In Brody and Kate's continuing story, pressures mount with the threat of a supernatural attack. Mercenary fae send hard luck and scouts to soften their target, while the few who know of the impending invasion struggle to understand the danger they face.Roland Barcus was just a maintenance guy with a good job and a good salary on the deep space survey ship The Ventura. The outer ring is the 2-G level on the ship where very few people live or work. People like Barcus and his friends.The last day of the Ventura would begin a series of events that would ultimately result in the Solstice 31 Incident.

This collection contains three short stories in the genres of horror, science fiction and fantasy, all about the things we lose: our humanity, our souls, even our very selves, through choice, through sacrifice, or by the passage of time. All stories published for the first time.This collection contains three short stories in the genres of horror, science fiction and fantasy, all about the things we lose: our humanity, our souls, even our very selves, through choice, through sacrifice, or by the passage of time. All stories published for the first time.Contains:“Loyalty”: When his fields become mysteriously barren, a farmer makes a desperate bargain to save his land and his daughter, but he is unprepared for the new crop he must grow in his fields.“Of Memories Lost”: An old and worn out robot on an unfinished journey meets a strange creature on its travels.“To Die in the Spring”: They are the Lok’Chang, the Army of the Damned. They were sent against their will to a nightmarish world outside of their own, to find and bring back an item of immense power. They will do whatever it takes to get home again, even though it may cost them everything.

The Lost Savannah is the second novella in the Lost and Found Pets series. Alexandra Prescott is a licensed private investigator specializing in finding missing animals. Reuniting pet and owner is more than just a job.Alex is hired to find a lost Savannah, a rare and expensive cat breed. She quickly learns the cat isn't just missing. The cat was stolen. The main suspect is the next door neighbor who is obsessed with Savannahs and the game of golf.Soon Alex discovers a black market ring in the world of fanatic Savannah cat breeders. She has to dust off her rusty investigative skills to solve the mystery of the lost Savannah.

The wind had been roaring across the face of the planet for ten days with no sign of stopping. It felt like it had always been there, and always would be. Eternal. Sometimes, if you listened closely, it seemed to form words. But it didn't pay to listen too long to those words. The wind had way of getting into your head....Somewhere in space and in time, you will be introduced to Umas, the dominant species, and to Bovs, one of the subservient species. We follow these creatures through numerous adventures full of adrenaline and emotion. Gradually, we will come to understand the oppression of Bovs by Umas, its reality, its scale and its consequences. Why does it have to be so? Why is this deviance not obvious for all? Does it remind us of something?Some vegan Umas are struggling to abolish exploitation of other species, but their enemies are powerful.But, there is something , we will say no more...

Marshall, a former gang member and new father is struggling to make ends meet with the love of his life Sarah. After he's fired from his a job an opportunity to make some extra money surfaces when he meets an old friend, the only problem is that it involve's stealing money from a Government program. When things take a turn for the worst Marshall is faced with a life-changing decision.Marshall, a former gang member and new father is struggling to make ends meet with the love of his life Sarah. After he's fired from his a job an opportunity to make some extra money surfaces, the only problem is that it involve's stealing money from a Mars exploration program. When the plan goes awry and things take a turn for the worst Marshall gets into trouble with the law. Marshall's mistake will trigger a series of events that will lead to a big decision, a decision of freedom or confinement, a decision that could change his life as well as the people he loves forever.

A definitive edition of the groundbreaking feminist fiction of a nineteenth century pioneerLibrary of America presents the fullest selection ever of visionary American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman: two novels, forty-four brilliant short stories, nearly two-hundred poems, and both the published and manuscript versions of the landmark story “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The short fiction presented here showcases Gilman’s mastery of ghost stories, allegorical fantasy, and social realism and includes a virtuoso series of stories written in imitation of the most acclaimed authors of her day. The utopian novels Herland and With Her in Ourland—abouta remote and isolated society of women—are pioneering works of speculative fiction and still-incisive commentaries on the politics of gender. Gilman was known to her contemporaries first and foremost as a poet, and this volume brings together her collection In This Our...

A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a "positive" people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts. On a national level, it's brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

What if you came back from the dead,came back to life.What would you do?What really makes one human, is it a fact of birth, the right of passage that is growing up, is it societies' influence on young impressionable minds, or is it something else? Is Humanity and all that goes with it in fact programmed into our DNA?These are questions that have plagued Shiva all her life. For most people, for Normal people, these are questions with easy answers, after all they were born human, raised human, and have always been 'Human'. But Shiva is not 'Normal', she might not in fact be 'Human'. She is or perhaps was a Weapon, she was created as a weapon, trained to be a weapon, and she sees the world as a weapon. But all that changes one day when she meets a girl and for the very first time, she feels something that defies all logic and all reason. Can a weapon fall in love, or this something reserved only for those who are humans?But there are those in her world who have never doubted these answers, to them she is a powerful tool created for a war not yet fought, and they cannot allow that tool to slip from their grasp. So from the shadows they strike at the very thing that threatens to take that weapon from their grasp, that person who might be the key to unlocking the heart within the weapon.

In a small country town an ancient evil is rising...Concealed, hidden in plain sight for millenia this dark force is feeding its way through the town's population, making puppets of them. For years it has been growing, biding its time, and now, it's almost ready....In the tradition of Stephen King's classic 'Salem's Lot, newcomer Paul Andrew Taylor crafts a tale of a small Australian town overcome by a dark and creeping horror.The Shadows are Coming...In the country town of Casino, a young mother hangs clothing on the old hills hoist while her toddler son plays on the lawn beside her. The sun shines brightly, painting shadows across the back yard. When her son's happy gibberish suddenly breaks off into choked gasps, his mother spins around to find him wrapped in her shadow, choked and grey and gasping for breath. The Shadows are Coming....A man sits in a park by the river, quietly feeding pigeons, shadows pooling beneath the bench. He drops some dry bread crumbs by his feet and a bold pigeon struts over to investigate. The man's shadow snaps out and drops over the pigeon like a blanket, devouring it in a puff of feathers and dust.The Shadows are Coming...When Ben Reilly returns to his home town of Casino, soured on city life after a bad break-up, he's hoping for little more than the comfort of things known and familiar and a place to clear his head. Instead, he finds a town full of strange, hungry people with jet black eyes and shadows that tug at their heels like hungry dogs.And like dogs, they need to feed...Searching the internet for answers, Ben draws the attention of a mysterious stranger with no shadow who claims to be impervious to the effects of the shadows. Known only as Shade, the stranger will lead Ben into the heart of darkness in a centuries old battle against these sinister Shadoweaters, people who are little more than appendages to the living shadows that have infected them.

The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar unemployment from "our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism"--The New York Times Book Review Americans' working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once guaranteed by "middle-class" jobs are a thing of the past. In Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with the plausible resume of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a "middle-class" job. She submits to career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and--again and again--rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people who have done everything right--gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes--yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they have only themselves to blame. Alternately hilarious and tragic, Bait and Switch, like the classic Nickel and Dimed, is a searing expose of the cruel new reality in which we all now live.

* Attention: this is not a story about werewolves, lycans, or whatever else you want to call them * Set in a distant land, a boy grows into a man as he learns about the gifts of his ancestral blood from a mysterious mentor. And then, on one fateful day, he learns that some knowledge comes with a price.Darcy and Brigit always wanted a new start for themselves. Hearing that things in the Niobrara Valley of northeast Nebraska offered them opportunities denied them in County Mayo, they eagerly board the train bound for the new town of Randolph Nebraska with hopes and dreams in their hearts.

When Serrel Hawthorne joined the Imperial Legion, the last thing he was expecting was to be selected for battlemage training. Now he and seven other misfits are going to have to learn how to weave the magical ether, and preferably not kill each other in the process. Of course, their gruff sergeant might just do that anyway, if they keep annoying him.Everyone has their reasons for joining the Imperial Legion. Some seek fame. Some are just running from something. You sign the scroll, take the Legion bronze, then you learn to hit things with a sword. But when Serrel Hawthorne joined the Imperial Legion, the last thing he was expecting was to be selected for battlemage training. Now he and seven other misfits are going to have to learn how to weave the magical ether, and preferably not kill each other in the process. Of course, their gruff sergeant might just do that anyway, if they keep annoying him.And the biggest threat any of them will have to face, is always going to be the one within themselves. Mages call it the Hollow. It is there, inside everyone, waiting to swallow them whole. It will kill you if you let it. But you have to climb out of it yourself.