First Project Gutenberg Collection of Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe - 2009
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Gift of the Magi


O. Henry - 2009
    Henry, originally published in 1906, has become one of the best known and most beloved of Chistmas tales. An exuberant couple urged on by their love, make great sacrifices in order to purchase the perfect Christmas gift for the other. The husband sells his gold watch in order to buy expensive combs for his wife's luxurious locks. While the wife sells her hair to the wigmaker in order to buy a chain suitable for her husband's handsome timepiece. When all is revealed on Christmas Eve, the sweet irony of their dual generosity leaves them, whether they know it or not, as the wisest of gift givers: "But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."The artist Joel Priddy employs the same twists of reciprocity in his own work and is well suited to adapting and updating this classic for a modern audience.

The Boy Vanishes


Jennifer Haigh - 2012
    Taut and powerful, it is a keen reimagining of a whodunit in which everyone is implicated and no one is safe. It’s the summer of 1976 on the South Shore of Massachusetts. The Bicentennial is a season-long celebration, and flags are everywhere, snapping in the seaside winds, ironed onto T-shirts, tattooed into biceps. Tim O’Connor works the Cigarette Game booth at Funland—toss a quarter placed on an eight-sided ball into the right slot and you win two packs of smokes or maybe, if you’re lucky, a carton. If asked his age, he’d say he’s seventeen, but in truth he’s fourteen. Yet the kids in blue-collar Grantham—a town first imagined by Haigh in her devastating bestseller "Faith"—grow up fast, are known for being wild, and more often than not drop out of school to punch the clock at the nearby Raytheon plant. When Tim disappears after the park’s closing one night, no one makes much of it till late morning. It’s not the first time his mother, Kay, has forgotten to pick him up. It’s not the first time he has stayed out all night. By the time local cops begin their investigation, there is little trace of the boy, only witnesses to a complicated set of relationships in a place where surviving isn’t always thriving and where disappointment mixes with the salt in the air. In this superbly crafted story, the search for a missing boy becomes a search for the American dream, laying bare how destructive its promises often are. Recalling Dennis Lehane in setting and subject and masters like Graham Greene and Richard Ford in tone and style, Haigh’s latest work is a testament to all that short fiction can be. It’s a searing portrait of how much a community loses when one of its own is lost.

The False Sun


R. Scott Bakker - 2012
    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

Bloodline; Master Of The Game; Rage Of Angels


Sidney Sheldon - 1993
    

Agnes Grey & Poems


Anne Brontë - 1992
    Possessed of an unshakeable sense of entitlement and a boundless sense of self-worth, assured of the adoration of all, Matilda can break men's hearts for fun. Agnes-diffident, careworn and poor-can only gape in astonishment at the figure her pupil cuts in the world. Employed to lead and form her, she is instead buffeted about in Matilda's tumultuous wake. She loves her young student-it is impossible not to. But it is hard not to wonder if Matilda's good fortunes will ever end.

The Best of Poe


Saddleback Educational Publishing - 2005
    This series features classic tales retold with color illustrations to introduce literature to struggling readers. Each 64-page eBook retains key phrases and quotations from the original classics. You'll be kept in suspense with these four Edgar Allan Poe short stories! The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

The Amish Broken Quilter (Amish Romance)


Emma Maas - 2018
    But even worse, she doesn't care. She blames God for taking her husband and has since lost her way in both her faith, and her community. But life must go on, and to support herself she makes and mends quilts for the Amish and Englishers alike. Living alone in an apartment above her shop, she works only to live and seemingly not much else as she feels the need to almost punish herself, and God, at the same time. But all that changes when Levi, himself a widow, comes into her shop to mend an old quilt as a surprise for his daughter's first child. He's immediately taken with Hannah. And as his job is repair and fixing broken things in his workshop, his trained eye spots a few problems around her home that could use some neighborly help. But his heart spots some problems, too. Yet Hannah doesn't want the help, or the attention. She resists, but Levi won't take no for an answer. He repeatedly shows up to work on things, trying to slowly chip away at her gruff exterior and win a smile, if not a friend. But Hannah is comfortable in her pain. She certainly has no time for friendships, let alone love. Yet God, and Levi, just might have other plans. Can two people find what they need in the other, when they both need it the most? A desire to mend against a desire to harbor old pains. Will love win out, in this sweet Amish Romance? Read this new book by Emma Maas to find out today...

UNEARTHLY


Stephen R. King - 2018
    Sometimes it feels like we are all on a different planet earth. Sometimes we are!

To Kill a Mockingbird - Prestwick Power Presentations: Lead-Ins to Literature


James Scott - 2008
    These colorful, illustrated presentations use the latest features of the free Adobe Acrobat format to make compelling presentations easy to use on any computer. Each presentation contains dozens of slides detailing all of the background material that makes reading literature such a rich experience.

Tyler’s Christmas Bride


Stella Clark - 2019
    Desperate to escape poverty, she agrees to marriage with Tyler, a Montana rancher. But when Rose arrives in Montana and Tyler is not there to meet her, she uncovers secrets and lies regarding Tyler and his family that break her heart. She finds Tyler handsome, and he finds her beautiful, but a bitter Tyler refuses to give in to his feelings, until Rose reveals a shocking secret. Can Tyler open his heart and make Rose his Christmas bride?

Punishment


Rabindranath Tagore
    

Peace on Earth (isn't what what we're good at)


Audrey Faye - 2018
    We're just two women who know what it is to need one." Jane has problems, and this December, keeping her assassin best friend from actually killing somebody isn't the biggest one. Her songwriting muse keeps trying to rise from the dead, they have a new sidekick they can't seem to dislodge from the back seat, and it's that time of year when the ghosts of Christmas shake their chains and make an unbearable season even worse. Peace on Earth isn't what they're good at - but it's coming for them anyhow. Which isn't anything a couple of assassins want for Christmas. (Previously published as Lesbian Assassins, which was a nod to how the story got started, and a terrible description of its contents. Heavily revised to become the tale of holiday redemption Carly & Jane apparently always intended to become!)

Five by Fitzgerald: Classic Stories of the Jazz Age


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1922
    Includes the following stories: Head and Shoulders, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Dalyrimple Goes Wrong, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

The Foster Portfolio


Kurt Vonnegut Jr.