Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.

    Can you imagine Draupadi in a Brothel house? How did she end there and who is responsible for that? Read this short story to meet her and know about her life.

    Arbitrating judgments for horse breeders in Isfaridesh can't compare to his journeymen circuit riding the disputed Nabosian border, and his partner, Gisa Protz, can't stand him. His thoughts are with his troubled sister Ella as he arrives in the small town of Keman, but what awaits him in a luthier's shop will change his life forever."The Luthier of Keman" is a short story that takes place twenty years before Shatter (The Children of Man, #1).

    A Louisiana farmer sees the image of Christ appear on the freezer door and questions the meaning of faith. In a Maine resort town, Miss Langevin, a spinster who could write a book on disappointment, now gets a chance to help another woman escape it. And in the title story, a science teacher's modest dreams and painful memories erode his existence like water entering stone.

    They test their friendship with their wickedly fun Seduction Game. Each woman implores the use of a different method of seduction in hopes of proving they are the better catch. The only problem is they practice their game on ONE very lucky man. Things get sticky when feelings get involved and backstabbing and foul play are sure to muddy the playing field. Is their friendship strong enough to survive? Or will they find out that matters of the heart are better left unplayed?

    These small town, clean contemporary romances are about first love, second chances and happily ever afters.Team MomJulie's calm life is thrown a curve ball when her brother arrives the night before his seven-month deployment asking her to take care of his son. Noting her nephew's interest in baseball, Julie signs him up for little league. She's anything but thrilled to find out that his coach is a celebrity.Stealing His HeartJust days after her return to St. Marys, Darcy runs into her childhood crush. Given that she was twelve and he was nineteen at the time, it's not surprising that he doesn't remember her. Her dreams of him coming back to find her grown up and so beautiful that he can't help but fall instantly in love with her should have been long forgotten. All he can ever be is a reminder of how much she lost when she veered off the road to avoid an oncoming car.Love of a LifetimeFaith's boyfriend has started mentioning the "M" word. Her family and friends are thrilled that she's finally found someone, pointing out that Ian (the husband she lost in Iraq four years earlier) wouldn't expect her to mourn him forever. There's just one problem: Faith isn't in love with Connor. Feeling pressure from all sides, she jumps at the chance to get away from St. Marys for a few days. Her escape to the Georgia Mountains isn't supposed to include waking up to find a stranger in her room.Dare to LoveWhen Sabrina arrives for a job interview, she never expects to run into the man who broke her heart six years ago. Trent is a painful souvenir of a first love that went terribly wrong. Four months of being unemployed is the only reason she agrees to work for him. For the present, she can't escape the cruel trick fate has dealt her. There will be no running away from Trent this time.Yours, With LoveAn unexpected inheritance brings Ellen back to her hometown of St. Marys. After an absence of ten years, she never expects to run into Quinn, one of her sister's old boyfriends and her teenage obsession. If it's true that it's a small world, it's also true that it can be a cruel one. The good-looking eighteen-year-old who touched her young heart is no more. In his place is a man whose life has been torn apart by tragedy and loss.Love at LastWorking on her grandmother's house gives Rosemary a reason to escape the media attention of a very public broken engagement. In St. Marys, she hopes to rekindle the music that used to flow easily from her mind to paper and rediscover the girl who's somehow lost her way. Instead she finds someone who challenges her beliefs about love and tests her resolve to guard her heart.

    She's never met anyone like American Steve Rossi, and it's hard to resist his good looks and easy confidence. But there's another side to Steve, and when he pulls a knife during a fight, Maggie begins to wonder what other secrets he's concealing. Joshua Lewis is everything Steve's not: kind, considerate and honest. And he's black. When he and Maggie become friends, Steve's true colours are revealed and Maggie begins to wonder if her feelings for Joshua are as paltonic as she first thought...

    Captain Charles Davis, West Point '39, flies B-17s with the 19th Bomb Group. Lieutenant John T. "Jack" Davis flies P-40s with the 21st Pursuit Squadron. The two young men are part of the reinforcements sent to the Philippines in the late fall of 1941. Charlie must fly his B-17 across the Pacific with a poorly-trained, inexperienced crew just to reach Clark Field, his base in the Philippines. Jack arrives in Manila with his squadron mates to discover there are no airplanes ready for them to fly. To their north, on the island of Formosa, the Japanese Army and Navy wait for word from Tokyo to go to war, with forces that greatly outnumber the Philippines garrison. When the war begins the two brothers must call upon everything they have in terms of skill and training to survive.

    Follow the lives of Pastor Dan and Anna as they meet, get engaged and begin their lives together. This anthology combines the short stories: A Bride for Pastor Dan, Ready Made Family, The Bridesmaid, Riley’s Song and Heartbreak.

    Sainsbury. Two short, punchy, action-packed episodes in each book.They murdered his parents, shot him in the head, and left him to die. They should have made sure.Twenty years after Tom Lewis watched his parents die, those responsible are being killed. One by one.Gentle, brain-damaged Tom, a giant of a man who can barely speak, can’t be responsible for their deaths. Can he?When Tom Lewis was shot, something new was created. Something unique. Something deadly. Something patient enough to plan revenge for twenty long years.Meet Bedlam Boy

    THE KING HENRY TAPES:Book 1 - The Foul Mouth and the Fanged LadyBook 2 - The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing CoyotesKING HENRY SHORTS:#1 The Foul Mouth - Little King Henry #2 The Foul Mouth - Conquering Hero#3 The Foul Mouth - Friendship is Madness

    A lonely teenage girl falls in love with an older, married neighbor. A woman attends a party at the home of her boyfriend’s ex-wife. A schoolteacher gets fired for teaching time incorrectly to grade-school students. And a young woman recovering from a breakup receives guidance from a drunk therapist. Poignant and sharply rendered, Otis’s stories seek answers to the questions of whom we love and why, how we search for love, lose it, or find it—sometimes at the last moment and in the most unlikely places. Quirky and hilarious, these stories display a knowing affection for human strangeness.

    This action changes the course of her reality and now has Rhyon contemplating if it all was worth it. On top of her new issue, she’s still separated from Santana, and that leaves her heart fractured. She yearns for him, but she could ruin everything she’s worked so hard for if she was to pursue the very man who’s captured her heart. Santana is saddened that the woman he so desperately wants has shunned him from her life. Rhyon left him hanging with no explanation for her bizarre behavior. Santana tried to figure out where they went wrong, but when Rhyon continues to keep him in the dark, he gives up his quest to keep her in his life. Unknowingly, he has no idea that his new interest may be the reason why the woman he longs for refuses to accept him. Will Santana realize that he’s been entertaining the enemy all along or will Rhyon come to her senses and fight for the man she’s deemed hers?

    The Lost Coast is a six-part novella, written to accompany the six episodes of the second season of Homecoming, an audio series starring Catherine Keener, David Schwimmer, and Oscar Isaac.The two works are designed to be read in alternating installments - Episode One of the podcast, then Chapter One of the book, then Episode Two, and so on - but other sequences are probably fine too.

    She knows God handed her a life of hardship, especially when her Dad gives her away in marriage to a man she doesn't know. However, she proves to be a true mountain girl with spirit, determination, feistiness and fiery spunk. Laine's unabashed account of events, before and during the first months of her marriage, draws the reader spellbound into a story that will linger like mists shrouding distant mountains.