Everything in my life seemed to be falling apart...my family, my finances, our Church. And I asked God the simple question, "Why?" This book is the result of my own search for answers. In the end, God gave me illustrations that I will share with you and brought healing to my heart and my distorted view of Him. I was able to trust Him again, even though my circumstances had not changed.I pray that God uses this short eBook to deeply impact you as well. I have included questions for reflection for you to go through individually or as a group."In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I (Jesus) have overcome the world!" - John 16:33

    Goth. Dykling. Desiree Garcia knows she’s weird and a weirdo magnet. To extinguish her strangeness, her parents ship her to Saint Michael’s Catholic High School, then to Mexico, but neurology can’t be snuffed out so easily: Screwy brain chemistry holds the key to Desiree’s madness. As fellow crazies sense a kinship with her, Desiree attracts a coterie of both wanted and unwanted admirers, including a pair of racist deathrock sisters, a pretty Hispanic girl who did time in California’s most infamous mental asylum, and a transnational stalker with a pronounced limp.As high school graduation nears, Desiree’s weirdness turns from charming to alarming. Plagued by increasingly bizarre thoughts and urges, Desiree convinces herself she’s schizophrenic, despite assurance otherwise. In college, she finds Rae, an ex-carnie trannyboi, who becomes the June Carter to her Johnny Cash. With Rae’s help, Desiree answers the riddle of her insanity and names her disease.Combining the spark of Michelle Tea, the comic angst of Augusten Burroughs, and the warmth of Sandra Cisneros, Mexican American author Myriam Gurba has created a territory all her own. Dahlia Season not only contains the title novella, but also several of Gurba’s acclaimed stories.Myriam Gurba is a high school teacher who lives in Long Beach, California, home of Snoop Dogg and the Queen Mary. She graduated from UC Berkeley, and her writing has appeared in anthologies like The Best American Erotica (St. Martin’s Press), Bottom’s Up (Soft Skull Press), Secrets and Confidences (Seal Press), and Tough Girls (Black Books).

    Center stage was an enormous mansion, the Fordham Mansion, where the elite family of Reginald and Amanda Fordham lived with their two children, Charles and Emily. The one Achilles heel of Bishops Fordham was an aged and slowly weakening dam that provided the residents with their livelihood. When it was rumored that the dam was in imminent danger of collapsing, a major relocation effort was launched. How many people perished in the floods? Was the Fordham family victimized by the flooding, or did they manage to survive? In 2017, the Bishops Fordham Nature Conservancy hired a young woman named Clarissa Evans to oversee the facility. She had a laser-focus on making the area a prime attraction for tourists from around the world, and for a while, she did well. But as climatic changes came along, the summers in the region got hotter and drier, and to Clarissa's shock and dismay, she came to the lake one day to discover that the old Fordham Mansion, was now visible above the waterline. That situation was now becoming the draw for visitors versus the wildlife that gave Clarissa purpose and meaning in life. To add insult to injury, an up and coming young journalist, Edward Milton, with a penchant for highlighting oddities such as this got permission to come and do an investigation of the mansion for his very popular blog. What is Clarissa willing to do to keep wildlife instead of the mansion as the primary reason for visiting? Join Clarissa and Edward as they dig deeper and deeper into the exposed mansion and old village. Seemingly otherworldly phenomena come about that appeal to Edward's sense of wonder and adventure, while Clarissa remains skeptical due to her scientific background. Is Clarissa correct, and Edward is just creating more buzz for his blog, or is he onto something that just has no logical or rational basis for belief? Will they grow to trust and perhaps even love one another, or will they discover and experience every horrific meaning of the word "lost" in existence? Read "The Haunting of the Lost Mansion" now to find out...

    

    Genetically engineered and designed for combat by the military, and then later discharged when they grew tired of her and her kind, the Amazonians, she ended up forming her own mercenary team and drifting across a galaxy where over half a dozen different species live in relative harmony. Although she's fairly successful when it comes to making money, she finds herself in a frustrating situation: it's hard to get laid when you're a seven foot killing machine. The other mercenaries she shares her ship with, all of them aliens, all of them women, have their own similar situations. In a fit of frustration, she decides to deal with this problem by hiring on a cute young human who she figures won't mind being passed around like a sex toy by the crew... Ryan is twenty years old and afraid that he's settled into the rest of his life already. He's prudent, responsible, has a good job and no debts. Although he isn't adventurous by nature, in a fit of spontaneity he decides to sign on with a crew of mercenaries, as he figures his skills as a technician would be useful to those who live on a space ship, and it's a way to see the galaxy. And apparently luck was on his side in a way it never has been before: he signed on with Emily and the Hellcats, a group of attractive, tough, mostly alien mercenaries who, he quickly learns, are interested in more than just his technical skill, and plan on having him perform maintenance on them rather than the ship... HELLCATS is a novel of casual sex between a human and a host of alien or otherwise inhuman ladies, and definitely features a lot of passionate sex scenes. You have been warned.