A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In nine brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, The Awful Possibilities will twist you in nine awe-inspiring directions.

    Caught at moments of change, Chabon's men and women, children and husbands and wives, all face small but momentous decisions. They are caught in events that will crystallize and define their lives forever, and with each, Michael Chabon brings his unique vision and uncanny understanding of our deepest mysteries and our greatest fears.

    Psychopathy is boring. Coldness is boring. She's interested in feeling, and when her stories turn violent (as they frequently do), it's with a surreal emotional barbarity that distorts the entire world. You can mop up blood with any fabric. Maggie's concern is with the wound left behind, because the wound never leaves-it haunts. As a result, each of these stories leaves a wound of its own. Some weep, watching as you try (and fail) to recover. Others laugh. But never without feeling."-B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space"And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled to skin; crying shit, hearing piss, fingernails seeping bile, pores dribbling blood, soles slopping off and out to meet a drain mid-floor ..."-Christopher Norris, author of Hunchback '88

    The isolation is all but unbearable until a mysterious tenant moves into the house at the bottom of the hill. James Dunford has come from America but he won’t say why. He spends his days fixing up the old cottage and walking the beach with a stray dog that showed up on his doorstep.As the weeks pass, Tara tries to get to know James, but he resists her at every turn. And it's not until a local villager recognizes him from the news that she realizes his visit might be about more than just a vacation. On the night of a big storm, Tara finally confronts James about why he is there. But how can she expect him to be honest when she, too, is hiding her own dark secret?Set against the backdrop of the Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, Sunsets Never Wait is a story about love, loss, and the risks of hanging on to the past. No matter how much the world has let you down, there’s always a possibility for second chances.

    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.

    

    He had been saving the pay he sweated so hard for, and he reckoned there was enough to set himself up with a spread of his own. He thought he might look into the Triple X Ranch, the one they called the Whiskey Brand. It had prime cattle land and was a bargain... or so it seemed.

    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.

    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.

    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...

    The prequel to G-Spot, the #1 bestseller that established the Urban Erotic genre. Meet the Man and the Myth...the Kingpin and the Killer...The Lover and the Legend...The Gangsta who put the G in the G-Spot...The TRUE King of Harlem! "I didn't come to Harlem ridin' shotgun. I came packin' one!"--GRANITE MCKAY. WARNING! This here ain't no romance, it's an urban erotic tale These gutter plots I drop will have you biting off your nails! A menace has arrived, a terror Harlem’s never seen He started from the bottom and turned a dollar into a dream! Before the ballin and the stuntin and the sexin and the flexin, Brutal vision and ambition is how this gangsta manifested! So let’s stand up and salute the ruthless boss who paved the way Let’s go back B4 the G-Spot to: The Legend of GRANITE McKAY!

    One spring night, while at home on a break from college, the threesome embarks on a night of adventure and experimentation, driving recklessly through the Connecticut Valley. Stopping at the French King Bridge, David -- full of hubris and hallucinogens -- dares to jump, mistakenly believing he'll be able to swim ashore. With this one act, he sets in motion an inexorable chain of events that indelibly alters the lives of everyone involved.Told through the alternating voices of Kay, Michael, and David's father, Kevin, The River Road is a closely observed and psychologically penetrating narrative of the accusations, murder investigation, and courtroom battle that follow.

    The exalted, memorable characters in Kirn's acclaimed debut short story col lection confront the real hard bargains in life that spring up from the business of simply living, and Kirn transforms these hard-luck stories into strapping moral lessons which evoke the bonds that unite us all.