Once there were three. Three friends who loved each other—Jenna, Locke, and Kara. And after a terrible accident destroyed their bodies, their three minds were kept alive, spinning in a digital netherworld. Even in that disembodied nightmare, they were still together. At least at first. When Jenna disappeared, Locke and Kara had to go on without her. Decades passed, and then centuries.
Two-hundred-and-sixty years later, they have been released at last. Given new, perfect bodies, Locke and Kara awaken to a world they know nothing about, where everyone they once knew and loved is long dead.
Everyone except Jenna Fox. Views: 566
On a lonely dark highway, Mark Hampton, had an unusual and frightening encounter with an uninvited passenger. An apparition from the past delivers a message from a dead loved one to bring peace to Mark’s troubled mind.The 7 Poems of Lady Gaga is part of a collection of books created by Amanda Song. The young mind will be able to learn about poetry while reading about their favorite people or topics. Teachers can grab their young ones attention by using examples of poetry that involve their interests. Students can impress their teachers by already knowing different styles of poetry. There are many styles in the collection, including Acrostic, Haiku, Cinquain, Sonnet, and even Sestina! Once students become acquainted with the different style of poetry, they will be able to identify where the author went outside the lines every now and then. Views: 566
Charlene ran down the hall trying to find a place to hide, a place to escape the creep who chased her; the stranger with the wandering hands. As she turned another corner in the labyrinth of halls, a shocking realization tore through her brain and caused her to stumble. He knew too much about her. That could only mean one thing: she wasn’t the only one with a secret. She was so disoriented by...Charlene ran down the hall trying to find a place to hide, a place to escape the creep who chased her; the stranger with the wandering hands. As she turned another corner in the labyrinth of halls, a shocking realization tore through her brain and caused her to stumble. He knew too much about her. That could only mean one thing: she wasn’t the only one with a secret. She was so disoriented by the twisting hallways that she wasn’t sure if she was getting closer to freedom or back to where she started. She had just turned left down another hall when two hands reached out and grabbed her, one quickly reaching up to cover her mouth and stifle the shocked scream building in her lungs. She was pulled hard to a male body and her mind raced back to when her life had suddenly become this tangled mess…Charlene had lived a sheltered life. As the youngest in the family, it felt like her whole family had a secret mission to watch over her and keep her from growing up.Maxwell was a highly successful businessman too busy with his career to date. This loner is happy with his life and his secrets. He doesn't know that he has a rival that will stop at nothing to see him fail. Regardless of his flaws, with his friendship could Charlene escape her family's thumb and discover the adventure and independence of her dreams? This good girl couldn't take the tight boundaries anymore. She was unprepared for life, but given the chance to break free, would she find happiness and life or would her misguided choices teach her life's lessons the hard way and create the ultimate bad girl? Views: 566
(MMF) Gwen has a cheating ex, a paranoid best friend, crazy overprotective and ultra-religious parents…and is a successful erotica writer. Forced to overcome her fear of flying to search for their sister in Rapid City, Gwen doesn't expect to run into her internet buddy, Tim. Better yet, Tim's boyfriend, Jack, is a police detective. They welcome Gwen and her older brother, Liam, to stay with them during their search.
Jack earned his "Stoneface" nickname after personal tragedy hardened his heart. He loves Tim, but Gwen stirs up painful memories that make Jack's feelings for her suspect in his own mind. It doesn't help that he falls in love with her.
Unfortunately, finding their sister leads to more problems. Shattered trust, broken hearts, and Liam coming out to their parents in a defiant showdown make Gwen question her priorities. Can she risk her heart again trying to break through Jack's "Stoneface" façade? Views: 565
Liesl lives in a tiny attic bedroom, locked away by her cruel stepmother. Her only friends are the shadows and the mice,until one night a ghost appears from the darkness. It is Po, who comes from the Other Side. Both Liesl and Po are lonely, but together they are less alone.
That same night, an alchemist's apprentice, Will, bungles an important delivery. He accidentally switches a box containing the most powerful magic in the world with one containing something decidedly less remarkable.
Will's mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey.
From New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver comes a luminous and magnificent novel that glows with rare magic, ghostly wonders, and a true friendship that lights even the darkest of places. Views: 565
Poems from 2011We've got more great stories for you this month, with a god morgue, a few unexplained benefactors, and a xenobiologist who would really rather not be eaten by space slugs. Yep, it's that good.Fiction Vortex publishes science fiction and fantasy stories weekly at FictionVortex.com Views: 565
In the third installment of the Collide series, we start off with Sherry, taken prisoner in the enforcement facility. The little bunker family must now decide whether it's worth the risk to try to save her or if it would bring doom to them all. Lily has started showing signs of her gift progressing, which may not be a desirable thing. And as Marissa starts to act strangely, Jeff must come to terms that there may be more to her illness that meets the eye. Daniel, the Lighter who shocked Lillian with his human emotions will reappear, but for what purpose? Will Sherry be rescued before it's too late? Will Daniel prove to be a genuine miracle? Will Cain be able to fully get over his love for Sherry and move on with Lillian? And how much more trouble can the new Taker cause for the rebels? Some will make it and some won't as the story continues. Views: 565
Rolf, a small, gentle wolf, lives with Mrs. Boggins, who tells him he is a good little wolf. But when he meets up with a large, ferocious wolf, he is told that he isn't a real wolf. Wolves aren't little and good—they are big and bad. To prove he is a real wolf, the old wolf tells Rolf he must perform certain tasks, such as blowing down a little pig's house. Rolf is a total failure . . . until the big bad wolf urges him to do something unspeakable to old Mrs. Boggins. Then the good little wolf proves that he can stand up to the big bad bully. Or so it seems. More mature readers may find a different ending that could lead to a great discussion! Using familiar storybook characters and an endearing new hero, Nadia Shireen makes her debut in this winning picture book. Views: 565
*A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
*
In this wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel, Tim O'Brien has created the ultimate character for our times. Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets.
But there are complications, including Lorna Sue's brother, Herbie, with whom she has an all-too-close relationship, and the considerable charms of Chippering's new love, the attractive, and of course already married, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who may at last satisfy Chippering's longing for intimacy.
In Tomcat in Love, Tim O'Brien takes on the battle of the sexes with astonishing results. By turns hilarious, outrageous, romantic, and deeply moving, this is one of the most talked about novels in years: a novel for this and every age.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
**Amazon.com Review
To date, Tim O'Brien's novels have all shared common traits: his heroes hail from the Midwest, usually Minnesota; Vietnam figures prominently; and the stories he tells, though invested with mordant wit, are usually pretty grim. So an O'Brien fan coming to Tomcat in Love on the heels of his earlier novels can be forgiven for occasionally checking the name on the cover (and the photo on the dust jacket) just to be sure this is, indeed, the same Tim O'Brien who wrote Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried, If I Die in a Combat Zone, and In the Lake of the Woods.
In Tomcat in Love O'Brien introduces us to a very different hero: "In summary, then, my circumstances were these. Something over forty-nine years of age. Recently divorced. Pursued. Prone to late-night weeping. Betrayed not once but threefold: by the girl of my dreams, by her Pilate of a brother, and by a Tampa real-estate tycoon whose name I have vowed never again to utter." Thomas H. Chippering, professor of linguistics, war hero, and sex magnet--in his own mind, at least, has recently lost his childhood sweetheart and wife of 20 years to another man, the Tampa magnate, and Lorna Sue's desertion has clearly unhinged him. He has taken to flying down to Tampa from Minnesota on weekends to spy on his ex-wife and plot revenge against her, the tycoon, and Lorna Sue's brother, Herbie, whom he blames for destroying his marriage.
Thomas, Lorna Sue, and Herbie go back a long way together, bound equally by ties of love, guilt, and suspicion. Dating from the afternoon young Herbie nailed an even younger Lorna Sue's hand to a makeshift cross, Thomas has occupied a kind of emotional no man's land between the two: "In my bleakest moods, when black gets blackest, I think of it as a high perversion: Herbie coveted his own sister. Which is a fact. The stone truth. He was in love with her. More generously, I will sometimes concede that it was not sexual love, or not entirely, and that Herbie was driven by the obsessions of a penitent, a torturer turned savior. Partly, too, I am quite certain that Herbie secretly associated me with his own guilt. I was present at the beginning. My backyard, my plywood, my green paint."
Chippering takes his revenge to hilarious lengths, starting with a purple leather bra and panties stuffed beneath the seat of the tycoon's car and escalating from there. But even as he attempts to wreak havoc in his ex-wife's life, he succeeds in laying ruin to his own. His self-proclaimed irresistibility to women gets him in hot water with both his female students and his administration; his obsession with Lorna Sue threatens his budding romance with Mrs. Robert Kooshof, a woman who loves him as his wife never did--and, oh yes, there's that little matter of the squad of Green Berets he crossed many years before in Vietnam who may or may not be hunting him down.
Once you get over the shock of this new, funny Tim O'Brien, traces of the writer you thought you knew begin to surface. Chippering might be a pompous, overbearing windbag, but you can't trust him any more than you did any of O'Brien's other earthier, equally unreliable narrators. In one breath, he tells us, "I must in good conscience point out that women find me attractive beyond words. And who on earth could blame them?" In the next he describes himself as resembling "a clean-shaven version of our sixteenth president." Half the fun of reading Tomcat in Love is trying to sort out just how much of what Thomas H. Chippering tells us is true. Stellar writing, a brilliant cast of characters, and a sly, surprising story that breaks your heart one minute and tickles your funny bone the next all make Tim O'Brien's first foray into the comic novel a resounding success. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
All of O'Brien's previous six novels, except perhaps The Nuclear Age, have a Vietnam War experience at their core. Men (and women) at war?and warring with war's aftermath?are themes that have sustained O'Brien's gifted narrative rushes and his beautiful prose, garnering him high praise, including a National Book Award (for Going After Cacciato). After the mixed reception of In the Lake of the Woods, O'Brien said he would stop writing fiction for a while. His return here will be welcomed by his many fans, but he is not in top form. The "Tomcat" of the title is one Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics whose wife has left him for "a tycoon in Tampa." Chippering narrates his woes, his scheme for revenge, the background to what he insists is his deep love for the departed Lorna Sue, all the while pursuing nubile coeds and the wife of a convicted tax felon. Although the book is being positioned as a comedy, Chippering is a most obnoxious companion, so terribly self-deluded, self-absorbed and self-satisfied, so pedantic and boorish, so convinced of his own charms that the unfolding drama of his pursuit of revenge becomes discomfiting. We want to root for his ex-wife, but through the Chippering "song of myself" we don't hear her, or know her. The Vietnam experience here, what there is of it, is ludicrously, and even disrespectfully, invoked by Chippering, who will remind those who attempt to resist his advances that he is a war hero. Although O'Brien is on interesting ground laying out Chippering's childhood crush on Lorna Sue in 1950s Minnesota, the book careens toward an unconvincing portrait of madness that is irritatingly flippant and shrill. BOMC and QPB alternates. Agent, Lynn Nesbit; editor, John Sterling.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 565
Four dark fantasy tales from the mind of Kevin J. Anderson, each with a short introduction by the author. Includes: “New Recruits,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Get You,” “Splinter” (written with Rebecca Moesta), and “Redmond’s Private Screening.” Views: 564
On Periremunda the populace are rioting. With local forces unable to contain the widespread civil disorder, Commissar Cain and his regiment of Valhallans are called in to help. However, it seems there is more to the rebellion than first appeared and Cain suspects sinister forces at work behind the scenes. When the commissar is reunited with Inquisitor Amberley Vail it seems his fears are realised. In this the fifth book in the popular Ciaphas Cain series our hero is thrown into a deadly conspiracy that even he might not be able to emerge from alive. Views: 564
A modern day fable about a time we've forgotten to remember ... about despair, hope and love reborn. About the challenges we've all been blessed with, the challenges we can either see as stumbling blocks or stepping stones ...A modern day fable about a time we've forgotten to remember ... He was born with a defect he could not change. He was different and could never be like other boys, other men, other people. His disfigurement eventually drove him from his family, from the village and out into the world as a troubadour, a teller-of-tales … well, more precisely, a listener-of-tales. In solitude, with his trusty horse, he found a softer world without sniggers and demands and a world of peace and the silent whisperings of his soul. However, the solitude never lasted for long. The more he searched for that softer world, the more the sharp and abrasive one encroached upon him … till, one day, he met someone he didn’t want to turn away, someone who yearned for the disfigurement he had … Views: 564
Lavishly disguised pop singer, Queen Bee, is known abroad for her high-fashion wardrobe and killer vocals. In the states, she's just Gemma Hunter – shy suburban teenager in her new role of high school junior. But how long can she keep her secret now that international heartthrob, Tyler Chase, has publicly declared his love for her?Lavishly disguised pop singer, Queen Bee, is known abroad for her high-fashion wardrobe and killer vocals. In the states, she's just Gemma Hunter – shy suburban teenager in her strange new role of high school junior. Luckily, Gemma is taken under the wing of the fiery and popular Madison, who leads her into the high school life of the charmed. Her world as Gemma quickly becomes everything she ever wanted in a normal life - that is until international teen heartthrob, Tyler Chase, announces his celebrity crush on Queen Bee. Suddenly, Gemma's alter ego becomes a household name as the handsome singer’s loyal “Tyler Chasers" create a frenzy to discover her true identity. And just when Gemma thinks she can hide from the celebrity drama in her high school life, Lucas - her next door neighbor as well as Madison's boyfriend - develops an interest in her that goes far beyond platonic, and Gemma soon learns that rumors aren’t strictly for the stars.Genre: Young AdultNovel Length: appr. 60,000 Words + Bonus ExcerptFeaturing Bonus Excerpt from the next novel in the Hidden Gem series Views: 564
She exorcises spirits from a distant time and place in Africa.The Feng Shui woman is not prepared for Grandpop and his harem. He has taken over one of the upstairs bedrooms. He is loud, smells of sulfur and brimstone and a general nuisance. All of this began the day he was buried. As the Feng Shui woman approaches the top of the stairs, she hears the trumpet of an elephant, the roar of a lion and the crazy laugh of a hyena. All coming from the last bedroom. Views: 564
