. . AND THE HOUSE.No train has run on this railroad since the end of the Civil War - a railroad built by a servitor to perfect evil - and its rusted tracks run right behind the house. Justin Collier expects his respite in Gast, TN to be relaxing if not a bit dull, but he will find out soon enough that those same train tracks once led to a place worse than Hell.WELCOME TO THE GAST HOUSEA historical bed and breakfast or a monument to the obscene? Collier doesn't need to know the building's rich history: women raped to death for sport, slaves beheaded and threshed into the soil, and pregnant teenagers buried alive. Who or what could mitigate such horrors over 150 years ago? And what is the atrocious connection between the old railroad and the house? Each room hides a new, revolting secret. At night, he can smell the mansion's odors and hear its appalling whispers. Little girls giggle where there are no little girls, and out back, when Collier listens closely, he can hear the train's whistle and see the barely human things chained up in its clattering prison cars. Little does he know, the mansion and the railroad aren't haunted by ghosts but an unspeakable carnality and a horror as palpable as exicted human flesh.WELCOME TO A PLACE WORSE THAN HELL. . .

    wild' while showcasing women's strength and purpose, and the power of friendship and laughter.Loretta is a school librarian, who embarks on compiling The Dangerous Book for Menopausal Women while waiting to collect her son from after-school activities.Chance is a teenager, who discovers an unusual creative outlet to offset the strain of her controlling mother.Riva is dedicated to the wetlands sanctuary she created, who is seeking a way to fulfil her promise to her dying sister to do something 'absolutely spectacular'.Within a clearing in the woods by a lake stands a den, a secret sanctuary and eventual meeting place for all three women . . .

    Amid the strange, disjointed rhythms of her days and nights and another impending winter in upstate New York, Ari is a tree without roots, struggling to keep her branches aloft.When Mina, a one-time cult musician — older, self-contained, alone, and nine-months pregnant —moves to town, Ari sees the possibility of a new friend, despite her unfortunate habit of generally mistrusting women. Soon they become comrades-in-arms, and the previously hostile terrain seems almost navigable.With piercing insight, purifying anger, and outrageous humor, Elisa Albert issues a wake-up call to a culture that turns its new mothers into exiles, and expects them to act like natives. Like Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Anne Enright’s The Gathering, this is a daring and resonant novel from one of our most visceral writers.

    The sign of the four --The adventure of the blue carbuncle --The adventure of the speckled band.

    Within days, Layla finds herself far from her accustomed social whirl, assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, and destined, in her opinion, to go completely mad with boredom. But once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of the town is entangled in the thorny past of the Romeyn dynasty. At the Romeyn house, twelve-year-old Willa is desperate to learn everything in her quest to acquire her favorite virtues of ferocity and devotion—a search that leads her into a thicket of mysteries, including the questionable business that occupies her charismatic father and the reason her adored aunt Jottie remains unmarried. Layla’s arrival strikes a match to the family veneer, bringing to light buried secrets that will tell a new tale about the Romeyns. As Willa peels back the layers of her family’s past, and Layla delves deeper into town legend, everyone involved is transformed—and their personal histories completely rewritten.

    She also acquires a new family: mother-in-law Audrey, disapproving and suspicious of Skyla’s nomadic past; father-in-law Walt, gruff but kind; and Thomas’s brothers, sofa-bound Jeffrey, and Dennis, who moved across the country seemingly to avoid the family. Skyla settles into marriage and motherhood, but quiet life in small-town Wisconsin can’t quell feelings of restlessness. Then into her life comes Madame Picard, the local psychic from the disreputable bookstore, Mystic Books, and new neighbor, Roxanne, whose goal in life is to have twelve kids even though she can’t manage the five she has. Despite her family’s objections, Skyla befriends Roxanne and gets a job at the bookstore, and life gets fuller and more complicated than she ever imagined. Exceptionally heartwarming and inevitably bittersweet, A Scattered Life is a story that will stay with the reader long after the last page is read.

    For as long as she can remember its just been Cream and Jackie. Bouncing from city to city with her mom was hard. She had to leave friends behind and move on with her life. Jackie is hiding a secret from Cream that may or may not cause harm to her family. Once Jackie back is against the way she has no choice but to tell the truth. The Finally settle in Cincinnati, Ohio and her life changes for the better.. Or worst. She meets and fall in love with Coffee, but does Coffee have what it take to keep Cream in Cincinnati? Coffee was the man in the streets. Even at a young age he was a boss. But Coffee has always had a problem with "keeping it in his pants". Now that he has Cream will he change his ways or lose her forever?

    

    Most of all, he loves to win. Just one person stands in his way: super-jock Shane. Then along comes an off-the-wall teacher and a wicked new challenge the Energex Iron Kid Triathalon. The perfect chance to take Shane on and win. Except Josh can't swim. He vowed he never would. If he's going to enter the triathalon he will have to overcome his fear of water and take a first step to confront a secret burried too deep in his past to think about.

    Powerfully conjuring up the world of the mining camps and the colorful communities of the central Rocky Mountains, Ellis interweaves an invaluable history of the nineteenth-century American West with a valiant personal tale.

    Now he’s a disc jockey, at one with the music and his faithful audience . . . until the day when he is swept into a battle invisible to all but the participants.For nearly five centuries, Cornelius Agrippa has fought against an evil that has threatened to corrupt and destroy everything good and untainted in the world. Now, Max has joined the battle. It wasn't his idea to fight a demonic entity that can become anything it wants: an undying monster or the most desirable woman in the world. Max has been chosen by fate to fight those who would use magick to destroy freedom and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world. Along with Agrippa and Valerie Drake, a beautiful, talented singer, Max is the only hope of the free world.

    Norah, the oldest, is a type A obsessive who hasn't forgiven Raine, the middle sister, for ruining her wedding day six years ago. Raine is Norah's opposite, a wild child/performance artist/follow-your-bliss hippie chick who ran off to California. The only thing the two have in common is their ability to drive Courtney, their youngest sister, crazy.When her longtime boyfriend proposes, Courtney decides it's finally time to call a truce and bring the three sisters together. After all, they're grown-ups now, right? But it turns out that family ghosts aren't easily defeated—and neither are first loves. Soon Courtney finds herself reexamining every choice she has made in the past six years—including the man she's about to marry—and the value of reconnecting with the sisters she knows she needs, in spite of everything.

    Georgia Young's wonderful life--great friends, family, and successful career--aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless. When she decides to make some major changes in her life, including quitting her job as an optometrist and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love. Georgia’s bravery reminds us that it’s never too late to become the person you want to be, and that taking chances, with your life and your heart, are always worthwhile. Big-hearted, genuine, and universal, shows what can happen when you face your fears, take a chance, and open yourself up to life, love, and the possibility of a new direction.

    Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage—the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist—find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other’s dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel. Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption”) is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and “freelance self”; in other words, she’s adrift. Meanwhile, Paul—the product of good hippies who were bad parents—finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma—an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity. As Paul is swept up by the promise of fame and fortune, Veblen heroically keeps the peace between all the damaged parties involved in their upcoming wedding, until she finds herself falling for someone—or something—else. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that squirrel really thinking? Replete with deadpan photos and sly appendices, The Portable Veblen is at once an honest inquiry into what we look for in love and an electrifying reading experience.