The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.
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Take a Break & Have a Laugh Series. Sexy Security Guard, Invisible Bricks for Russian Mafia, Space Rabbit vs. Captain Doomsday and more!

Laughter is the best tool to deal with stress and boredom. Made-up scientific studies show that hamsters who read books from 'Take a Break Have a Laugh" series live 10 times longer than humorless hamsters that are into Goth novels and French documentaries. In all seriousness though, after you read short stories from this book you will feel great! Enjoy!Do you feel like jumping out of a plane without a parachute? CLICK on that BIG GREEN BUTTON on top, DOWNLOAD Take a Break & Have a Laugh book and READ a story, you'll feel BETTER.Do you feel like tossing your boss into a meat grinder? READ ANOTHER STORY, it will help.Run out of these hilarious stories to read and need more? Pray that you've accumulated enough positive energy until the next installment of Take a Break & Have a Laugh Series comes out.
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Of Blood and Sorrow

Erin Driscol works the perfect job consoling fellow demons by feeding off their grief at Putzkammer & Sons Funeral Home. When fledgling vampire Nicolas Reese comes to Erin for help, she learns the truth behind the legends and hides him from his sire and the vampire hunters who seek him. But when the Putzkammers begin to die one by one, Erin is caught between her act of kindness and the need to save her adopted family. Only by facing her own personal demons can she stop the slaughter and still rescue Nicolas from his dark fate.
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Pump Six and Other Stories

Paolo Bacigalupi's debut collection demonstrates the power and reach of the science fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning, and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience. The eleven stories in Pump Six represent the best Paolo's work, including the Hugo nominee "Yellow Card Man," the nebula and Hugo nominated story "The People of Sand and Slag," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."
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Thy Fearful Symmetry

The end of the world started in Glasgow, with a kiss. Two people - two creatures - fated to be eternal enemies downed their blazing spears and loved. To do so, they broke rules hardwired into the DNA of the universe. The universe noticed. The universe broke. Now Heaven and Hell are hunting them. Nobody on Earth can help them. Worst of all, the fabric of reality is unravelling around them, the Apocalypse has been brought forward a millennium, and it might all be their fault. On cold streets, the last tattered remnants of humanity must draw faith in a world that has no more use for them. As the masses pray and crawl on bloody knees, the few must restore the fearful symmetry between good and evil - for the sake of all. Blood will flow. Days will end. Fire will fall.
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The Deadly Juggling Kid- A Vampire Across the Hall Story

Ima is having difficulty adjusting to having a mum and dad who are jugglers. In this story she meets a very strange young girl at Newtown Jugglers.A cursed prince. A vain beauty. Glory is the seventh daughter of Balthazar, High King of the Twelve Kingdoms. Glory hopes that - of all her sisters - she can escape the fate of a loveless marriage. But on the night she plans to elope with the royal falconer, her world comes crashing down: Her father announces Glory's betrothal to Eoghan of the Blood Realm - a prince no one has ever seen. The prince is said to be a recluse, cursed and deformed by the gods for the sins of his power-hungry father. Yet when Glory is trapped in Blackthorn Keep she discovers that not everything is what she expected. An insulting gryphon, a persistent ghost, and a secret plan to usurp the prince keep Glory reeling. Can she overcome her vanity to learn that what you want isn’t necessarily what you need—and save the cursed prince?
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One Day in Summer

Aran is a time-traveller who keeps returning to the same place and time over and over again, dragging his best friend, Navaya, with him.Navaya is getting jaded by the constant trips to the same place, and she has a secret to protect.No one is an island, and private detective of the gods Tom Statford is no different. The family he was born with, the family he chose, the family that chose him, they all make him more than the sum of his parts.This collection of short stories is set between the first and second volumes of The Statford Chronicles, and answers some of the questions about the lives and times of some of the pivotal members of Tom Statford's life.
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The Haunting of Hill House

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
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Wishing

Carol is on a mission: to deliver a special package to her sweet, but forgetful husband. And no amount of snowy tundra will stand in her way...A short story of approx 1800 words.Choices is the story of Melissa and Jake. Melissa is suffering from a debilitating addiction to prescription pills. She has broken down every relationship to the point of fray. Now her husband Jake must decide what is next does he given up or give her another chance. Jake seeks the support of friends and family to make this hard decision.
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Tin Universe Monthly #15

This issue of Tin Universe Monthly brings to you, the reader the legendary red couch, thinking on Information Processing Theory, and more on what a Ferrets Thief Bag is. Also research wankIn this prequel to SanClare Black, Karon, the first Princess of Sorrows, is pregnant, held hostage in a foreign land, and trapped in a political marriage. When her father dies, she must find a way to defeat her husband's plans to seize her throne.
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Prey

This fascinating detective on the force and a court attaché is the niece of the very-famous and inimitable P.I. Bo Jon Littlehorse. Prey Ophelia Littlehorse is one in her own right. Growing up in LA and joining the LA Police force, she tackles differing crimes...Prey, is a child of LA and learns the profound skills of the determination, honor and duty of being a detective; only she's on the force as a detective and court-attaché, her work in quite adept and refined for working on the beats. You'll enjoy the tales of solving crimes, and being a steward of the courts... It's the LA scene lifestyle and crime-wise.
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The Sons of Man

Teen Sonya Neslund and her friends solve the mystery behind a series of sniper shootings in their hometown during a fierce winter. Who is the Marine Sniper?Teen Sonya Neslund and her friends solve the mystery behind a series of sniper shootings in their hometown during a fierce winter. Sonya's friend Bobby finds a kindred spirit in a boy with his own secrets. Meanwhile, the outlaw Blue Diamonds MC seek vengeance for a murdered brother. Does a new church, and its charismatic leader, have the answers? Who is the Marine Sniper?
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The Man Who Invented the Computer

From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a  David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age. One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois–Iowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic switches, com­bined with an array of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory, could yield a computing machine that would make his life and the lives of other similarly burdened scientists easier. Then he went back and built the machine. It worked. The whole world changed. Why don’t we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we know those of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he never patented the device, and because the developers of the far-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas from him. But in 1973 a court declared that the patent on that Sperry Rand device was invalid, opening the intellectual property gates to the computer revolution. Jane Smiley tells the quintessentially American story of the child of immigrants John Atanasoff with technical clarity and narrative drive, making the race to develop digital computing as gripping as a real-life techno-thriller. From the Hardcover edition.
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The Last

Terrorized by the thought of death, a man lets himself be contaminated by vampirism to prolong his life indefinitely. However, when Hell and Heaven’s legions face each other in the ultimate battle, he becomes the last human being on Earth. Will he let himself be dragged peacefully into one of the afterlife kingdoms?Terrorized by the thought of death, a man lets himself be contaminated by vampirism to prolong his life indefinitely. However, when Hell and Heaven’s legions face each other in the ultimate battle, he becomes the last human being on Earth. Will he let himself be dragged peacefully into one of the afterlife kingdoms?This is one of the short stories included in the anthology "Dark Fantasies and Other Stories " by the same author .
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The Heart of the Family

David Eliot finds his career as a successful and much-acclaimed actor a definite strain, and his brittle conversation and seeming arrogance earn him the dislike of his new secretary Sebastian Weber.
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