Chance is a knock about thirteen year old boy who lives and works on a vast cattle station in northern New South Wales. An orphan he was adopted by the owners of “Ironwood Station.” Set during depression era Australia of the late 1930s, the station has been transformed into a game park. During his first outing on a hunt for water buffalo and wild boar Chance is injured. In this first instalment of “The Stock and Station Short Stories” his injury sets Chance on a path of discovery and adven...

Cinnamon Diamonds is a short story based on the amazing events of a stormy night in 1847. The Felix Lighter a three-masted schooner survived a hurricane off the east coast of the United States. Reaching port wasn’t its most significant achievement. A young man named Hanson Gregory became a savior when he was inspired to create the first ever doughnut with a hole. His creation during the hurricane has become a thing of legend. This story couples his one and only interview with The Washingto...

Mouse, Bear and Elephant Games is a frightening yet funny speculative look into our near future. This is book two of Piper's trilogy, and the story continues from where we left off in The Mouse Who Poked an Elephant. Did Canada survive President Trump's nuclear attack? Is there civil war in America? Both novels discuss how individual, national and corporate greed must give way to sustainability, the horrifying effect these changes will have on wealthy people, and how (so-called) developed ...

In the summer of 2013 the Central Intelligence Agency and the Clinton Presidential Library made an unprecedented declassification of more than 300 documents showing the role of intelligence in supporting American decision-making on Bosnia in the 1990s, and in particular the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which brought an end to the fighting in Bosnia. The following spring, James Madison University hosted a conference in which scholars from all over the world assessed what the documents show ...

The year is 2019. The Trimp administration has been in power in the US for two years, and Canadian Prime Minister Dustin Trudel is up for re-election. But there’s a new smoke show in town, and his name is Elijah. Elijah—just like Cher, Bono and Jesus—goes by one name only. He’s hip, funny, black, bisexual, trilingual and dangerously handsome…in other words, Elijah is a Canadian demographer’s wet dream. The enormously popular CBC talk show host wants Trudel’s job, but only so that he can gi...

With Matchless, Gregory Maguire has reinvented the Hans Christian Andersen classic The Little Match Girl for a new time and new audiences. Originally asked by National Public Radio to write an original story with a Christmas theme, the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked and A Lion Among Men was once again inspired by the fairy tales we all loved in childhood—and he composed a poignant and enchanting tale of transcendence. A lovely and b...

A young man seeks to understand the strange connection he feels to the wolves that live hear his village.Originally published in the anthology WEREWOLVES, edited by Jane Yolen. Republished in Bruce Coville's solo collection, ODDLY ENOUGH.

Winthrop was never meant to live ashore. When the barmaid he was seeing flirted with another guy there was a small dustup over her attentions. win knew if he didn't get to sea, at least for a while, he'd be in trouble. So he sailed off onto the Inside Passage alone, never dreaming this night would never end.

A dreamer petitions his king for a boat—and gets more than he bargained for—in "t his richly enigmatic short story" by the Nobel Prize-winning author ( Kirkus)."A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. But the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone ...

99 Brain-bending riddles, designed to keep kids amused for hours. They'll have great fun challenging friends and family and will be improving their reading skills without even realising.What better way is there to get those brain cogs whirling?

Everyone knows leprechauns are just make believe.But wait, isn’t that what they say about ghosts?

An impossible smuggling routeA smuggler who won’t quitWill Adelma’s stubbornness bring her success or ruin her life?Adelma has one dream: to set herself up as a smuggler. But as the daughter of a fisherman, that’s easier said than done.As she slowly starts to network in the smuggling world, she comes across a man who loudly mocks her looks. What’s a self-respecting wannabe smuggler to do? Punch his lights ou...