First published in Macomber's Digital Magazine, these heartwarming stories are now available exclusively in this collection.A CEDAR COVE DAD’S ADVICEWelcome back to Cedar Cove. When we last saw Zach and Rosie Cox in 311 Pelican Court, they had divorced and were awarded joint custody of their two children: Eddie and Allison. Now a grown man, Eddie Cox is experiencing marital problems of his own and turns to his parents for advice. Will Ed and his wife, Emma, be able to resolve their issues and find love again?A FRESH NEW YEARAt the beginning of every January, Elle always started off writing down her goals for the year. The usual ones were: Visit her parents more often. Lose ten pounds. Be a good aunt to her niece and nephew. Visit Venice. And of course, find love. This was a fresh new year and Elle was finally feeling ready to start dating again. She set up an online dating profile and before she knew it, she was going on a date. What she didn’t know was that she would be catfished. Is there any chance to salvage her dreams and achieve the one goal she’s always dreamed of: love?DADDY’S GIRLFrom the time she could remember, Molly had always been a Daddy’s girl. When she makes the shocking discovery her dad isn’t her biological father, her whole life is called into question. What's more, her biological father doesn't have long to live, and Molly has to decide whether she wants to meet him before it's too late. Will she make the right decision?

    He plays sports, she plays music. He's rich, and she's poor. They argue, and they fight, and they fall in love. So they get married, and make a home together. They work hard, they enjoy life, they make plans for the future. Then they learn that they don't have much time left.

    Isabella is a beautiful Mexican woman that everyone in town loves, including the hapless Pete and the wealthy, powerful Jack...but most of all, Carl.Part romance, part police procedural, IN THE SHADOW OF EL PASO contains two short stories by Frank Zafiro. Both stories explore love, race, class and the ambiguity that exists on the southern border.

    Winner of every major Japanese literary prize, his work translated around the globe, Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) is a great and unique figure in the literature of the twentient century. "Irrevocably enmeshed in Japanese culture, he is by virtue of his religion [Endo was Roman Catholic] irrevocably alienated from it" (Geoffrey O'Brian, Village Voice). It is this aspect that has made Endo so particularly intriguing to his readership at home and abroad. Now gathered in a New Directions Bibelot edition are five of Endo's supreme short stories exemplifying his style and his interests, presenting, as it were, Endo in a nutshell. "Unzen," the opening story, touches on the subject of Silence Endo's most famous novel -- that is the torture and martyrdom of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan. Next comes "A Fifty-year-old Man" in which Mr. Chiba takes up ballroom dancing and faces the imminent death of his brother and his dog Whitey. In "Japanese in Warsaw" a business man has a strange encounter; in "The Box," an old photo album and a few postcards have a tale to reveal. Finally included is "The Case of Isobe," the opening chapter of Endo's novel Deep River in which Isobe, a member of a tour group, hopes to find in India the reincarnation of the wife he took so much for granted.

    Grab a mug of hot chocolate, sit back and enjoy a fairytale New York Christmas.... When Londoner Penny decides to visit her best friend Kate in New York for the festive season, the surprise appearance of a previous suitor sends her plans for a relaxing, carefree visit into complete disarray. When she and Mike last saw each other, the timing couldn't have been worse. But when Mike decides to show Penny the very best of what a snowy, festive, New York has to offer - resolving to make it a fairytale Christmas - will she be able to resist his charms this time round? And will finding one other again turn out to be the greatest Christmas gift?

    Until now, however, there has been no anthology of Shelley's work. The Mary Shelley Reader is a unique new collection that fills this gap. In addition to the original and complete 1818 version of her masterpiece Frankenstein, the book offers a new text of the novella Mathilda--an extraordinary tale of incest, guilt, and atonement that was not published until 1959 and has been out of print since then. Also included are seven short stories that range from gentle satire to fantastic tales of reanimation, diabolical transformation, and immortality. Eight essays and reviews are reprinted here for the first time since their original publication, and eleven representative letters help bring to life a remarkable literary and historical figure--author, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. An illuminating introduction, a chronology, explanatory notes, and a bibliography make The Mary Shelley Reader indispensable for readers of English Romantic literature.

    

    I also wanted to deal with something I've kept at arm's length--Muslim extremism. Add to this Somali pirates, self-loathing Western agents, and a disastrous stop-over in Rome before heading on to Nairobi, and you have...well, you have the makings for some explosions.I hope you enjoy it. If you do, then of course don't resist the impulse to run out and purchase my back catalog, but I'd also suggest picking up a copy of Agents of Treachery--it's an excellent collection for any fan of spy fiction. For fans of the genre, I'd call it required reading.

    Friends seeing each other with new eyes. The hesitant touch of new lovers. A first glance. A first word. A first touch. A first kiss. Take a journey through thirteen erotic shorts, poems and art to relive that first-time feeling. Naughty Bedtime Stories: First Taste will stir the butterflies, curl the toes and send hearts racing. After all, nothing tastes as good as naughty feels…

    If she didn’t marry the man her parents had chosen for her, they would lose everything. Nandini wasn’t willing to sacrifice her life for the sake of paying her father’s gambling debts. And the groom, while handsome and very successful, was not the kind her parents would ever pick under ideal circumstances. In fact, he would be the most unsuitable groom since he didn't have a long line of royal ancestors like Nandini's family. But something about the groom’s proposal touched Nandini's heart. Will Nandini agree to marry the man her parents had picked? Find out in—The Proposal Note: This is a fictional short story with an approximate length of 4500 words or 25 pages. It is a lighthearted and clean romance that is meant for entertainment purposes only.

    A retired public school teacher, Miss Budge embarks on a series of slice-of-life adventures that take readers into the intriguing and authentic lives of Southern church women. "What our readers love about Miss Budge is that they all know her personally. In fact, they all are her in one way or another. Daphne's stories are instantly recognizable to those in a church community, and that's where the real humour and real pathos comes from. Daphne is a keen observer of the strange and wonderful subculture of 'the church lady.'" Brett Alan Dewing The Christian Courier (Canada) "Mildred Budge is a forthright, almost larger than life, woman who challenges every reader's faith walk by being transparent about her own. She reminds us that Jesus loves us the way we are but He loves us too much to leave us as we are." Julie Innes Evangel

    Despite the warnings, Aenarion rides out upon his dragon Indraugnir to seek the prize in order to save his homeland of Ulthuan. The journey is fraught with danger, and Aenarion must confront daemons, spirits and the elemental forces of nature itself if he is to succeed. But in drawing the blade from the Black Anvil, he will unleash the ancient and malevolent force that will tear the elven race apart.The events in this story form the underpinnings of the entire Warhammer mythos. What Aenarion does here changes the face of the world in ways that won't be resolved until the End Times themselves...This story is also available in the anthology Age of Legend.

    Linked, equal but opposite, these blades are destined to be wielded by two of the greatest heroes of the Age of Darkness. And as the spears themselves, Appolonian and Dionysian, are equal and opposite, so too are those to whom they were gifted. This is their story too. The warrior-scholar, a savant and a servant. The warrior-king, a savage and a soldier. Their fates entwined in ways they do not understand, they carry the blades as both gift and curse, fulfilment of destiny unseen by any save the Master of Mankind. Read It Because This is truly a Horus Heresy story unlike any other. Chris Wraight crafts an elegiac look at two heroes of the Heresy, through the blades that bond them and forge a destiny that may well extend far beyond the stories that have yet been told…

    Francesca, Kelly, and Kelly's teenage sister Amanda are only meant to spend several hours at the pool together, while their professor parents finish up an afternoon of work at their lush, Oregon college. The younger girls are caught up in hair braiding and Marco Polo, but Amanda is poised on the cusp of an adult realm bursting with cruel secrets. When the girls run into a beautiful, anxious woman and her toddler, Amanda starts to act in ways that may well transform an unremarkable day into a dark turning point in all their lives. By turns enchanting and terrifying, and always bursting with vivid emotion, “Frito Lay” brings us deep into our own childhood memories, reminding us that the dark and sinister were never quite as far away as we might have believed.

    Life is good until the father who abandoned her as an infant turns up dead in the swamp. Who else can help her but Ida Belle, Gertie and Fortune? And they've got their work cut out for them as they try to solve two mysteries - who Hugo Ancelet really was, and who killed him?