Darkly hilarious and unexpectedly profound, Citizen Vince is an irresistible tale about the price of freedom and the mystery of salvation, by an emerging writer of boundless talent.
Eight days before the 1980 presidential election, Vince Camden wakes up at 1:59 A.M. in a quiet house in Spokane, Washington. Pocketing his stash of stolen credit cards, he drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. This is the sum of Vince's new life: donuts and forged credit cards—not to mention a neurotic hooker girlfriend.
But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes that his sordid past is still close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, on the run from Spokane to New York, Vince Camden will negotiate a maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters, only to find that redemption might just exist—of all places—in the voting booth. Sharp and refreshing, Citizen Vince is the story of a charming crook chasing the biggest score of his life: a second chance. Views: 517
The Trap is a bleak and uplifting personal allegory of relationship with masculinity, authority, and self.This short horror story is based on a nightmare I had some time back. A young boy encounters a beautiful witch who promises to take away his fears...Excerpt:No one believed him that the monsters were real. His uncle grew frustrated and impatient with the nighttime fears the boy should long have outgrown. His aunt was more sympathetic and well-intentioned, but she dismissed them as being merely nightmares. Only he knew that, at night, the truths always revealed themselves.After the lights went out and all was dark, the silence of his room was broken by quiet scratching and moans. He covered his ears against the screeches, but they grew louder and louder until they filled the air, and he could feel them even in his lungs. Then, when a scream threatened to burst forth from his throat, and he could bear it no longer, there was silence. Not one sound. It was the same disquieting nothingness as in a forest filled with animals that sensed a new predator. The monsters were still, but he knew they were there.He uncapped his ears and glanced at his little sister, asleep in the bed next to his. Quiet and undisturbed, she’d slept through it all. He envied her peaceful slumber; she always looked like an angel.Then, there was another noise. Whispers. “She’s coming,” they said. “She’s coming. She’s coming.” Views: 517
We're the D'Artigo sisters: half-human, half-Fae, we're sexy, we're savvy and we just turned in our badges to the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. My sister Camille is a wicked good witch. Delilah's a werecat and blossoming Death Maiden. And as for me? I'm Menolly, acrobat extraordinaire turned vampire. But being a vamp isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when the Godfather of all vampires decides to play Prince Charming. . . It's the holiday season and a vampire serial killer is on the loose. Hungry ghosts are tearing up the town and people are running scared. I strike a deal with Ivana Krask--one of the Elder Fae--and too late, discover strings are attached. But when I turn to Roman, one of the oldest, most powerful vampires around, for help, he offers me more than I ever bargained for. Views: 516
We're the D'Artigo sisters: sexy, savvy operatives for the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. But being half-human, half-Fae short-circuits our talents at all the wrong times. My sister Delilah is a Were who turns into golden tabby when she's stressed. And Menolly's a vampire who's still trying to get the hang of being undead. As for me, I'm Camille D'Artigo, a wicked-good witch who's learning death magic with a youkai-kitsune husband. Until now, the Moon Mother has pretty much ignored me, but she's about to take me on the Hunt of my life. . . Another equinox is here, and life's getting more dangerous for all of us. The past is catching up to our friends Iris and Chase. Smoky, the dragon of my dreams, is forced to chose between his family and me. To top it off, there's a new demon general in town, and we can't locate her. And when the Moon Mother and the Black Beast summon me to Otherworld, I think I'm just going to reunite with my long-lost soul mate, Trillian. But once there, I'm forced to undergo a drastic ritual that will forever change my life, and the lives of those around me. Views: 516
Once upon a time, in a village nestled in a mountain valley, lived a girl named Darkin. Darkin wants three things more than anything else: to visit the farthest-away mountain, to meet a gargoyle, and to marry a prince. Everyone in her village thinks she's crazy, especially since no one has ever been to the farthest-away mountain. But one day, when she is nearly 15, she hears the mountain calling her. Darkin sets off on a tantalizing journey that will change her life, and the lives of others, forever. Views: 515
Ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: stunning explorations of the mysteries of love and our complex desire for connection.
Ranging from youth to old age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer tender, unexpected, and always tightly focused accounts of our quest to understand each other, individually, and as part of a political and historical moment. These stories are shot through with tragedy—the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son’s death at sea; poignant reflections upon cultural and personal circumstances—whether it is being Jewish, overweight and single, or a tourist in a history-haunted land; and paradigmatic questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies—all across America, and in countries as distant as Nepal and South Africa—these stories showcase David Guterson’s signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional and moral suspense, and evocations of small-town life and the natural world. They celebrate the ordinary yet brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, as well as the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his astonishing literary career.
This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide. Views: 514
Only one thing stands between a son and his father's killer: forty years of lies..
On a remote Arizona ranch, a man who has known loss, fear, and war weeps for the first time since he was a child. His tears are for the father taken from him four decades before in a deadly shoot-out. And his grief will lead him back to the place where he was born, where his father died, and where a brutal conspiracy is about to explode.
For Bob Lee Swagger, the world changed on that hot day in Blue Eye, Arkansas, when two local boys rode armed and wild in a '55 Fairlane convertible. Swagger's father, Earl, a state trooper, was investigating the brutal murder of a young woman that day. By midnight Earl Swagger lay dead in a deserted cornfield.
Now Bob Lee wants answers. He wants to know the truth behind the shoot -out that took his father's life, a mystery buried in forty years of lies. Because for Bob Lee Swagger, the killing didn't end that day in Blue Eye, Arkansas. The killing had just begun...
Weaving together characters from his national bestsellers Point of Impact and Dirty White Boys, Stephen Hunter's gripping thriller builds to an exhilarating climax--and an explosion of gunfire that blasts open the secrets of two generations. Views: 514
Time has moved on in Chiqetaw. Seven years have passed since we last saw Emerald and her family, and life has changed. Emerald is now 45, and Joe is 35. While Chiqetaw remains a quirky little town, the Chintz 'n China Tea Shop is now an internet café. Miranda's a graduate student and Kip's just graduated high school. Emerald and Joe have settled into a new normal after an accident has completely altered their life together. Though the ghosts have been plentiful and always present, all has been quiet on the mystery front. But when they visit Harlow and James's new home up near Mount Baker, Emerald literally stumbles over an old well that leads her into an old mystery surrounding the tragic death of a child. A strange and dangerous creature near the area may have been involved with the death, and now she fears that if it's not destroyed, Harlow, James, and their daughter Eileen will be in danger of history repeating itself. (NOT a cozy... Views: 513
Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again. Views: 512
“Lukeman’s sequel to the Scottish play succeeds as both a fascinating literary exercise and an entertaining play in its own right….[A] poetic, well-paced drama.”—Booklist “Lukeman did a top-notch job creating a fresh play in the style of Shakespeare. The story moves quite briskly, and takes quite a few intriguing twists...."“An audacious achievement.”--Jennifer Lee Carrell, Ph.D. (Harvard)New York Times Bestselling author of Interred With Their Bones/The Shakespeare Secret“Lukeman’s sequel to the Scottish play succeeds as both a fascinating literary exercise and an entertaining play in its own right….[A] poetic, well-paced drama.”—BooklistRecommended Reading, New York Magazine Fall PreviewIn 1610, The Tragedy of Macbeth was first performed. 400 years later: the sequel, written as a five-act play in blank verse.Ten years king, Malcolm sits on an uneasy throne. If Malcolm’s mind is haunted by the ghosts of his royal father (“gracious Duncan”) as well as the thane and lady who so bloodily betrayed him, Malcolm’s soul is sickened, as was Macbeth’s, by the witches’ prophecy that from Banquo’s seed would spring a line of Scottish kings: a prophecy that remained unfulfilled at the end of Shakespeare’s play. The witches also taunt Malcolm with riddles all his own: that sorrows will visit him from Ireland (where his younger brother fled upon their father’s death); that his love for Macbeth will breed fresh treachery. True to the Shakespearean model, its devious plot unfolding in five acts and its speech set to the measure of blank verse, Macbeth, Part II, draws bold the tragedy of a powerful man undone by the terrors he imagines and the truths he fails to see."Noah Lukeman's bold sequel to Macbeth, written in blank verse, is a fierce, memory-ridden love letter to Shakespeare, and an enthralling reminder that, in our imagination, Shakespeare's greatest plays have no end."--Nigel Cliff, author of The Shakespeare Riots “Lukeman did a top-notch job creating a fresh play in the style of Shakespeare. The story moves quite briskly, and takes quite a few intriguing twists....The rhythm of the words and the drama of the story would make for quite a suspenseful and entertaining show.”—Fashionista Piranha“Lukeman truly has mastered the Shakespearian art and created a play that can stand as a sequel to the great Shakespearian play.”—A.M. Perez, Amanda's Weekly Zen Views: 512
"Did you ever wonder at the lonely life the bird in a cuckoo clock has to lead --" wrote the editor of Fantastic Universe in January, 1954, blurbing this tale "-- that it might possibly love and hate just as easily as a real animal of flesh and blood? Philip Dick used that idea for this brief fantasy tale. We're sure that after reading it you'll give cuckoo clocks more respect." Views: 511
