ABOUT THE SHORT STORY’S PRICE: Hello, you lovely people. Odd to talk about money straight up, but I know that some of you might be thinking, £1.99 is a lot for a short story. Let me explain how it works. A rate of 20% VAT (Value Added Tax) applies to eBooks in the UK. This doesn’t apply to ‘real’ paper books. That means 33p of the £1.99 goes straight to the British government. Amazon takes around 2p to deliver the story to your Kindle, then takes another 48p as its cut. The remainder, £1.16, goes to me. That's not a great deal, I hope you agree. In these times of falling sales, and authors losing their contracts, and only one in seven traditionally published authors being able to write fulltime, stories like this are a vital way of YOU supporting the authors whose books you enjoy. So THANK YOU for your support! Think of it in terms of a pint of beer or a cup of coffee: they cost £2-4, depending on where you live. This story will give you more enjoyment (I think!) than either of those things, and last for a longer time, and cost you less money. This is only the second time I have self-published a short story. (Massive thanks here to Pete Simpson, who designed the cover for me!) It’s been an exciting project since the day I did the poll on Facebook, asking you lovely people which of my characters you wanted me to write about. Centurion Tullus won out, narrowly, and this is the result. The one hundred and something people who backed the Kickstarter campaign got to read this story almost 7 months ago, but now you can too. Enjoy the story, and please email me if you have any questions about it or anything else – ben@benkane.net Ben

    These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

    Life, as the daughter of a Victorian millhand, had never been easy, but now she was mother and housekeeper both to the little family left behind. As one tribulation after another beset her life, so a longing, a determination grew - to venture out into a new world of independence and adventure, and when the chance came she seized it. America, even on the brink of civil war, was to offer a challenge that Ruth was ready to accept, and a love, not easy, but glorious and triumphant. A giant of a book - about a woman who gave herself unstintingly - in love, in war, in the embracing of a new life in a vibrant land.

    But their happy world is shattered when, in 1912, William takes a trip to America that ends in tragedy.

    How could God grant her the desire of her heart, then do nothing to prevent it from being taken away? Can she wait for God’s perfect timing, or will she take matters into her own hands…again? About to age out of a Missouri orphanage in 1858, shy Rachel listens with terror as the orphanage matron tells her she’s practically auctioning her off to the highest bidder for her hand in marriage. Rachel prays, asking God to help her and her younger brother Charlie escape, but how? When God provides what Rachel believes to be her liberator, the seed of an idea sets in motion an adventure that will bring happiness and heartbreak and nearly cost Rachel her health. When trouble comes, it comes in a big way and those who care for Rachel wonder if she will ever recover. Rachel and Charlie face danger and sorrow, see new territory, and grow in their faith. They just might even find the desire of their hearts and realize God had bigger plans than they ever imagined.

    When Heshel Rosenheim, apparently suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, hands his son, Michael, a box of moldy old journals, an amazing adventure begins–one that takes the reader from the concentration camps of Poland to an improbable love story during the battle for Palestine, from a cancer ward in New Jersey to a hopeless marriage in San Francisco. The journals, which seem to tell the story of Heshel’s life, are so harrowing, so riveting, so passionate, and so perplexing that Michael becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about his father. As Michael struggles to come to grips with his father’s elusive past, a world of complex and disturbing possibilities opens up to him–a world in which an accomplice to genocide may have turned into a virtuous Jew and a young man cannot recall murdering the person he loves most; a world in which truth is fiction and fiction is truth and one man’s terrible–or triumphant–transformation calls history itself into question. Michael must then solve the biggest riddle of all: Who am I?Intense, vivid, funny, and entirely original, Not Me is an unsparing and unforgettable examination of faith, history, identity, and love.From the Hardcover edition.

    Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh. Four days later they would all surrender, but they had struck the match that would burn Great Britain out of Ireland for the first time in seven hundred years.The 13th Apostle is the reimagined story of how Michael Collins, along with his young acolyte Eoin, transformed Ireland from a colony into a nation. Collins’s secret weapon was his intelligence system and his assassination squad, nicknamed “The Twelve Apostles.” On November 21, 1920, the squad—with its thirteenth member, young Eoin—assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin. Twelve months and sixteen days later, Collins signed the Treaty at 10 Downing Street, which brought into being what is, today, the Republic of Ireland.An epic novel in the tradition of Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the French and Leon Uris’s Trinity, The 13th Apostle is a story that will capture the imagination and hearts of freedom-loving readers everywhere.

    In one of her most ambitious novels, Anya Seton here created one of her most memorable heroines, and one of her most varied tales.

    This unforgettable story is one of hope, healing, and the discovery of truthSometimes the untold stories of the past are the ones we need to hear...When Katie Garrett gets the unexpected news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston—and her increasingly estranged husband—and travels to rural Texas.There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly, flamboyant, eternally optimistic, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.

    He struggles to find the strength and courage to survive in his new surroundings, which are governed by an unusual race-based code. Bodee’s circle of family and friends help him successfully manage some initial tests of his perseverance, but when he finds himself alone and confronted with an overwhelming challenge, he isn’t sure he’s up to the task. Stand and fight or cut and run? Running is what he knows. Running is what will keep him safe. Will Bodee find the courage to fight, or will he simply do what he has always done? Pick up a copy to find out. MINETTA LANE, the third volume in A. Robert Allen’s Slavery and Beyond series, is a stand-alone novel that continues the broad themes of the first two volumes, Failed Moments and A Wave From Mama.

    Garnet Cameron, a fashionable young lady of New York, is leading a neat, proper life, full of elegant parties and polite young men, yet the prospect of actually marrying any of them appalls her. Yearning for adventure, she instead marries Oliver Hale, a wild trader who is about to cross the mountains and deserts to an unheard-of land called California. During Garnet and Oliver's honeymoon in New Orleans, she meets a dance-hall performer on the lam who calls herself Florinda Grove and is also traveling to California. Along the Jubilee Trail, Garnet and Florinda meet kinds of men never known to them before, and together they make their painstaking way over the harsh trail to Los Angeles, learning how to live without compromise and discover both true friendship and true love.

    Midnight, in bed with her sister, Anastasia (Shvybz), in the Ipatiev Mansion in Ekaterinburg, during the last night of their lives. So much of my story unfolds by moonlight. This is a tale of midnight wakings and forced marches before dawn. Since this nightmare began, I do not dare undress, even to go to bed. I wear my dressing gown, my hair is prepared, and my shoes are set beside me. I have no idea when we will be summoned to rise. We have moved, as in the worst of dreams, slowly toward this place. There is no logic other than the sleepwalker’s obedience—to follow instruction which we cannot resist: an actual lunacy. Now, I have control only of this—my record of what happened to us, to me. I have committed a single sin, my one terrible transgression. I pray to be absolved. In this recording of memory lies all meaning to my life. Let my will prevail in this, my ultimate wish, to salvage something of value from this tragedy. The rest, as my mother says, is in God’s hands. When I look back, as I must in the short time allotted to me now, I can see the exact moment when our lives changed: at last light, on the thirteenth of March, 1917." Here, in startling new historical detail, based on original diaries and letters, is the Romanov tragedy told from the point of view of the Tsar's third daughter, Marie, Anastasia's closest, older sister. Marie's story is unique-only Marie crossed the frozen Siberian river with her parents, and only Marie shared the full 78 days and nights in 'The House of Special Purpose.' About the Author: Laura Rose is a popular playwright in Russia and is of Russian descent. She has extensively researched the history and explored the Alexander Palace and the site of the Ipatiev mansion.

    

    These two classic works capture the tide of world events even as they unfold the compelling tale of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.The multimillion-copy bestsellers that capture all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of the Second World War — and that constitute Wouk's crowning achievement — are available for the first time in trade paperback.

    Extensively researched and compellingly told, it introduces us to the passionate drama and violent upheaval of eleventh-century Europe. The world as we know it, and the English language, would have been vastly different were it not for the driving ambition of one man: William the Conqueror. But conquerors are made, not born, and William was made in fire and blood. How does a boy become a man, surviving a tumultuous and terrifying childhood? And how does that man become a legend? William Rising plunges us into this world of danger and betrayal, of choosing sides and dying for absolutes. It follows the creation of a conqueror, as he grows up abandoned, learns to fight at an early age for anything he hopes to keep, and is sculpted into a remorseless, far-sighted, ruthlessly efficient soldier and statesman. From his origins as an orphaned, penniless bastard boy, to his personal and political trials by fire, to the climactic battle with his rebellious barons where he finally comes of age, the young duke increasingly establishes himself as a force to be reckoned with. But as the shadowy intrigues of English politics, and the all-consuming question of an heir for a childless king, begin to draw him into their web, it may just be that William of Normandy has a destiny far greater than even he has ever dreamed.