As the summer season ends, Daria Drake and her father prepare to close their ice cream shop on the Atlantic City boardwalk. After Labor Day, they'll return to the mer-city of Tor, their home under the ocean. When a handsome man enters one day and kicks out a trio of troublemakers, Daria's captivated but won't chance loving a human. Zale Monroe is the captain of the palace guard in Tor, but the queen has forced him to take a vacation. He didn't expect to find a beautiful girl and her father being harassed in their ice cream shop. These men are trouble, but how can he convince Daria of this without giving away his merman secret?
Combining free verse with traditional rhyme schemes and experimental formats, Charles Cooper's work is a writer at the height of his poetic skill. Cooper takes the reader along with him on a perilous psychological journey through love, madness, and pain.Often varying his writing style from one poem to another, and even stanza-to-stanza, Cooper makes excellent use of rhythm in a number of offerings, particularly his beatnik-inspired effort, "The Black Bleeding Heart Beats Alone," and provides readers with searing portrayals of the human condition in eloquently rendered poems like "Failure" and "The Wastrel."In the end, This is a stellar effort for Cooper, a literary work true to its author's vision and triumphant in its poetic craftsmanship. - Jay Waitkus, Praise for Desperate Times
The author has thoroughly revised the second edition. Dreams enrich us with their pictorial and sensitive language. Dreams amplify our consciousness by informing the dreamer about his conflicts, feelings of guilt, wishes and instincts. The psychiatrist Dr. Flöttmann researched 45.000 dreams by means of the computer and his great experience in psychotherapy. For many dream symbols new scientific meanings have been found.
Renee Tate needs to spread her grandmother’s ashes around a special tree in the small town of Garland Falls, MN. Her grandmother’s ghost decided to tag along and do some matchmaking. There, Renee meets a tall, quiet man with a gift for gardening. What would he think if he knew she could see and talk to ghosts? Parker Callahan is the groundskeeper at Warner’s Bed and Breakfast. When Renee arrives, he’s asked to help her find the special oak tree she needs to spread her grandmother’s ashes. What would she say if she knew he’s one of the mythical Green Men and a spirit conduit between this world and the other side? As Halloween approaches, and a dark presence is detected by Parker and the town elders. He’ll need Renee’s help to cross over the ghosts before they’re taken by the looming shadow.
When Joanna Robillard's car breaks down in front of the Heavenly Bites cookie shop, it's just another part of the string of bad luck since she started her trip west. Her money's almost gone, now she needs repairs and a place to stay. When the owner of the shop comes out, she's struck by his resemblance to the tall elves in fantasy movies. Davin Mines owns the shop where Joanna's car breaks down. He offers her a temporary job to help her earn money to get her car fixed. But the longer she's there, the more he thinks she belongs with him. However, he has his own magical secret and works to fulfill the promise of the season.
Felissina Markhov escaped her anti-matter dimension to avoid marriage to a usurper king. Landing on Earth through a wormhole, she was taken in by the Angels superhero team. Her powers, normal for her people, make her one of the elite heroes on Earth. Since her arrival, she’s been trying to find a way back to her dimension to free her province. A traitor from her world appears and attacks her, making her time on Earth grow short. Martin Long’s powers keep him apart from the rest of humanity. Fear has built in him as they’ve spiraled more and more out of control. When he saves a woman from an attacker, a strong attraction surges between them. However, touching her could show him a future he doesn’t want to see. Forces are converging as the two of them are forced to fight new enemies in order to be together.
When Melissa Owens’ Aunt Dee tells her the magic in Garland Falls is fading, Mel knows she has to help, but how? Her aunt says business has fallen off and she’s contacted a travel agency to come list the B and B and the town. Could the lack of business be tied to the fading magic? Conner Andrews is a no-nonsense owner of a travel business. He doesn’t quite know how to react when he opens Dee Warner’s letter containing a dying sprig of mistletoe, but he decides he has to go and find out more. Mel believes in magic, and Conner doesn’t. Can the Christmas season and his strong feelings for Mel make a believer out of him before the mistletoe magic fades from Garland Falls forever?
Blair Mallone, an elf agent for the Holiday Security Agency, is given the assignment of protecting a magical flower called the Hope Rose. When she arrives in the small town of Garland Falls, MN, she finds security around the rose lacking. But the man charged with the rose's protection definitely isn't lacking anything, except taking his task a little more seriously. Lucas Callahan is one of the fairy folk known as a Green Man. He's been in charge of taking care of the Hope Rose for years. When Blair Mallone comes into his life, he's surprised at how attracted he is to her. He reminds himself he needs to focus his attention on the rose, but Blair sneaks into his thoughts at odd times. A band of evil fairies have made it their mission to steal the Hope Rose and snuff out its light. Blair and Lucas have to fight their growing attraction and concentrate on protecting the Hope Rose, or all the realms will be destined to despair forever.
Jenn left the intelligence game behind to sell a delicious dessert using her family's magical age-old recipe. As the sole ice cream vendor in the food truck arena, success is hers until the hot, new ice cream guy arrives threatening to melt her competitive nature as he heats emotions she thought were dead. Former Navy SEAL, James "Camp" McLeod returns home wanting to bring joy to people. The perfect solution--making ice cream cones. Who doesn't like ice cream? But what he really wants is to forget his past. Not an easy task...maybe impossible with the mysterious Jenn Beagle and her tantalizing waffle cone distracting him. His past and her secrets may prevent the rivals from forging an alliance, but the magic spark is undeniable whenever they mix business with pleasure.
The Creole praline arrived in New Orleans with the migration of formerly enslaved people fleeing Louisiana plantations after the Civil War. Black women street vendors made a livelihood by selling a range of homemade foods, including pralines, to Black dockworkers and passersby. The praline offered a path to financial independence, and even its ingredients spoke of a history of Black ingenuity: an enslaved horticulturist played a key role in domesticating the pecan and creating the grafted tree that would form the basis of Louisiana’s pecan orchards. By the 1880s, however, white New Orleans writers such as Grace King and Henry Castellanos had begun to recast the history of the praline in a nostalgic mode that harkened back to the prewar South. In their telling, the praline was brought to New Orleans by an aristocratic refugee of the French Revolution. Black street vendors were depicted not as innovative entrepreneurs but as loyal servants still faithful to their former enslavers. The rise of cultivated, shelled, and cheaply bought pecans—as opposed to the foraged pecans that early praline sellers had depended on—allowed better-resourced white women to move into the praline-selling market, especially as tourism emerged as a key New Orleans industry after the 1910s. Indeed, the praline became central to the marketing of New Orleans. Conventions often hired Black women to play the “praline mammy” role for out-of-towners, while stores sold pralines with mammy imagery, in boxes designed to look like cotton bales. After World War II, pralines went national with items like praline-flavored ice cream (1950s) and praline liqueur (1980s). Yet as the civil rights struggle persisted, the imagery of the praline mammy was recognized as an offensive caricature. As it uncovers the history of a sweet dessert made of sugar and pecans, New Orleans Pralines tells a fascinating story of Black entrepreneurship, toxic white nostalgia, and the rise of tourism in the Crescent City.
