"Beware he who wrestles with monsters, lest he become a monster himself" - Nietzsche ... The suspicious death of an Aerospace Executive, Ted Barber, rocks the Defense giant, Global Defense Analytics. In an attempt to quickly investigate, the firm calls on retired CIA operative, Stanley Wisniewski. Time is of the essence, as the firm is days away from naming Langston Powell, the last person seen with Barber, as their next CEO. Stanley Wisniewski, with demons of his own, is haunted by the three deathbed promises he made some forty years ago to his father, a survivor of the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp. Activating his old European network, he reunites with the mysterious Jean Paul. Together they begin to unravel this complex story of Good vs. Evil, and the weak suffering at the hands of the strong. Set in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., California, London, Amsterdam and Poland, two stories of Stanley and his father intertwine, creating the incendiary fuse to the climatic events in Warsaw.
Vere's irrepressible spirit is an asset as he comes of age in Antigua. His is a hard-knocks existence marked by poverty and loss - but he is equally shaped by his family, his first love and island life. Beautifully told, his is the story of a Caribbean boy, trying to hold on to what's real and precious to him while learning to be a man.
Spousal abuse can strip away any woman’s confidence. That is, until her children are threatened, and the warrior inside stages a rebellion. Growing up in in a sheltered, loving environment, Val doesn’t realize that her husband is manipulating her in the worst possible way. Summoning an inner strength she didn’t know she had, she breaks free. But will her traumatic past prevent her from trusting again?
Sometimes you don t appreciate what you have until it is too late... Cindy Sawyer has a wonderful Shetland pony named Pidgy. Together they have lots of wonderful adventures but Cindy does not appreciate her cute little pony. What she really wants is a fancy show horse like the ones her friends ride. After a summer of fun and riding, a morning comes when Pidgy goes missing. Not until she looks into the empty stall does Cindy realize how much she really loves her pony. Will Cindy be able to find her beloved pony before it is too late? Pidgy's Surprise is a re-release of a popular pony story from the 1950's, updated for today's young horse enthusiasts. This book is written and lavishly illustrated with over 80 original drawings by famed equine author/illustrator Jeanne Mellin.
"The Willows" is a novella by English author Algernon Blackwood, originally published as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature.[1] "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.
"Steeped in Gothic eeriness."--Nicola Cornick, USA Today bestselling author In Salem, they burned. Now, they will rise. New Oldbury, 1821 The house holds its breath, trying to outlast me… Something has awakened in Willow Hall. Eighteen-year-old Lydia Montrose can feel it. But she has no idea what it is. Rocked by rumor and scandal, Lydia, her parents, and her sisters, Catherine and Emeline, fled their sparkling life in Boston for the sleepy country estate. But bone-chilling noises in the night have Lydia convinced their idyllic new home wasn’t exactly vacant when they arrived. The Salem witch trials cast a long shadow over the Montrose family as the cloying heat of summer in Massachusetts mingles with something sinister in the air. The sprawling history of Willow Hall is no stranger to secrets, and its dark past soon calls to Lydia, igniting ancient magic she never knew she possessed. But with menacing forces unwilling to rest, threatening to tear her family apart, Lydia must learn to harness her newly discovered power or risk losing everyone she holds dear. Don't miss Hester Fox's next novel, THE BOOK OF THORNS, where two sisters who never knew the other existed meet on opposite sides during the Napoleonic Wars and must use the magic of flowers to solve the mystery of their mother’s death—while surviving the war raging around them... Look for these other gothic mysteries from Hester Fox: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library The Widow of Pale Harbor The Orphan of Cemetery Hill A Lullaby for Witches
Several plays have been composed into novels of short stories. This began the saga of Beneath the Willow. The first book in the series focused on several of the residents of the established settlements. After many years of hard work, the town began to flourish. When they initially settled, all residents were in one central location. They spread out as the town began to grow. Development of farms and pastureland advanced rapidly. The town of Willow Bend is filled with imaginary characters but implies a very realistic concept. It is the writers vision that the town was established in the 1870s. Horace Lee Crowley and seven hundred migrants braved the elements, traveling until they found what they later established as the Willows. It was divided into several settlements: Willow Bend, Willow Estates, Willow Grove, and Willow Creek. The people tilled the soil and made their own clothing. For a short length of time, everyone cooked on a huge open pit. They prayed, inspired, encouraged, and made unified efforts together to lighten the load of chores of one another. They suffered the hardship of floods, crop infestation, poor farming equipment, and loss of profits. Through it all, unity blended them together as a community. After many years of hard work, the town flourished. Disagreements were natural in personality differences but were short lived. They migrated from a sharecrop farm thirty miles away. They tread large bodies of water that sometimes rose above waistlines. Small children were placed upon mens shoulders or on one of the old mules. Women carried the bundles of food and what little clothing they owned. It was a rough going, but majority of the people endured it. They had small clippings of flowers, twigs from fruit trees, and roots from vegetables. The substance of their existence was on their backs, mules, and wooden trestles that the men fashioned. Scraps of wood and small trees made up the trestles. This was the beginning of the Willows. Once settled, many differences occurred, natural in personalities, but they were able to accomplish agreement with the help of the county judge. The drama was getting to that point. Thanks for reading. See what you would do in these cases.
One of NPR’s 50 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Decade: A fifteenth-century palace mapmaker must hide his powers in the time of the Inquisition . . . Award-winning author G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen was an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year and established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. Now she delivers The Bird King, an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Fatima is a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain. Her dearest friend, Hassan, the palace mapmaker and the one man who doesn’t leer at her with desire, has a secret—he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls? As the two traverse Spain with the help of a clever jinn to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate. “Wilson has a deft hand with myth and with magic, and the kind of smart, honest writing mind that knits together and bridges cultures and people.” —Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology “A triumph . . . one of the best fantasy writers working today.” —BookPage “A treasure-house of a novel, thrilling, tender, funny, and achingly gorgeous. I loved it.” —Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians trilogy
