Smith Award, 2015. [Rating: R] The Fourth novel in the "Tropical Frontier" series, The Cow Hunters is the sequel to The Good Dog. The Florida Prairie, 1860, cattle country. War looms, but to the settlers living along a jungled, tropical creek, it all seems very far away. For Becky Hackensaw, there are much more pressing matters, such as providing an education for her six children, but where to find someone willing to brave an uninhabited wilderness overrun with wild animals, alligators, poisonous snakes, and bloodthirsty mosquitoes?

    But a difficult investigation turns much tougher when all communication with the outside world is suddenly cut off.While Heller works diligently to reconstruct the scene of the crime, evidence mounts that a pathogenic event could be ravaging the rest of the planet. As night descends, fear mounts, and confusion reigns, the killer strikes again. If this is a global cataclysm, is someone now picking off the human race’s few remaining survivors? Is this the end of the world—or just the end of Joe Heller’s?

    An unforgettable evening awaits him... if he lives through it. Past collides with present... temptations and tensions simmer... until they erupt.

    By day, they gather herbs for Auntie’s healing potions; by night, Auntie spins tales of faraway lands and wicked fairies. Clara’s favorite story tells of three orphan infants—Clara, who was brought to Auntie by a stork; Maren, who arrived in a seashell; and their best friend, O’Neill, who was found beneath an apple tree.One day, Clara discovers shimmering scales just beneath her sister’s skin: Maren is becoming a mermaid and must be taken to the sea or she will die. So Clara, O’Neill, and the mermaid-girl set out for the shore. But the trio encounters trouble around every bend. Ensnared by an evil troupe of traveling performers, Clara and O’Neill must find a way to save themselves and the ever-weakening Maren.And always in the back of her mind, Clara wonders, if my sister is a mermaid, then what am I?

    Rooted in the homogenous suburbs of the 1970s, the novel explores the American propensity to pursue great ambitions, regardless of upbringing, that can result in lives that are larger than life. The four main characters meet at college and forge such lives, each achieving remarkable success in their chosen pursuits while condoning the choices that enable their success. The main character, Benjamin Franklin Matthews, the son of a printer and avid Revolutionary War buff, believes deeply in America, its founding principles, and “by the people, for the people” government. Inspired by the grand ideals of the Founding Fathers, Ben starts a newspaper and runs for political office, efforts aimed at righting a nation he perceives as falling short of its potential and promise. His three college friends, a writer who is also his business partner, a television news anchorwoman who was his lover, and a former college football star, play contributing roles in his rise to national prominence. In the end, Ben learns that grand ideals are elusive, difficult to maintain, and better left to the perfect among us.

    Definitely for the cerebral high concept sci fi fan.”A POST-APOCALYPTIC FIRST CONTACT EPIC — NO-BULL SCI-FI AT ITS BEST! Aliens, First-Contact, Collapse, Dreamtech, Revolution and Extinction. Twenty-first century: An exhausted Earth destroyed civilization.THAT WAS THE FIRST COLLAPSE.Twenty-second century: An intractable disease destroyed humanity.THAT WAS THE SECOND COLLAPSE.What little remains is the rural utopia known as Goah’s Gift, a rural paradise that expands a dying world. A world where you live quickly.A world where you love intensely.A world where you live quickly.A world where you love intensely.A WORLD WHERE YOU DIE CERTAINLYON YOUR TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY.Aliens have been watching us for millennia. They know us well.They know humankind cannot take a Third Collapse.They just revealed themselves. To a few.INSIDE THEIR DREAMS.—————BOOK 1 of the DREAMWORMS series includes:EPISODE I: 2399 First ContactThe wu-sarc is truly a wonder of alien technology, the dream of every dreamer.EPISODE II: Alien MasterDo not let the words fool you, Overseer Yog. Human speech is as unstable as the surface of the ocean during a storm. After centuries of study, I have learned to find the truth beneath the waves. This human loves her parent with unusual intensity, even for a young female.EPISODE III: 31st December 2399Propaganda is like a recreational drug: it feels good, it feels right, but it eventually corrupts you, and kills you.—————Is this book for YOU? No-Bull Sci-Fi! Do you love Science Fiction that feels like it matters? That digs into the truth of human condition and the purpose of civilization? Engaging characters, escapist settings, intense adventures, wildly imaginative plots and EPIC stakes.

    In his simple life, at his tiny house, he paints quiet masterpieces while living as a hermit. But with one phone call from a brash New York lawyer, Alex learns he’s inherited Castle Carrick, the grandest fortress in Northern Ireland. At Carrick, strange and dark events begin to swirl ever closer to Alex, turning his hoped-for quiet life inside out. Now, he must decide: flee from Ireland and give up his inheritance…or embrace the dark power which compels him to paint wondrous, yet terrifying things. The Fall of Castle Carrick - a suspenseful tale of solitude and sacrifice from author J Edward Neill

    Find out how she helps her new friends solve their problems.This is a heart-warming bedtime story that teaches young children about the value and importance of friendship, empathy, and kindness. It also helps them develop a deeper connection with nature.

    University of Miami freshman Cameron McKinney is in dire need of cash. In a few years, he will graduate with over 100,000 dollars in student loan debt. To make matters worse, he is utterly ignored by the opposite sex. College isn't quite what he pictured back home in freezing-cold Chicago. Fortunately, Cameron has a brilliant mind for numbers. He decides to start a sports betting website with the help of fellow classmate Dylan Posner, a notorious campus party animal. Within weeks, hundreds of students sign up, and the business is a runaway success. Cameron begins making thousands of dollars of per week, tax-free. He uses the money to pay off his loans and fund his new South Beach lifestyle. As his operation grows, so does his ego. Cameron raises the stakes, taking on a group of jet-setting international students as customers. He begins dating Grace Cooper, the hard-drinking, purity ring-wearing daughter of a prominent Republican Party lobbyist. As the business grows, Cameron's problems multiply further. His dysfunctional romance and his business partner's reckless lifestyle threaten to take them all down.Do you love easy-to-read books filled with wealth, intrigue, and palm trees? If so, don't miss reading High Rollers!

    In this collection of sometimes outrageous, sometimes sad, often heartwarming interconnected vignettes, author Alex Shahla enters the fray with a delightful confessional celebration of family life told in stories from a dad’s unique perspective. Centered around the untruths parents regularly tell their kids in an effort to protect (or silence) them—from “Daddy Loves his Job” to “There’s a Jolly Fat Man who Brings You Presents (Assembly Required)” —Lying to Children is an unforgettable familial history filled with laughter, tears, and life lessons, and brimming over with a somewhat-less-than-perfect suburban dad’s unwavering love.

    Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows, covered in ash, and wearing a pair of costume wings. With his mother and sister in California, and unable to reach his father, a New York City detective likely on his way to the disaster, Kyle makes the split-second decision to bring the girl home.What follows is their story, told in alternating points of view, as Kyle tries to unravel the mystery of the girl so he can return her to her family. But what if the girl has forgotten everything, even her own name? And what if the more Kyle gets to know her, the less he wants her to go home?

    Three generations of women. A lifetime of love. In Paris, 1958, Grace Kelly’s royal wedding dress is still all the rage in fashion circles. Rose, a seamstress at a famous atelier, has just been entrusted with sewing another gown in its image. An orphan, she needs her job to survive. But when Rose finds herself in love with the bride’s handsome brother, she must decide what matters most: love or security.Sixty years later, Rocky is thrilled to be marrying the love of her life. He truly is her perfect fit. But there’s just one problem: her family’s heirloom wedding dress isn’t. Rocky knows this admission will break her mother’s heart. What she doesn’t know is why her mother is so set on the dress—or about the shocking secret that changed her mother’s life decades before, as she prepared to wear the dress herself. As the wedding day approaches, the mother-daughter pair will finally confront long-buried heartaches, and it might just be the dress that brings them closer than ever.Life-affirming, heartwarming and timeless, Brenda Janowitz’s The Grace Kelly Dress is about the importance of tradition, new and old, and the power of a dress to fulfill even the most impossible of dreams.

    It is everywhere: in their new neighborhood, in their old apartment complex, and in the bodies of Ringo’s beloved family. What should a dog do when he survives a plague? Scared and confused, Ringo sets out on his journey.

    But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.But what if she had made a different choice?What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz at the age of twenty-four, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?Entwining Marie Curie’s real story with Marya Zorawska’s fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled—and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya’s life, Jillian Cantor’s unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines how the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved – as well as the world at large and course of science and history—might have been irrevocably changed in ways both great and small.

    A train carrying exiled German prisoners from a labor camp arrives in southern France. Within moments, word spreads that Nazi capture is imminent, and the men flee for the woods, desperate to disappear across the Spanish border. One stays behind, determined to ride the train until he reaches home, to find a woman he refers to simply as “her.” 1937. Leonora Carrington is a twenty-year-old British socialite and painter when she meets Max Ernst, an older, married artist whose work has captivated Europe. She follows him to Paris, into the vibrant world of studios and cafes where rising visionaries of the Surrealist movement like Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali are challenging conventional approaches to art and life. Inspired by their freedom, Leonora begins to experiment with her own work, translating vivid stories of her youth onto canvas and gaining recognition under her own name. It is a bright and glorious age of enlightenment—until war looms over Europe and headlines emerge denouncing Max and his circle as “degenerates,” leading to his arrest and imprisonment. Left along as occupation spreads throughout the countryside, Leonora battles terrifying circumstances to survive, reawakening past demons that threaten to consume her. As Leonora and Max embark on remarkable journeys together and apart, the full story of their tumultuous and passionate love affair unfolds, spanning time and borders as they seek to reunite and reclaim their creative power in a world shattered by war. When their paths cross with Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector and socialite working to help artists escape to America, nothing will be the same.