Mating season. For the new settlers, Deathfall is proving difficult to tame. The crops will not grow, the livestock is dying, and the people are starving. If things don't change, none of them will survive the winter. That is not something Annabelle is willing to accept. She will not watch her family starve if there is anything she can do to stop it. Against the wishes of the other families, Annabelle meets with one of the creatures who share the valley with them. He is surprisingly willing to be helpful. With one catch. She has to stay with him. Can Annabelle stay indifferent to him? Or will her fascination grow into something far more? Cizen groaned at the sight of her bare body. His large hands grasped her knees and Annabelle spread her thighs. She let him look his fill, feeling like a wanton as she shamelessly let him gaze at her most secret place. His eyes flicked up to her face for a brief moment, before he ducked his head.

    The demands and indignities of associate life have been softened by his interest in his mentor, Harmony Piper, granddaughter of the firm’s founder. When Harmony disappears, Jack learns firm secrets and dangers that he could not have imagined – and may not survive. Set in 1990s Seattle, All Good Things reflects a world before smartphones and constant connectivity, where a responsible and hardworking attorney says a cheerful goodbye to her colleague at midnight – and simply vanishes before morning.

    Often deceptively simple, the task of a logo is hardly ever an easy one--via extreme reduction it needs to radically and perfectly distill an image or message into a simple, easily recognizable icon.Assembling the works of designers from around the globe this substantial volume contains an incredible wealth of pictorial representations, providing a broad overview of contemporary logo design of cutting edge designers.

    A creature with a very nasty habit.So says the editor of the local newspaper. But neither he, nor anyone else knows what is behind the spate of brutal killings which sent a shockwave through the town.They don’t know that a séance was held one dark and stormy night. A séance that went disastrously wrong. Something evil had been summoned from a dark place. For those around the table, the clock is ticking..And for the whole town, the nightmare is just beginning.The only clue to its real identity, and its purpose, comes in the terrifying visions of a psychic girl….but who can believe she can see the killings before they actually happen.It is only when the victims bodies are found impaled in steep, high places that detective Jack Fallon realises the visions are real. And that something evil, and hungry, is stalking the night.Something that must be stopped and stopped fast.Because Lorna Breck’s latest vision makes it clear that the beast is coming for Jack Fallon, and the people he loves most.Together, they will have to face it…in the dark.

    He would represent Kimberly Bennett in her desperate child-custody battle-and he would taste sweet revenge against her shady ex-husband-but he'd steer clear of both her and her little girl's beseeching blue eyes. Degree by slaw degree, Kim felt icy Jake warm toward her little family's plight. Yet shadows lingered in his eyes, bleakness in his smile, desperation in his hungry kisses. What had hardened his heart so? And now that she loved him, was she about to taste the bittersweetness of regret?

    But what seemed a perfect life was shattered when she went into labor four months early, delivering her one-pound, eleven-ounce daughter, Andie.The first time Kasey was wheeled into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), nothing prepared her for what she saw: a tiny, fragile baby in a tangle of tubes and wires. All at once, Kasey was confronted with a new and terrifying reality that would test the limits of love, family, and motherhood.In this riveting, honest, and often humorous memoir, Preemie chronicles the journey of one tiny baby’s tenacious struggle to hold on to life and the mother who ultimately grew with her. From hospital waiting rooms to the offices of alternative practitioners, from ski slopes to Symphony Hall, Kasey tries to make meaning of her daughter’s birth and eventually comes to learn that gifts come in all sizes and all forms, and sometimes... right on time.

    

     From the author of the best-selling series “The Chronicles of Benjamin Jamison”. Magic is waning. The ancient dragons of Torinth that once darkened the sky with their numbers are all but extinct. Older than even the dragons, the elementals, spirits of earth, sky, water and fire, have slumbered for millennia, leaving the races of Torinth to fend for themselves. The Kingdom of Northern Wastes feels not only the loss of magic but a foreboding change in seasons—winter grows longer with each passing season. The queen has set her eye on the south and the bounty of a fertile land. In the Southlands, Morgan, the third son of a lumber merchant, expects nothing from his future but hard work felling trees and chopping firewood. His property borders land belonging to the elven Kingdom of the Black Mountains, where Alexis, the third princess to the elven throne, is ranger. Alexis joined the rangers with hopes of forgetting the royal court, her family and a betrothal in which she had no say. Fascinated by the woodcutter’s son, she traverses the border between their properties, knowing they could never meet. Now an elemental has awoken, and set her sights on these two figures. In a time of uneasy kingdoms and threats of a pending war, she reaches out to Alexis and Morgan and arranges a conversation that will change the future of all of Torinth.

    More neurotic than it is sane. More corrupt than it is law-abiding. And more prone to hurricanes than it should be.This book is a celebration of life, love and adventure--an enchanting account of a couple who weren't afraid to jump off the hamster wheel and have a go at a dream.

    

    Extending this trend, Short Takes presents over seventy-five writers whose range and style demonstrate the myriad ways we humans have of telling our truths. Themes develop and speak to or collide with one another: musings about parents, childhood, sports, weather, war, solitude, nature, loss—and, of course, love. The stellar roster of contributors includes well-known writers—Verlyn Klinkenborg, Jo Ann Beard, David Sedaris, Dorothy Allison, Salman Rushdie, and Terry Tempest Williams—along with Michael Perry, Mark Spragg, Jane Brox, and others whose literary stars are clearly rising. Each short—whether a few paragraphs or reaching 2,000 words, and reflecting almost every way nonfiction can be written—invites us to experience the power of the small to move, persuade, and change us.

    It will feature the best sports writing from the website, delivered in a full-color book featuring original artwork and a host of print exclusives—including original fiction, new writing from editor-in-chief Bill Simmons, posters and pull-out sections, old-school baseball cards and mini-booklets, and a cover that looks and feels like you're holding a basketball. Like its namesake website, Grantland Quarterly will regularly include some of the most exciting and form-pushing sports writers currently plying the trade, including Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Bissell, Harris Wittels, John Brandon, Anna Clark, Chris Jones, Colson Whitehead, and many more.

    Underneath it, he was cold, calculating, brutal - a perfect murderer. He cooks up a plan to rob his own bank at Pittsville and make it look as if his secretary, Alice Craig and her boyfriend, had made off with the looted money. Alice, who is a spinster, with no parents, no relatives and nobody to care whether she lived or died.... Dave Calvin knew just how he could make her disappear. And to achieve his plan, he enlisted the support of his own landlady, Kit Loring, who was sensuously beautiful and also an ex-alcoholic. However, Dave Calvin was soon to realise that a woman who is an ex-alcoholic, isn't the most reliable partner for murder...

    Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, antiseptic, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn't have to be that way. The team that brought you the Clio Award-winning Bullfighter software is back with an entertaining, bare-knuckled guide to talking straight--for those who want to climb the corporate ladder, but refuse to check their personality at the door. Why Business People Speak Like Idiots exposes four traps that transform us from funny, honest and engaging weekend people into boring business stiffs: • The Obscurity Trap: "After extensive analysis of the economic factors facing our industry, we have concluded that a restructuring is essential to maintaining competitive position. A task force has been assembled..." These are the empty calories of business communication. And, unfortunately, they're the rule. The Obscurity Trap catches idiots desperate to sound smart or prove their purpose, and lures them with message-killers like jargon, long-windedness, acronyms, and evasiveness. • The Anonymity Trap: Businesses love clones--easy to hire, easy to manage, easy to train, easy to replace--and almost everyone is all too happy to oblige. We outsource our voice through templates, speechwriters and email, and cave in to conventions that aren't really even rules. • The Hard-Sell Trap: Legions of business people fall prey to the Hard-Sell Trap. We overpromise. We accentuate the positive and pretend the negative doesn't exist. This may work for those pushing Ginsu knives and miracle Abdominizers, but it's dead wrong for persuading business people to listen. • The Tedium Trap: Everyone you work with thinks about sex, tells stories, gets caught up in life's amazing details, and judges everyone else by the way they look and act. We live to be entertained. We all learned that in Psychology 101, except for the business idiots who must have skipped that semester. They tattoo their long executive-sounding titles on their foreheads, dump pre-packaged numbers on their audience, and virtually guarantee that we want nothing to do with them. This is your wake-up call. Personality, humanity and candor are being sucked out of the workplace. Let the wonks send their empty messages. Yours are going to connect. Fast Company magazine named Why Business People Speak Like Idiots one of the ideas and trends that will change how we work and live in 2005. So grab your cape and sharpen your sword. It's time to fight the bull!

    It helps us distinguish many faces of truth, empowering a sense of judgement and it increases the power of positive thinking. Anxiety and skepticism when reign high, the disillusioned society needs to be resuscitated with morale, confidence and trust.