One striking emerald dress. One captivating Marine next door. One willing husband who loved watching every breathless second.For six quiet years, Lauren was the picture of sweet suburban innocence. That all changed the afternoon she slipped into a form-fitting emerald dress and caught the undivided attention of Ryan, the athletic young soldier living right across the fence.What began as a daring flirtation on a crowded dance floor quickly turned into a passionate awakening....

The rent is $650 a month. The house is a Victorian dream. The catch? It's available October 1st - and nobody will tell them why. Maya and Derrick are broke, out of options, and out of time. The gorgeous old house on Whitaker Lane in Cedar Hollow, Kentucky is the miracle they need. The landlord is a little too eager. The neighbor is a little too afraid. And carved into the basement wall are dozens of names - every one of them dated October.As Halloween creeps closer, the house start...

Nobody goes up Crowley Hollow road on Halloween. Everybody in Hickory Flats knows that. So on Halloween night, five lifelong friends drive up it anyway - as a dare. The dare is simple: one of them goes inside the abandoned Crowley farmhouse alone, ten minutes, camera running. Take a picture of the doorframe where Ada Crowley carved her dead children's names fifty years ago. But the names in the wood aren't just Wren and Silas anymore.By midnight, Tommy is missing. The road out of t...

At the Westcote express office, a trivial shipping question turns into a full-scale comic battle when Mike Flannery and Mr. Morehouse clash over the rate for two guinea-pigs. Flannery insists they must be charged as "pigs," while Morehouse argues they are domestic pets, and their argument quickly becomes a test of stubbornness, logic, and bureaucratic language. Furious, Morehouse files a complaint, convinced he has exposed the company's absurdity and will force Flannery to yield. Instead, ...

When the narrator meets the exuberant Mr. Perkins of Portland, advertising stops being a business and becomes a faith. Perkins can sell almost anything with the right phrase, and he proves it through a string of outrageous schemes: first a nonexistent "Perkins's Patent Porous Plaster," then rare lop-eared guinea-pigs, then foul-smelling bottled water recast as medicine, and finally canned cheese, complete with a free can-opener. Each venture depends on the same brilliant gamble—create dema...

She was the picture of aristocratic perfection until a sleepy country village unlocked her deepest desires.Moving to rural Hartwell was supposed to bring peace to our marriage. Instead, it dismantled every polite boundary we had ever known. Lady Victoria was private-school educated, refined, and impeccably proper. Beneath that elegant exterior was a woman yearning to let go, and I discovered the intoxicating thrill of watching other men desire her while knowing she always came home...

These poems shine with the mellow radiance of a life deeply lived, gathering childhood wonder, family love, friendship, music, flight, memory, and the soft companionship of beloved cats into one graceful tapestry. With warmth and hard-won wisdom, the author reflects on service, loss, resilience, and renewal, finding beauty in both open skies and quiet rooms. Tender, humane, and quietly uplifting, this collection sees aging not as diminishment but as deepening—a generous meditation on grati...

**NEW FOREWORD BY JANELLE MONÁEExperience the time travel science fiction classic from the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo Awards.A modern Black woman is pulled through time to face the horrors of slavery in this “Great American Novel” about racism, sexism, and white supremacy—then and now (The Atlantic).**“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm...

He saw something he was never supposed to see - and now the whole town is pretending it never happened. Ray Cobb works the night shift at a plastics factory in Harlan's Ford, Kentucky. At 6:14 one October morning, he watches two men load a screaming woman - wrapped in a tarp - into a black SUV. By noon, there's no trace she was ever there. The sheriff never filed his report. A strange "consultant" starts watching him at work. Someone goes through his locker. Then his wife disappears, and a...

An exploration of how the corset is employed to construct character and narrative in mid-Victorian sensation fiction and contemporary Neo-Victorian literature, this book re-contextualizes the Victorian corset within its own cultural narratives and treats these as a primary context for Neo-Victorian fiction. Re-centring Victorian responses to the corset that both vilified the garment and defended its virtues in periodicals and conduct manuals, Emma Butler-Way digs into the ...

This carefully curated anthology brings together a broad selection of timeless works in one digital edition. Readers can discover essential voices, memorable stories and enduring ideas across a rich variety of literary styles. Prepared for comfortable continuous reading, this collection is ideal for exploring classic literature or returning to lasting favorites.

This carefully curated anthology brings together a broad selection of timeless works in one digital edition. Readers can discover essential voices, memorable stories and enduring ideas across a rich variety of literary styles. Prepared for comfortable continuous reading, this collection is ideal for exploring classic literature or returning to lasting favorites.