The Planets and Awakening is Volume 5 in a series of astrological essays from some of astrology's leading lights. In this essay, astrologer Eric Meyers embraces a spiritual perspective of each of the planets in the horoscope and offers insight into becoming more conscious of these individual and collective energies.

A blockbusting collection of no less than TWELVE Short Stories. This is war fiction at its punchiest and best, including stories from Hawkins' Heroes, SEAL Strike, Tank Platoon and Desert Strike. Why buy one, when for a low price you can download the entire compilation. That's right, twelve stories at an unbeatable price.TANK PLATOON: FOR HONOR AND GLORYThe invasion of Iraq is underway, and PFC Carl Yeager, an M1 Abrams driver, is about to experience the hell of the Second G...

Alan Seeger was born on 22nd June 1888 in New York. When he was one the family moved to Staten Island and nine years later onwards to Mexico for two years.After attending several elite preparatory schools he enrolled at Harvard in 1906, where he also edited and wrote for the Harvard Monthly.He graduated in 1910 and went to live the life of a bohemian in New York’s Greenwich Village, and thereafter moved to Paris to continue his poetry writing in the Latin quarter.Wa...

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio.When his father’s business failed the family was forced to move on a regular basis before finally settling in Clyde, Ohio.Anderson, one of 7 children, left school at 14 to take a number of jobs to help with the family finances. These were difficult years.He moved to Chicago in search of opportunities before joining the Army for the US-Spanish War of 1898. He then entered Wittenberg Academy in Springfi...

A wise man once said ‘The safest place for a child is in the arms of his mother’s voice’. This is a perfect place to start our anthology of female short stories.Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex.Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunit...

Herman Melville was born in New York City on 1st August 1819.At the age of 7 Melville contracted scarlet fever which permanently diminished his eyesight. Add this to a contemporary description of being "very backwards in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension" and his opportunities for success seemed limited.His father died when he was 12 leaving the family in very straitened times. 2 years later Melville took a job in a bank and followed up with a failed stint as a surv...

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His father was a serving Army colonel and his first decade dictated that family life and education was centered at the base his father was serving from.From ten it became a little more stable when he was dispatched for a traumatic year to the Hitchcock Military Academy in San Rafael, California before graduating from the Summerville Academy in Augusta, Georgia and thence to Yale University, at age 17, where he quickly establis...

The top 10 short stories of all time written by American authors.Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately th...

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school.In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the fr...

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language.Growing up in Koscuisko County, Indiana poverty and religion were defining features of his childhood, and he would later describe his parents as “unwashed savages” and fanatically religious, showing him little affection b...

An urban myth is often quoted that you are never further than six feet from a rat in any built-up area. The true figure is nearer one hundred and fifty feet but that too seems too close for comfort.Wherever these creatures settle there is an undeniable fear amongst most of us that they are malevolent, vile and disgusting creatures. A chill and a shudder are our bodies natural reactions. Fear lurks in our hearts and souls.Enter our storied arena of authors. This, for them, i...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...