But when the ex-diplomat and the Blade Witch's current annoyance insinuates his way into her journey home, and an orphan AI attempts to pick her storm cloud pocket, and bandits appear from a hypnofield, well, the Blade Witch may find that her blades can't solve every problem in the universe. Nah. It's time to carve up the galaxy! *** Blade Witch is a science fiction holiday novella.

    With power and precision, humanity and insight, Supporting Cast captures the extraordinary moments in our ordinary lives, and the darkness and the joy of the everyday.

    A new collection of adventures from Jack and Annie! This volume includes: Mummies in the MorningJack and Annie find themselves whisked away to ancient Egypt, where they come face to face with a dead queen--and her 1,000-year-old mummy! Pirates Past NoonJack and Annie are in deep trouble when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to the days of desert islands, secret maps, hidden gold--and ruthless pirates! Will Jack and Annie discover a buried treasure? Will they find out the identity of the mysterious M? Or will they walk the plank?

    But news of her father's death--and the cloud of scandal surrounding it--has suddenly made Juno the center of attention, as various factions attempt to seize her supposed bridegift--a fabulous cache of diamonds. In vain, Juno protests that she knows nothing about a bridegift, and that her father had no such fortune, but England's enemies are not convinced, and Juno is forced to escape with an unlikely ally--a Barbary pirate. Can she believe his extraordinary tale about her father, or is he only another one who is looking to steal her bridegift? Find out, as Juno plumbs depths of courage she never knew she had, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance

    Compulsively readable and always accessible, each story takes the reader into the mind and heart of its central character, whether a young boy suffering from Lawrence Welk damage and teetering precariously on the edge of puberty ("The Music of Your Life") or a not-so-young-anymore man for whom fantasy and reality have become a terrifying blur and who finds himself slipping over the edge toward total meltdown ("Wildlife of Coastal Carolina"). Nostalgia plays a part in these stories as a somewhat jaded New York film critic looks back on his life and the movies that shaped him ("Spectators in Love"), and an aging flower-shop owner ruefully assesses the love he found and lost when, as an eighteen-year-old, he embarked on a Hollywood career that never soared but did include one particularly memorable appearance on the I Love Lucy television show ("Who Loves You?") These stories all create entire worlds within which the characters live and struggle to find their way. Funny, touching, serious, and tender, the tales within The Music of Your Life are sure to appeal to anyone who has ever known the awkwardness of being "different," and while life is often harsh for the stories' characters, the bold determination with which they persevere offers inspiration to all.

    Matt is ready to reform his brawling ways, but the group he joins doesn’t turn out to be a typical 12-step program, in “The Taskmasters.” “Protecting the Innocent” features Nick, who fails to heed the warnings of his girlfriend’s possessive brother. And with “A Gun in the House,” Leah refuses to move from her beloved home, leading to protective measures with disastrous results. These and six others send out the invitation for disaster—one that’s gladly accepted.The ten taut tales in this collection from award-winning crime-fiction author Simon Wood are rife with good intentions gone bad—and bad intentions gone worse. Filled with jaw-dropping twists and turns, Asking for Trouble is a wild ride that will leave readers clamoring for more.

    Rich beyond their wildest dreams, Captain McGregor and his band of pirates set out to sea, their ships' holds full of pirate booty. When they are hit by the most intense electrical storm of the 17th Century, the Sea Dancer is transported through time to the year 2014. Bemused, hungry and thirsty, Captain McGregor and his crew sneak into a secluded bay in Puerto Rico, hoping to find food and water. Instead they find a 'palace' : an exclusive five-star holiday resort for the rich and famous. Scared, bewildered and desperate, they take over the resort, holding everyone hostage. Quickly, the situation goes from bad to worse. Within hours of landing at the Blue Emerald Bay Resort, several of the crew fall sick. When one dies, the resort doctor identifies it as a unique and new strain of pneumonic plague, never before seen in the 21st Century, and an infection so deadly, that if it infects the residents of the Blue Emerald Bay and escapes the confines of the resort, could threaten to wipe out the human race…

    I'm lost. And my abductor is a big alien who has no sense of humor and glows when he's horny. Who knew that alien abduction could be so terrifying? Or blue and sexy? Now, I just need to find a way to get back home before I become someone's dinner or worse - fall for the jerk who stole me.**Note: Alien Space Pirates is a serial that was previously published!! This is the complete serial!! All three books are included in this one volume! Enjoy!! :)**

    

    

    The stories include tales of strippers, of their husbands and lovers and the helpless, ill-placed desire that is shot out of their customers, of a rape by a man of another man at a peep show in Times Square, the victim wordlessly accepting what happens to him while watching a woman dance behind glass, of fucking a woman wearing a fur coat and feeling unexplainable rage at her disregard of animal life. The story ends with the character running away into the night with the coat, "as if an animal rescued." In "Invisible Fish," a night clerk in a mall pet store tortures the animals at night until the whole place stinks of fear and rage. Dumbfounded, the store owners blugeon to death a chimpanzee, the only animal in the store that can imagine capable of such atrocities.

    While not nearly as much in demand today as they were in the days of the Yankee clippers, these skills nevertheless remain important and necessary to today's yachtsmen and owners of smaller pleasure boats.In this excellent handbook on basic shipboard skills, marine expert Hervey Garrett Smith offers boating and yachting enthusiasts a complete course in rigging, working, and maintaining a ship. More than 100 illustrations help the reader grasp the fundamentals and fine points of handling a ship while the author describes in detail a sailor's tools, basic knots, and useful hitches as well as the arts of splicing, handsewing, and canvas work.Other topics equally important to safe, economical, and efficient boat maintenance and management include belaying, coiling, and stowing; towing procedures; how to make a chafing gear; and much more. Easy-to-follow instructions for fashioning decorative knots, ornamental coverings, and nettings, and even how to make a proper bucket round out this engaging and informative guide.Packed with useful "hands-on" information conveyed in a chatty, humorous style, The Arts of the Sailor is the perfect book to keep aboard ship for study and for ready reference when the need arises. It also makes delightful reading for armchair sailors and the legions of landlubbers with an interest in the sea.

    It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1972. Twenty-eight years later, she received the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is, as the Washington Post Book World said, "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances -- new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled. From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.

    Abbott, "Cheever's true heir, our major American short story writer" (William Harrison).Here are stories about fathers and sons, stories about men and women, and stories about the relationships between men by one of our most gifted story writers. The narrator of "The Who, the What and the Why," begins breaking into his own house as a sort of therapy after his daughter dies. In "The Human Use of Inhuman Beings," the main character realizes that his closest relationship is to an angel, who appears to him only to announce the death of loved ones. All Things, All at Once reminds us why Lee K. Abbott is to be treasured: his perfect pitch for tales of hapless Southwesterners, his way with sympathetic irony, his eye that skillfully notes the awkward humiliations—common heartbreak, fractured families—and records it all in lyrical, affectionate language. In tales new and from previous collections Abbott examines lived life and the lies we necessarily tell about it.

    It is the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form.Beginning with the sudden terror of a family caught up in shocking sectarian violence, and ending with the whiteout of an Iowa blizzard and the fear of losing your way very far from home, this collection is about bonds made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary story "Up the Coast," a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her, finally, feel whole, only to have that communion shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression that will resonate throughout her life.Written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are hauntingly real. MacLaverty's perfect attention to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, remakes the world for us here on the page.