He's confronted the HOA. He's even taken on Santa himself. He doesn't usually win. These are the tales of the Dumb White Husband and they are all available here in this collected edition.This handsome volume includes:Dumb White Husband vs. the Grocery Store - John would rather sit and watch the game, but his wife needs some things at the store. Can he complete the list and get back in time to see the end of the game?Dumb White Husband vs. Halloween - Every Halloween, Chris has the scariest house on the block and gives out the best candy. But, this year, someone is showing him up and he'll stop at nothing to find out who.Dumb White Husband vs. Santa - Erik has planned the perfect Christmas for his family. The plan is foolproof, bulletproof and flame retardant. Nothing can undo the hours of planning and preparation. Nothing except maybe odd-shaped packages, ill-timed fruitcakes or an errant neighborhood Santa Claus.Dumb White Husband vs. the Tooth Fairy - Erik always has a plan and he's sure he would have figured out the whole Tooth Fairy thing eventually. But, when his three-year-old son takes a frisbee to the mouth, he's forced to speed things up. Between neighborhood kids with big mouths and unhelpful dentists he's going to need to improvise. Will he bend to the pressure of inflation? Will he get caught in the act? And, what do you do with those teeth anyway?Dumb White Husband for President (A novella) - There comes a time in every man's life when he must stand for the things he believes in. John doesn't believe in bagging his grass. So, when a new allergy-prone neighbor gets the HOA to require it, there's only one thing he can do - run for President of The Creeks of Sage Valley Phase II.John, Chris and Erik put aside most of their differences to run a campaign that they hope will see John elected as President and end the meddling of the rule-loving new kid on the block. Will they succeed? It's doubtful.

    With so much going for him, his life is perfect. Until the morning of his biggest case yet. That day, Jack makes a mistake, one that costs him everything.Artist Mar Delgado had it all – marriage to her childhood sweetheart, a successful career. She had never been happier, until the boat carrying her husband on a trip to dive with hammerhead sharks returns without him.For four years, as his career tanks and his personal life is non-existent, Jack tries to make amends for his mistake the only way he can – by searching for and bringing home the child that was stolen from him.Mar’s attempts at rebuilding her life after her husband’s death founder. She can no longer paint the coral reef paintings that she had been famous for because water terrifies her. She can no longer trust herself to love because the toll is too high. But then, in the most unexpected way, she is given a second chance.Private Investigator Sy Colomanos has seen it all. Still, for him, finding the Westfield baby is personal. For years, he follows the kidnapper’s convoluted trail across the country searching for the one clue that will help bring young Mia home. When the trail dead ends at Mar’s door, however, all hell breaks loose as the question becomes, what makes a family?

    More specifically, she sees ghosts as a private investigator, working alongside the Chicago Police Department to put away killers and put troubled spirits to rest.When the daughter of one of Chicago's wealthiest families turns up dead, Samantha and her assistant Mark team up with homicide detective Lance MacDowell to get to the bottom of the crime.Allison Allen is tall, blonde, beautiful-and very much dead. As Samantha interviews the girl, who doesn't remember anything about the circumstances of her own murder, it's clear that there's more going on behind the walls of this manicured home than anyone wants to let on-and that Samantha has her work cut out for her this time.Juggling her own love life, tracking down troubled spirits, and evading attempts to thwart her investigation keeps Samantha on her toes. Good thing Samantha knows how to keep her eyes open, her wits about her, and her sense of humor.

    University of Miami freshman Cameron McKinney is in dire need of cash. In a few years, he will graduate with over 100,000 dollars in student loan debt. To make matters worse, he is utterly ignored by the opposite sex. College isn't quite what he pictured back home in freezing-cold Chicago. Fortunately, Cameron has a brilliant mind for numbers. He decides to start a sports betting website with the help of fellow classmate Dylan Posner, a notorious campus party animal. Within weeks, hundreds of students sign up, and the business is a runaway success. Cameron begins making thousands of dollars of per week, tax-free. He uses the money to pay off his loans and fund his new South Beach lifestyle. As his operation grows, so does his ego. Cameron raises the stakes, taking on a group of jet-setting international students as customers. He begins dating Grace Cooper, the hard-drinking, purity ring-wearing daughter of a prominent Republican Party lobbyist. As the business grows, Cameron's problems multiply further. His dysfunctional romance and his business partner's reckless lifestyle threaten to take them all down.Do you love easy-to-read books filled with wealth, intrigue, and palm trees? If so, don't miss reading High Rollers!

    John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world—Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, the future bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in Better to Have Gone, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice. Akash and Auralice grew up in Auroville; like the rest of their community, they never really understood those deaths. In 2004, Akash and Auralice return to Auroville from New York, where they have been living with John’s family. As they reestablish themselves in the community, along with their two sons, they must confront the ghosts of those distant deaths. Slowly, they come to understand how the tragic individual fates of John and Diane intersected with the collective history of their town. “A riveting account of human aspiration and folly taken to extremes” (The Boston Globe), Better to Have Gone probes the underexplored yet universal idea of utopia and portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one such community. Richly atmospheric and filled with remarkable characters, spread across time and continents, this is narrative writing of the highest order—a “gripping…compelling…[and] heartbreaking story, deeply researched and lucidly told” (The New York Times Book Review).

    He is considered autistic by many. He is not. He appears autistic because he is hearing a voice. The voice is real, but it is a supernatural presence. What the voice gives him is a power that he can transfer by touch. Gabriel is the starting point for a change that is happening to many young people just like himself, all over the world. The change is wondrous and difficult at the same time. One thing is certain. The voice holds power beyond anything any of these young people could have ever imagined. This power is changing everyone, one beautiful child after another. The problem with this mysterious blessing is that Gabriel does not trust this voice completely. This distrust never leaves him, and for good reason, but Gabriel finds that the wonder of what he is experiencing is far too great for him to resist. Below, Gabriel experiences the shock of “hearing” the voice for the first time. “If only I could tell someone what this is like! God! What is wrong with me? What is wrong?” Gabriel was screaming with a tremendous power of his own, not with his voice, but with his mind. As soon as he screamed these thoughts, which he had done so many times through the years, he received the one thing he had always been very, very scared of, an actual answer. His body tensed to rigidity as the sound rose from within. As often as he had felt a communication with this presence, he had never had an interaction like this. Before today he had heard “voice” whisperings to his body, mind and soul, and these were very strong, but seemingly subconscious. What was happening now was completely new, and extremely unsettling. He was hearing now. To make it even more difficult for the boy to deal with, this was much more than just a voice, it was a sound of so much complexity that the richness of it made Gabriel senseless for a moment. It was the sound of the universe, every timbre of an orchestra, every harmonic of all the tones of every instrument in the world, buzzing together in something beyond harmony. This sound made extreme loudness seem quiet. It was all encompassing, crushing, like a freight train coming straight for you, the ground shaking, and a complete madness. Still, with all this, Gabriel could not resist it, because even with the unstoppable fear, he felt an absolute connection to it that could not be denied. This book is an excellent read for all ages. It has many youthful characters, adult characters and supernatural characters, and each of them bristle with personality. The work also has a deeper meaning. The author has attempted to present the world condition in a truthful and hopeful way, which is designed to ignite imagination and possibility.

    For Rachel, struggling to maintain the facade of a picture-perfect life, it’s an escape from an emotionally abusive marriage. Then Andy receives an anonymous note warning him to end the affair. Or else.Whoever’s been watching is going to make Andy pay. Weeks later, Rachel’s husband, David, is shot to death. Rachel and her two young sons vanish without a trace. One misstep, one careless reveal, and Andy could look as guilty as sin. Clue by clue, as his investigation into the mystery unfolds, Andy discovers that he and Rachel weren’t the only ones keeping secrets.Nothing in this quiet neighborhood is as it seems. No one peeking from behind the curtains of their homes can be trusted. And the worst is yet to come. Because David isn’t the only one who will die.

    Ever since his forced retirement, Mercer and his team have been negotiating the safe return of kidnapping victims, but that isn't enough to satisfy Julian's darker desires. His own life-altering tragedy has left him on the brink of insanity, and only his team and his job keep him from falling over the edge. After stumbling upon the scene of a botched assassination, Mercer vows to protect a newspaper heiress from an unidentified killer. But she wants more than a bodyguard. She wants a mercenary who will hunt down the animal responsible for nearly murdering her fiancé. Violence and mayhem decimate the city as Mercer and his team race against the clock to stop a contract killer, but the hired gun is just a symptom of the underlying disease. Until the man pulling the strings is stopped, a life hangs in the balance. Left with limited options, Mercer may have to abandon his morality or sacrifice himself in order to keep his promise.

    Determined to break free before it kills her, she enrolls in the respected school to confront the cunning witch who cast the curse: Miss Mabel.Bianca finds herself faced with dark magic she didn’t expect, with lessons more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. Will Bianca have the courage to save herself from the curse, or will Miss Mabel’s sinister plan be too powerful?Miss Mabel’s School for Girls is the first novel in The Network Series, an exciting new fantasy collection. A gripping tale about the struggle to survive, it will take you to a new place and time, one you’ll never want to leave.

    Now, twenty years later, in the heat of a New Mexican summer, Thomas has begun having bizarre conversations with his dead relatives and it's up to Amina-a photographer in the midst of her own career crisis-to figure out what is really going on. But getting to the truth is far harder than it seems. From Thomas's unwillingness to talk, to Kamala's Born Again convictions, to run-ins with a hospital staff that seems to know much more than they let on, Amina finds herself at the center of a mystery so thick with disasters that to make any headway at all, she has to unravel the family's painful past.

    Murder, death and the dead. Family, friends, love and relationships. Food and eating. Fear, dread, and the unknown. Crime and punishment. The human body. Lock the doors, turn up the lights, and take a deep breath. A series of brief, horrible moments await.

    In his imagination, Mark is a heroic soldier, a surgeon, and a daredevil striving to live up to the ideals of the 1950s. When his family uproots from Queens, New York, to start afresh in Massachusetts, Mark finds refuge from loneliness in an unlikely friendship with an eccentric, wealthy, elderly neighbor who has shut out the world following a debilitating accident. Their mutual gift for conjuring up imaginary worlds to cope with reality which for Mark includes the confusing teachings of his Jewish faith leads them to push the boundaries between these two realms, exploring the fine line between love, imagination, and the existence of God."

    

    Outpost - A prelude to Blood on the Snow with Jack Hallam. The Emerald Graves - Lorn Mullone at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. Pipe and Drum - A tale of the Battle of Assaye seen through the eyes of a Highlander of the 78th Foot. Plains Wolf - Rifleman Arthur Cadoc impresses a certain Spanish Guerrillero. Summer is Coming - There is nothing more horrific than the horrors of the French retreat in icy Russia, 1812. The Diabolical Circumstance of Captain Bartholomew Chivers - A funny story in the vein of Harry Flashman. Flowers of Toulouse - A chilling story. Lamentation - A redcoat looks back on his life after the Battle of New Orleans. Enemy at the Gates - The bloody defence of Hougoumont. The Bravest of the Brave - Ney's final moments at Waterloo.

    Former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson draws on her own experiences to take readers inside a haunting story of Iraq at the turn of the millennium and the impossible choices faced by families under a deadly regime. At night, in Huda’s fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the mukhabarat—the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador’s wife. Huda has no wish to be an informant, but fears for her teenaged son, who may be forced to join a deadly militia. Nor does she know that Ally has dangerous secrets of her own. Huda’s former friend, Rania, enjoyed a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a sheikh. Now her family’s wealth is gone, and Rania too is battling to keep her child safe and a roof over their heads. As the women’s lives intersect, their hidden pasts spill into the present. Facing possible betrayal at every turn, all three must trust in a fragile, newfound loyalty, even as they discover how much they are willing to sacrifice to protect their families.