True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable--was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue, how are you?" he whinnies back.
But sometimes True Blue seems...spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something. Or someone. Abby starts to wonder about True Blue's owner. What was she like? What did she look like? One moonlit night, Abby could swear she hears a whisper in her ear: "He's still my horse." Filled with riding scenes and horse details, this newest middle-grade novel from a Pulitzer Prize-winner offers a mysterious and suspenseful almost-ghost story.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 347
William Wymark "W. W." Jacobs (8 September 1863 – 1 September 1943) was an English author of short stories and novels. Although much of his work was humorous, he is most famous for his horror story "The Monkey\'s Paw Jacobs was born in Wapping, London; his father was a wharf manager at the South Devon wharf at Lower East Smithfield. He was educated at a private school in London and later at Birkbeck College (then called Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London)In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank, and by 1885 he had his first short story published. His road to success was relatively slow: Arnold Bennett writing in 1898 was astonished that Jacobs turned down the sum of £500 for six short stories. Jacobs was financially secure enough to be able to leave the Post Office in 1899 Jacobs is now remembered for his macabre tale "The Monkey\'s Paw" (published 1902 in the collection of short stories The Lady of the Barge) and several other ghost stories, including "The Toll House" (published 1909 in the collection of short stories Sailors\' Knots) and "Jerry Bundler" (published 1901 in the collection Light Freights). However, the majority of his output was humorous in tone. His favourite subjects were marine life: "men who go down to the sea in ships of moderate tonnage" said Punch, reviewing his first collection of stories, Many Cargoes, which achieved great popular success on its publication in 1896. Michael Sadleir described Jacobs\' fiction thus: "he wrote stories of three kinds; describing the misadventures of sailor-men ashore; celebrating the artful dodger of a slow-witted village; and tales of the macabre Views: 346
It's a grimy future and data is a drug. Solis is an addict willing to do whatever it takes to get his fix -- even if that's calling in debts and trading punches with a few guys he considers friends.Included with this story is an excerpt of the novella Chasing Filthy Lucre.Sometimes life can be a real witch. Meet Maxie Duncan. Your average 23-year-old blonde. If you can call being wealthy, gorgeous, and knowing what the future holds at times, average. After her fiancé blindsides her with a breakup at their favorite restaurant, she leaves Maine for a shot at being Hollywood’s new ‘it girl.’ There’s only one problem. She’s never acted a day in her life. When a big Hollywood director sends her packing, she realizes if she wants to stay in L.A., she may have to become a normal girl after all. But normal has never been in the cards for her. Strange things keep happening wherever she goes, a red-eyed shadow no one else sees is stalking her, and to top it off, she may be falling in love again, with either the bookish guy next door, or Hollywood’s hottest leading man. But everything isn’t what it seems. Someone’s keeping secrets from her. Is it her new friends at the apartment building she moved into? Or is it Ryan Everheart, the actor who wants to sweep her off her feet? And why are her feet suddenly floating off the ground? It’s enough to drive a girl insane. All Maxie wants to do is ride off into the sunset with her one true love and find a killer pair of Manolo Blahniks on the way. But how’s a girl supposed to focus on a love life and shopping when everywhere she turns someone or something is trying to kill her? Views: 345
An elf of the Wildlands recounts his adventures in this fantasy short story.An elf of the Wildlands recounts his adventures in this fantasy short story.Jhinn, an elf from the wooded area known as the Wildlands, has lived an adventurous life. A master with a bow, he has joined forces with a human army to rid the forest of savage trolls. During training, he falls in love with a female warrior named Aurelle who has taken up her axe in defense of their homeland. After the battle, the pair journey together to begin new lives, though Jhinn prefers a life of crime.Follow along as they embark on an adventure full of excitement, greed, and tragedy. Views: 345
Also available in Pump Six and Other Stories
“The People of Sand and Slag” starts as straight military sf — and then twists. It was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 2004. Views: 345
O. Henry is the knight of the shop-girl and the waitress; of the wandering, homeless tramp; of poverty-stricken young married folk; of hundreds of lonely human beings who live within the dirty, gloomy wall of two-dollar-a-week boarding house rooms - of the great mass of humanity not included in the "four hundred", the everyday men and women of New York's East Side.
The Four Million contains O. Henry's best and most characteristic work: the famous Gift of the Magi, the moving story of a young couple who sacrifice their most prized possessions to buy Christmas presents for each other; Soapy, the brilliant tale of a tramp who desperately attempts to break the law in order to be sent to prison so that he will have a home for the winter months; An Unfinished Story, which is a stern reproval of the employer who underpays his shop-girls - and many others. Unforgettable stories - humorous, poignant, penetrating - by "the most widely discussed and most popular short story writer of his generation."
(from the back cover) Views: 341
Buck Johnson, along with his slow-moving and slow-thinking sidekick Skeeter Evans, currently plies his trade as a dragon wrangler on Terul and is busting out a bunch of dracs for the repulsive Terullian Karposh.But when an unruly Red Kraken throws Buck, events take an unexpected turn. “Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler” is short story (approximately 4,000 words).Buck Johnson, along with his slow-moving and slow-thinking sidekick Skeeter Evans, currently plies his trade as a dragon wrangler on Terul and is busting out a bunch of dracs for the repulsive Terullian Karposh. But when an unruly Red Kraken throws Buck, events take an unexpected turn. And Buck and Skeeter, with a little help from Snort Jones, right some wrongs and give Karposh his come-uppance, while still meeting their contractual obligations. A wild mix of Fantasy, Action/Adventure, Western, and Science Fiction, “Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler” is a new twist on the Space Western and a rollicking ride across the vagaries of a dragon wrangler’s and his sidekicks’ lives on the planet Terul. Think of The Good Old Boys, The Rounders, and a little bit of Lonesome Dove all rolled up together and cast into space.“Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler” is short story (approximately 4,000 words). Views: 340
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them. Views: 340
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition.
A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” (National Review), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature.
A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 339
Herman Melville's The Confindence-Man: His Masquerade was the tenth, last, and most perplexing book of his decade as a professional man of letters. After it he gave up his ambitious effort to write works that would be both popular and profound and turned to poetry. The book was published on April 1--the very day of its title character's April Fools' Day masquerade on a Mississippi River Steamboat. Views: 337
Winner of the National Book Award and in print for more than thirty years, them ranks as one of the most masterly portraits of postwar America ever written by a novelist. Including several new pages and text substantially revised and updated by the author, this Modern Library edition is the most current and accurate version available of Oates' seminal work. A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American fam-ily—broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel's title, pointedly uncapitalized, refers to those Americans who inhabit the outskirts of society—men and women, mothers and children—whose lives many authors in the 1960s had left unexamined. Alfred... Views: 336
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 336
This free e-book contains song lyrics from Twisted Romance, a band from the mind of Yaritza Garcia (aka Moody Thursday)! There are 10 full songs and a "Bonus Track" :-)I hope you enjoy these poetic lyrics!Ajita has been trapped in School for as long as she can remember; it is a steel-cold institution with sharp rules and stone-faced Instructors. Unfortunately, Ajita thinks in pictures rather than numbers, and fails every Assessment and Exam. Her only escape is through her dreams, where strange people visit her and tell her star stories. When she befriends Yallie, a young Trainee who takes interest in her art, she believes she’s found a kindred spirit...until her dreams give her warnings of betrayal. Views: 336
