Slayful Stories


Book Description

Welcome to Interludes, a collection of short stories by Canadian author Melanie McCurdie. These separate journeys take place in ordinary towns, in the midst of ordinary life. The stories in this collection peel back the facade of normal, revealing the horrors that await, and in every one, something lurks... All the players in these nasty and wicked little tales soon reveal their true, appalling faces that skulk beneath the masks they wear. Interludes contains several new tales including: Thicker Than Water, Frozen, Follow The Dog and a sneak peek into the upcoming novel Autopsia featuring the excerpt Snapshot.




Erotic Interludes


Book Description

With her groundbreaking works of erotica, Lonnie Barbach has given women a forum to express their most passionate and imaginative fantasies about sex and sexual encounters. These graphic stories, filled with the unexpected and the forbidden, brilliantly capture the myriad layers, colors, and visions of every woman's sexuality. A book that can be read as a starting point for shared intimacies or as a pleasure experienced in solitude, EROTIC INTERLUDES stimulates the mind as well as the body. These twenty-one stories by and about women--yound and old, married and single, heterosexual and lesbian--bring a feminine point of view to such subjects as mysterious partners, racy games, and risque encounters. But most important, EROTIC INTERLUDES is fun, celebrating a woman's sensualtiy and reaffirming her right to the positive pleasures and adventure of sex. The result is a classic work of explicit passion, ready to be thoroughly enjoyed.




Pacific Interlude


Book Description

During the last days of World War II, a young officer braves enemy fire and a maverick crew on the open waters and in the steamy ports of the South Pacific Twenty-five-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant Sylvester Grant, a veteran of the Greenland Patrol, has just been given command of a small gas tanker, running shuttle and convoy duties for the US Army. Sally, his wife of three years, is eager for him to get back to Massachusetts and live a conventional suburban life selling insurance—but Syl longs for adventure and is bound to find it as the captain of a beat-up, unseaworthy vessel carrying extremely flammable cargo across dangerous stretches of the Pacific Ocean. As the Allies prepare to retake the Philippines, the only thing the sailors aboard the Y-18 want is for the war to be over. First, however, they must survive their mission to bring two hundred thousand gallons of high-octane aviation fuel to shore. From below-deck personality clashes to the terrifying possibility of an enemy attack, from combating illness and boredom to the constant stress of preventing an explosion that could blow their ship sky high, the crew of the Y-18 must learn to work together and trust their captain—otherwise, they might never make it home. Based on Sloan Wilson’s own experiences, Pacific Interlude is a thrilling and realistic story of World War II and a moving portrait of a man looking toward the future while trying to survive a precarious present.




Interludes and Irony in the Ancestral Narrative


Book Description

The stories of Hagar, Dinah, and Tamar stand out as strangers in the ancestral narrative. They deviate from the main plot and draw attention to the interests and fates of characters who are not a part of the ancestral family. Readers have traditionally domesticated these strange stories. They have made them “familiar”—all about the ancestral family. Thus Hagar’s story becomes a drama of deselection, Shechem and the Hivites become emblematic for ancestral conflict with the people of the land, and Tamar becomes a lens by which to read providence in the story of Joseph. This study resurrects the question of these stories’ strangeness. Rather than allow the ancestral narrative to determine their significance, it attends to each interlude’s particularity and detects ironic gestures made toward the ancestral narrative. These stories contain within them the potential to defamiliarize key themes of ancestral identity: the ancestral-divine relationship, ancestral relations to the land and its inhabitants, and ancestral self-identity. Perhaps the ancestral family are not the only privileged partners of God, the only heirs to the land, or the only bloodline fit to bear the next generation.




Monster Hunter Guardian


Book Description

NEW ENTRY IN THE BESTSELLING MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL SERIES BY DRAGON AWARD–WINNING AUTHORS LARRY CORREIA AND SARAH A. HOYT When Owen Pitt and the rest of the Monster Hunter International crew are called away to mount a month’s-long rescue mission in a monster-infested nightmare dimension, Julie Shackleford—Owen’s wife and descendant of MHI founder Bubba Shackleford—is left behind. Her task: hold down the fort and take care of her new baby son Ray. Julie’s devoted to the little guy, but the slow pace of office work and maternity leave are starting to get to her. But when a routine field call brings her face-to-face with an unspeakable evil calling itself Brother Death, she’ll get more excitement than she ever hoped for. Julie is the Guardian of a powerful ancient artifact known as the Kamaresh Yar, and Brother Death wants it. In the wrong hands, it could destroy reality as we know it. Julie would die before giving it up. Then Ray goes missing, taken by Brother Death. The price for his safe return: the Kamaresh Yar. If Julie doesn’t hand over the artifact it means death—or worse—for baby Ray. With no other choice left to her, Julie agrees to Brother Death’s demands. But when you’re dealing with an ancient evil, the devil is in the details. To reclaim her son, Julie Shackleford will have to fight her way through necromantic death cults, child-stealing monsters, and worse. And she’ll have to do it all before Brother Death can unleash the Kamaresh Yar. It’s one woman against an army of monsters. But Julie Shackleford is no ordinary woman—she’s one tough mother! The Monster Hunter series: Monster Hunter International Monster Hunter Vendetta Monster Hunter Alpha Monster Hunter Legion Monster Hunter Nemesis Monster Hunter Siege Monster Hunter Guardian The Monster Hunter Memoirs series by Larry Correia and John Ringo: Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Larry Correia and the Monster Hunter International series: “[E]verything I like in fantasy: intense action scenes, evil in horrifying array, good struggling against the darkness, and most of all people—gorgeously flawed human beings faced with horrible moral choices that force them to question and change and grow.” —Jim Butcher “[A] no-holds-barred all-out page turner that is part science fiction, part horror, and an absolute blast to read.” —Bookreporter.com “If you love monsters and action, you’ll love this book. If you love guns, you’ll love this book. If you love fantasy, and especially horror fantasy, you’ll love this book.” —Knotclan.com “A gun person who likes science fiction—or, heck, anyone who likes science fiction—will enjoy [these books] . . . The plotting is excellent, and Correia makes you care about the characters . . . I read both books without putting them down except for work . . . so whaddaya waitin’ for? Go and buy some . . . for yourself and for stocking stuffers.” —Massad Ayoob “This lighthearted, testosterone-soaked sequel to 2009's Monster Hunter International will delight fans of action horror with elaborate weaponry, hand-to-hand combat, disgusting monsters, and an endless stream of blood and body parts.” —Publishers Weekly on Monster Hunter Vendetta About Sarah A. Hoyt: “[Three Musketeers creator] Alexandre Dumas would give [Sarah A. Hoyt] a thumbs up.” —Steve Forbes “[F]anciful and charming.” —Library Journal "First-rate space opera with a moral lesson. You won't be disappointed." —Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com “[A] tour de force: logical, built from assumptions with no contradictions . . . gripping.” —Jerry Pournelle “Exceptional, wonderful, and enormously entertaining.” —Booklist




Chicago Renaissance


Book Description

A fascinating history of Chicago’s innovative and invaluable contributions to American literature and art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century This remarkable cultural history celebrates the great Midwestern city of Chicago for its centrality to the modernist movement. Author Liesl Olson traces Chicago’s cultural development from the 1893 World’s Fair through mid-century, illuminating how Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the twentieth century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. From Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, and Ernest Hemingway to Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olson’s enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic “renaissance” moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens, and the creative ferment of Bronzeville. Stories of the famous and iconoclastic are interwoven with accounts of lesser-known yet influential figures in Chicago, many of whom were women. Olson argues for the importance of Chicago’s editors, bookstore owners, tastemakers, and ordinary citizens who helped nurture Chicago’s unique culture of artistic experimentation. Cover art by Lincoln Schatz




How to Read Literature Like a Professor 3E


Book Description

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest—a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contexts—teaches you how to make your everyday reading experience richer and more rewarding. While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye—and the literary codes—of a college professor. What does it mean when a protagonist is traveling along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he’s drenched in a sudden rain shower? Thomas C. Foster provides answers to these questions as he explores every aspect of fiction, from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form. Offering a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—he shows us how to make our reading experience more intellectually satisfying and fun. The world, and curricula, have changed. This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect those changes, and features new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, as well as fresh teaching points Foster has developed over the past decade. Foster updates the books he discusses to include more diverse, inclusive, and modern works, such as Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere; Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X; Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird; Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street; Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; Madeline Miller’s Circe; Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls; and Tahereh Mafi’s A Very Large Expanse of Sea.




Cedar Key Stories


Book Description

Magical stories of a real place - where cats and crabs talk and mermaids gambol in the waves. A delightful collection of tales for those who know, want to know, or remember the little island of Cedar Key, Florida. Unusual stories of an unusual place.




The Way of Kings Prime


Book Description