Scary, funny, heart-warming and magical, this story of love and loss by one of our best-loved writers and illustrators for children is written with great fondness for the delights of childhood. Teddy One-eye has a rough and tumble life. He is dragged around, chewed on, loses an eye and is often left outside at night. But his many patches show how much he is loved. Teddy One-Eye’s special powers lead him to some curious situations and exciting adventures . . .
In this first book of a new children’s book series, The Wonderful One-Eyed Teddy Bear: Stories Begin, a little girl named Kristi receives a Teddy bear for Christmas. She loves the bear so much and hugs him so tightly that one of his eyes pops out, rolls under the Christmas tree and is lost. Teddy quickly becomes a leader of the other members of Kristi's stuffed animal family, and they have great adventures together. The characters have sweet personalities, for the most part, and are always courteous and polite. The author attempts to weave basic moral and ethical principles, as well as a bit of humor and suspense into these stories that seem destined to become classic.
Award-winning photographer Mark Nixon has created a trove of quirky and nostalgic portraits of teddy bears and other stuffed animals that have been lovingly abused after years of play. MuchLoved collects 60 of these images along with their accompanying background tales. An exhibit in the photographer’s studio led to a small sensation on the Internet when a few of the pictures circulated unofficially on scores of blogs and on many legitimate news sites. Viewers have been intrigued by the funny, bittersweet images and their ironic juxtaposition of childhood innocence and aged, loving wear and tear. When you see these teddy bears and bunnies with missing noses and undone stuffing, you can’t help but think back to childhood and its earliest companions who asked for nothing and gave a lot back. Praise for Much Loved: “Much Loved is impossibly endearing in its entirety.” —Brain Pickings
At twenty-four, Teddy should be used to feeling abandoned and unwanted. After all, he's been dealing with it most of his life. But a recent breakup takes him completely by surprise and now he's on his own again. Nursing new and old hurts, he leans on his makeshift family and finds solace in a growing and unexpected friendship with an older man. Forty-two-year-old Barrett has successfully ignored his biggest need for years. His last boy left him questioning everything he knew, and he is determined to lead a vanilla life, no matter how much his friends try to convince him to be true to himself. When he learns his favorite barista needs a new place to stay, he offers a solution that leads to spending more time with the younger man. A change in circumstances brings both men together and their buried feelings to light. Teddy knows he's attracted to Barrett but isn't sure if he's ready to risk his heart again, and Barrett is losing the struggle against his dominant nature. Will learning Barrett's sexy secret be too much for Teddy, or is it just the thing he never knew he needed?Teddy & His Bear is a 90K word slow-burn, May/December, Daddy kink MM romance featuring one hot Daddy, his sweet new boy, coffee, and unicorns.
Have you ever wondered what a writer’s childhood was like? Well, wonder no longer. These stories are about my childhood. I began writing when I was twenty-one in the year 1971 and have since seen not only the world change dramatically but the publishing world as well. When I published my first novel, a horror yarn titled Evil Stalks the Night in 1984 with Leisure mass market paperbacks, I was a loyal worker bee of the big publishing houses with a stingy boiler contract and a whopping 4 percent of the royalties…now thirty-two years later I am self-publishing and am finally making a living at my craft for the first time in forty-five years of writing; with 24 novels, 2 novellas and many short stories to my name. Three of the four short stories in this collection were the VERY FIRST stories I ever had published and they were printed in my local newspaper between 1977 and 1979 after the one titled Michael, a tale about my youngest brother who was murdered in 1971, won their short story contest over two hundred other submissions. I illustrated all the stories for the newspaper then and have included those original drawings in this book. The fourth short story was just recently written and is a composite of some of my childhood Christmases. All four are loosely based on my childhood in the 1950’s and 1960’s. After my musician/singer/songwriter brother Jim passed away last year from cancer I felt the intense need to revive these old stories and memories and put them out there for all to read as a tribute to him and my family. These are my stories, my childhood and some of my fondest memories.
Teddy is focused on one thing, and one thing only—making his brother proud. That means finishing his Master’s degree with the highest grades possible, then finding a good job. Those plans don’t leave time for anything else, so when Teddy is told he needs a date for a birthday party, he lies and says he has one in the hopes that he’ll be able to wiggle his way out of the party. He doesn’t. Instead, he finds himself having to come up with a fake boyfriend, and he has no idea who can help him with that, so he’s lucky Sterling, a Gillham pack member and one of his acquaintances, comes up with someone. When a pack member approaches Ollie and asks him if he wants to play fake boyfriend for a friend of his, Ollie agrees. He hopes it will help distract him from the jealousy he feels at the sight of his best friend with his mate. He loves Gabriel and Gabriel’s new mate, but he wants what they have, and he doesn’t know how to get it. They’re both stunned when they meet at the party and realize they’re mates. Teddy doesn’t have time for Ollie, but can he really give up his only chance at being with his mate? And can Ollie get over what his parents did to him and trust Teddy, especially when Teddy is trying so hard to keep him at arm’s length?
Septuagenarian sleuth Julia Clancy investigates murder aboard the luxury ocean liner, Queen Victoria, which is making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. The victim is a member of a British trade commission. By the author of The Garden Plot.
“[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park. . . . You’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” —The Boston Globe “A cascade of charm. . . . Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.”—The Washington Post One beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on displaywhile the distant past confounds the present ina relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.
When the words great homily come to mind, the name Bill Bausch inevitably pops up. Here he offers 100 new homilies, reflecting the liturgical year, holy days and holidays, and saying farewell to loved ones. All are shaped and finessed with stories. As Bausch himself says, We never exhaust the meaning of a good story. Truth wrapped in story is irresistibleand thats why I use stories. These homilies are irresistible as well!
