Each book in this powerful Civil War trilogy from award-winning novelist Lynn Austin's powerful Civil War trilogy offers a unique and shattering perspective on the conflict while exploring the deep affect the war had on the faith of a nation.

    It is not about terrorism, the holocaust, or understanding death. They are the framework for this heartwarming story about a never-a-serious-thought high school senior and his best friend, a Deaf-blind, legless old man, who teaches him how to capture and hold, The Pristine American Dream. Pristine, "Characteristics of the earliest period or condition: original: still pure: uncorrupted: unspoiled [Pristine beauty]." Webster's New World Dictionary. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we, as a people, stopped living and dreaming The Pristine American Dream as our Founding Fathers knew it. Like colors fading from a handkerchief long forgotten on a cedar post, the Dream has faded from our thoughts and aspirations. The change has been imperceptible, yet over time all of the brilliance has faded to the dull, uninspiring and common. The Pristine American Dream has taken on a different hue. To some, the American Dream has become a passionate search for easy wealth by hitting it big in the lottery, sweepstakes, a big lawsuit, or receiving an inheritance. To others it is landing a professional sports contract, or achieving prominence in politics, business or popularity without any thought to inherent rights. As important as these achievements may be to some people, The Pristine American Dream is much better. This story showcases The Pristine American Dream, which is those inalienable or inherent rights guaranteed to each American by virtue of their birth, and the diligence, hard work and determination required to obtain and enjoy the privileges of life. Simply put, inherent rights are the rights to be and to do good. Everything that is good is right, an inherent right. Nobody ever has the right to do bad; they only have the power to choose it. Many people see goodness as the result of religious dedication instead of the catalyst that fires the furnace of happiness. No matter what circumstances' individuals, families, communities or nations find themselves in, they always enjoy more peace of mind and happiness when they maintain their inherent rights. Privileges are the sweet things of life for which one must work to receive. This is a fiction story. The setting is Declo, Idaho during the years of 1966 and 1967. All the characters are fiction, but like many great fiction characters they may resemble living or dead individuals whose lives have impacted that of the author. Most family names are indigenous to the Declo community, yet there should not be any inference made that any of the characters are living or have ever lived. There are, however, certain authenthic individuals who make cameo appearances to add color to its historical setting.

    Determined to keep the family together, Zetta and their toddlers join Asa and her brothers at the Golden Gate coal camp just before Christmas 1922. She is eight months pregnant. During the first week in the dismal camp, Zetta suffers fearful nightmares of cut trees and fresh dirt--Appalachian signs of trouble. Asa dismisses his wife's pleas to return to their farm, insisting their three-month stay will provide the $400 they need to give their children better lives. Disappointed, Zetta draws strength from her plump red-haired neighbor, Dosha, and the strong willed granny woman, Clarie, who will deliver her baby. And each morning, she thanks the Lord they are one more day closer to home. Or are they?

    He wears his temper like a badge of honor, would rather step over a homeless beggar than walk around him, and engages in petty warfare with his staff over expense receipts. He's also never been much bothered with monogamy, but when one morning he spontaneously seduces his temp in an office storeroom, he's definitely crossed a line in blatancy. Miller has made few friends and many enemies—not to mention the fact that the storeroom is a notorious trysting place and he and the temp both emerge covered in dust and airmail stickers—so the news doesn’t take long to reach his cold, beautiful wife. Conveniently, it just happens to be their anniversary. Imagine the celebratory dinner, capped by her returning her house keys and consummating her desire to sleep with the neighbor.Not a man to suffer rejection well, Miller heads for a London media hangout, where two employees introduce him to cocaine. By morning, his exploits are public (a photographer captured him snorting the cocaine in public), his career is over (thanks to a damning interview he gave a journalist from a rival paper), he's not only painted the word 'WANKER' on the cuckolding neighbor's car, but misspelled it, and his house is on fire (never leave a goodbye bonfire of wedding photos unattended). . . . Clearly, it’s time to leave town. Miller has an engagement to speak to the boys at his old prep school, but he can't seem to stop pouring gasoline on the fire that his life has become, showing up hungover after a night partying with an old school friend and a gaggle of Spanish flight attendants, and calling the headmaster by his behind-the-back nickname of "Stiffo" to the students, for a start. After the speech, he speaks with his doctor and learns that his father-in-law plans to kill him.Leigh, the old school friend, works for an English language school in Barcelona, and Miller wrangles its address out of him, for he clearly can't go home. He gets the job and adapts surprisingly well to a life of an underpaid teacher, despite the fact that some of his students will clearly never learn the language (there are hilarious scenes of their attempts in this section) and even starts up a romance with a tough-talking English girl who's one of his fellow teachers—but he doesn't tell her who he really is when he has the opportunity, and when she figures it out on her own she is livid and that bridge is burnt. To make matters worse, his father-in-law's goons have tracked him down.Miller flees again, winding up in Florida, in a town populated by ex-circus freaks and presided over by the Half Man, a criminal and sadist with no legs who welcomes Miller to town by shoving a gun barrel in his mouth and breaking his teeth. But ironically, it seems that despite the fleas in his trailer, the one-eyed albino hit man who seems to overhear every compromising conversation between Miller and the Half Man’s beautiful wife the Lizard Woman, and the fact that the Half Man’s stranglehold on the local police mean that Miller isn’t actually free to leave, it seems that Miller somehow belongs among the freaks. These misfits—among them a black dwarf, a gay clown with a penchant for altar boys, a heroin addict who is their unlicensed doctor, a biker hit man named Hollis after Grove’s erstwhile publicist, and the Lizard Woman’s wonderful eight-year-old daughter—unwittingly teach Miller what normal life never could—how to love, and how to stand up for something he truly believes in. When Miller's wife tracks him down and has him sign over the spoils of his old life to her, he gets enough money out of her to hire the albino to hit the Half Man. And though all certainly does not go smoothly with the hit—someone as vicious as the Half Man is unlikely to go quietly—Miller and the Lizard Woman are able to close that chapter and start a new life together.

    Devastated, he numbs the pain with drink. Leaving a tavern one night he stumbles upon a cloaked female figure lying in a dark alley. Charles helps the stranger, unaware the chance encounter would eventually alter his life forever when hidden secrets and feelings are revealed. A few years later, he returns to London to search for this women with the goal of setting right his wrongs of the past. Imprisoned by fear, will unraveled secrets change everything for Charles after he finds her? ISABELLA became smitten with the handsome but troubled businessman from America who rescued her. He fled just as their flourishing friendship turned passionate. When the apprenticeship system is abolished, Isabella has no choice but to create another life for herself. She disappears without a hint of her whereabouts, carrying a secret with the potential to ruin everything Charles holds dear. Time passes when an innocent outing finds Isabella reliving emotions of love and abandonment she thought were buried. Can she still find the peace and safety she so desires? Or will fate continue to unleash a life of inescapable affliction?

    Parables are stories with numerous meanings-two, four, or many more. Once again Edward Hays unlocks a treasury of original parable-stories as traveling companions for those on the spiritual quest. Parables are unique because they are stories with silent spaces, using imaginative symbols to lead us toward answers to the great questions that surround our journey through everyday. Each parable holds hidden insights that point the way to happiness and happily to the Way. Open the cover and enter the magical world of the story through the door of the Ethiopian Tattoo Shop. Each story is accompanied by a brief interpretation, a key provided by the author which serves as a starting point for your own explorations. Intricately illustrated with a blend of Ethiopian and other ancient art, this book brings together a remarkable blend of beauty and insight.

    Elwood Reid first appeared on the literary stage with a powerful and bruising story called "What Salmon Know," which appeared in the March 1997 issue of GQ.  Here was a writer not afraid to examine the soulful underside of the American male, or the violence that accompanies disappointed dreams.  Now, in his first, extraordinary novel, Reid tells the story of Elwood Riley, a six-foot-six, 275-pound blue-collar kid whose ticket out of Cleveland is a "full ride" football scholarship to the University of Michigan.But Riley is cursed with intelligence and an awareness of the vicious inhumanity of the college football system.  If Riley doesn't want to "six"--lose his scholarship or get maimed--he has to become a "fella," a pain-loving freak too nihilistic to care what he does to himself or others.  And after Riley encounters the alluring, mysteriously damaged Kate, his dilemma becomes ever more painful.Elwood Reid's portrait of this world is at once blackly humorous, starkly tragic, and perfectly detailed.  With deft strokes, he portrays emotionally stunted coaches who have mastered the art of humiliating and manipulating young men, groupies attracted to the fame but undone by the shocking cruelty of the players, and the athletes themselves, who grow addicted to violence, alcohol, and steroids, too caught up in the glory of playing for Big Blue to notice they are mere meat to the coaches and the university.In tough, spare, beautiful prose that should invite comparisons to the works of Thom Jones and Denis Johnson, Reid describes a place where young men damage their souls and their bodies in pursuit of a worthless glamor.  This is a profound, unsettling book about a familiar yet hidden world--a Greek tragedy in cleats.

    How did he allow the other person to die? How did he help the other person to hang himself to death? He was terribly upset about this. The moment his eyes saw a rope in any form he used to remember everything.........

    Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge.

    - The author herself was diagnosed with MS 21 years ago and authentically and beautifully captures the thoughts and emotions of a vibrant woman navigating a new reality.- Comparable to Jan Karon's bestselling Mitford series, A SUNDOG MOMENT is brimming with insight and wisdom for everyone--no matter what their experience or point of view.- Sharon Baldacci has written for "The Herald-Progress and "Richmond Magazine, among others, and has won awards from the Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Press Women, of which she is a member.

    Narayan has few rivals when it comes to bringing alive people and places. Most of his timeless novels are set in the fictional town of Malgudi, located somewhere in South India, a town as real to his readers as any they will find on the map. This volume contains three quintessential Malgudi novels — Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The Vendor of Sweets. Swami and Friends, published in 1935, was the first novel Narayan wrote. Described by Graham Greene as a novel in ten thousand, it recounts the adventures of ten-year-old Swaminathan and his friends Rajam and Mani. The Bachelor of Arts, the second novel in the collection, is a brilliantly realized account of the workings of a young man’s mind. It is the story of Chandran, in his final year at college, who falls hopelessly in love and is forced to exile himself from the familiar surroundings of Malgudi until he is able to arrive at a satisfactory resolution to his problems. The Vendor of Sweets showcases a classic cross-generational battle, between Jagan, a widower of firm Ghandian principles, and his ‘modern’ son Mali, who returns to Malgudi with a half-American wife and a grand plan for selling story-writing machines.The third in the series of Penguin India’s collectors’ editions of the Malgudi novels, The Magic of Malgudi, with an introduction by S. Krishnan, will delight first-time readers as well as devoted Narayan fans.

    Recorded in ancient Spanish records, it is the dog of Christ, a mongrel stray dog that was present at the crucifixion and which was stabbed by the same spear that pierced the body of the Savior. When a tragedy reveals the dog's existence through a series of miracles accidentally caught on television, it upends the world, destabilizing governments and causing worldwide revolution.

    Yet here she is, watching her car literally go up in smoke—along with her last-ditch hope of staying with her cousin in Louisiana. When Jancy spies a Help Wanted sign hanging in the window of the quaint Strawberry Hearts Diner, the memories of the two years she spent there as a teenager—and the lure of the diner’s beloved strawberry tarts—are enough to draw her in and plant her feet…but only temporarily.Raised by parents who refused to settle anywhere for long, Jancy has never known what it is to have roots. Now that Jancy’s swept up by the warmth and character of this quirky little community—and by the pull of an old crush—it’s beginning to feel like home. She’s making friends and even discovering the sweetness of falling in love. But when the town is threatened, Jancy knows it will take more than its legendary tarts to save it. Can she fight for this little Texas town—knowing she might not stay forever?

    But on the day of her funeral, he discovers a book Kate left for him, Things I Want You to Know. Her instructions for raising Emma and Liam without her give him comfort, but her other plans for him seem much more daunting...Five dates with five different women. Nick isn't sure his heart is in it...but as he tries to follow Kate's careful instructions, he slowly realises that it's not romance Kate wanted him to find, but something far more important. Will Nick find the courage to take a second chance?

    The stories take place after the events of Threshold, the third full-length novel in the series, and before the events of Ragnarok, the fourth. The novellas are all co-authored by Jeremy Robinson and one of six other fantastic authors. The Chesspocalypse novellas are designed to introduce readers to the series. If you haven't read the novels, no worries. Enjoy the ride!The stories were released in the following order:Callsign: King–Book 1Callsign: QueenCallsign: RookCallsign: King–Book 2–UnderworldCallsign: BishopCallsign: KnightCallsign: Deep BlueCallsign: King—Book 3—BlackoutThis collection contains the standalone Queen, Rook and Bishop stories.CALLSIGN: QUEENAt the beginning of her search for Rook, a missing Chess Team member, Zelda Baker, Callsign: Queen, is redirected to Pripyat, Ukraine, a ghost town on the radioactive outskirts of Chernobyl. Intel indicates that splinter cell of Manifold Genetics—a ruthless corporation dismantled by Chess Team—may be operating in the area. Tasked with confirming the existence of a Manifold facility, Queen begins a recon sweep of the abandoned town in search of clues, but soon finds herself fighting for her life. Something sinister lurks beneath the decaying, surreal remnants of Pripyat's never-used amusement park, and it rises up to greet Queen.In Pripyat, the streets are empty, the derelict buildings crumble, but the bodies...are fresh.CALLSIGN: ROOKAfter a failed mission claims the lives of his five-man support team, Stan Tremblay, Callsign: Rook, flees Siberia and finds himself on the secluded coast of Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. Exhausted, cut off from the outside world, and emotionally beaten from his defeat in Russia, Rook just wants to find a place to rest. The small coastal town of Fenris Kystby seems like the perfect place.Within hours of arriving, he discovers that the town is not as tranquil as it appears. The townspeople are mistrustful of outsiders, a pack of mysterious wolves stalk the local tundra, and two villagers have been killed by a creature that defies explanation. To make things worse, there are rumors of something sinister, something the townspeople refuse to discuss.Despite the hostility of the locals, Rook commits to stopping the creature murdering townspeople. As the body count rises, he quickly learns that the greatest threat might walk on two legs. And when he uncovers the town's hidden past, Rook knows only one thing for certain: something is rotten in Norway.CALLSIGN: BISHOPAn Iranian terrorist cell has gotten their hands on weaponized Ergot-B—a compound that causes violent hysteria, madness and death within 24 hours—and plan to unleash the weapon on major cities around the world. Successful deployment would begin a bloodbath, as those exposed would kill everyone they encountered before succumbing to the compound's lethal effects.Erik Somers, Callsign: Bishop, is called in to investigate, but his first discovery shocks him to the core. Dawoud Abbasi, the terrorist leader planning to unleash Ergot-B, is his biological father.