ShortStories

Durand, Kendra Wisdom Turiya: A Collection of Wordizms (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

TURIYA: A Collection of Wordizms is a work of art that mixes media in the written and visual form. Turiya is the 4th and highest level of human consciousness one can obtain. When you reach Turiya you have the ability to take an ideal for it's true value without attaching it to anything else. The ideal stands alone. The tag line is "Have You Been Here Before?" TURIYA: A Collection of Wordizms not only makes a strong presentation but it also makes a statement about just how far we have come as a community of color in America. Each page of this book was carefully conceived to illustrate the writer's point of view. The book is separated into two sections 1. Heads of Lettuce Speak 2. Ears of Corn Hear This. The first section is short stories. The second section is poetry. The poems are universal and deal with issues that all human beings face despite their origins. The artwork for each section cover page uses Adinkra symbols that have powerful meanings. There are also photos and sketches included throughout the book. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Two of the sketches in particular may be thought controversial. That's why they are in the book! For example, did you know that what we know as the swastika was the original form of the cross preceding the ankh? The short stories are written from an African American point of view and to be even more specific from a southern black woman's point of view. Most of the short stories in this work of art deal with issues blacks in America have faced as backlash against resistance to change. Full to the brim with the kind of colorful language folks use down south in The Country. What is important here is to remember the historical value of challenges we as people of color have faced in our uphill battle for equality. Durand shines a light on things that some folks like to sweep under a rug and forget about, even use words some might find offensive (ie. jungle bunnies and jiggaboos). Deals a lot with suspicion and the practice of ancient wisdom (ie. never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing). The focal point in many of the short stories is the contrast between light and dark skinned people of color. Good hair vs. bad hair. You know, racy topics that have divided communities of colors for centuries in the past. None of those sentiments continue today. Right?

Akpan, Uwem Say You're One of Them eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of ""An Ex-Mas Feast"" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord. In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa. Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

Le, Nam BOAT eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice

My father arrived on a rainy morning. I was dreaming about a poem, the dull thluck thluck of a typewriter's keys punching out the letters. It was a good poem--perhaps the best I'd ever written. When I woke up, he was standing outside my bedroom door, smiling ambiguously. He wore black trousers and a wet, wrinkled parachute jacket that looked like it had just been pulled out of a washing machine. Framed by the bedroom doorway, he appeared even smaller, gaunter, than I remembered. Still groggy with dream, I lifted my face toward the alarm clock.

"What time is it?"

"Hello, Son," he said in Vietnamese. "I knocked for a long time. Then the door just opened."

The fields are glass, I thought. Then tum-ti-ti, a dactyl, end line, then the words excuse and alloy in the line after. Come on, I thought.

"It's raining heavily," he said.

I frowned. The clock read 11:44. "I thought you weren't coming until this afternoon." It felt strange, after all this time, to be speaking Vietnamese again.

"They changed my flight in Los Angeles."

"Why didn't you ring?"

"I tried," he said equably. "No answer."

I twisted over the side of the bed and cracked open the window. The sound of rain filled the room--rain fell on the streets, on the roofs, on the tin shed across the parking lot like the distant detonations of firecrackers. Everything smelled of wet leaves.

"I turn the ringer off when I sleep," I said. "Sorry."

He continued smiling at me, significantly, as if waiting for an announcement.

"I was dreaming."

He used to wake me, when I was young, by standing over me and smacking my cheeks lightly. I hated it--the wetness, the sourness of his hands.

"Come on," he said, picking up a large Adidas duffel and a rolled bundle that looked like a sleeping bag. 'A day lived, a sea of knowledge earned." He had a habit of speaking in Vietnamese proverbs. I had long since learned to ignore it.

I threw on a T-shirt and stretched my neck in front of the lone window. Through the rain, the sky was as gray and striated as graphite. The fields are glass . . . Like a shape in smoke, the poem blurred, then dissolved into this new, cold, strange reality: a windblown, rain-strafed parking lot; a dark room almost entirely taken up by my bed; the small body of my father dripping water onto hardwood floors.

I went to him, my legs goose-pimpled underneath my pajamas. He watched with pleasant indifference as my hand reached for his, shook it, then relieved his other hand of the bags. "You must be exhausted," I said.

He had flown from Sydney, Australia. Thirty-three hours all up--transiting in Auckland, Los Angeles, and Denver--before
touching down in Iowa. I hadn't seen him in three years.

"You'll sleep in my room."

"Very fancy," he said, as he led me through my own apartment. "You even have a piano." He gave me an almost rueful smile. "I knew you'd never really quit." Something moved behind his face and I found myself back on a heightened stool with my fingers chasing the metronome, ahead an

Hecht, Julie Happy Trails to You: Stories eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

"When Julie Hecht's stories first appeared in The New Yorker, her unnamed photographer-narrator became an instant literary icon. Chronicles of her strategies for surviving civilization's decline -- herbal remedies, macrobiotics, a bit of Xanax -- have established her as one of the most captivating and eagerly read voices in modern literature. In this new collection of stories, Julie Hecht reclaims the darkly funny, existential territory for which she is known: ""People say 'Good morning,' but don't believe them. It's just something to say."" The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world -- whether she's attempting to withdraw money from a bank machine, worrying about Paul McCartney, or seeking a nonexistent place of calm on Nantucket, where nail guns and chain saws have replaced the sounds of birds singing. Appalled by life in our times, the narrator recounts innumerable artifacts from a now vanished America (civility, idealism, Elvis Presley, well-made appliances). She is also exquisitely attuned to the absurdities of our culture; her acute observations illuminate every subject, from the dangers of microwave ovens to the disappearing ozone layer. With deadpan wit, the author reveals the truths of a new century. Happy Trails to You is a radically distinctive work of American fiction. "

Bausch, Richard Wives and Lovers eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Wives & Lovers is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the Boston Globe calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers."

Requisite Kindness -- published here for the first time -- tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. Rare & Endangered Species demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, Spirits is about the pain that men and women can -- and do -- inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love -- not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.

Harbour, William Talmon Scary People, Scary Stories (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

William Talmon Harbour is a writer with equal parts humor and dark imaginings. After the tradition of Edgar Allen Poe, these stories will make you sit up straight and perhaps even turn on some lights. Some will make you laugh and some will make you squirm and sweat. Whatever you may think about Mr. Harbour and his stories, you WILL think about them. The first time I read a Steven King novel I knew I would read more. When this manuscript found our desk we got that feeling all over again.

Lahiri, Jhumpa UNACCUSTOMED EARTH eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Unaccustomed Earth / Jhumpa Lahiri

We have received the following praise for the above:

“Lahiri’s enormous gifts as a storyteller are on full display in this collection: the gorgeous, effortless prose; the characters haunted by regret, isolation, loss, and tragedies big and small; and most of all, a quiet, emerging sense of humanity.”

–Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner

“Pulitzer Prize winning Lahiri returns with her highly anticipated second collection exploring the inevitable tension brought on by family life. The title story takes on a young mother nervously hosting her widowed father, who is visiting between trips he takes with a lover he has kept secret from his family. What could have easily been a melodramatic soap opera is instead a meticulously crafted piece that accurately depicts the intricacies of the father-daughter relationship. In a departure from Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri divides this book into two parts, devoting the second half to “Hema and Kaushik,” three stories that together tell the story of a young man and woman who meet as children and reunite years later halfway around the world. The author’s ability to flesh out completely even minor characters in every story, and especially in this trio of stories, is what will keep readers invested in the work until its heartbreaking conclusion. Recommended for all public libraries.”

–Sybil Kollappallil, Library Journal

“The tight arc of a story is perfect for Lahiri’s keen sense of life’s abrupt and powerful changes, and her avid eye for telling details. This collection’s five powerful stories and haunting triptych of tales about the fates of two Bengali families in America map the perplexing hidden forces that pull families asunder and undermine marriages. ‘Unaccustomed Earth,’ the title story, dramatizes the divide between immigrant parents and their American-raised children, and is the first of several scathing inquiries into the lack of deep-down understanding and trust in a marriage between a Bengali and a non-Bengali. An inspired miniaturist, Lahiri creates a lexicon of loaded images. A hole burned in a dressy skirt suggests vulnerability and the need to accept imperfection. Van Eyck’s famous painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, is a template for a tale contrasting marital expectations with the reality of familial relationships. A collapsed balloon is emblematic of failure. A lost bangle is shorthand for disaster. Lahiri’s emotionally and culturally astute short stories (ideal for people with limited time for pleasure reading and a hunger for serious literature) are surprising, aesthetically marvelous, and shaped by a sure and provocative sense of inevitability. Lahiri writes insightfully about childhood, while the romantic infatuations and obstacles to true love will captivate teens.”

–Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)

“Stunning . . . The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American—raised children–and that separates the children from India–remains Lahiri’s subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle

Atwood, Margaret MORAL DISORDER eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Margaret Atwood is acknowledged as one of the foremost writers of our time. In Moral Disorde, she has created a series of interconnected stories that trace the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it—those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. As in a photograph album, time is measured in sharp, clearly observed moments. The ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and the present —all are here. The settings vary: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. As the New York Times has noted: "The reader has the sense that Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations.”

“The Bad News” is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. The narrative then switches time as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence in “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” “The Headless Horseman,” and “My Last Duchess.” We follow her into young adulthood in “The Other Place” and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories: “Monopoly,” “Moral Disorder,” “White Horse,” and “The Entities.” The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab," deal with the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.

Moral Disorder is fiction, not autobiography; it prefers emotional truths to chronological facts. Nevertheless, not since Cat’s Eye has Margaret Atwood come so close to giving us a glimpse into her own life.

Millhauser, Steven DANGEROUS LAUGHTER eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Cat ’n’ mouse

The cat is chasing the mouse through the kitchen: between the blue chair legs, over the tabletop with its red-and-white-checkered tablecloth that is already sliding in great waves, past the sugar bowl falling to the left and the cream jug falling to the right, over the blue chair back, down the chair legs, across the waxed and butter-yellow floor. The cat and the mouse lean backward and try to stop on the slippery wax, which shows their flawless reflections. Sparks shoot from their heels, but it’s much too late: the big door looms. The mouse crashes through, leaving a mouse-shaped hole. The cat crashes through, replacing the mouse-shaped hole with a larger, cat-shaped hole. In the living room they race over the back of the couch, across the piano keys (delicate mouse tune, crash of cat chords), along the blue rug. The fleeing mouse snatches a glance over his shoulder, and when he looks forward again he sees the floor lamp coming closer and closer. Impossible to stop—at the last moment he splits in half and rejoins himself on the other side. Behind him the rushing cat fails to split in half and crashes into the lamp: his head and body push the brass pole into the shape of a trombone. For a moment the cat hangs sideways there, his stiff legs shaking like the clapper of a bell. Then he pulls free and rushes after the mouse, who turns and darts into a mousehole in the baseboard. The cat crashes into the wall and folds up like an accordion. Slowly he unfolds, emitting accordion music. He lies on the floor with his chin on his upraised paw, one eyebrow lifted high in disgust, the claws of his other forepaw tapping the floorboards. A small piece of plaster drops on his head. He raises an outraged eye. A framed painting falls heavily on his head, which plunges out of sight between his shoulders. The painting shows a green tree with bright red apples. The cat’s head struggles to rise, then pops up with the sound of a yanked cork, lifting the picture. Apples fall from the tree and land with a thump on the grass. The cat shudders, winces. A final apple falls. Slowly it rolls toward the frame, drops over the edge, and lands on the cat’s head. In the cat’s eyes, cash registers ring up NO SALE.

The mouse, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, is sitting in his plump armchair, reading a book. He is tall and slim. His feet rest on a hassock, and a pair of spectacles rest on the end of his long, whiskered nose. Yellow light from a table lamp pours onto the book and dimly illuminates the cozy brown room. On the wall hang a tilted sampler bearing the words HOME SWEET HOME, an oval photograph of the mouse’s mother with her gray hair in a bun, and a reproduction of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon in which all the figures are mice. Near the armchair is a bookcase filled with books, with several titles visible: Martin Cheddarwit, Gouda’s Faust, The Memoirs of Anthony Edam, A History of the Medicheese, the sonnets of Shakespaw. As the mouse reads his book, he reaches without looking toward a dish on the table. The dish is empty: his fingers tap about inside it. The mouse rises and goes over to the cupboard, which is empty except for a tin box with the word CHEESE on it. He opens the box and turns it upside down. Into his palm drops a single toothpick. He gives it a melancholy look. Shaking his head, he returns to his ch

Brockmeier, Kevin VIEW FROM THE 7TH LAYER eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Kevin Brockmeier is the author of The Brief History of the Dead, The Truth About Celia, Things That Fall from the Sky, and two children's novels. He has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, McSweeney's and Oxford American, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

From the Hardcover edition.

Goldstein, Evelyn Fishler A Close Brush with Life (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

The banquet is set. A smorgasbord of 135 stories and poems beckons. Savor tantalizing science-fiction stories of unearthly worlds. Watch as the incredible becomes credible. See new worlds created in timeless tales of love, romance and faith.

But there are also dark tales-of murder, revenge and ominous spirits. Some of the stories contain twists and surprise endings. Others tell of the power of faith, prayer and love.

You'll be carried through time and space, from worlds of dreams and imagination and back again to the reality of today.

Evelyn Goldstein's talented, award-winning "brush" paints heartwarming and humorous poems about every facet of life-dieting; keeping plants alive (or not); teaching; marriage and many more.

So pull up a chair, get comfortable and prepare to be amazed, mystified, charmed and uplifted by-A Close Brush with Life.

de Almeida, Elizabeth J SOUNDS LIKE A DOLL (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

The key to our minds ability to create is to bring forth images that help us to see the world in a different way, a new way. With this line of vision, we are opened to numerous possibilities. All hopes that have once seemed so far a way suddenly become attainable. For moments that are surrounded by despair, with no sign of light to guide us, are soon turned into a time of triumph and rejoicing. There is a spirit of our mind's eye, when at its most active, gives more power to extend itself further. That is inspiration. Drawn from the simplest of matters or objects that we may or may not have taken notice. In these stories, inspiration is given to a number of working people, who try to fill in the missing links in their vocations of choice. For in their midst they come face to face with an ultimate gift from a common object, a statue, a cloth sculpture, a beaded art form. Whichever name they are given, the message to these people is to respond to this gift; Find within their hearts the courage to go beyond where the eyes can see.

Hazzard, William Russell Angell of Mercy (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

The "nether world of long-term care" is the underbelly of our technically distinguished but humanistically challenged American health care system and the final stop on the way to dying and death for millions of our most frail and elderly citizens. Each of them has a story to tell, and this novel is a compilation of such stories as related by Rob Angell, a social worker with a deeply troubled past who is advocate and confidante of dozens of patients on the nursing home units of Mercy Meadows, an upscale Charlotte Methodist retirement community. These include Fred Walter, a retired, disabled, depressed, and bitter academic physician once renowned for broadcasting the stories of heroic pioneer physicians in rural upstate New York from his radio station at the university medical center in Schenectady. The two of them collaborate in recording Rob's stories in a series of tapes that accumulate in Fred's bedside table drawer. Upon being notified of Fred's unexpected death, in going through his belongings, Rick Nelson, his 2nd cousin and an academic geriatrician who regularly combines social visits to Mercy Meadows with teaching rounds there with medical students there under his charge at the university in Charlotte, discovers the tapes and listens to them one at a time over the next few months during sleepless nights at his Carolina Piedmont home. While generally charming, these are also somehow deeply disturbing stories of Piedmont citizens living their final days in the apparent luxury of Mercy Meadows but passing them in boredom, neglect, and misery before coming to "untimely" ends, which remain unexplained and uninvestigated in the quiet environment of long term care where death is the expected outcome. This leisurely listening exercise for Rick comes to a crashing end when he listens to the final tape, which is the frightened call of his cousin who comes to realize in his final moments that his own death his imminent.

Wiederhold, Art Fantasia: A Collection of Erotic Short Stories (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

A collection of short, highly erotic fantasies from the author of Strange Love and Wildflowers.

FANTASIA is guaranteed to get your heart pumping and put your libido into overdrive, once again proving that Art Wiederhold is the modern master of erotic fiction.

Peterman, Gene R Woman's Creek (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Woman's Creek, book three of the Western Heart Series, is a collection of two dozen short stories. More men went West than women. When a man became established he wanted a wife and family. These stories are about finding a wife and starting a western family. Other Western Heart books are Marrying Tree Stories and Crossing Niobrara.

Swenson, Jack By the Light of the Silvery Moon (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Read these stories carefully. They're large. Read them one, two, three times. There's more here than meets the eye.

Some of the stories are jokes, some confessions, some mysteries. There are rewrites of stories written earlier, too. My favorite stories are those where there's something left out, where you can't see the whole tapestry, just a single thread.

Pull on the thread and see what is revealed. You'll be surprised.

Dean, Debra Confessions of a Falling Woman eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

A surprised Southern matriarch is confronted by her family at an intervention. . . . A life-altering break-in triggers insomniac introspection in a desperate actor. . . . Streetwise New York City neighbors let down their guard for a naïve puppeteer and must suffer the consequences. . . .

In this stunning collection of short stories—five of which are being published for the very first time—bestselling, award-winning author Debra Dean displays the depth and magnitude of her extraordinary literary talent. Replete with the seamless storytelling and captivating lyrical voice that made her debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, a national bestseller, Dean's Confessions of a Falling Woman is a haunting, satisfying, and unforgettable reading experience.

Swartz, David Splice (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

The title work in this volume is truly the narrative of a SPLICE, that is, the conjoined, rejoined, temporary, temporarily, sanity of a man-deeply fragmented, wounded by his era, having fled employment and household out of dread and profound depression-who, arriving at the old cannabis buddy's hometown, of all potential oases on a harsh Jehovah's earth.

Des Moines, Iowa .

. having sought sustenance and support and having received the total sum of both-negotiates seven weeks of respite in an employment program and the loving arms of a wonderfully endowed African-American (black) "older woman" to eventually "deconstruct" i.e., implode toward his formally diagnosed "schizoid affective"

chaos and misery .

. and again, flight-return at last to the arms of his estranged, long-suffering helpmate and wife, bride of a dozen years-and there with no certain resolution or promise on any imaginable horizon, terminate this terrible, non-redemptive, dark and foreboding, utterly idiosyncratic, fictive phase of his living.

SPLICE, and the stranger Dinner Party and Adam and Evan, are indeed fictions .

. yet are truer than real. Darker than the necessary. More amusing than credulous. Sensitive than credible. Valid than factual. Sudden than visual. Important than published. Greater than read. Larger than critiqued. Scarier than privilege. Tender-even the concluding apocalyptic parody-tender-the very last brush of a butterfly's wing.

Westbrook, Eddie Truth and Fiction (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

". In order for you all to meet the goals that you need for life, you must live inside a ring of fire," my mother said calmly. "The fire will protect you from things that might cause you to lose focus. You are part of a chain, and when one link gets weak, it causes the whole chain to suffer."
Seamlessly blending truth with fiction, these poignant vignettes offer slice of life portraits of the kinds of people who informed and grounded Eddie Westbrook's life as one of ten children born into a sharecropper family in rural Georgia in 1950. The stories pay tribute to the sorts of emotions- compassion, ambition, regret, thrill, joy, hope-that unite us all.

Gathering people, circumstances, and insight from his early years, Westbrook weaves tales of days gone by into valuable, timeless lessons for today. You'll be moved by the passion that Auntie Mae had for Uncle Candy despite his indiscretions. You'll appreciate the sacrifices Uncle John made for Auntie Martha. And you'll take to heart the wisdom Eddie's mother doled out whenever she sensed her son was straying from the proper path. Westbrook's encouraging collection honors one of God's greatest gifts to mankind, time, with its tremendous power to heal and comfort.

Stryker, Theodore K Driftwood (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

"One writes out of one thing-one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give." So wrote the novelist James Baldwin.

True to Baldwin's observation the remarkable short stories of Theodore (Ted) Stryker are drawn entirely from his experiences during the last half of the volatile 20th Century. Included in this unusual assortment are his childhood memories of World War II and its aftermath, and his own troubled participation in three of the nation's later military conflicts. In the last two of these he served not as a combatant but in a civilian support role.

His essays and commentaries address the critical issues of his time, most of which remain very much with us today. We sense immediately that he is passionate about what he writes; yet he never ceases to surprise us. Using persuasive argumentation he is often conservative when we expect him to be liberal and liberal when we expect him to be conservative. We may not always agree with him but he certainly tempts us to reexamine our long-standing beliefs.

Price, Khojesta A Karma, Chameleon (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

She is still the exotic creature that swam across the seven seas to find me--wistful, demanding, and playful.

There were piles of cards: birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year--all wrapped up neatly with ribbons. There were dried flowers, old perfume bottles, costume jewelry, hats, gloves, old lace peignoirs, and stuff that I didn't even recognize.

Your kiss lands on her cheek as she rearranges herself on her bed--the beautiful brass bed where you both spent such happy times together...Vivid images appear and go running by your mind faster than the speed of light. Your legs weigh a ton. "Another time maybe," she says looking at the patch of blue summer sky high above her window, "in another life, my love," she whispers to the spruce tree outside.

"Peek a Boo, Daddy," she'd say, hiding herself behind my couch while I read the daily newspaper. I can already hear the pitter-patter of her tiny feet.

My friend gets up to leave. I walk him to the door. He looks much taller than I remember him and very handsome--much more hndsome than any knight I've ever known.

Kaplan, Robert Barry Essential Stories (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

A man is repeatedly abducted by the same aliens. A woman metamorphoses into a giant bird. A man and woman are surgically joined to each other. A man experiences the difficulties of remodeling a haunted house. A woman repeatedly drives her boyfriend to the brink of suicide. A man encounters a prehistoric beast in his backyard. A young couple kidnaps little children to supplement their income. A man searches for his evil twin.

These are the types of situations the characters in Essential Stories routinely find themselves in.

A man reminisces about the time his town was invaded by zombies. A woman is frustrated with her discount-store clone. A man and woman rent an apartment to a vampire. A man is seduced by a beautiful witch. A woman reveals the strange secret of her everlasting youth. A hitch-hiker accepts a ride from an alien. An artist's statues come to life. A man relates the conditions of his imprisonment. A man and woman visit an alternate universe. The last man and woman on Earth are ambivalent about having children.

The stories are occasionally silly, often tongue-in-cheek, usually outlandish, and sometimes poignant. Told in a straightforward matter-of-fact style, they show how ordinary people react to extraordinary events.

Ulysse, Katia VOICES IN THE HURRICANE & OTHE (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Leaving Haiti was like dying. We could not take our possessions with us. On the eve of our departure, we gave away our kitchen table, the tablecloth, the wooden spoons, the dishes (even the good ones), and the clay jugs that kept our drinking water cool. Manman parceled out our clothes, our shoes, every last grain of rice, sugar, and salt we possessed. She gave away our ironing board, the iron, our pillows, the sheets on the bed, the bed itself. Manman said we wouldn't need those old things. She said we would have new lives and new possessions to go with them.

When the plane landed in JFK finally, and the cruel man at customs did the unthinkable, Manman's joy curdled like milk under the noonday sun. Her secret had been exposed. Something within her started to run backwards, running and howling like a child lost in dense woods. She'd made a mistake. Now that she was at the finish line, she wanted out of the race. She wanted to give the Consul his visas back and return to the island. But it was already too late.

Whalen, Jill Celtic Tales 8 (Adobe Reader) eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Celtic heroes seize the moment and revel in life. Join them in their struggles and triumphs.

What makes a man? Is it his age, or his size, or his mettle? Meet a man of seven years that thousands of men swore sword fealty to. A prophesy about honor is fulfilled by a boy who found a signet ring and returned it to the McLeod clan. A boy dreaming of honor, riches, and glory in far off lands gets more than he bargained for. Find out about the sword that only belongs to heroes.

These Celtic people lived exciting lives. For a little while step into the past of your ancestors. Be a part of the daring with a sword and a brain.

Smith, Neil BANG CRUNCH eBook

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 47:07:37 GMT

Neil Smith is a Montreal writer. He has won an honorable mention at the National Magazine Awards in Canada, first prize at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival, and was nominated for the Journey Prize, one of Canada's most prestigous literary awards, three times. He is also a French translator.

From the Trade Paperback edition.