Thousands of years ago, the great Sage Montok Waynew signed the Book Accords, in which it was declared that all books must edify and instruct for the good of all mankind. Created in the hope to end the tyranny that had come into existence in their time, it was widely received and ratified by all living Sages as a good thing in the wake of the last great Story wars. So it went, that those books that were not found desirable were burned or destroyed, to protect all future generations.
Gailen, Alena and Targ find this peace is about to end. In a world where Sages can summon stories to life to do their bidding, these three apprentices must find where they belong, when the laws of the past seem to no longer exist.
Who doesn’t love a good story? Sharlow’s Story Tellers is an intriguing book of fiction and fantasy. Story Tellers is brought to life by the excellent prose, engaging characters, magical plot, and overall fine writing.
Perhaps one of the best fantasy novels I have viewed in quite some time, we hear the story of three heroes, magical creations through the use of stories, and self-discovery. A highly recommended, delightful read of its genre. - L. Anne Carrington and The Book Shelf
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This children’s story is about a small boy with a big imagination. He lives in a country type setting where his mom and dad’s house has a big back yard and has woods connected to the yard.
George the little boy in this story likes to play in the woods. George is all boy and like all boys he likes to go exploring, getting dirty, playing, and swimming. All the things a small boy would like to do.
George meets a big yellow and black bee in the woods and they become friends. The bee tells George about different animals in the woods and that most will not hurt him.
4500 words / illustrated / read to Young children
(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10)
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The Essence will help you escape reality with Sophia, a reporter who receives an unusual opportunity to interview a reclusive dictator. She digs in with gusto, but finds she needs more than just reporting skills to survive her adventure!
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
A realization flooded through Sophia. The man who had helped her up — and was still holding her hand — must be the General himself! Yes, he looked somewhat like the photograph she had found — a bit older, maybe heavier than the picture, but definitely the same man — weathered features, squared jaw, charcoal curly hair, and a full mustache with hints of gray. She had rehearsed opening lines and introductions for herself but she couldn’t recall any of them right now.
The photo hadn’t prepared her for his wild eyes. They had small pupils and gray irises with radial lines like stars, which seemed to look right into her brain. As she looked back at him, she realized the hair on the back of her neck was standing up. It was an odd sensation, not fear, but rather like she was sensing a strong unknown force.
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Benny wants a pet—a dog or a cat. You know, the kind of pet everyone else has. But other kids don’t have his mom. She likes to do things differently. So Benny doesn’t know what to expect when he first opens the pet carrier. Certainly not that his neighbors will want to kick is family out of town—he just got here! And he was just about to make the baseball team, too. What will he do?
Not Just For Breakfast Anymore is a classic book for modern kids. Middle grade readers and some older kids as well will find a lot to interest them in Benny’s world. -Suite 101 Book Reviews
No Wimpy Kid Here: A Great Book for Mid-Grade Boys. -Stephanie Gehlen, Amazon review
$1.99 until the print edition is released in Feb.
376 pages
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My name is Sumto, and I am a gambling, lazy, good-for-nothing drunk who has to join the army and fight in a war I am frankly too corpulent to cope with. Still, that’s got to be as bad as things get, Am I right?
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In a misty land, long ago, and far away, lived a lovely girl-child of fourteen. Her lineage was as mysterious as the mountain range that loomed over the valley where she lived. Her father grew flax, and her grandmother, “The Dark Weaver”, wove the linen into beautiful tapestries, some with strange powers. This was their only means of a living. Deila tended the animals on the small farm and helped “Gran” with the weaving.
One night everything changed when a foal was born to the dray horse and by morning was taken from them by a mysterious, evil creature.
(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10)
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In the runup to the war in Iraq, dozens of intelligence operatives watched their careers evaporate when they spoke candidly about Saddam’s lack of weapons of mass destruction. One such case officer, now unwillingly retired and living in Las Vegas, finds himself a target for assassination.
The Last Days of Las Vegas is the story of Ashor dur-Shamshi, a powerful military exile from Iraq who pulls the strings of an international conspiracy that will return him as Iraq’s new dictator, and of Charles Remly, who struggles to dismantle the centerpiece of the ex-general’s conspiracy. Fueled with billions of dollars from Saddam’s looted fortune, the tentacles of Ashor’s plot reach from his war-torn homeland to the glittery streets of Las Vegas, and much of the world in between. At the heart of the plan is an event that will wake up the American people and confront the power brokers inside the Beltway with two grim alternatives: Reinstitute the military draft, or help install a military government in Baghdad that will end Iraq’s expanding conflict, while searching for the bogus terrorist organization that has created a mini-Chernobyl in Las Vegas.
The ragtag team that defends Vegas against a nuclear meltdown is led by Remly, a middle-aged spook who was forced into early retirement during the runup to the war against Iraq because he insisted on sending proof to his headquarters in Virginia that Saddam had no N-B-C weapons. Cynical and burned out, Remly has a serious heart condition and is a significantly less-than-heroic hero. Spiritually and philosophically Remly is closer to Leamas of le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold—and perhaps Meursault of The Stranger—than he is to the macho characters of modern spy fiction. He’s not entirely disconnected, but he is devious, seemingly unprincipled, and isn’t above shooting an adversary in the back. Best illustrating Remly’s take on the world is the opening of Chapter 10:
“Reality is negotiable, or so Remly was given to understand his first week on the Campus in Virginia. By the time he retired and moved to Las Vegas he concluded that reality was merely optional, and Vegas did nothing to disabuse him of the idea.”
Similarly betrayed, two old men on the team—retired from the upper echelons of the nameless intell agency in Virginia—were denied follow-on consultancy contracts because they refused to drink the Koolaid coming from inside the Beltway. One of them—an amateur magician—has a bit of a drinking problem … Leopold Gourmel cognac, not Koolaid. The other—a cranky old black-ops and regime-change specialist— has spinal disc damage and needs a walker to get around.
Another intelligence operative, described as being “a little light in his loafers,” was fired because of his sexual orientation, despite Remly’s defense of him. Then there’s a voodooman—an electronics genius also retired from the agency—who verges on a paranoid breakdown toward the end, when he’s strung out on sleep deprivation and gets wired on uppers. Rounding out the group are three sociopathic thugs from South Boston—”Neanderthals” the voodooman calls them—recruited for their black-bag skills.
Obviously, this is not a team of super-heroes.
Complicating Remly’s task are the alliances that Ashor forms with K Street lobbyists, pols on the Hill, and a cabal within the agency in Virginia - thus turning Virginia, which should be resisting Ashor, against Remly’s team. And so The Last Days of Las Vegas is as much a political thriller as it is an espionage caper.
Remly’s adversaries are equally complex and dysfunctional. Ashor is a loving husband, father, and grandfather who decides to nuke Las Vegas without a moment’s hesitation. The coördinator of the strike against Vegas is a pious, one-time Dzerzhinsky Square black-arts cadet, rumored to have chosen the Service over the Seminary on the flip of a coin, his piety no obstacle to his job of bringing death and disaster to thousands of people. Then there’s a flashy Crimean remote-control assassin, another Dzerzhinsky Square cadet, who trolls the vodka bars of Moscow in his Student Prince parade-ground uniform looking for casual sex. And an Iraqi pilot with little if any religious conviction, driven to this suicide mission by a military strike against his family at a wedding party.
The important conflict in The Last Days of Las Vegas doesn’t come from people shooting each other. Oh, there are gunfights and bombings and whole buildings destroyed, and all sorts of similar derring-do, but the real conflict comes from people trying to overcome one another through a sort-of mental kung fu— each trying to bring down his adversary with ideas and working deviously to sandbag the other’s emotions —something at which Remly excels. He likes to think of it as “manipulative empathy.” (Some might call it “mind ****ing” - though you and I and Remly never would!)
Roy Hayes is the author of The Hungarian Game, which sold just under 520,000 copies in 6 languages worldwide.
(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10)
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England may look like a peaceful island, but it swarms with ancient forces: old gods hungry for a touch of worship; mysterious spectres that can grant wishes, no matter how destructive those wishes might be; pre-historic cultural memories that can raise hungry spirits; and then there’s the mysterious haunted washing machine unhappy with the new detergents. To combat evil forces, the Church of England calls on a special breed of men (yes, they’re all men–and that is part of the problem). The Theological College of St. Van Helsing trains its students to combat evil forces–except when those students go renegade and fight their fellows.
With St. Van Helsing restricted to men only, women with talent lack a place for proper training, which makes them both dangerous and tempting targets for dark forces. Penny Bailey finds herself confronting a hungry fertility god, a misdirected love-spell and the horrors of the perfect diet.
Author Vanessa Knipe continues her stories out of St. Van Helsing (after 2008’s WITCH-FINDER) with another strong series of adventures. Knipe writes with a compelling mix of darkness and tongue-in-cheek humor. While theological students confronting evil by calling phrases from the Book of Common Prayer sounds amusing, Knipe makes it both real and dangerous. More so even than in WITCH-FINDER, darkness underpins these stories–the title, HARD LESSONS is definitely hard-earned.
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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A man on the run from his wife’s wrath after selling her dog. A dozen crash-landed bounty hunter clones. An alien on the tracks of the man who scammed him. An intergalactic detective looking for a mysterious artefact. Above all, a world which is familiar but yet is slightly off - legalized bribery, cities run by gangsters, mysterious sects which believe in the power of jokes. This is the story of Normal Kint and Johnny Goolbhai the android, who are determined to get to Kabul City despite highwaymen, scheming opponents and the occasional cop on the take.
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The FREE e-book, Ripples of Difference, is a collection of unique and powerful stories written by volunteers from around the world. From refugee camps in Africa to orphanages in Asia, readers can learn about how volunteers are touching the lives of others and making a difference - a ripple of difference.
The book is not just a collection of stories; it is a call to action. Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. We want to challenge readers to stand up and create their own ripple and join the sea of change that brings hope to those in need around the world!
Ripples of Difference has been launched by Global Volunteer Network in recognition of International Volunteer Day, December 5th 2009, to celebrate the thousands of volunteers who have given their love, energy, and time to help communities in need around the world.
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Her name is Lori Foroozandeh, and this is her true story.
Lori lived her young years as a victim of abuse. As she grew older she fell into a classic pattern of self-destructiveness. But by the time she was twenty-seven, she was doing her utmost to create a sane life.
Mohammad Foroozandeh seemed like a man she could trust, a man who would care for her and respect her. Though she knew he engaged in drug use, she ignored the warning signs and married him. Two years later, he asked her to move to Iran, promising that she could pursue her career, assuring her that the country was quite modern. For four years, Lori adjusted as best she could to the oppressive customs of the land, but as her husband grew more demanding of her, he also became more violent.
After the World Trade Center bombings, Mohammad told her they must leave Iran. He purchased bus tickets that he said would take them out of the country and eventually to America. But before they could escape, armed guards attacked and kidnapped her. Lori was blindfolded and taken to a paramilitary POW camp somewhere in the hills.
Then the nightmare began…. six weeks of horrific beatings, raping, torture, and starvation.
The reason I’m writing is that I truly want this story to get out. It took me eight years to write it, and the reason I went with a self publishing company was that any correspondences I had with the larger publishers required me to edit my book and leave out certain details. (For example my childhood sexual abuse and drug addiction…they only wanted the book to focus on IRAN ).
Once a girl from Bahrain and I escaped the camp (will elucidate when requested) we went to Ostandary a place in Iran to help foreigners in trouble. Since there is no American embassy in Iran , I was taken (flown to) Dubai, UAE, where our embassy paid my way home. But before doing so they made me sign a non disclosure agreement that I wouldn’t talk about what happened to me.
On Nov. 14th I arrived back in the USA . since then I’ve been writing my story but wanted no publicity, until the book had been published which took eight years. Now that it is published I would like the people to know.
I am also not a squeeky clean person, I fled to Iran due to having false prescription charges I was facing due to being a nurse and addicted to Vicodin.
The above and my childhood sexual abuse is also accounted for in the book.
When I arrived home on Nov.14, 2001, I had severe head trauma and brain injury that I now have dealt with. I have had seizures due to this, and I was injured internally when I was raped there with a rifle barrel. They also did public rapes. I also taught english at Zabanamoozan Language School in Iran until one of my students were drowned in her fathers swimming pool for not being a virgin on her wedding night.
– Lori Foroozandeh
Author Website
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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Is Global Warming a myth, a conspiracy, an “Inconvenient Lie, or “An Inconvenient Truth”?
Is carbon dioxide good or bad for the planet?
Are petroleum products good or bad sources of energy?
Wind farms? Nuclear? Bio-fuels?
Do we need to conserve or produce more energy for an ever-expanding world economy?
Are politicians making the problem worse or better?
No matter if you think all this is an Inconvenient Truth or something else, Howard Johnson’s A Convenient Solution has many of the answers to our energy crisis along with some solid solutions we can implement
using today’s technology.
We can replace all fossil fuels with renewable fuels and alternative energy sources within ten years and with only minor disruptions to present manufacturing and distribution systems.
A Convenient Solution describes most of the existing energy systems and some proposed new ones, all within current technology and present capabilities. Some of these proposed systems are quite unusual and some are very recently announced. Mr. Johnson provides many unique and surprisingly workable, long-term answers to the many growing concerns about energy, the economy, and much greater energy efficiency and reliability.
Adopting these new systems would improve our balance of trade, our economy, our job opportunities, and our technological presence. It could even reduce or eliminate the growth of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, whatever that might do.
The point has been reached where we no longer have the luxury of time. The menace is here, now, and dangerous. If we don’t act immediately, the consequences could be catastrophic.
$4.95
365 pages (95,000 words)
(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10)
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