Fourteen short stories with a twist, Duck for Cover & Other Tales is filled with surprises. The Yes Man is about a woman who looks after her elderly father with dementia, only to discover he still has life lessons to teach her. Living My Best Life tells the story of an aging rock star who finds his legacy lives on in a way he hadn't imagined. Thicker Than Blood is about the dilemmas caused by modern technology when a trio of siblings is asked to make the hardest decision of their lives. The Devil's Workshop is the story of a young man being scared straight from a life of delinquency by a clever probation officer and an ex-con. Topical, relatable and just plain fun, these and many other stories in this collection deal with friendship, kinship and the complexities of the modern world, and are sure to leave you with a smile.
The post-apocalyptic world isn't that bad. Sure, there are mutants. But, for the people of New Hope, daily life isn't so much a struggle of finding food or medicine as it is trying to find a new shortstop for their kickball team. This makes it difficult for a post-apocalyptic warrior to find work. Thankfully, an army full of killers is making its way to the peaceful town and plans to raze it to the ground. Only a fully trained post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior can stop them. Two have offered their services. One is invited to help. The other is sent to roam the wasteland. Did the townspeople make the right decision? Will they be saved? Did they find a shortstop? What's with all the bears? Find out in Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors, the first book in the Duck and Cover Adventures. It's the end of the world as you've never known it.
While spending thirty years overseas in the US Foreign Service, and living in eleven countries and working in many more, Ambassador Lucke accumulated many stories that would never have happened "at home." His work took him to Timbuktu (twice), to places in West Africa where kids ran away in fear at their first glimpse of a person with white skin, to the scary run up to Gulf War I in North Africa, to the jungles of Bolivia and Lake Titicaca in the Andes, the fall of Communism in the old Czechoslovakia, biblical sites of Jerusalem, the passing of King Hussein in Jordan, to interaction with a few US Presidents and many members of Congress. He was thrust into the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, deployed into the war zone of Iraq, and finally served as US Ambassador to the last absolute monarchy in Africa. His take on a thirty-year career abroad: "It was never boring."
A short story memoir of life in the segregated South as seen through the innocent eyes of a young white girl Duck and Cover is a wry, laconic memoir penned by Kathie Farnell, based on her perspective as a smart-mouthed, unreasonably optimistic white girl growing up in Cloverdale, a genteel and neatly landscaped neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During those decades Montgomery's social order was slowly--very slowly--changing. The bus boycott was over if not forgotten, Normandale Shopping Center had a display of the latest fallout shelters, and integration was on the horizon, though many still thought the water in the white and colored drinking fountains came from separate tanks. Farnell's household, more like the Addams family than the Cleavers of Leave it to Beaver, included socially ambitious parents who were lawyers, two younger brothers, a live-in grandmother, and Libby, the family maid. Her father was a one-armed rageaholic given to strange business deals such as the one resulting in the family unintentionally owning a bakery. Mama, the quintessential attorney, could strike a jury but was hopeless at making Jello. Granny, a curmudgeon who kept a chamber pot under her bed, was always at odds with Libby, who had been in a bad mood since the bus boycott began. Farnell deftly recounts tales of aluminum Christmas trees, the Hula-Hoop craze, road trips in the family's un-air-conditioned black Bel Air, show-and-tell involving a human skeleton, belatedly learning to swear, and even the pet chicken she didn't know she had. Her well-crafted prose reveals quirky and compelling characters in stories that don't ignore the dark side of the segregated South, as told from the wide-eyed perspective of a girl who is sometimes oblivious to and often mystified by its byzantine rules. Little did she know that the Age of Aquarius was just around the corner.
Duck and Cover is a memoir born of Rosemary's desire to transport readers back to the beloved 1960's Brooklyn of her youth, with its familiar streets and stoops, during a more innocent time in this fabled borough. Yet Duck and Cover is also a coming-of-age tale, spotlighting the universal struggle of a young girl forging an individual identity- and trying not to attract too much attention-while carefully navigating her way across that crucial border between childhood and adolescence.
Author Yeomans and illustrator Sheban present a clever, irreverent, and sidesplittingly funny book about two best duck friends just looking for some company. Full color.
The seventeen stories in Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales take place at the edges of this world, some veering more deeply into it, others towards worlds on the other side. With elements of fairy tales and folklore, and occasional forays into dystopian futures, its constant theme is a search for home and belonging, and the darkness at the heart of that search. Women stalk through these pages looking for the keeper of human hearts and a cruel map that will answer only to its true owner. Faeries are more likely to seek revenge or a human soul than they are to grant wishes. A man washes up on a pebbled beach, his only means of communication being the haunting songs he plays on an old piano. Elsewhere, music is the language of love and sorrow and, sometimes, a weapon. Stay awhile, here, and learn the secrets of a city built for a long-gone lover and how to find the land of the dead. Learn what it means to chart stories on human skin. But remember that, between these covers, getting what one needs is often different from what one wants. “Suzanne J. Willis is a chronicler of note, a documenter of the glorious strange, a creator of such wonders and horrors as might make a heart sing or the blood curdle.” -from the introduction by Angela Slatter
When Harold, a large green alligator with a big mouth and an even bigger appetite, shows up at Irene's door seeking shelter, everyone hides. Except Max. Max persuades the other critters that this particular runaway needs their help. So while everyone keeps busy seeing that Harold remains well fed, Max cooks up a clever plan. But is a room filled with fake alligators enough to keep the zoo detective away?
