Short story from "If it bleeds".

    JTE is developing advanced animatronics editing techniques to create high-end movies indistinguishable from live-action. Long dead stars can now share the screen with today's A-list. But one night Joshua and Ana discover something lingering in the rendered footage…an entity that will lead them into a new age beyond the reality they have come to know.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Both Detective Mark Whitman and Sorcerer Merrick Stone have expressed a desire to woo her, but she’s had to put them both on the back burner while she and her son have gotten their thriving restaurant and B&B up and running. But now that things at Habernackle’s have settled down a little, Linda is at a crossroads. It’s time to pick which man has her heart! Unable to make up her mind, Linda enlists the help of local matchmaking witch Sweets Porter to help. But when everything goes haywire will Linda be forced to start back at square one again? Or will she finally choose one of the men to call her own? ​ This is a Witch Squad Cozy Mystery Short-Story. It falls after Witch School Dropout and before The Witch Within in the series. If you haven’t read the series yet you may discover a few character spoilers.

    Moreover, it had the answer! But what man ever takes free advice?

    The bridge holds many secrets.Two hurting women face each other on this night, destinies merging. Mistakes have been made, people have been hurt, and these two are the victims. After the many years, they are ready to give up, ready to end it all. But one thing keeps them from giving up.The bridge holds many secrets, and the city breeds scum. But together, they can heal and help.This passionate, emotional story about the power of forgiveness takes you far away, to a city you'll always remember and never forget. Follow me to the place where mercy and grace mingle, where love and pain go hand-in-hand. Follow me to the bridge.

    Past winners and shortlisted authors have included the Pulitzer winners Junot Díaz, Anthony Doerr and Adam Johnson, plus Hilary Mantel, Ali Smith, Yiyun Li, CK Stead and Elizabeth Strout.Six Shorts 2017 brings together the six stories shortlisted for this year's award: ‘Reputation Management’ by Kathleen Alcott; ‘Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows about Horses’ by Bret Anthony Johnston; ‘The Hazel Twig and the Olive Tree’ by Richard Lambert; ‘The Tenant’ by Victor Lodato; ‘Every Little Thing’ by Celeste Ng; and ‘Mr Salary’ by Sally Rooney.Chosen by a hugely experienced and prestigious judging panel that included Booker-winner Anne Enright, Orange- and Whitbread-winner Rose Tremain, Booker-shortlistee Neel Mukherjee and critic and novelist Mark Lawson, the six stories represent the very best in contemporary English-language short fiction.

    A short story on forbidden love

     Laurel Ashwood needs a miracle. All her six-week old daughter wants for Christmas is a daddy...just for the holidays while Nana visits from Montana. Laurel and her former boss, construction tycoon Nick St. John, used to share a chemistry. But will Nick want to cooperate? Six months ago, she’d left him without a word. Nick can’t believe Laurel is back. Now he can finish what they’d begun months before. But he won’t accept a “couple of days.” If Laurel wants him to play along with a fake engagement, he’s got his own naughty and nice list. A kiss under the mistletoe is just the beginning.

    Ranging from tiny sketches and prose poems to longer, more conventional narratives, the stories included here are:A Country Doctor - In the Gods - An Old Folio - Before the Law - Jackals and Arabs - A Visit to the Mine - The Next Village - An Imperial Message - A Paterfamilias Perplexed - Eleven Sons - A Fratricide - A Dream - Bucket Rider - Of Metaphors - The Silence of the Sirens - Gracchus the Hunter - The Knock on the Courtyard Door - Advocates - The Vulture - At Night - A Little Fable.This e-book has a total length of around 16,000 words.

    In this novella, Trans-Siberian Orchestra creator Paul O'Neill spans generations, from WWII Germany to the modern inner-city, and fearlessly dives into the darkest places of the human condition to spin a modern parable about how, even in the grip of great evil, redemption is possible and the spark of hope can burn brightly.

    Arrasmith was his opposite, a Blobel spy on earth who was unwilling to return to Titan due to the shame of being in human form for almost three quarters of each day.The story deals with the ramifications for the agents' personal and social identity from this alteration.Author quote: "Here I nailed down the ultimate meaningless irony of war; the human turns into a Blobel and the Blobel, his enemy, turns into a human, and there it all is, the futility, the black humor, the stupidity. And in the story they all wind up happy."

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    There's Walter, newly abandoned by his wife; there's Edith, a fiftyish virgin; there's Bunny, taking care of her mother and her mother's boyfriend; and there's Belle, whose married lover dies in the hallway wearing her dead husband Herb's pajama top. Blindly, they encounter one another in ways the reader recognizes are profound even as the characters themselves are unaware. The genius and the art in this collection derives from the possibility that these ships might actually find each other by daylight. If only these four could get together--they'd be so good for each other. "Written with an expert touch, and a wise and tender sensibility. The effect is subtle, strong, and comic."--Charles Baxter, author of BELIEVERS and BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE; "It's hard to think she is capable of writing anything that isn't immediately engaging and a joy to read. Probably someone should publish her shopping lists."--Elizabeth Berg, author of TALK BEFORE SLEEP. A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB SELECTION

    From the first page of each of the edgy and unrelentingly intense stories in this debut collection, the teenaged characters are headed for big trouble. The adult world has mostly failed them, and they find themselves entering into highly charged situations where they make their own rules, with misguided understanding of the consequences. The stories burn hot and fast, providing searing insights into their world of sex, drugs, drinking, violence, and accidental grace, played out in small, tough towns. Written with raw directness and understanding that makes these nine stories impossible to forget, The History of Vegas announces an exciting, fresh talent with the impact of Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr, and Jayne Anne Phillips.

    Here the commonplace wind is personified as a sinister kind of monster who tracks its victims to the ends of the earth and sucks away their lives.