The Beast of Ten


Beth Brower - 2018
    THE DEATH BLEAK - For centuries he has haunted the nations, taking the blood gain further than any before himTHE PYRE - His storied stronghold deep in the Forrest of Naeethe, its glory forgotten, its ancient purposes abandonedAND I, EMBER - Sent by the Lights to stop him from becoming the one thing that all nations fear the most.

Every Kiss a War


Leesa Cross-Smith - 2014
    She takes us down Kentucky roads in the back of a pickup truck to both truculent and delicate women and rough, rambling men edged with gentleness. A finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award, this collection is a ravishing war of characters laid bare as they look for the glow and fight to stay in the light. As affecting as they are sexy and romantic, these stories burn with sweetness like firecrackers and honey as you throw them back and holler for another round.

The Gift of the Magi


O. Henry - 2009
    Henry, originally published in 1906, has become one of the best known and most beloved of Chistmas tales. An exuberant couple urged on by their love, make great sacrifices in order to purchase the perfect Christmas gift for the other. The husband sells his gold watch in order to buy expensive combs for his wife's luxurious locks. While the wife sells her hair to the wigmaker in order to buy a chain suitable for her husband's handsome timepiece. When all is revealed on Christmas Eve, the sweet irony of their dual generosity leaves them, whether they know it or not, as the wisest of gift givers: "But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."The artist Joel Priddy employs the same twists of reciprocity in his own work and is well suited to adapting and updating this classic for a modern audience.

Amma


Perumal Murugan - 2019
    She raised her children with the income from just a few acres of land that she managed on her own, tending to the cattle and crops with maternal concern, all the while minding her unruly husband. Every obligation met, all accounts squared up, each meal cooked to satiate the tongue and heart—Amma never rested, not even when bedridden with Parkinson’s. She lived a farmer’s life and died a farmer’s death.Amma is a homage to a way of life and values—simplicity, honesty and hard work—lost to us today. Peppered with unsentimental nostalgia and delightful humour, and vividly documenting village and farming life in the Kongu region, Amma tugs at generational memory. Murugan’s non-fiction writing, his first to appear in English, is as deeply affecting as his fiction.

Mothers and Sons


Colm Tóibín - 2006
    With exquisite grace and eloquence, Tóibín writes of men and women bound by convention, by unspoken emotions, by the stronghold of the past. Many are trapped in lives they would not choose again, if they ever chose at all. A man buries his mother and converts his grief to desire in one night. A famous singer captivates an audience, yet cannot beguile her own estranged son. And in "A Long Winter," Colm Tóibín's finest piece of fiction to date, a young man searches for his mother in the snow-covered mountains where she has sought escape from the husband who controls and confines her. Winner of numerous awards for his fifth novel, iThe Master/i -- including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award -- Tóibín brings to this stunning first collection an acute understanding of human frailty and longing. These are haunting, profoundly moving stories by a writer who is himself a master.

Second Chance


Danielle Steel - 2004
    A widower with two daughters, John was as conservative as Fiona was freewheeling, both amused and appalled by her world of high-strung designers, anorexic models, Fendi-stuffed closets, and Sir Winston, her snoring bulldog. But after Fiona impulsively invited John to the Paris couture shows, somewhere between the magic of the runway and the stroll along the Seine, she let him into her heart. And within weeks of their return to New York, John was making friends with Sir Winston-–and Fiona was making room in her closets.It didn’t take long for the dominoes to start falling. First, John introduced Fiona to his hostile daughters and their bloodthirsty Pekingese and snarling housekeeper. Then, after a disastrous dinner party with John’s biggest client, Fiona and John’s relationship began to unravel with alarming speed. What happens next will set Fiona on a journey filled with pain, revelation, and awakening. When she risks everything and returns to Paris alone, an extraordinary series of events begins to unfold. And as the snow falls on the city of light, the curtain will rise on a second act Fiona never saw coming.In a dazzling tale of modern misadventures and career-crossed relationships, Danielle Steel captures the heady magic of instant attraction, the challenges of change-–and the hope that comes when we dare to do it all over again.

The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul


Douglas R. Hofstadter - 1981
    From verbalizing chimpanzees to scientific speculations involving machines with souls, from the mesmerizing, maze-like fiction of Borges to the tantalizing, dreamlike fiction of Lem and Princess Ineffable, her circuits glowing read and gold, The Mind's I opens the mind to the Black Box of fantasy, to the windfalls of reflection, to new dimensions of exciting possibilities."Ever since David Hume declared in the 18th century that the Self is only a heap of perceptions, the poor Ego has been in a shaky conditions indeed...Mind and consciousness becomes dispensable items in our accounts of reality, ghosts in the bodily machine...Yet there are indications here and there that the tide may be tuming...and the appearance of The Mind's I, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, seems a welcome sign of change." William Barrett, The New York Times Book Review

Everything to Lose


Andrew Gross - 2014
    A car ahead of her careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Stopping to help, she discovers the driver dead--and a satchel stuffed with a half a million dollars.That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep her special needs son in school. In an instant, this honest, achieving woman who has always done the responsible thing makes a decision that puts her in the center of maelstrom of dark consequences and life-threatening recriminations--a terrifying scheme involving a twenty-year-old murder, an old woman who's life has been washed out to sea, and a powerful figure bent to keep the secret that can destroy him hidden.With everything to lose, everything she loves, Hilary connects to a determined cop from Staten Island, reeling from the disaster of Sandy, to bring down an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep what that money was meant to silence, still buried.

Roar (Kindle Singles)


Nicole Trope - 2014
    The man on the bed breathes his way into the darkness, filled with rage.Was there ever really a choice?From the queen of searing family drama and suspense comes a short story about the fierce bonds between mother and child, the things we sacrifice to protect the ones we love and the desperate choices we make when there's nowhere left to run.'Powerful and thought provoking writing with a telling edge of reality.' Women's Weekly on Nicole Trope's The Secrets in Silence, AWW Pick of the Month.

She's Dating the Gangster


Bianca B. Bernardino - 2013
    All of a sudden, she finds herself pretending—unwillingly at that—to be his girlfriend to make his ex jealous.Now, not only does she have to deal with dirty looks from the girls in school who want Kenji for themselves, but her supposed boyfriend is getting on her nerves. He's hotheaded, never seems to agree with her on anything—and everything about him screams gangster.Has Athena gotten herself into more trouble than she can handle? Or has she actually found herself a boy she can call hers—gangster be damned?

Parallel Myths


J.F. Bierlein - 1994
    . . An eye-opener to readers into the universality and importance of myth in human history and culture."--William E. Paden, Chair, Department of Religion, University of Vermont For as long as human beings have had language, they have had myths. Mythology is our earliest form of literary expression and the foundation of all history and morality. Now, in Parallel Myths, classical scholar J. F. Bierlein gathers the key myths from all of the world's major traditions and reveals their common themes, images, and meanings.Parallel Myths introduces us to the star players in the world's great myths--not only the twelve Olympians of Greek mythology, but the stern Norse Pantheon, the mysterious gods of India, the Egyptian Ennead, and the powerful deities of Native Americans, the Chinese, and the various cultures of Africa and Oceania. Juxtaposing the most potent stories and symbols from each tradition, Bierlein explores the parallels in such key topics as creation myths, flood myths, tales of love, morality myths, underworld myths, and visions of the Apocalypse. Drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Karl Jaspers, Claude L�vi-Strauss, and others, Bierlein also contemplates what myths mean, how to identify and interpret the parallels in myths, and how mythology has influenced twentieth-century psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and literary studies."A first-class introduction to mythology . . . Written with great clarity and sensitivity."--John G. Selby, Associate Professor, Roanoke College

Small Miracles Ii


Yitta Halberstam - 1998
    Each Small Miracles book is a collection of more than sixty heartwarming stories that recall remarkable coincidences that have changed people's ordinary lives.

Intimacy and Other Stories


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1939
    Zawartość zbioru:- Intymność- Pokój- Mur

When the Clock Chimes Two: A Short Story


Adriana Licio - 2021
    That is, until she finds herself accused of murder.Filled with newfound confidence, Zoe is enjoying the respect she is receiving all of a sudden from the inhabitants of the beautiful coastal village of Maratea in southern Italy. But just how far will her determination to take control of her life go? When she is discovered standing over the dead body of her bullying boss, the murder weapon in her hand, it looks as though it has gone way too far.When the local carabinieri regard the case as solved, travel writer and part-time sleuth Giò Brando investigates further, disturbed by her sister Agnese’s distress at having sold Zoe the scent that apparently transformed her into a killer. But it appears all the other suspects have watertight alibis for the time of the killing.With her shrewd granny’s words “A wolf is always a wolf, a lamb is always a lamb” echoing in her mind, Giò is sure that Zoe remains the gentlest of lambs. And then a chance remark in Leo’s Bar leads her to the truth – a truly heartless plan was put into action as Maratea’s clock struck two.◆◆◆ Cosy mystery fans, synchronise your watches and grab yourself a cappuccino. It’s time to help Giò investigate murder most horrid and make sure everyone gets what they deserve ◆◆◆---"When the Clock Chimes Two" is a short story in the heart warming and compelling "An Italian Village Mystery" series. Beloved by fans of Rhys Bowen, Agatha Christie, MC Beaton. Each book can be read as a standalone or enjoyed in sequence.Book 0 (prequel) - And Then There Were BonesBook 1 - Murder on The RoadBook 2 - A Fair Time for DeathBook 3 - A Mystery Before ChristmasBook 4 - Peril at the Pellicano Hotel

Reunion


Karen Ball - 1996
    Taylor Sorensen has a secret: there are wolves on her ranch. Taylor's new ranch hand, Connor Alexander, has a secret, too: he's a wildlife biologist who's been sent to find out if, after sixty years, wolves have returned to Wyoming. Caught in a fierce battle against angry ranchers and centuries of superstition, Taylor and Connor are drawn together by their desire to protect these wild, majestic animals. What they don't know is that there's someone else out there who hates the wolves -- someone who's as determined to get rid of them as Taylor and Connor are to protect them.