After spending nearly twenty years searching for his runaway high school girlfriend Alice, Mike Connors, a man with a bottle for a crutch, returns to Fallen's Island. He intends to clean up his life and let go of the past, only the past won't let go of him. His old high school friends are still there and are telling Mike all sorts of lies about Alice making it difficult for him to give up his addiction. The relationship with his mom, who has been slowly deteriorating, is as strained as the da...

Welcome to the Fifth Terrace in the famed Purgatorio, where you will atone for your incorrigible greed with your fellow Penitents, languishing in sight of gold forever out of reach.In this collection of dark needful tales, an unusual door grants riches for an unexpected price, bikini clad thieves make the score of a lifetime at ravenous cost, an expensive mistress gets what’s coming to her, it’s all fun and games until the Hare kills the Hound, a family bound rock star longs for li...

Your need to be liked is holding you and your clients back from succeeding at your highest potential.Over 1000s of hours of coaching multiple seven and 8-figure businesses worldwide, Chris Marr has figured out the path to owning your authority and why it’s critical if you truly desire your work as a coach to lead to transformation for your clients.In Become an Authoritative Coach, you will follow a 5-step framework that will guide you to creating an authori...

An octet of stories in which interesting characters are tested to their limits. In the opening story, what will happen when a teenage girl, who feels constricted by her family and her Muslim faith, develops a crush on a white classmate? Will she be able to withstand the pressure not only exerted by her parents and grandmother but also by her overzealous aunt? In 'To Old Times!', two university friends bump into each other after a long break. Was the friendship genuine or were they both kee...

A Hampshire estate in 1903. George Erskine, a young man invalided out of the Boer War, falls desperately in love with Emily Delsey, a debutante. Although he persuades her to marry him he remains insecure, convinced she is being unfaithful or at least hiding some terrible secret. Why is she writing letters to another man behind his back? Why is she so reticent about the past? And why, just as a matter of interest, does she refuse to countenance physical relations between them? One evening h...

Camden, North London, 1991. Two idealistic men in their mid-twenties are looking for love. Gareth is heartbroken when his girlfriend turns down his marriage proposal and decides, in order to distract him from his maudlin thoughts, to help his hapless housemate, Reece, acquire a partner. Reece has already been meeting women through a lonely hearts advertisement but, unfortunately, has a habit of saying the wrong thing and a history of dating disasters. How difficult can their mission get? V...

The theme of murder runs through these six tales. In the title story, Josh, an eleven-year-old boy, discovers a notebook in which an anonymous diarist describes his search for his wife's killer. Is it possible that Josh knows the characters depicted - friends of his father's - even though they are bizarrely named after different animals? Similarly intriguing is 'The Distant Shore', in which a hospice nurse hears confessions from not one but two of her patients, and 'The Long Night', about ...

Clara Brownacre’s life is shattered when she discovers her husband David, a popular history lecturer, has been shot dead on their doorstep. Who could have done such a thing? There is one clue – a newspaper article he is holding about a girl who died after swallowing an ecstasy tablet – but the police are unable to connect the two deaths, and Clara, heartbroken from her loss and the chief suspect in the murder, decides to investigate the matter. It is a difficult, not to say dangerous, unde...

A potpourri of stories about murder and the mystical interspersed with moments of mirth. A fortune-teller makes predictions that turn out to be uncannily correct – to the misery of all. A couple write to each other after a long break and spar over what secrets to reveal. A woman discovers she has the power to kill whomever she wants by supernatural means. Marr often explores the issue of time. How trapped are we by the past and particularly by certain key moments? Suspenseful, surprising a...

Robert Hillier is shocked when film actress, Tamara Collins, visits his office and tells him that her husband, film director Lewis Lawson, has beaten up Robert’s twenty-year-old son, James. Ever since the suicide of his wife, Jill, Robert has been particularly protective towards James, who is offhand towards him in his manner, and the news that his son has developed an infatuation with the famous actress is deeply worrying. To add to the complications, Tamara claims that her life is under ...

A care assistant, Fiona Tidy, has gone missing and DCI Michael Janaway sets out to find her, encouraged by one of her service users, a young autistic man called Stewie. Janaway, who has autistic traits himself, is working against time, since two women have already been murdered recently in his home city of Cambridge, and the more he looks into Fiona’s disappearance, the likelier, it seems, the outcome will be tragic. Fiona has written in adoring terms about her therapist, the mysterious ‘B...

DCI Michael Janaway has borderline Asperger’s syndrome and a unique perspective. Awoken late at night at his home in Cambridge, he is disturbed to find a neighbour has been stabbed to death on his doorstep. An investigation ensues but immediately Janaway is confronted with whether he should remain as the investigation’s senior officer, living as he does opposite the murder house, or indeed whether he is emotionally stable enough to cope after the recent death of his baby daughter. One memb...