As a commoner raised to a position reserved for nobles Col faces bullying, taunts, and dirty tricks, when he isn't ignored completely, On the day of his greatest triumph a beastman invasion sends Col running for his life with the arrogant Princess Rain in tow. His mentor murdered, his home in flames, and an army of monsters out to kill him, can Col deliver Rain to the safety of legendary Celestia? The Squire is a tale of love and honor, duty and revenge, war and survival.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Besides George Meredith and his wife Mary Ellen, Swinburne and his companion Theodore Watts-Dunton are among those who also find a place in the three poem-sequences that comprise the book: "Arisbe," "The Leisure of the Theory Class," and "Rückenfigur." Howe's historical linkings, resonant with the sorrows of love and loss and the tragedies of war, create a compelling canvas of associations. "It's the blanks and gaps," she says, "that to me actually represent what poetry is-the connections between seemingly unconnected things-as if there is a place and might be a map to thought, when we know there is not."

    The thankless task facing him and his men -- to patrol the tension-filled streets through weeks of boredom punctuated by bursts of horror -- takes them through times of tragedy, madness, laughter and terror.

    When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget—his wife’s recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill’s story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus’s death.Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.*Time Out (Chicago)

    Though officially unsolved, Jane’s murder was apparently the third in a series of seven brutal rape-murders in the area. Nelson was born a few years after Jane’s death, and the narrative is suffused with the long shadow her murder cast over both the family and her psyche.Jane explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, and documentary sources, including newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane’s own diaries written. Each piece in Jane has its own form that serves as an important fissure, disrupting the tabloid, "page-turner" quality of the story, and eventually returning the reader to deeper questions about girlhood, empathy, identification, and the essentially unknowable aspects of another’s life and death. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, Jane’s powerful and disturbing subject matter, combined with its innovations in genre, expands the notion of what poetry can do—what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them.

    L. Bartlett, Rae Davies, and P.B. RyanAll author proceeds from this anthology to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.Murder Passes The Buck by Deb BakerWhen her neighbor is shot and killed, sixty-six-year-old widow Gertie Johnson seizes the opportunity to move on with her life by investigating his death. Gertie is abetted (and hindered) by her grandson Little Donny, man-hungry best friend Cora Mae, and word-of-the-day challenger, Kitty. It doesn’t help that the death has been ruled an accident by the sheriff of this backwoods community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Or that Sheriff Blaze Johnson happens to be Gertie’s son.Whether it’s interrogating neighbors, spying, or impersonating the FBI—not to mention staying one step ahead of Blaze—Gertie will do whatever it takes to solve the case, even when the killer takes aim at her.Murder On The Mind By L. L. BartlettAfter insurance investigator Jeff Resnick is viciously mugged, he discovers the resulting brain injury has left him able to sense people’s secrets. When his estranged half-brother, Richard, takes Jeff to the family home to recover, Jeff’s senses pick up clues to the recent vicious murder of a local banker. Despite Jeff’s mixed feelings about his new sixth sense, he feels compelled to explore the banker’s murder--using both his senses and his investigative skills, along with Richard’s reluctant help. Against the gritty setting of wintry Buffalo, NY, and a tormented family history of his own, unraveling the truth threatens Jeff’s--and Richard’s--life.Loose Screw by Rae DaviesLucy Mathews, crime reporter turned antiques dealer, avoids confrontation like a home perm. She even lets a cat shove her around.When Lucy trips over the body of a buckskin-clad relics trader, her ex-boss asks her to cover the story. She tries to tell him no, but old habits die hard and soon she finds herself directly in the path of a killer and the exasperating, if attractive, detective in charge.Can Lucy catch a killer or is this the last confrontation for her—period?Still Life With Murder by P.B. RyanBook #1 of P.B. Ryan’s bestselling historical mystery series featuring Boston governess Nell Sweeney and opium-smoking former battle surgeon Will Hewitt. Long thought to have died during the Civil War, Will is arrested for murder, and it's up to Nell to prove his innocence.“P.B. Ryan makes a stunning debut with Still Life With Murder, bringing Nineteenth Century Boston alive, from its teeming slums to the mansions on Boston Common, and populating it with a vivid and memorable cast of characters. The fascinating heroine, Nell Sweeney, immediately engages the reader and I couldn’t put the book down until I discovered the truth along with her. I can’t wait for the next installment.” —Bestselling author Victoria Thompson

    Big, bold, and beautiful are three adjectives that describe Erika to a tee. Named after her mother's favorite soap opera vixen, Erika Kane is self-assured, headstrong, and opinionated. But Erika is also unlucky in love. Whenever she thinks she's found everlasting love, it always ends up being short-lived--literally. She has three dead husbands to prove that point, and it has earned her the title of The Black Widow. Just when Erika is about to give up on true love, she learns that, like it does in the soaps, love sometimes shows up when you least expect it--though sometimes it can be deceiving. Once again, life has gone wrong for Artemis Clay. It seems like she's always been unlucky in love, and this time is even worse than she could imagine. Her own family looks down upon her, and everything looks hopeless. Artemis decides to leave everything behind for a last-minute getaway. While she's enjoying her newfound freedom, she comes across not one, but two reminders that maybe not all hope is lost. Is she ready to take a chance on love again?

    Nearly fourteen years ago Sirowitz began turning his mother's advice into poetry--never showing her exactly what came of her ranting and raving about a ketchup jar: Deformed FingerDon't stick your finger in the ketchup bottle, Mother said. It might get stuck, &then you'll have to wait for your father to get home to pull it out. Hewon't be happy to find a dirty fingernailsquirming in the ketchup that he's going to useon his hamburger.He'll yank it out so hardthat for the rest of your life you won'tbe able to wear a ring on that finger.And if you ever get a girlfriend, & you hold hands, she's bound to ask youwhy one of your fingers is deformed, & you'll be obligated to tell her how you didn't listen to your mother, & insisted on playing with the ketchup bottle, & she'll get to thinking, he probably won'tlisten to me either, & she'll push your hand away. Since then Sirowitz has become a regular in New York City's downtown poetry scene, was awarded a residency at the MacDowell artists colony, performed live on MTV's "The Spoken Word: Unplugged," appeared on Public Television's "United States of Poetry" series, and received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to continue writing about his mother.No one, not even Estelle Sirowitz, could have predicted the incredibleallure and success of his dead-pan delivery and dead-on depictions of a mother's words of doom: from A Bum's LifeYou're going to be a bum, Mother said, if you're not one already, but you'llsoon find out that even a bumhas to work hard convincing peoplethat he's really poor. When it rainsyou can't stand out there holdingan umbrella, & ask for money, butyou have to get wet, because the moreyou drip, the more sympathy you'll get.... Like nursery rhymes for adults, the poems included in Mother Said are addictive. Read them once and you'll have to read them twice.Hear Sirowitz read them, and you'll find yourself reciting them to your friends--mimicking as best you can his Queens accent and his dry delivery. Who knows, you may even find yourself reciting them to your own mother."

    Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend. Realizing what his life has been he decides it would be better to die than to go on living this way. A failed suicide attempt leaves Leroy hospitalized where he retreats further into his mind in order to make sense of his existence.Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and kids, and is close to losing his house. He's buried in debt, unable to pay the medical bills from his daughter's childhood illness. As Freddie's situation becomes more desperate he undertakes a risky endeavor he hopes will solve his problems but could possibly end in disaster. Just as Freddie is about to lose it all, he is faced with the possibility of getting his kids back.Pauline Hawkins takes care of everyone else around her. She cares for her mentally ill father out of a deep sense of obligation. As a nurse at the local hospital, she treats her patients and their families with a familiar warmth and tenderness. When Pauline becomes attached to a young runaway, she learns the difficult lesson that you can't help someone who doesn't help themselves.The lives of these three characters intersect as they look for meaning in desperate times. Willy Vlautin covers themes ranging from health care to the economic downturn and housing crisis, to the toll war takes on veterans and their families. The Free is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America and a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.

    The play portrays each young woman before, during, and after her tour in the war torn jungle and ends as each leaves a personal token at The Wall in Washington.A Piece of My Heart premiered in New York at Manhattan Theatre Club, and now has enj

    With its main office in Hamburg, base of operations for terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and many of the others, Der Spiegel's journalists were on the front lines of the earliest investigation into the identities of those who, on a cloudless summer's morning, brought Holy War to America.The award-winning team from Spiegel was also at Ground Zero, talking to people, gathering stories, interviewing survivors, seeking the words that might express the interconnections of horror and heroism. The words came to them from those who had been inside and somehow gotten out, and take us as close as we can get to what happened. Combining first-class investigative journalism and writing of extraordinary clarity, Inside 9-11 is a heartbreaking and gripping reconstruction of the events that changed us all. No book can encompass what took place on 9-11. But here is one that gives it human dimension.

    The are an amalgam of mythology and folk tales from the Indian sub-continent, Persia, and Arabia. No original manuscript has ever been found for the collection, but several versions date the collection's genesis to somewhere between AD 800-900. The stories are wound together under the device of a long series of cliff-hangers told by Shahrazad to her husband Shahryar, to prevent him from executing her. Many tales that have become independently famous come from the Book, among them Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. This collection comes from the third of sixteen volumes translated by Burton.

    --from "Before"Jason Shinder's last poems are his moving testimonies to poetry, love, and friendship. With power, clarity, and disarming humor, the poems confront grief and mortality with a humility and fortitude that come only "with hope, stupid hope." Stupid Hope is Shinder's wry, penetrating, and wise farewell.

    Hamilton Jr., and the veteran military history writer and bestselling author of One Shot One Kill,, Hill 488, and Crosshairs on the Kill Zone, Charles W. Sasser, detailing how Hamilton brought together a combination of Navy, Army, and CIA training methods to shape the United States’ unconventional military force, culminating in the Navy Seals, the world's most effective warriors in combating terrorists and international criminals, whose Team Six carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden.