Rose, a lowly fisherman's daughter in the crumbling Kingdom of Illiamna, knows nothing of magic, secrets, spies, or sailing ships—not until, dressed as a boy, she is taken under the wing of the kingdom's most mysterious schemer...Who said history had to be boring? Everyone in Illiamna knows the Tale of Benson Rose, a bedtime story beloved by adults and children alike, but few know the story behind their national hero. Would they be surprised to learn that Benson Rose did, in fact, live? Would they be surprised to know he was actually a woman? Raised as a fisherman's daughter in the crumbling Kingdom of Illiamna, Rose knows nothing of magic, secrets, spies, or sailing ships—she is content playing pranks on her neighbors with twin brother Benson at her side. Her idyllic lifestyle is not to last, however, and her tiny village is destroyed, thrusting upon her young shoulders responsibility for her helpless family. In order to protect her mother and sisters in unfriendly lands (fending off thieves, thugs, and an uncle who intends to sell them for gold), Rose must dress as her missing brother. In this disguise, she receives the help of Fenric, a mysterious scribe from the merchant ship Turnagain, and the charismatic Captain Kaille, a man to whom she feels drawn by fate. Little does she know that, with these interactions, she begins the journey that will sweep her into Illiamna's most clandestine intrigues and endear her to time as Benson Rose, the man who saved the kingdom in its darkest days.This is the first in the Rose's Garden and the Sea series. Views: 810
Only Ally knows the secrets that lie within the world of the Gallagher Girls.
And the biggest secret of all? In Out of Sight, Out of Time, the fifth installment in the Gallagher Girls series, Cammie “The Chameleon” Morgan has awoken in an alpine convent with one very important thing missing — her memory. So what happened to Cammie over the summer? Did her friends manage to find her before it was too late?
I've created a EPUB/MOBI version of this short book.
You can find them here: here
But if you'd like to read it on a webpage just read it here Views: 810
It's a hard life in the vegetable patch as Sir Thomas de Tomato finds out on his return from the pea pod wars. All the vegetables are getting ready for war. During the war a great black cloud is seen and King Billy Brussel knows that it is St George de Gardiner and that his army is doomed. Read this fantastically silly and funny tale of vegetable matters.The telegram that has just arrived brings good news for Doctor Beth, giving her something to look forward to. However, it also reminds her of another telegram that her guardian aunt received on her behalf twenty years earlier. Ever since, Beth has waited. This is a short story of the grim affects of racial and ideological prejudice which can rear its head in the least likely of places and the long-lasting pain caused. Views: 810
A short story of friends, shoplifting, beer, and one very long night in a new town.Eddie Montez has just moved to the desert of southern California from the city. His only friend is a frequently-injured skateboarder named Beady, who forces Eddie into one uncomfortable situation after another. Arson, hitchhiking, and shoplifting all factor into a pivotal night during which Eddie must choose the person he wants to be.Previously published in "Storychord". Views: 810
Join Madeline Hatter, daughter of the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, for a positively upside-down day at her father's Mad Hatter of Wonderland's Haberdashery Hat & Tea Shoppe. Read all about it in this exclusive Ever After High short story by Newbery Honor author Shannon Hale. Views: 810
Karen and her best friends Hannie and Nancy call themselves the Three Musketeers. They do everything together. And now that it's summer, they have big plans to play, play, play!
But then Hannie and Nancy make plans without Karen. And Karen is mad. Really mad. What happened to the Three Musketeers? Views: 809
Even salvation can be delivered through the love of the damned…
Beauty can be a curse.
Faith can be a cage.
Only love can set you free.
A few long weeks after being reluctantly ripped from the comforting embrace of her sacred prophet’s religious commune—the only life she has ever known—a terrified Delilah is thrust into a world enveloped by evil and swimming in sin.
Steadfastly devout in her faith, and retaining the deep belief that her soul is innately tarnished as a branded ‘Cursed woman of Eve’, Delilah is determined to find her way home to her people in The Order and away from the corrupt and damned outlaw motorcycle club—The Hades Hangmen—who hold her at their secluded compound for her protection—a 'protection' she strongly resents.
Delilah yearns to return home, convinced that only amongst her own people, and under the holy guidance of the Lord’s revealed prophet, can her Satan-spawned soul be truly saved. Conditioned her entire life to believe she is a witch... a life-long temptress… the devil’s whore... Delilah increasingly resents her beautiful face, her shapely body and her sensuous effect on men. But when a man of the motorcycle club—a deeply sinful yet stunningly beautiful man—is charged with her care, Delilah begins to see that this dangerous and moralless sinner from the 'outside' may offer her something she did not know could truly exist: unconditional love.
Kyler ‘Ky’ Willis loves his life: a daily abundance of brotherhood, liquor, the freedom of the open-road and—best of all—his pick of hot women. Raised a biker brat and now VP of the most notorious MC in the States, Ky has no shortage of club sluts warming his bed; a situation he takes full advantage of… until a certain blonde enters his life… a gorgeous pilgrim-blonde he can’t get out of his head… a pilgrim-blonde he and his club recently-rescued from some backward religious cult… and a pilgrim-blonde he’s been ordered to keep the hell away from and his whorish hands off.
When yet another in a lengthy line of drunken blunders forces Ky to reluctantly take charge of the pilgrim-blonde’s care, he realizes that there could be more to this woman than just supermodel looks and a stacked set of tits. He begins to see that she could be the woman who could do the impossible—tame his wild ways and capture his reluctant heart.
But the unyielding bonds of Lilah’s past are strong, her ‘people’ determined and, with a new Prophet in charge and hell bent on revenge, they are mightily reluctant to let her go...
Dark Contemporary Romance.
Contains explicit sexual situations, violence, disturbingly sensitive and taboo subjects, offensive language, and very mature topics.
Recommended for age 18 years and up* Views: 809
HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?
All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far...and almost doesn't make it back.
John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won't soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won't be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge -- and over.... Views: 809
In 2005, Brandon Sanderson debuted with Elantris, an epic fantasy unlike any other then on the market. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Tor is reissuing Elantris in a special edition, a fresh chance to introduce it to the myriad readers who have since become Sanderson fans.
This new edition begins with a preface by author Dan Wells, the first person to read the completed novel, and a new afterword by Sanderson explaining how he came to write the book and its place in the Cosmere, the unified universe of all his Tor novels.
Also included is an expanded version of the "Ars Arcanum" appendix, with more of the technical details of the book's magic that fans can never get enough of.
Elantris was truly a milestone both for Sanderson and for the genre of epic fantasy. It deserves this special treatment, something Tor has done only once before, with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Sanderson fans old and new will be excited to discover it.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer (forthcoming)****
The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
*Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning*
Collection
Arcanum Unbounded
Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
The Rithmatist series
*The Rithmatist*
Other books by Brandon Sanderson
The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity
** Views: 809
*Ride with the tide! *
Deep beneath the waves, King Triton’s powerful trident has passed through the magical barrier that surrounds the Isle of the Lost—keeping villains in and magic out. And when Mal’s longtime rival Uma, daughter of Ursula, gets wind of this, she can’t believe her luck. The tide has dragged in something good for a change, and Uma is determined to get her wicked hands on it. But first, she needs a pirate crew.
A storm is brewing back in Auradon, and when Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay hear that the trident has been washed away, they realize they’ll have to find it before anyone from the Isle does. Luckily, they seem to have a talent for locating missing magical objects.
As Uma readies for the high seas alongside Harry, son of Captain Hook, Gil, son of Gaston, and the toughest rogues on the Isle of the Lost, the reformed villains of Auradon devise their own master plan. And with King Ben away on royal business, they won’t have to play by all the rules. Using bad for good can’t be totally evil, right? Views: 809
Have you ever had the out-of-control dream? The one where you know you're not crazy, but no one around you--not your parents, not your teachers, not even the authorities--will listen to you? For sixteen-year-old Brit Hemphill, the out-of-control dream comes true when her dad enrolls her at Red Rock, a bogus treatment center that claims to cure rebellious teen girls. At Red Rock, Brit is forced into therapy, and her only hope of getting her life back is in the hands of an underqualified staff of counselors. Brit's dad thinks Red Rock can save her, but the truth is it's doing more harm than good. No girl could survive Red Rock alone--but at a treatment center where you earn privileges for ratting out your peers, it's hard to know who you can trust. For Brit, everything changes when she meets V, Bebe, Martha, and Cassie, four girls who keep her from going over the edge. Together they'll hold on to their sanity and their sisterhood while trying to keep their Red Rock reality from becoming a full-on nightmare. Views: 809
One of the most controversial YA novels of all time, *The Chocolate War *is a modern masterpiece that speaks to fans of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.
After suffering rejection from seven major publishers, The Chocolate War made its debut in 1974, and quickly became a bestselling—and provocative—classic for young adults. This chilling portrait of an all-boys prep school casts an unflinching eye on the pitfalls of conformity and corruption in our most elite cultural institutions.
“Masterfully structured and rich in theme; the action is well crafted, well timed, suspenseful.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The characterizations of all the boys are superb.”—School Library Journal, starred review
“Compellingly immediate. . . . Readers will respect the uncompromising ending.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice
A New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 809
#1 New York Times bestselling author Richelle Mead returns to the Otherworld, a mystic land inextricably linked to our own--and balanced precariously on one woman's desperate courage . . .Shaman-for-hire Eugenie Markham strives to keep the mortal realm safe from trespassing entities. But as the Thorn Land's prophecy-haunted queen, there's no refuge for her and her soon-to-be-born-children when a mysterious blight begins to devastate the Otherworld. . . The spell-driven source of the blight isn't the only challenge to Eugenie's instincts. Fairy king Dorian is sacrificing everything to help, but Eugenie can't trust the synergy drawing them back together. The uneasy truce between her and her shape shifter ex-lover Kiyo is endangered by secrets he can't--or won't--reveal. And as a formidable force rises to also threaten the human world, Eugenie must use her own cursed fate as a weapon--and risk the ultimate sacrifice. . .Praise for Richelle Mead's Storm Born. . ."My kind of book--great characters, dark worlds, and just the right touch of humor. A great read." --Patricia Briggs, New York Times Bestselling Author Views: 809
Not only are other's grass always greener, another's spouse is also often sexier. That's all I'll tell you. Click the blue below to see why. Here it suffices to say that the story is short and free. Why read a summary when with little more effort you can read the whole thing? If you can't spare a moment more, you shouldn't be wasting time reading fiction anyway. Go back to work!"One can not judge a book by its cover." So we are told. But a cover is usually the only thing a reader has to base a judgment on. Smashwords tries to aid readers by providing summaries, one short, one long, for each book it distributes. For non-fiction this works well. But this, it seems to me, defeats the whole purpose of fiction. After all, one reads a story to find out what will happen. It’s the uncommon twists and turns that make a story interesting. But if a summary has told all this beforehand, what fun is to be had in the reading? Therefore, no summary of the present short story is given. It's short and it’s free! So read the whole thing and see if you like it. I ask you to do this because I think it is the best book judging method. To find fiction you like you must first read around enough to learn something of the style and stories of different authors. Then you can judge books, not by their cover, but by the your opinion of the writer. I'd like to help you do this. The present short story is one of several which I will make available free at Smashwords. Read a few (or all of them) and decide if you like them. It won't cost you a dime. If you like them, you can then purchase some of my not free (but still inexpensive) longer stories. All these stories are of one particular kind. To reflect this similarity all have the same cover picture, the Kitty & Rose shown above. So after you’ve read a few, you can, in fact, judge them by their cover. The common theme of the Kitty & Rose stories is human sexuality. This is not unusual. Most fiction concerns sex in one way or another; ranging from romances so sedate and demure an extraterrestrial could never know sex is at the root of everything described, to erotica so unrestricted even an extraterrestrial might blush. Kitty & Rose stories are in the middle of this range. All deal with human sexuality, but none do so explicitly. Rather, they are seemly. The dictionary gives three meanings for seemly: Attractive or agreeably fashioned; Decorous or conventionally proper; and Appropriate or suited to its purpose. With respect to appropriateness, seemly sex stories range from the humorous to the inspirational, but all concern human sexuality. So they are clearly appropriate. These stories are also seemly in the decorous and conventionally proper sense. For, while they treat sex candidly, they do not do so graphically. There is nothing pornographic nor erotic in any seemly sex story. Of course, different persons’ opinions about this may differ. A few consider frank pornography decorous. At the opposite extreme are those like the abbot of the monastery where the great biologist Gregor Mendel did his epochal research. This abbot thought Mendel’s studies were decidedly indecorous because they involved the sex of pea plants! Finally, there is the principal sense of seemly, attractive and agreeably fashioned. Like every author I exert my every effort and ability trying to make these stories seemly in this regard. But like every author, I must await your determination of the degree of my success. Since both of us will be pleased if you find them attractively seemly, I very much hope you do.Happy reading!BobbyBP.S. This is free Kitty & Rose short story #11, uploaded 2-28-17. Views: 808
In a wild untamed world, the entire race of dragons are enslaved by a sadistic sorcerer and trapped inside of a gemstone. Four centuries later, a boy is born with the blood of dragons flowing in his veins.Cursed by his bizarre appearance, yet blessed with amazing abilities,he sets off on a quest to investigate the rumors of a rampaging dragon, and to avenge his father's murder.This book includes bonus material for the Seeker Series: Dark Beauty, Dark Seeker & Dark Return. With never seen before material, it's a great companion to the series. An in-depth look into the Seeker Series through: Character Interviews, Deleted Scenes, Sneak Peeks, Author Interviews, and more...“Get ready for a new breed of vampire slayers! Browning has created an intriguing world that promises many interesting surprises to come. A terrific start to a new urban fantasy.” —Artist Arthur, author of The Mystyx Novels"YA fans of fresh, edgy urban fantasy are going to love Dark Seeker. Taryn Browning is a rising star. This is one author you'll want to keep your eye on as she shoots straight to the top of the charts!" —Kari Lee Townsend, National Best Selling Author of The Samantha Granger Experiment & The Fortune Teller Mysteries"Taryn Browning is a master writer. DARK SEEKER is thrilling and beautiful, and follows only one trend: good story-telling." —Brent Taylor, The Naughty Book Kitties"Dark Seeker is an original and action-packed adventure that will leave you kicking and screaming for the next installment! With endearing characters, a breathtaking romance, fabulous world-building and a spectacular storyline, Dark Seeker will surely impress readers!" --Shirley, Shiirleyy's Bookshelf"Taryn Browning’s debut novel is a stunning addition to any paranormal romance lover’s library." --Tiffany, For Those About to Read"This is a wicked tale! It's original and flows really well. There is great action, mystery, and Romance*yes I ment to capitalize that*. Everything works so well together. Well thought out and you don't have to make yourself believe any of it as your reading ... you just do. Get this AMAZING story NOW!" --Heather, SupaGurl Books Views: 808
