living from a land that was more often than not, unpredictable in what it would yield. Still, life had been mostly good for them but that was before the war and their feud with Jim Thompson. Given the man he was, it was not a good set of circumstances for Otto.

    Gaines's new novella revolves around a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order.After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. When the editor of the local newspaper asks his cub reporter to dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, he heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who narrate with empathy, sadness, humor, and a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims--an honorable, just, and unsparing man who with his tough love had been handed the task of keeping the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana in line to protect them from the unjust world in which they lived. And when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning. In the telling, we learn the story of a small southern town, divided by race, and the black community struggling to survive even as many of its inhabitants head off northwards during the Great Migration.

    It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt eyes, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator’s memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment—for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust. But at the book’s core, and his, is family—his relationships with those he loved, and with the natural world around him. Vivid, haunting, and deeply moving, Spy of the First Person takes us from the sculpted gardens of a renowned clinic in Arizona to the blue waters surrounding Alcatraz, from a New Mexico border town to a condemned building on New York City’s Avenue C. It is an unflinching expression of the vulnerabilities that make us human—and an unbound celebration of family and life.

    To that end, he has held a monopoly on not only their souls, but also their thriving drug addiction.But times have changed, and forces larger than him have moved in to take control of both the church and the flow of narcotics.When he suffers a lethal bite from a rattlesnake someone placed in his mailbox, a dying, venom-addicted Clyde has only hours to undo a lifetime of sin, avenge his own murder and save his godforsaken town from the human monsters he’s unleashed.

    27-year-old American detective and heiress, Slim Moran, is hired by a British spymistress to find Marie-Claire, a spy long presumed dead. Slim soon realizes that scores from the last war have not been settled. She races to find out what happened to this deeply troubled lost spy because if Marie-Claire is not dead, she will be soon.

    A farm girl is locked in a dangerous love triangle with two Germans soldiers held in an Illinois POW camp ... Another German, a war refugee, is forced to risk her life spying on the developing Manhattan Project in Chicago ... And espionage surrounds the disappearance of an actress from the thriving Jewish community of Chicago’s Lawndale. In this trio of tales, acclaimed thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann beautifully depicts the tumultuous effect of war on the home front and illustrates how the action, terror, and tragedy of

    One choice. No turning back.Peyton is a rising star in the church who is well on the way to reaching his biggest dreams. Levi is a pastor's son struggling to live up to his faith under pressure from all sides. DaVonte is a kid from the wrong side of town who would be content if he and his friends were just left alone.When an act of violence presents a sudden decision, each boy's answer will shake the community to its core and shape its future forever. Love and truth face off against fear and pride in this modern extension of one of Jesus' best-known parables.

    Holiday hilarity ensues when a new cat shows up on her doorstep each day. Who's leaving the cats? And why? Will Gloria's Christmas go up a poof of pet fur, or will it prove to be the most purrfect holiday ever?This is a short story (approx. 17 minutes reading time).

    With an iron-fisted police chief on his tail and a ruthless mob captain at his throat, he'll need his wits, his fists, and his father's trusty Vietnam war hatchet to hack his way through a toxic jungle of New Jersey corruption that makes the gator-filled swamps of home feel like the shallow end of the kiddie pool.

    In 1805, Lewis and Clark stumble out of the Rockies on the edge of starvation. The Nez Perce help the explorers build canoes and navigate the rapids of the Columbia, then spend two months hosting them the following spring before leading them back across the snowbound mountains. Daytime Smoke is born not long after, and the tribe of his youth continues a deep friendship with white Americans, from fur trappers to missionaries, even aiding the United States government in wars with neighboring tribes. But when gold is discovered on Nez Perce land in 1860, it sets an inevitable tragedy in motion.Daytime Smoke’s life spanned the seven decades between first contact and the last great Indian war. Capturing the trajectory experienced by so many native peoples—from friendship and cooperation to betrayal, war, and genocide—this sweeping novel, with its large cast of characters and a vast geography, braids historical events with the drama of one man’s remarkable life. Rigorously researched and cinematically rendered, The Coming is a page-turning, heart-stopping American novel in a classic mode.

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...Fiction, Novelette: “Good teeth, she’s learned, are like a passport: they helped you cross borders.”

     They needed a ring to make it official, and his best pal just happened to have a real nice one handy. And they’re all about to get way more than they bargained for. Meredith Fayett needed to marry someone before the week was out or she would lose her ranch. It sounded simple, so ranch hand Chance Stevens agreed to take on the job, in spite of his friend Marty’s warnings that it could only lead to trouble. But even Marty, a loyal though opinionated sidekick, couldn’t have predicted the mayhem that ensues when his own eccentric relatives appear on the scene, dragging Chance, Marty, and Meredith into the latest skirmish in a long-running family feud. What follows is a hilarious tangle involving an emerald ring, a fearsome aunt, a scheming suitor, and a team of runaway mules—by the end of which Chance finds that even a marriage just on paper has its complications, and that it never hurts to have a good sidekick. If you love a good screwball romp in a homespun setting—think P.G. Wodehouse meets O. Henry—pick up A Sidekick’s Tale now and start laughing!

    The present holds the answer, and the last opportunity for Gracey to understand her father's alcoholism, her mother's infidelity, and her siblings' version of the truth.The voices of the past give Gracey the courage to find her voice. Using biting humor and gut-level truths for the first time in her life, Gracey walks across the land mines created by a crippling family legacy.Henry's funeral and the Irish wedding of Therese Mueller, Gracey's and her husband Mark Mueller's daughter, coincide by a few weeks and serve as a completion of the family circle. With the closing of one door, and the opening of the future, Gracey finds forgiveness by realizing six generations of the Walsh-Mueller family, saints and sinners, criminals and heroes, the abandoned and the celebrated, are forever family, forever bound by blood and the dreams of an Irish girl, Patricia Walsh Mueller.A Good Girl examines the numbing work of raising children and burying parents through six generations.

    Now a young woman, her disapproving fiancé and her practical-minded mother see her dream only as a foolish flight of fancy. Nevertheless, Kathleen relocates to Mexico and finds herself under the instruction of Fermin, a retired matador who is intent on asserting his dominance in their partnership. Though taking on a female apprentice is unheard of, Fermin sees Kathleen’s undeniable talent and promises that she’ll one day perform at the prestigious Plaza Mexico bullring.While Kathleen struggles to perform alongside the unwelcoming men of Mexico’s bullfighting scene, she is befriended by Julio, better known as El Cabrito—The Kid. Much to Fermin’s displeasure, not only does Julio show Kathleen techniques that defy his strict instruction, but a forbidden romance quickly ignites between them.As time passes, Kathleen’s confidence in her ability increases—though so too do her suspicions of Fermin’s intentions. She has become a sensation, selling out arenas as La Diosa Tejana, the Texan Goddess. But while Fermin gets rich, Kathleen’s pay remains pitiful and her instructor’s control over her life remains absolute. Will she always be a vehicle for another person’s success?  Or will she finally face her own moment of truth and seize the success that she has worked toward for so long, in a world that has always belonged to men?

    In a city that keeps surviving disaster, one elite team is dedicated to making its shores a little safer.  During the famous Mardi Gras parade, a young Naval oceanographer plunges to his death from a hotel balcony. It’s up to Pride and his crew to investigate. But this is a case that goes from grisly to utterly strange. A gris-gris bag found in the victim’s belongings, a trail of mystical clues, and the haunting figure of a voodoo loa on CCTV at the crime scene all suggest that dark powers are at work in The Big Easy.

    In this collection, two unique and distinct voices converge in their shared faith in black humor and a relentless, intelligent deconstruction of our modern condition.

    And once the weapon latches onto a goal, there’s not a person on earth who can change it.”Emma White is the most dangerous weapon the world has ever seen. She’s not a child; she’s a hurricane, an earthquake, a force of nature. She’s been trained as the world’s most deadly assassin – capable of stopping and starting wars as easily as others breathe. Under her skin crackles the type of power that most people only ever dream about. And she doesn’t remember any of it. Adrae Silverman is the Queen of the Night. She’s clothed in darkness and washed in royalty, and Emma is her newest conquest. She wants the kind of power Emma wields, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make Emma remember – and embrace – what she was created to do. She’s going to rise into the skies, one way or another. But Emma has made a promise to protect humanity – from a past she can’t even recall. To keep it, she must find a way to defy Adrae, and she must do it without the help of the hurricane under her skin.Set in a surprisingly normal, modern-day world, Echoes mixes contemporary with a hint of science fiction and is told from the scattered, poetical style of Emma’s thoughts. Stunning comparisons and Emma’s breathtakingly raw honesty weave a heartbreaking story of Emma’s attempt to protect humanity – from her own past.NOTE: This is the first part of a duology following the emotional and inner journey of a girl with a form of PTSD. It focuses on the inward turmoil caused by the damage of a dark past and her journey to overcome it. The second part is set to release in Fall of 2018, and will complete the set - including answering many of the questions left unanswered in this first novel.Find out more and discuss the book here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

    In a series of elegant, nonchronological scenes spanning the years from 1946 to 2015, the play hopscotches through Mary Page Marlowe’s quiet existence as an accountant from Ohio—complicating notions of what it means to lead a “simple life.”

    Karl has devoted his life to this world by becoming a professional skateboarder and spreading his unique positive nature and genuine love of all. Not to mention his legendary style on the board. Karl devotes himself to inspire youth to be positive, to see all people as one, and to work hard toward goals to achieve success. Illustrator, Henry Jones, was the perfect choice to create the vibrant images in this book. Henry is a renowned artist within the skateboarding community and grew up skating himself. His distinctive cartoon style highlights skate culture, captures amazing tricks, and is often filled with humor. My First Skateboard will hopefully inspire new young shredders to get out there, get involved, and be active. The skateboarding community is waiting to embrace them.

    Mrs. Rush hated the feeling but was powerless to fix things. Traveling to visit relatives for the holidays, the Rush children pass the time with their eyes glued to the screens of their devices. That is, until the flashing lights of a State Highway Patrol car bring their trip to a sudden and unplanned-for stop.

    The manuscript tells the former student's story--a story he had never revealed to anyone. As a newly-minted Ph.D. from Yale, Jack Springs, ended up in Kobe, Japan circa 1992, where he encountered a mysterious Japanese professor of American literature, named Goto. The second son of a family of immense wealth and power, Goto was a clandestine collector of literary rarities, manuscripts, and books. Through a series of meetings, Goto provided Jack with a systematic set of revelations about Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and other literary giants, all of which were supported by unknown documents in Goto's possession. With the allure of these revelations, as well as Goto's beautiful niece, Jack was drawn back to Goto's house again and again until the tragic events on the day of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995 threatened to destroy all that had been revealed--including Jack's sense of who he was and what he was capable of.

    This is Pyne's masterpiece. I guarantee no reader will go wanting." - Michael ConnellyTimes may change, but crimes never do, and neither do the people who investigate them. A collection of three loosely connected crime novellas, each set in a distinct era, Catalina Eddy is a gritty, hard-boiled exploration into the immutable police underworld of Southern California. In The Big Empty, an obstinate Los Angeles detective investigates the murder of his estranged wife while fears of nuclear war and Communism grip the nation; in Losertown, a mid-career attorney in San Diego chases down a legendary drug kingpin but chafes against the Reagan Revolution policies of his new boss; and in Portuguese Bend, set in the present day, an undercover cop is paralyzed in a gunfight but determined to solve what may be her last case as a police officer in Long Beach. They are all, in one way or another, stuck in dreary endless loops of love, murder, and the quest for clarity, release, and redemption. Reminiscent of James Ellroy's grittiness and Raymond Chandler's dark wit, Catalina Eddy is Daniel Pyne's clever homage to--and skillful deconstruction of--traditional noir storytelling. Moody, enthralling, and keenly imagined, Catalina Eddy evokes the characters and ambiance of a singular, peculiar landscape with cinematic flair.

    In the summer of 1943, John Thomas enlists in the American army to get away from his incredibly uncomfortable home life. Escaping a rushed wedding , however, comes at no small cost. Less than six months after enlisting, John is dropped behind enemy lines, and being shot at by German soldiers. Fortunately, his life is saved by a French resistance fighter, who sacrifices himself for John. Afraid of being identified as an American soldier, John trades clothes with the dead Frenchman, assuming his identity. Now he must survive against all odds in Nazi-occupied France with a dangerous new identity, and no way of contacting the army, or his home.

    As a San Antonio architect, she’d have vowed her career was to investigate the history and create new functions for the structures everyone else saw as eyesores. The old German farmhouse in Comfort, Texas, might be the screeching end of that dream job. The assignment seemed so ideal at the start; generous clients, a stunning location, and a pocketful of letters that were surely meant to explain the ranch’s story. All that goodness crashed louder than a pile of two-by-fours when her grandfather announced he’d lured Colette’s ex-husband back to San Antonio to take over the family architecture firm. Now, not only does Colette have to endure the challenges posed by Beau Jefferson, the client’s handpicked contractor, a house that resists efforts to be modernized, and letters that may hold the secret to buried treasure, but she also has to decide if she has the courage to fight for her future.

    The Battle of the Bulge is raging.The tides of war are turning against Germany, and the Americans are pitted against a desperate enemy.The small town of Eschdorf Luxembourg is currently under German control.While the residents are gathered in the town hall, members of the SS pull them out for interrogation.Andre Verhoeven is a town elder. He is also the uncle of Elise Lambert, a young woman about to give birth to her first child.Concerned by what is happening, Andre believes it best to relocate to their family farmhouse, in the woods nearby.They set out in the deep snow and freezing temperatures, avoiding German soldiers as American patrols infiltrate the woods.Private William Conley is nineteen. He becomes separated from his unit, and lost in the cold and the snow.As he tries to navigate his way back, Conley thinks about his girl back home, Helen Kincaid, and the many memorable family Christmases past.His path crosses a wounded German soldier, Eric Mueller, whom he takes prisoner as a means to get himself oriented.They make their way to a barn to warm up, but shortly after arriving, Elise enters about to give birth. The two form an uneasy alliance to bring life, not death, into the world.But as the fighting leads desperate men from both sides to the vicinity, the area around the barn becomes a killing field and Conley and Mueller find it increasingly difficult to maintain the barn as a shelter for Elise.For men who have little to lose, like Hauptmann Peter Decker, the German officer tasked with holding the town of Eschdorf from the Americans, with dwindling forces; Private Stephen Ryan, the trigger-happy, blood-thirsty GI, looking to kill every German in his path to avenge the loss of his patrol group; and Gestapo Lieutenant Adolf Wolf, looking to make a name for himself in the Fuhrer’s circle, the barn and its occupants become pawns in a deadly game.And when a patrol is sent out to find Conley’s missing unit, what they encounter in the cold dark woods is anybody’s guess.Through it all, Rene, Elise’s husband, risks death and the bitter cold to find his wife and baby daughter, on a Christmas night like no other.Based on a real battle for a real town, When Night Awakens is a story of hope during a dark time, and the power of love over hatred.

    Performed at the local theater, the play, with the students in complete charge of, the performances has become a tradition in town. Everything is going well until the morning of the final performance when calamity hits. Should the students cancel the final performance or try to turn the disaster into something good?

    It will continue to augment destinies forever, and that’s a beautiful thing... You should be proud of that." - Kevin Hines, International Suicide Prevention Speaker, Author & Award-Winning Documentary FilmmakerFeaturing inspiring stories of hope and resilience after trauma, ‘Reasons to Live: One More Day, Every Day’ follows the lives of 10 high profile and everyday individuals (including global hip hop artist L-FRESH The LION) who have found a way to rise above the darkness of mental illness, past trauma, or suicide attempts. Described as raw, powerful, and life-changing, and endorsed by influential figures such as Kevin Hines, and members of Lifeline and Royal Flying Doctor Service, 'Reasons to Live' features memoirs of surviving and thriving after a variety of adversities, including childhood cancer, veteran PTSD, disabilities, eating disorders, the death of a child, and more. A must-read for anyone searching for hope, inspiration, and reasons to live one more day, every day. PAPERBACK VERSION available via www.jasrawlinson.com***"A remarkable book" - Professor Patrick McGorry "Powerful...superbly disguised...a critical component in overcoming the darkness" - Dion Jensen, Founder of Success for Soldiers"I highly commend this book" - Robert Sams, Lifeline Hunter Valley

    His only regret was that the Romans, not his people, would carry out justice. Yet, his world is rocked with a few words spoken from the cross.A 5,000 word short story