Clean Freak and Other Stories


Book Description

Clean Freak and Other Stories is Lindsey M. Costley's first collection of nonfiction essays. The book opens with a critical introduction that situates the creative work in a tradition of comedic personal narrative. David Sedaris, Periel Aschenbrand, and Jack Driscoll include some of the influences that shape the ideas and techniques behind the essays. For example, Sedarisâ situational humor inspired essays such as âThe Penis,â in which the author describes her experience drawing nude models in an art class. The themes in the collection range from family and loss to personal growth and societal issues, such as body image and homosexuality. The title piece, âClean Freak,â encapsulates several of these themes as the author examines her own obsession with cleanliness.




Claiming the Cleanfreak


Book Description

Isaac is a class A shitheel with only three things on his mind: his next vape break, his next paycheck, and a just-for-fun feud with fun police coworker, Atticus. Atticus is a surface level stick-in-the-mud. Cleancut and built, he's never found without hand sanitizer or a scowl. He hates three things: a disorganized workspace, germs of any kind, and Isaac. The two exist on the verge of Atticus's fist down Isaac's throat at all times, until one day, Isaac discovers a secret: Atticus's pierced nipples. Something clicks in his head, and Isaac goes from zero to a hundred. Obsessed. He has to have Atticus - whether or not the big guy is on board with this budding romance. Things move fast, but Isaac isn't happy just to get him in bed. He needs to own Atticus body and soul - and doing so requires confronting Atticus's germophobia, by making him more scared of the person who loves him than he is of a dirty floor. At 34k, Claiming the Cleanfreak is a dark MM story. It contains very rough content. Further warnings inside.




Clutter


Book Description

“I’m sitting on the floor in my mother’s house, surrounded by stuff.” So begins Jennifer Howard’s Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out her mother’s house in the wake of a devastating physical and emotional collapse, Howard sets her own personal struggle with clutter against a meticulously researched history of just how the developed world came to drown in material goods. With sharp prose and an eye for telling detail, she connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution, the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the Container Store, and shines unsparing light on clutter’s darker connections to environmental devastation and hoarding disorder. In a confounding age when Amazon can deliver anything at the click of a mouse and decluttering guru Marie Kondo can become a reality TV star, Howard’s bracing analysis has never been more timely.




Switched


Book Description

From the Edgar-nominated author Bruce Hale comes a hilarious story of a boy and a dog...who become a dog and a boy Who's a good boy?Twelve-year-old Parker Pitts hates a mess. Ever since his grandmother died, he's much more comfortable when things are organized: He scrubs the kitchen counters at home, avoids the school bully at all costs, and never even speaks to Gabriella Cortez, the most interesting girl in the sixth grade. No muss, no fuss, no complicated feelings to worry about.But now Parker's older sister is traveling abroad for the semester, leaving behind her obnoxious and extremely disorderly goldendoodle, Boof, for Parker to manage. Man's best friend? More like boy's worst nightmare!When an intense round of tug-of-war leaves both dog and boy with bumped heads, Parker and Boof wake up to the biggest disaster yet: they've switched bodies! Suddenly Boof has to find his way through a school day and Parker has to...eat dog food?!It's a mess of truly epic proportions. Can Parker and Boof clean it up -- together?




Speed Cleaning


Book Description

Clean your entire house in 42 minutes with the Clean Team's unbeatable system that makes every move count! Cleaning Expert Jeff Campbell and the Clean Team share their techniques and tips for cleaning your home fast but with consistency and quality. They also recommend environmentally sound products and technology and how to get the very best from your housecleaning service.




Clean


Book Description

A RUTHLESS KILLER— OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino put killers behind bars. My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes me the best interrogator in the department. But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—real scary. Now the cops don’t trust the telepaths, the Guild doesn’t trust me, a serial killer is stalking the city—and I’m aching for a fix. But I need to solve this case. Fast. I’ve just had a vision of the future: I’m the next to die.




Behold Faith and Other Stories


Book Description

In sometimes humorous and sometimes tragic, even violent contexts, the characters in these stories struggle to fathom the complexities and circumstances of their lives. Here are ordinary people trying to come to grips with the implications of where they've been, and preparing themselves for where they're headed. All these stories seek to interrogate and render in genuine and unflinching ways the nature of doubt, delusion, and surprisingly, the potentially rescuing powers of faith and grace. They are above all, honest and compassionate stories. Here is a writer you can trust; here are people you have known. (Behold Faith)







Minotaur and Other Stories


Book Description

"Salvatore Difalco's fiction is a finely blended mix of toughness, street-smart insights and violence, along with flashes of tenderness and compassion. (His stories) are thoughtful, enigmatic ... drawing the reader in with sharp detail, poetic phrasing and recognizable characters. Though we're dealing with thugs, prostitutes and crackheads, they are all folks you'll feel uncomfortably at home with. That's Difalco's magic: scrape characters from the bottom of society's bowl and reveal them in literary daylight as powerless dreamers, failed mothers, caged creatures." Matthew Firth, 'Front & Centre'




Euthanasia, Operation Vijay Memorial and Other stories


Book Description

This is my first collection of short stories which range from a period of 2008 to 2018. It took me a varied time to write these stories. Some were written in an evening while some took more than 45 days. All of these stories have a story behind them. For example, ‘With Braces’ was born out of a SINGLE SENTENCE on 9Gag, ‘What if you had braces and there were no dentists?’ The 3rd Wheel is what I saw every day during walks and casual outdoor lunches. Op Vijay Memorial is inspired by a female friend’s true experience when she went to Ladakh on a bike. Life’s Trial is a story of a windy rainy evening when I wanted to write something with a twist. The Traveler is when I wanted to write a Sci-Fi without invoking horror and blood. Euthanasia is when I saw relatives and people I knew on a death bed. It also is about what sometimes everyone has thought about themselves on a scary sleepless night Superheroes and Villains is from 2016 when India was still dealing pathetically with the 2012 Delhi rape case. And… Mriya is from an upcoming novel. None of these stories have anything common between them except for me as the writer. The plots and characters in each story are as different as chalk and cheese. Excluding two, there is however one thing which binds all of the stories – Hope. My imaginary world isn’t scarred and behest with nerve-racking experiences.