Her formidable mother's health is declining, her fearless teenage daughter wants to leave but won't say where, and the new high school principal has problems with her unorthodox teaching of physics.And then there is the upcoming ceremony at the Art Museum. In ten days, a gallery will be named after her late father, Tig Henriksen, a modernist furniture designer whose sought-after cult pieces hide a troubled narrative. With a mixture of anticipation and dread, Elin prepares to reunite with her once-estranged siblings--Mette, a free-spirited singer-songwriter, and the serious, emotionally distant architect Casper--hoping they'll finally grapple with hard truths they've so far refused to accept.In the countdown to the event, as her daughter's risk-taking mounts, her mother's fragility intensifies and strange packages land on her doorstep (including a yellow-eyed dog), Elin's only relief is confiding to a dead physicist.Struggling with the paradoxes of truth and clarity, love and witness, genius and ambition, and her own ambivalent connection to her confessor, she inches toward confronting not just the explosive potential of memory but the costly fallout of silence.Told with dazzling insight, intelligence, and compassion, Half Life is a beautifully rendered story about family truths and the profound human need to be believed.

    A mysterious lump on her throat is making it hard. Handsome Dr. Jeremy Nelson is making it harder.

    Martin took the coward’s path to save her skin. She has lived with that decision, eking out a life as an indentured servant on a space station far from home. Only now, fate has decided to give Rebecca another chance. A ghost from her past plans to execute a daring rescue from the prison bowels of the station Rebecca now works. Rebecca has to face the same decision she made all those years ago. Could she watch her friends be murdered? Or could she, just for once, be a hero?

    Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, sacrifice and revelation...This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed bestselling international writer Christos Tsiolkas takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and characters that will never let you go.

    Illustrator and writer's Carolyn Marie Castagna's first shared short story.A small icicle hanging from a roof peers inside a window at a small reading room, and learns about magical human qualities, and the importance of the one most special human feeling.

    In these ten unsettling tales of unexpected madness master storyteller Roald Dahl explores what happens when we let go our sanity. .Among other stories, you'll meet the husband with a jealous fixation on the family cat, the landlady who wants her guests to stay forever, the man whose taste for pork leads him astray and the wife with a pathological fear of being late.Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in the four centenary editions featuring his own stories: Madness, Deception, Cruelty and Lust.--back cover

    Ancrum's The Legend of the Golden Raven novella, part fairy tale and part gritty reality, follows a boy as he descends into madness. August and Jack weren’t meant to be friends. One is a misfit with a pyro streak and the other a golden boy on the rugby team. But as their relationship intensifies, Jack slowly begins to lose his mind—taking readers on an intimate journey into the fantasy kingdom creeping into the edges of his world.As the novella moves back and forth between a medieval legend and our own, contemporary world, nothing is as it seems. The boys alienate everyone around them as they struggle with their sanity and as Jack’s quest to fulfill a dark prophecy begins to consume them both . . . Devour this companion novella to The Wicker King. An ImprintBook

    A young man finds out from a fortune teller that there’s always a price to be paid. A rich man doesn’t quite have the 25th high school reunion experience he expected. Beware of strangers on a train. A dog may not be man’s best friend. An aging hitman takes a trip down memory lane.

    It was Halloween and Samantha`s contractions were unbearable so her husband rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their new bundle of joy. Mike told the doctor and nurse to take great care of his wife. The doctor and nurse reassured Mike they would take very good care of her and not to worry. Mike waited patiently in the waiting room as the doctor and nurse delivered their beautiful baby. After a few hours the baby finally arrived and the doctor entered the waiting room and told Mike to come in the room and see his new baby. Mike entered and his wife was all smiles and said "Honey, it`s a boy!" "I think he looks like a Johnny. What do you think?" asked his wife. "Johnny sounds fine to me," replied Mike. Mike was so excited and held his baby boy in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks and said "Darling, I think he likes me." Mike stayed the night in his wife's room with their new baby, but as they were both sleeping, an unforeseen force came in their room that was about to change their lives forever, when they both woke in the morning. Morning came, and Samantha was discharged from the hospital, and time for their new baby to be raised in their new home. It wasn't until after little Johnny turned 6 years of age that things around the Delany Estate turned deadly. The first sign that Johnny had the mark of the beast was June 6. It was the 6th month, 6th day, and Johnny was 6. All the numbers represented 666.

    Wishing to provide entertainment at the College's Gaudy Night, the annual Christmas party, Professor Davies created a "spooky story," which he read aloud to the gathering. That story, "Revelation from a Smoky Fire," is the first in this wonderful, haunting collection. A tradition quickly became established and, for eighteen years, Davies delighted and amused the Gaudy Night guests with his tales of the supernatural. Here, gathered together in one volume, are those eighteen stories, just as Davies first read them.

    She's taken on an unexpected detour back to her life shortly before she died. But she's seeing the world from a different point of view. This is the first time she has ever experienced a detour being the best part of a journey. 'A wonderful, warm read that's guaranteed to tug at the heartstrings,' author Colette Caddle. Checkout Girl was published as part of the short story compilation, Moments, in aid of the tsunami. It was also part of a short story collection published in Germany. Aimee Alexander is the pen name of bestselling Irish author Denise Deegan Checkout Girl includes a short excerpt from Pause to Rewind, a contemporary novel by Aimee Alexander.

    At the heart of this bold and seductive novel is an alleged crime committed many years before the story opens. Mala is the reclusive old woman suspected of murder who is delivered to the Paradise Alms House after a judge finds her unfit to stand trial. When she arrives at her new home, frail and mute, she is placed in the tender care of Tyler, a vivacious male nurse, who becomes her unlikely confidante and the storyteller of Mala's extraordinary life.In luminous, sensual prose, internationally acclaimed writer Shani Mootoo combines diverse storytelling traditions to explore identity, gender, and violence in a celebration of our capacity to love.

    It’s a law somewhere, I think. Maybe Guyana. Apparently not in New Hampshire, because the box kept jumping.All Katie Lin wants is to get away from the magic, mayhem, and the never-ending war of her family. Unfortunately, someone has other ideas, and sends her a box. A box that jumps.The tiny fire hazard inside sends her right into the path of a dragon war, the Crow King, and a reluctant elf prince, forcing her to admit that sometimes, running away doesn’t work as planned.

    In this empowering retelling, she uses the mythology of the goddess to weave a common thread through the past and present. By the end of this book, Aphrodite make you believe in the possibility of your own healing.

    Emotionally, physically and sexually abused by the hands of her own mother, revenge is looking bitter sweet as Nancy faces her own inner demons, one being her best friend.