Wall, Stone, Craft

An alternative-history classic nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards! Young Mary Godwin has run away with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but a chance encounter places them in the path of Lord Byron, the Hero of Waterloo. Byron wants Mary, and is willing to use Mary’s young, reckless sister Claire as a pawn in his heartless schemes. Exactly how heartless, and how audacious is only revealed on a storm-tossed lake in Switzerland, a tragic encounter that produces not only an alternate history, but an alternate literary monster, a new Frankenstein for a new world...
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Almost Famous Women

From "a top-notch emerging writer with a crisp and often poetic voice and wily, intelligent humor" (The Boston Globe): a collection of stories that explores the lives of talented, gutsy women throughout history.The fascinating lives of the characters in Almost Famous Women have mostly been forgotten, but their stories are burning to be told. Now Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, resurrects these women, lets them live in the reader's imagination, so we can explore their difficult choices. Nearly every story in this dazzling collection is based on a woman who attained some celebrity—she raced speed boats or was a conjoined twin in show business; a reclusive painter of renown; a member of the first all-female, integrated swing band. We see Lord Byron's illegitimate daughter, Allegra; Oscar Wilde's troubled niece, Dolly; West With the Night author Beryl Markham; Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister, Norma. These...
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The Malfeasance Occasional

Tender-hearted, tough-minded (and occasionally foul-mouthed) girls take center stage in suspenseful tales that are also touching, haunting, and darkly funny. From modern cities and the middle of nowhere—even a place that never existed—come stories about female entrepreneurs, housewives, mothers, daughters, addicts, strivers, wanderers, conquerors, runaways, and women in collision. Whatever you think upon hearing the phrase Girl Trouble, this spectacularly varied e-collection of short crime fiction from CriminalElement.com delivers.
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Give Me Your Heart

“Haunting . . . Written in the author’s classic, clear style, these narratives enchant.”—Boston GlobeThe need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, children veer beyond their parents’ control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand.“Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing . . . Oates isn’t writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop.”—Los Angeles TimesAbout the AuthorJOYCE CAROL OATES is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the winner of the National Book Award. Among her major works are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Give Me Your HeartDear Dr. K——, It’s been a long time, hasn’t it! Twenty-three years, nine months, and eleven days. Since we last saw each other. Since you last saw, “nude” on your naked knees, me. Dr. K——! The formal salutation isn’t meant as flattery, still less as mockery—please understand. I am not writing after so many years to beg an unreasonable favor of you (I hope), or to make demands, merely to inquire if, in your judgment, I should go through the formality, and the trouble, of applying to be the lucky recipient of your most precious organ, your heart. If I may expect to collect what is due to me, after so many years. I’ve learned that you, the renowned Dr. K——, are one who has generously signed a “living will” donating his organs to those in need. Not for Dr. K—— an old-fashioned, selfish funeral and burial in a cemetery, nor even cremation. Good for you, Dr. K——! But I want only your heart, not your kidneys, liver, or eyes. These I will waive, that others more needy will benefit. Of course, I mean to make my application as others do, in medical situations similar to my own. I would not expect favoritism. The actual application would be made through my cardiologist. Caucasian female of youthful middle age, attractive, intelligent, optimistic though with a malfunctioning heart, otherwise in perfect health. No acknowledgment would be made of our old relationship, on my part at least. Though you, dear Dr. K——, as the potential heart donor, could indicate your own preference, surely? All this would transpire when you die, Dr. K——, I mean. Of course! Not a moment before. (I guess you might not be aware that you’re destined to die soon? Within the year? In a “tragic,” “freak” accident, as it will be called? In an “ironic,” “unspeakably ugly” end to a “brilliant career”? I’m sorry that I can’t be more specific about time, place, means; even whether you’ll die alone, or with a family member or two. But that’s the nature of accident, Dr. K——. It’s a -surprise.) Dr. K——, don’t frown so! You’re a handsome man still, and still vain, despite your thinning gray hair, which, like other vain men with hair loss, you’ve taken to combing slantwise over the shiny dome of your head, imagining that since you can’t see this ploy in the mirror, it can’t be seen by others. But I can see. Fumbling, you turn to the last page of this letter to see my signature—“Angel”—and you’re forced to remember, suddenly . . . With a pang of guilt. Her! She’s still . . . alive? That’s right, Dr. K——! More alive now than ever. Naturally you’d come to imagine I had vanished. I had ceased to exist. Since you’d long ago ceased to think of me. You’re frightened. Your heart, that guilty organ, has begun to pound. At a second-floor window of your house on Richmond Street (expensively restored Victorian, pale gray shingles with dark blue trim, “quaint,” “dignified,” among others of its type in the exclusive old residential neighborhood east of the Theological Seminary), you stare out anxiously at—what? Not me, obviously. I’m not there. At any rate, I’m not in sight. Yet how the pale-glowering sky seems to throb with a sinister intensity! Like a great eye staring. Dr. K——, I mean you no harm! Truly. This letter is in no way a demand for your (posthumous) heart, nor even a “verbal threat.” If you decide, foolishly, to show it to the police, they will assure you it’s harmless, it isn’t illegal, it’s only a request for information: should I, the “love of your life” you have not seen in twenty-three years, apply to be the recipient of your heart? What are Angel’s chances? I only wish to collect what’s mine. What was promised to me, so long ago. I’ve been faithful to our love, Dr. K——! You laugh, harshly. Incredulously. How can you reply to Angel, when Angel has included no last name, and no address? You will have to seek me. To save yourself, seek me. You crumple this letter in your fist, throw it onto the floor. You walk away, stumble away, you mean to forget, obviously you can’t forget, the crumpled pages of my handwritten letter on the floor of—is it your study? on the second floor of the dignified old Victorian house at 119 Richmond Street?—where someone might discover them, and pick them up to read what you wouldn’t wish another living person to read, especially not someone “close” to you. (As if our families, especially our blood kin, are “close” to us as in the true intimacy of erotic love.) So naturally you return; with badly shaking fingers you pick up the scattered pages, smooth them out, and continue to read. Dear Dr. K——! Please understand: I am not bitter, I don’t harbor obsessions. That is not my nature. I have my own life, and I have even had a (moderately successful) career. I am a normal woman of my time and place. I am like the exquisite black-and-silver diamond-headed spider, the so-called happy spider, the sole subspecies of Araneidae that is said to be free to spin part-improvised webs, both oval and funnel, and to roam the world at will, equally at home in damp grasses and the dry, dark, protected interiors of manmade places; rejoicing in (relative) free will within the inevitable restrictions of Araneidae behavior; with a sharp venomous sting, sometimes lethal to human beings, especially to children. Like the diamond-head, I have many eyes. Like the diamond-head, I may be perceived as “happy,” “joyous,” “exulting,” in the eyes of others. For such is my role, my performance. It’s true, for years I was stoically reconciled to my loss, in fact to my losses. (Not that I blame you for these losses, Dr. K——. Though a neutral observer might conclude that my immune system has been damaged as a result of my physical and mental collapse following your abrupt dismissal of me from your life.) Then, last March, seeing your photograph in the paper—“Distinguished Theologian K—— to Head Seminary”—and, a few weeks later, when you were named to the President’s Commission on Religion and Bioethics, I reconsidered. The time of anonymity and silence is over, I thought. Why not try? Why not try to collect what he owes you? Do you remember Angel’s name now? That name that for twenty-three years, nine months, and eleven days you have not wished to utter? Seek my name in any telephone directory; you won’t find it. For possibly my number is unlisted; possibly I don’t have a telephone. Possibly my name has been changed. (Legally.) Possibly I live in a distant city in a distant region of the continent; or possibly, like the diamond-head spider (adult size approximately that of your right thumbnail, Dr. K——), I dwell quietly within your roof, spinning my exquisite webs amid the shadowy beams of your basement, or in a niche between your handsome old mahogany desk and the wall, or, a delicious thought, in the airless cave beneath the four-poster brass antique bed you and the second Mrs. K—— share in the doldrums of late middle age. So close am I, yet invisible! Dear Dr. K——! Once you marveled at my “flawless Vermeer” skin and “spun-gold” hair rippling down my back, which you stroked, and closed in your fist. Once I was your Angel, your “beloved.” I basked in your love, for I did not question it. I was young; I was virginal in spirit as well as body, and would not have questioned the word of a distinguished elder. And in the paroxysm of lovemaking, when you gave yourself up utterly to me, or so it seemed, how could you have . . . deceived? Dr. K—— of the Theological Seminary, biblical scholar and authority, protégé of Reinhold Niebuhr, and author of “brilliant,” “revolutionary” exegeses of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among other esoteric subjects. But I had no idea, you are protesting. I’d given her no reason to believe, to expect . . . (That I would believe your declarations of love? That I would take you at your word?) My darling, you have my heart. Always, forever. Your promise!These days, Dr. K——, my skin is no longer flawless. It has become the frank, flawed skin of a middle-aged woman who makes no effort to disguise her age. My hair, once shimmering strawberry-blond, is now faded, dry and brittle as broom sage; I keep it trimmed short, like a man’s, with scissors, scarcely glancing into a mirror as I snip! snip-snip! away. My face, though reasonably attractive, I suppose, is in fact a blur to most observers, including especially middle-aged American men; you’ve glanced at me, and through me, dear Dr. K——, upon more than one recent occasion, no more recognizing your Angel than you would have recognized a plate heaped with food you’d devoured twenty-three years ago with a zestful appetite, or an old, long-exhausted and dismissed sexual fantasy of adolescence. For the record: I was the woman in a plain, khaki-colored trench coat and matching hat who waited patiently at the university bookstore as a line of your admirers moved slowly forward for Dr. K—— to sign copies of The Ethical Life: Twenty-First-Century Challenges. (A slender theological treatise, not a mega-bestseller, of course, but a quite respectable bestseller, most popular in university and up...
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The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack: 28 Classic Tales of the Supernatural

The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack collects 28 more classic tales of the supernatural by one of the greatest ghost story writers of all time. Included in this volume are:SKELETON LAKESMITH: AN EPISODE IN A LODGING-HOUSEA SUSPICIOUS GIFTTHE EMPTY HOUSETHE LISTENERMAY DAY EVECARLTON'S DRIVEIF THE CAP FITS—THE MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAFOLD CLOTHESTHE ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTETHE GOLDEN FLYTHE TRANSFERTHE ATTICTHE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOWSANDH.S.H.A DESERT EPISODEBY WATERTHE GOBLIN'S COLLECTIONA BIT OF WOODAN EGYPTIAN HORNETCAIN'S ATONEMENTTHE OTHER WINGTHE DANCE OF DEATHTHE GARDEN OF SURVIVALA CASE OF EAVESDROPPINGCLAIRVOYANCE
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13 Tales of Terror

ABOUT THIS EBOOK The stories selected for this eBook came from a variety of sources. All the stories were either scans of books I own or in digital format---pdf, rtf, txt and/or HTML 1.0 files. I converted, cleaned-up and re-formatted all the stories contained in this eBook to better suit an eBook reader. I “test” my final epubs on a Nook Color and an iPad2 to ensure the best possible reading experience; however, not all eReaders are the same and don’t always display epubs in the same way as others. This is especially true when it comes to the Table of Contents (ToC), images within the epub and the display of the book cover. I adhered as much as possible to the original punctuation, spelling and sentence structure in each story. Many of these stories were written with a very specific structure and style that may seem odd when presented in an electronic format. I found this especially true in the way many characters’ dialogue was written. Please understand, in an effort to preserve the author’s text, some words, structures etc. may seem like errors that I missed while creating this eBook for you. No words or text of the authors’ original works were omitted or altered; each story is word-for-word as presented in the original source file. If you find errors, or run into any difficulty with this eBook please feel free to contact me through Bolt. Finally, it is my sincerest wish that you have the best possible reading experience with this eBook. Flyboy707 October, 2011 ABOUT THE AUTHORAlgernon Henry Blackwood was born on march 14, 1869 and was an English short story writer and novelist. Blackwood was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that "his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century". Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas". Blackwood had a varied career, working as a milk farmer in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for the New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher. Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined the “Ghost Club”. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner but also cheerful company. Jack Sullivan points out that "Blackwood's life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn't steeping himself in occultism, including Rosicrucianism and Buddhism, he was likely to be skiing or mountain climbing.” His two best known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which climaxes with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution in human consciousness. Algernon Blackwood dies on December 10, 1951. He was 82 years old.
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Crash - the Last Rendezvous

A huge asteroid is speeding towards the earth. It is the Day of Judgement.
 The human race is annihilated.Completely?In the Atlantic there are survivors. On board of two submarines from the U.S. and North Korea. The mortal enemies are watching each other.Only one can win. All clear for battle!
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The Crown Jewels

Peleng is a planet ripe for the plucking, and Drake Maijstral is an Allowed Burglar rated in the Top Ten by the Imperial Sporting Commission. But what should be a simple case of breaking-and-plundering turns into an intergalactic crisis when Maijstral steals something so rare, so valuable, so utterly desirable, that everyone wants it— everyone including well-armed Imperial spies, gun-toting human militias, a homicidal maniac with a very large sword, and a fanatical countess with a really, really nasty croquet habit.   The Crown Jewels, by award-winning author Walter Jon Williams, is sophisticated science fiction comedy at its best.
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Smut by the Sea

Light hearted, sexy fun by the sea is the theme of this erotic anthology, edited by Victoria Blisse and Lucy Felthouse.From the sun soaked bays of Australia to the rainy coastal towns of England, Smut by the Sea has it all. Whatever your interpretation of naughty seaside fun, there's something nestling between the covers for you. Surfer boys, sea creatures, pirates and the fairground abound in this exciting collection of stories from erotica's finest authors.
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Bet on a Mistletoe

Lorna Morgan has found herself on the road home for Christmas, dejected, defeated and dead broke. Returning to her small town where time seem to standstill was not in her goals for the future. Ending up caught in the middle of a holiday bet, stirs up past feelings and emotions, she’s not sure she can handle a second time around. She had to keep herself focused and not get distracted by a tall-frame, cerulean eyes and midnight black hair. Nothing was there for her except a plan to get herself away again. Richard Patterson’s Christmas just got brighter. Lorna got away from him nine years ago, but not this time. Santa has brought him a ginger coated dream and he’s ready to be the bad boy Lorna has always believed him to be. But, this time he’s going to make it his job to convince her that every thing she needed was at home with him.
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Light Lifting

Review"His brilliant debut collection, Light Lifting, is engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying: each story has the weight of a novel. The young Canadian writer is already winning plaudits in his own country. He can expect acclaim far beyond ... The choice of words is spare, simple and unaffected, and the rhythm is perfect ... stunning work. Mr. MacLeod's next contribution will be eagerly anticipated."—The Economist"Across seven wide-ranging tales, lives are saved, others are lost, and redemption, both physical and spiritual, is occasionally found. Nevertheless, the world harnessed by MacLeod is also one that bursts with wonder and nostalgia, and the author lets his subjects shine with both raw power and supple beauty throughout. Each story in Light Lifting is a true marvel—there are no fillers here—and with every passing page MacLeod firmly establishes himself as a bright new talent in literary fiction." Benjamin Woodard, Rain Taxi"MacLeod's Light Lifting arrives across the Atlantic laden with praise."—Irish Times"Alexander MacLeod demonstrates a strapping writerly prowess. If literature were an athletic competition he'd certainly deserve a silver medal, and I suspect he'll soon be vying for gold." —The National Post"Alexander MacLeod looks like a heavyweight in the making."—Irish TImes"create[s] ripples in the mind of the reader"—The Independent"Alexander MacLeod's control of cadence and rhythm is so complete that it seems effortless.... [These stories] contain a rare kind of truthfulness." —Colm Toibin"Light Lifting shows MacLeod is a honed storyteller. What will surprise, and surely impress, is the fresh, imaginative subject matter. And the integral prose: MacLeod has the ability to wave his wand and paint a picture in milliseconds, carving images out of dust."—THIS Magazine"Taut to a point of richness, deft in the dark, with an understanding of narrative suspense that's somehow actually beautiful, Light Lifting is a powerful collection and the debut of a writer clearly a master of the form." —Ali Smith"To read each story in this gorgeous collection is to live a series of rich and dangerous lives along the Canadian-Michigan border. The forces threatening Alexander MacLeod’s characters include speeding trains, rip tides, lice, old age, automobile assembly lines, the exuberant despair of vacationing in Nova Scotia, and everything that lurks in the Detroit River. MacLeod is a literary rock star, and his prose is wise and rowdy music. I will recommend this book to everyone."—Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage"Rarely does fiction inhabit the body—the moving, athletic body—as fully as in Alexander MacLeod’s debut story collection. Whether describing what it is to run track, to swim against a current, to build cars or to haul bricks, MacLeod brings into vivid concrete language the physical experiences that mark us as profoundly as any thought. His stories are a careful marriage of the lyric and the narrative: each unfolds around a resonant, ineffable moment, replete with history and emotion, a Gordian knot comprised of all the strands that lead up to and away from it. Sensitive and subtle, MacLeod is a writer through whose deliberately partial and quotidian pieces shimmers life’s unspoken complexity." —Giller Prize jury citation"[MacLeod’s] capacity to encapsulate entire lives in the span of a few pages rivals Alice Munro. This is one of the finest collections of short fiction to appear . . . in a long, long time." —Quill & Quire (Best Books of the Year citation)"MacLeod’s straight-up themes of endurance and frailty, boyish transgression or gnawing mid-life regret, unfold without a trace of cliché or sentiment. Muscular and uniquely voiced, these stories swim entirely in their own waters." —Globe and Mail (Best Books of the Year citation)"Few authors . . . have delved so deeply into the workplaces of [the] working-class as MacLeod, and the characters he finds there are as rich and complex as any of the cerebral exotics that populate the work of Ondaatje, Urquhart and Atwood." —Toronto Star"MacLeod’s prose is reminiscent of Annie Proulx’s: It carries much weight in its sparse, straightforward style." —Hamilton Spectator"An impressive collection . . . The diversity of characters is matched by the variety of tones." —National Post"The stories in Alexander MacLeod's Light Lifting are dense with the tragic poetry of the everyday. His narrators speak in a deceptively relaxed vernacular that reflects a fierce emotional intensity just beneath the surface of the words, the stoic heroism of the common man and woman, and MacLeod's commitment to realistic story-telling." —Danuta Gleed Jury CitationProduct DescriptionGiller Prize FinalistAtlantic Book Award WinnerA Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire, and Amazon.ca Best Book of the YearFinalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and the Frank O'Connor Award"A brilliant collection without a weak link." —Quill & QuireThis was the day after Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear. You remember that. It was a moment in history – not like Kennedy or the planes flying into the World Trade Center – not up at that level. This was something much lower, more like Ben Johnson, back when his eyes were that thick, yellow color and he tested positive in Seoul after breaking the world-record in the hundred. You might not know exactly where you were standing or exactly what you were doing when you first heard about Tyson or about Ben, but when the news came down, I bet it stuck with you. When Tyson bit off Holyfield’s ear, that cut right through the everyday clutter. —from "Miracle Mile"Two runners race a cargo train through the darkness of a rat-infested tunnel beneath the Detroit River. A drugstore bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life and a young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she's caught in far more dangerous currents. An auto-worker who loses his family in a car accident is forced to reconsider his relationship with the internal combustion engine.Alexander MacLeod is a writer of "ferocious intelligence" and "ferocious physicality" (CTV). Light Lifting, his celebrated first collection, offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies that explore the depths of the psyche and channel the subconscious hopes and terrors that motivate us all. These are elemental stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of beauty, love and fragile understanding.
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