The Barn is an old fashioned scary story about two brothers who find their usual playspot now is home to something else, something terrible.The PA is a humourous short story about the world post-apocalypse (PA). It is 1182 words.

Romi Narindra must find love before her parents find her a husband.From whiskey-breath scum bags to uni-brow creeps and everything in between, Romi and her wingmen come up empty time after time. But hope floats again when she meets a fellow writer unexpectedly.On the Internet.So will it be arranged marriage doom, or an Internet affair that's not as a creepy as "To Catch a Predator"?[Book 1 in the "Year of the Chick" series. There's a bit of a cliffhanger to end this book, but the sequel addresses any unanswered questions]An awkward family homecoming at Christmas.A humiliating public weigh-in, with two judging parents as the audience.The announcement of a deadline for arranged marriage doom.And that's just the first two chapters.In "Year of the Chick," Romi Narindra must find love before her parents find her a husband (a seemingly absurd concept that's the norm in many cultures). To escape her fate, Romi wades through the waters of secret-dating, where self-consciousness is at an all-time high, and experience at an all-time low. It's the sort of thing that would turn almost anyone into a man-crazy freak with romance tunnel-vision, and that's exactly what happens to her. All the while, a lack of inspiration in her corporate job leads Romi to her love of writing, in what quickly becomes a man-quest play-by-play.From whiskey-breath scum bags to uni-brow creeps and everything in between, Romi and her wingmen come up empty time after time. And that's when she meets a fellow writer. On the Internet.So will it be arranged marriage doom, or an Internet affair that's not as creepy as "To Catch a Predator"? Time will tell in the "year of the chick," a twelve-month quest to find love.Tick-tock.---------------------------------------------"Year of the Chick" is book 1 in a series, and the sequel "Last-Minute Love" is available now!LENGTH: 75,000 words or 288 pagesDISCLAIMER: this book contains profanities, blunt accounts of the dating scene, and cringe-worthy awkward family moments

And here I am unknown and unemployed a helpless artist lost in London?with a sick wife and hungry children and bankruptcy staring me in the face?""

Heinrich Böll’s taut and haunting first novel tells the story of twenty-four-year-old Private Andreas as he journeys on a troop train across the German countryside to the Eastern front. Trapped, he knows that Hitler has already lost the war ... yet he is suddenly galvanized by the thought that he is on the way to his death. As the train hurtles on, he riffs through prayers and memories, talks with other soldiers about what they’ve been through, and gazes desperately out the window at his country racing away. With mounting suspense, Andreas is gripped by one thought over all: Is there a way to defy his fate? From the Trade Paperback edition.

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant victories and hardships more brilliantly than Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest essays and reporting, Krakauer writes of mountains from the memorable perspective of one who has himself struggled with solo madness to scale Alaska's notorious Devils Thumb. In Pakistan, the fearsome K2 kills thirteen of the world's most experienced mountain climbers in one horrific summer. In Valdez, Alaska, two men scale a frozen waterfall over a four-hundred-foot drop. In France, a hip international crowd of rock climbers, bungee jumpers, and paragliders figure out new ways to risk their lives on the towering peaks of Mont Blanc. Why do they do it? How do they do it? In this extraordinary book, Krakauer presents an unusual fraternity of daredevils, athletes, and misfits stretching the limits of the possible. From the paranoid confines of a snowbound tent, to the thunderous, suffocating terror of a white-out on Mount McKinley, Eiger Dreams spins tales of driven lives, sudden deaths, and incredible victories. This is a stirring, vivid book about one of the most compelling and dangerous of all human pursuits.

Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schneir collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards. Heinrich Böll’s gripping consideration of how to overcome guilt and live up to idealism—how to find something to believe in—gives stirring evidence of why he was such an unwelcome presence in post-War German consciousness . . . and why he was such a necessary one.

When Rick and Annie Waldron, a bitter elderly couple, turn onto New Hampshire's legendary Kancamagus Highway in a dangerous snowstorm, they are unaware that their fate may lie with an ancient forest alive with a vengeful spirit. (Short Story)This special edition of "The Kanc" includes free bonus chapter's from Steven R. Porter's novels "Confessions of the Meek & the Valiant and "Manisses."The past meets the present!In this first ever published collection of poetry by the author and written with warmth and feeling straight from the heart, this book intends to take readers,on a journey of emotions.A landmark in poetry, using olde English and contemporary crossover dialects.

"This collection has a straightforward ambition: to redirect the interpretive perspective that readers bring to Lawrence Durrell's literary works by returning their attention to his short prose." - From the Introduction Best known for his novels and travel writing, Lawrence Durrell defied easy classification within twentieth-century modernism. His anti-authoritarian tendencies put him at odds with many contemporaries-aesthetically and politically. However, thanks to a compelling recontextualization by editor James Gifford, these 38 previously unpublished or out-of-print essays and letters reveal that Durrell's maturation as an artist was rich, complex, and subtle. This edition promises to open up new approaches to interpreting his more famous works. Durrell fans will treasure this selection of rare nonfiction, while scholars of Durrell, Modernist literature, anti-authoritarian artists, and the Personalist movement will also appreciate Gifford's fine editorial work.

Juniper Hill is a short story of a young woman named Catherine and her brief relationship with John, a farmer's son, in a rural New England town.In the far future, humans have abandoned a dying Earth and colonised planets on the edge of another galaxy. Once there, they discover this galaxy is teeming with various species of alien life that have created a huge galactic network of planets which the humans become part of. This is the story of a human who journeys from the outer colonies to the bustling, cosmopolitan centre of the galaxy to start a new life. After befriending a cheeky alien, he unwittingly becomes entangled in a web of crime and adventure far beyond his wildest imagination. Can he stay ahead of the people who are determined to hunt him down?

Lawrence Durrell's series of four novels set in Alexandria, Egypt during the 1940s. The lush and sensuous series consists of Justine(1957) Balthazar(1958) Mountolive(1958) Clea(1960). Justine, Balthazar and Mountolive use varied viewpoints to relate a series of events in Alexandria before World War II. In Clea, the story continues into the years during the war. One L.G. Darley is the primary observer of the events, which include events in the lives of those he loves and those he knows. In Justine, Darley attempts to recover from and put into perspective his recently ended affair with a woman. Balthazar reinterprets the romantic perspective he placed on the affair and its aftermath in Justine, in more philosophical and intellectual terms. Mountolive tells a story minus interpretation, and Clea reveals Darley's healing, and coming to love another woman.

In this boisterous story collection, mischief abounds in the quiet corners of the British Empire on which the sun never setsAs the overseer of the kitchen at the British embassy in Vulgaria, De Mandeville has begun to abuse his power. He subjects the King's guests to a blistering Madras curry, a French onion soup served without spoons, and a table so loaded with vegetation that the party can hardly see the food. But worst of all, he has begun to cook with garlic, that fragrant bulb so beloved by diplomats that it must be banned, lest foul breath cripple the Empire. De Mandeville is due for comeuppance, and no breath mint can save him now."If Garlic Be the Food of Love" is only the first story in this invaluable peek at life in British diplomatic circles. After the ninth, the reader will wonder not how the British Empire came apart, but how De Mandeville, Polk-Mowbray, and the King's other dips ever got it started in the first place.

There’s always been something a bit off about Perry Palomino. Though she’s been dealing with a quarter-life crisis and post-college syndrome like any other twentysomething, she’s still not what you would call “ordinary. ” For one thing, there’s her past which she likes to pretend never happened, and then there’s the fact that she sees ghosts. Luckily for her, that all comes in handy when she stumbles across Dex Foray, an eccentric producer for an upcoming webcast on ghost hunters. Even though the show’s budget is non-existent and Dex himself is a maddening enigma, Perry is instantly drawn into a world that both threatens her life and seduces her with a sense of importance. Her uncle’s haunted lighthouse provides the perfect catalyst and backdrop for a horrific mystery that unravels the threads of Perry’s fragile sanity and causes her to fall for a man, who, like the most dangerous of ghosts, may not be all that he seems.

The Bath Fugues is a meditation on melancholy and art, in the form of three interwoven novellas, centred respectively on an ageing art forger; a Portuguese poet, opium addict and art collector; and a doctor, who has built an art gallery in tropical Queensland. These characters are tied by more than their art, each dealing with questions of deception and discovery, counterfeiting and rewriting, transmission and identity and each stretching the bonds of trust and friendship.