What starts out as the happiest day in history for the local inhabitants soon turns into a race against the clock to find the lucky winner and cash in the lottery ticket. A priest with verbal incontinence, a sweet little old lady with secret sexual fantasies about the local butcher, a village mayor who's held power for thirty years, and a mailman in love with the wife of a villainous baker are just a few of the quirky characters who will make you laugh and occasionally bring a tear to your eye as you enjoy everyday situations taken to extremes. A Lucky Day is a heartwarming comedy peopled by a highly entertaining cast of characters. Truly a novel to be savored slowly, if possible.

    In this book, a woman who has lost her identity to the Witness Protection Program flirts with trusting her life to the Mafioso hired to kill her.

    She edits books from her small apartment. She occasionally goes out to the local diner for a tuna melt. She enjoys living in Worcester. It's where the Worcester Lunch Car Company made diners from 1906 to 1957. And now she gets to enjoy one in all its vintage glory. But her quiet, predictable evening at the diner is disturbed when four restaurant workers come in complaining about a theft. And her inquisitive mind soon notices something ... * * * Diner Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is the first book in the Diner Short Story Mysteries series. These short stories are about 15-20 pages each and feature authentic diners around Massachusetts. Author Lisa Shea goes to each diner personally to write up its sights, sounds, and aromas. That way you, the reader, can take a virtual vacation to these historic locations! Visit Lisa's webpages to see photos and write-ups of the diners. All of the Diner Mystery series contain no violence, no swearing, and no intimacy, so they are suitable for teens and up. You can read the books one-by-one as they are released, or you can wait for the boxed sets to be published once the series gets enough books in it. It's your choice! I try to write them right after I visit, so that's why there are sometimes gaps in the release schedule. It's not always easy to get to a diner when they're open! A portion of all proceeds benefits battered women's shelters.

    When she meets Adam, a fellow sleuth and collector, they embark on their biggest adventure yet: the Whitson house. The house is a marvel, and its secrets are even stranger than Kendra imagined.Kendra stumbles upon the find of a lifetime. But she may have signed on for more than she bargained. There’s a darkness in the house that wasn’t there before, a pair of eyes in every corner, watching, waiting. And Adam isn’t at all who he claimed to be.

    Right isn’t quite as easy as Amy first thought.Following in the footsteps of her favourite New York movies Amy is determined to have that romantic Manhattan moment. But like all good romances – love often turns up in the most unexpected of places…A heart-warming, 23 page short story from best-selling author, Claudia Carroll, this is the perfect read for Valentine’s Day.

    Success, love, marriage – they’ve all come at no cost. But David is about to find out that the things he takes for granted aren’t all what they seem.

    A boy who planned to be the next school shooter. A patient with OCD whose loved ones really did suffer every time he missed a ritual. A choir boy who claimed he was being molested -- not by a priest -- but by God Himself. A patient with PTSD who gave me nightmares. A husband and wife who accused each other of abuse, and only one of them was telling the truth.And how could I ever forget, Patient #220.The problem is, my patients have a habit of dying. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the common denominator. Or maybe that's just the cost of taking on exceptionally broken clients.Either way, I'll never stop trying to help.

    Absolutely not a romance.A short story about a child with a gift for seeing past the world.

    An enthralling glimpse into the Intangible world by an "author [who] has a way with words that just pulls you into the story and holds you there until the very last word, and even then you just do not want to be let go" (Shelly Hammond).Luke and his twin sister Sera have unusual abilities. Hers is a gift--she can heal with a touch of her hand. His is a curse--he can see the future but he can't do anything about it.On a hike up the mountain, Luke has a vision unlike any other--one that leaves him terrified. Knowing that it will come true--and that he must do everything in his power to stop it--leaves his own future uncertain.(This is a short story, and approximately 16 pages long.)Intangible (Book One), Imaginable (Book Two), and Indomitable (an Intangible novella) are available now. Book Three coming late 2015.

    Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award.In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection—and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.A father’s life is upended by his son’s night terrors—and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of “empty-nest syndrome”; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes—on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there’s something off, something sinister, in his late parents’ house.Dan Chaon’s stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm—in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.

    Positioned beneath a statue of Leto, the goddess of motherhood, the crime is weighted with meaning and, Ellen discovers, remarkably similar to one from a decade past.Ellen's professional duty is to protect the child, but she's not equipped to contend with a killer. As she races to connect the dots, she knows her time is running out. And the stakes are high: if she fails, another mother is sure to make the ultimate sacrifice.

    

    She started seeing them when she got on the bus that morning. She didn't know what they meant...until she saw them run out...

    Imagine opening your front door one morning only to have your life horribly ripped apart.In a moment, you're implicated in the murder of your entire family and hounded by something not of this world.And the very thing that did this to you is now asking for something more-Your faith.

    But, when she needs to do some research of this kissing kind, things may get a little more heated than she expected.Research has never been so fun.WARNING: This 11k short has no vampires, shape shifter or scorching sex, but it might make you snort your diet Coke out your nose.