Meet the man who vacuums bewildered prairie dogs out of their burrows; a frustrated werewolf who roams the streets of Soho getting mistaken for Brian Blessed; a smug carbon-neutral eco-couple; a teenage girl who invites 45,000 MySpace friends to a house party; the author of a business book entitled Highly Successful Secrets to Standing on a Corner Holding Up a Golf Sale Sign and a man whose attempts to teach softball to a group of indolent British advertising executives sparks an international crisis.

    Prize-winning author Chloe Wilson’s stories will pin you to the page.‘Chilling, funny, and razor sharp – a writer in control every step of the way. How I relished this extraordinary and original collection.’ Sofie Laguna, Miles Franklin winner for The Eye of the SheepFirst published in Granta Magazine, the title story takes us into the cold war of a contemporary family: a missile-making mother doubts her husband’s guts and the steel of her son, until a playground incident escalates and brings them into the most surprising of alliances.Needle sharp, effortlessly surprising and beautifully controlled, every story is transfixing. A young couple move into a house in which there’s been a recent murder, and fall under the spell of their peculiar, commanding neighbours. Two sisters are determined to detoxify themselves into perfection. A diver pushes herself and those around her to higher and higher jumps. Interspersed with these transfixing tales are lightning strikes of flash fiction: we glimpse a leopard in the apartment next door; plants grown out of a strange and miraculous soil; the spirit of a girl who’s been thrown down a well. At each turn, Chloe Wilson offers a unique insight, a tear in the veil of our comfortable moral certainties. Hold Your Fire exposes the battles we wage beneath the surface.

    With information she receives at an anonymous email address, she produces mostly humorous, sometimes poignant, but always truthful obituaries that magically appear between sections A and B of the morning paper.When several cryptic emails question the official details of a man’s death, Lizzy elicits the help of handsome detective Jackson Clark. Together, they travel halfway around the world to search for answers . . . and maybe even find love along the way.With mystery, romance, and a hefty helping of humor, The Secret Obituary Writer will keep you entertained until the very last page.

    Following the accidental drowning of her sister, sixteen-year-old Nif and her family move to a small village on the Welsh borders to escape their grief. But rural seclusion doesn't bring any relief. As her family unravels, Nif begins to put together her own form of witchcraft - collecting talismans from the sun-starved land. That is, until she meets Mally, a teen boy who takes a keen interest in her, and has his own secret rites to divulge.Reminiscent of the suspense of Shirley Jackson and soaked in the folk horror of the British landscape, Water Shall Refuse Them is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel and a thrilling debut.

    Christmas Lights, Naman’s first work of fiction, evokes that same warmth and tenderness in stories set during the holiday season and centered on the lives of ordinary women. In separate vignettes, we meet Katherine, who is taking care of her ailing husband; Julianna, juggling with construction paper, scissors, and rubber cement in a room full of high-spirited four-year-olds; Adrianna, struggling with the difficulties of marriage; Cassandra, the busy mother of toddlers; Victoria, searching for a love to call her own; Alexandra, a young woman waiting for word from her doctor about an uncertain diagnosis; and Isabella, discovering the gift of motherhood. The lives of all the women come together in a moving conclusion that perfectly captures the heart and soul of the holiday spirit. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and poignant, Christmas Lights celebrates the most significant aspects of the season. Small, beautifully designed, and full of festive cheer, it is the ideal gift for anyone longing to rediscover the magic of Christmas.

    

    Perilous quests, true love, and animals that talk. The traditional stories of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and Wales transport us to the fantastical world of Celtic folklore. These timeless tales brim with wit and magic, and each on is brought to life with elegant silhouette art in this special illustrated edition.

    There is something very familiar about Simon that brings Eleanor great peace, and Simon feels the same way. But when Eleanor's boyfriend, Abe, sees her talking to Simon, his jealousy is unleashed, and he warns her to stay away from Simon. Eleanor refuses, planning to break up with Abe - until an emergency changes her plan. But Eleanor cannot stop thinking about Simon and is shocked when he reveals a secret about their childhood years. Torn between Abe and Simon, Eleanor prays to Gott for an answer. Should she leave the possessive Abe and run to Simon?

    Dick has written some of the most intriguing, original and thought-provoking fiction of our time. He has been described by The Wall Street Journal as the man who, "More than anyone else…really puts you inside people's minds."

    An insomniac on Halifax’s moonlit streets. A runaway bride. A young woman accused of a brutal murder. A man who must live in exile if he is to live at all. A woman coming to terms with her eccentric childhood in a cult on the Bay of Fundy shore.

    Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, he’s overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing on the Sella River with his father, uncle, and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater. José’s regrets and dark family secrets are flooding back, as is the devastating tragedy that drove José into exile and makes him bear the burden of a soul-deep guilt.Now, as his three estranged sons return to their father’s side, José hopes to outpace death long enough to finally put his house in order and exorcise its demons. Only in his quest for redemption can José begin to understand the meaning of his life—and what his legacy has meant to others.

    This is the opener of a planned Cade Chase series. It is a crime thriller set in the fictional Rockledge, an impoverished town in the center of Appalachia, more precisely in extreme southwest Virginia.The main character, Cade Chase, recently retired from the military. He has given insufficient thought to life afterward. He accedes to the urgings of a longtime friend and former JAG officer, to come to the town of Rockledge. He leaves Florida and heads to Rockledge uncertain that this move is wise.On his first morning in Rockledge he runs across a hillbilly octogenarian named Dale Carter, who tells him finding a place to live will be tough. So Carter invites him to have a look at a home, one of three, he owns on a mountainside "out in the valley." The home he shows Cade is one of the grandest Cade has ever seen. Carter tells Cade the house is his if he wants it. Seems joining the military was the defining event of Dale's life. Without the military's 'gifts' he wouldn't have amassed the wealth he possesses. But he stipulates one condition: help protect him and his wife against what appears to be a dangerous crew of squatters camping in the woods on or near his property.Cade is instantly fond of Dale, and agrees to help him. This agreement sets the story in motion. There's plenty of action from that point onward. Yes, it's a thrilling story involving crime, but more important, it's a story of the evils of autocratic behavior by political elites. Cade is determined to bring the evildoers down. He quickly learns that extreme southwest Virginia has been a whipping boy for sixty years or more. Cade and a cadre of like-minded people strive to end the trampling of this region of the state. You may find it on Amazon and Kindle books. If searching under my name, you need to search under John M. Vermillion, including the middle initial.Thank you.jmv

    'I missed the turning over Battersea Bridge. I didn't know it would make a difference... that the manner of living seconds and minutes mattered' Joan is a single mother - beautiful, talented and desired. John is her adored son, her 'Merboy'. Growing up in the West Country, his life is lived outdoors, playing in the creek by their cottage in Devon, swimming, hunting for shells, collecting bits of old boats. On his thirteenth birthday, Joan treats him to a trip to London to buy his first pair of Levi's jeans. Unused to city driving, she takes a wrong turn. The repercussions of that moment's hesitation are devastating... Their story recounts the life-altering effects of that one moment. It is a story about a mother's heartbreaking love for her son and the different ways people survive damage. With sensitivity and compassion, Jules Hardy's lyrical prose explores the strengths and flaws of this unique relationship between a mother and her son, and vividly describes the altered worlds in which they must live. It is a wonderfully assure

    She wants the world to know what it’s like to start secondary school with a best friend who stages one-person flash mobs in the canteen, a mother who over-shares at parents’ evenings and an unwelcome suitor who draws pictures of her as a unicorn. But it’s when she decides to start a band with a spoon-player and a lead-singer who’s a cat that things take a turn for the truly crazy…With kooky, cool incidental illustrations throughout, this hilarious novel about how to fit in when you don’t want to conform will be adored by fans of Louise Rennison and David Walliams.

    As she uncovers layers of grime on what could prove to be a lost Flemish masterpiece, Rachel finds that layers of her own soul—layers that she would rather have kept hidden—are being stripped away.Imbued with historical and artistic detail, Unveiling will appeal to readers of A.S. Byatt’s Possession and Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Beautifully written, it brings the venerable city of Rome vividly to life and illuminates the power of art, imagination, and beauty to speak directly to the heart.