Colson Whitehead’s eagerly awaited and triumphantly acclaimed new novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it’s the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where American legend gives way to American pop culture, replete with p. r. flacks, stamp collectors, blues men , and turn-of-the-century song pluggers. John Henry Days is an acrobatic, intellectually dazzling, and laugh-out-loud funny book that will be read and talked about for years to come. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Tom Wolfe's THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES defined an era and established Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. In his #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist, A MAN IN FULL, the setting shifts to Atlanta, Georgia—a racially mixed late-century boomtown teeming with fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians."Don't miss the star-studded mini series adaptation of A Man in Full–coming soon to Netflix.Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife—and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running...

Kim and Shelton are desparate to find their missing loved ones. Then gradually each comes to a secret but mutual understanding of the global mystery of the vanished millions. It's a secret that not only binds but separates them, until loneliness, danger and love force them to start over. They name their son Adam.Special thanks to Deb Smith, of Belle Bridge Books, for cover design.In acclaimed southern author Janice Daugharty’s apocalyptic Biblical thriller, the Rapture comes not with spectral flourishes or rumors of war but with unemployed former real estate agent Shelton Teasdale waking from a nap in his rural Georgia home to find the power off and his wife gone. At first, he thinks she is out with her pet goats, but going outside their small frame house, he sees that her old Jeep isn’t parked in its usual place. Depressed about his job situation and lethargic about life in general, Shelton shrugs off the peculiar circumstance at first, but as evening arrives he grows worried. Next, he notices his cell phone is dead. He sets out in his pickup truck with his dog beside him. Driving up the long dirt road running by his house, he begins to smell and see smoke out over the woods near the highway that Elaine takes to her job in the nearby town of Valdosta. When he reaches the highway he sees automobiles in every direction, some burning, some wrecked and others only parked, but empty. A massive traffic accident? Terrified, Shelton searches for Elaine amidst the wreckage. He finds her Jeep with her cell phone on the front seat and, next to it, her purse with all her belongings inside. Bizarrely, she left the ignition turned on, and the Jeep has run out gas. Shelton races to a nearby convenience store to call for help. But the frightening mystery deepens as the manager shoots at Shelton and refuses to talk to him. By now Shelton is filled with horror. Has the United States been bombed? Has there been a massive terrorist attack? When he makes his way back to his wife’s Jeep with a can of gasoline in hand, a state patrol officer orders him out of the vehicle . . . and then scans the microchip on the top of Shelton’s right hand. Shelton bolts, unwilling to risk being jailed for reasons he can’t comprehend. He becomes a wanted man. In Daugharty’s A RIGHTEOUS WIND, the United States is a place of big brotherism gone out of control, where the citizenry is under the thumb of an international cabal known as the World Government System, headed by an iconic former President who was once hailed as a savior but is now revealed as the embodiment of evil—the Anti-Christ. Filled with poignant religious themes, the dark secrets of the political superpowers, and the struggles of the ordinary people left behind to face the Tribulation, A RIGHTEOUS WIND is a thought-provoking suspense novel that readers of apocalyptic fiction will add to their keeper shelves. “Janice Daugharty is a born storyteller.” – Joyce Carol Oates “Janice Daugharty is a natural-born writer, one of those Georgia women like O'Connor, McCullers, or Siddons who are best grown in small towns, a long way from city lights. There is a lot of red clay and long nights in every line she puts on paper." --- Pat ConroyJanice Daugharty’s 1997 novel, EARL IN THE YELLOW SHIRT, (HarperCollins) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels and one short story collection. She has served as writer-in-residence at Valdosta State University, in Valdosta, Georgia, near her home, and is now writer-in-residence at Abraham Baldwin College. Visit the author at www.janicedaugharty.com Special thanks to my editor at Belle Bride Books, Deb Smith, for this long description of "A Righteous Wind"

Time Didn't Heal All Wounds, and the Scars were About to be Ripped Open Stevenson When I'd moved from Homicide to the Cold Case Unit my friends headed, I'd thought it would be a new start. The minute my marriage fell apart, I'd lost my purpose. Years passed, and I hadn't found myself until I'd helped my friends catch a serial killer, but I'd also found friends and family. As I'd searched for a case among dusty boxes, a decades' old murder and missing person case caught my attention. The autopsy report sent me to the ME's office and the man I'd avoided for months. Doc Making death my job didn't allow for normal friends, but the dead needed an advocate, and it was the only purpose I'd known. Being a medical examiner was all I'd had for decades, and I didn't know what to do outside my job. I had a group of friends, all worked in law enforcement and forensics, but one thing was missing. Short, adorable middle-aged men...

Pulitzer Prize Winner: An American in Germany fights against the rising tide of Nazi terror in this monumental saga of twentieth-century world history. In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed.  But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals—much to the chagrin of his heiress wife, Irma, a confirmed capitalist. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism. His concern over the growing popularity of the Nazi Party escalates when he meets Adolf Hitler, the group’s fanatical leader, and the members of his inner circle. But Lanny’s gravest fear is the threat a national socialist government poses to the German Jewish family of Hansi, the musician husband of Lanny’s sister, Bess—a threat that will impel the international art dealer to risk his wealth, his future, even his life in a courageous attempt to rescue his loved ones from a terrible fate. Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Dragon’s Teeth brilliantly captures the nightmarish march toward the Second World War. An astonishing mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.

Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war - the War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare; of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death. The Wars is quite simply one of the best novels ever written about the First World War.

Not only is Turner Buckminster the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, he is shunned for playing baseball differently than the local boys. Then he befriends smart and lively Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from Malaga Island, a poor community founded by former slaves. Lizzie shows Turner a new world along the Maine coast from digging clams to rowing a boat next to a whale. When the powerful town elders, including Turner’s father, decide to drive the people off the island to set up a tourist business, Turner stands alone against them. He and Lizzie try to save her community, but there’s a terrible price to pay for going against the tide.

“A fun and poignant coming-of-age story," declared Entertainment Weekly of the third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares, author of The Here and Now. It’s the summer before the sisterhood departs for college . . . their last real summer together before they head off to start their grown-up lives. It’s the time when Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen need their Pants the most. “Readers of the other books won’t be disappointed.” —Booklist, Starred “A treat for anyone.” —*Los Angeles Times “These are friends worth having.” —Chicago Tribune *

The brilliant and beloved gang from the New York Times bestselling series is back! Since The Mysterious Benedict Society debuted twelve years ago, the series has become a modern classic, drawing comparisons to J.K. Rowling and Roald Dahl and selling over three million copies. Some time has passed since the inimitable quartet of Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance have had a mission together. But with the arrival of a new Society member — and a new threat — they must reunite to face dilemmas more dangerous than ever before, including the villainous Mr. Curtain and a telepathic enemy tracking their every move, not to mention a dramatically preteen Constance. In its triumphant return, the Society encounters all new challenges, but the series' trademark sly humor, sweet camaraderie, hairsbreadth escapes, and mind-bending puzzles are all as engaging as ever. Fans of the series will be thrilled to see the Society has grown up a...

Gene Wolfe is producing the most significant body of short fiction of any living writer in the SF genre. It has been ten years since the last major Wolfe collection, so Strange Travelers contains a whole decade of achievement. Some of these stories were award nominees, some were controversial, but each is unique and beautifully written. Reviews From Publishers Weekly Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, this collection of Wolfe's stories published in the 1990s contains death by overdose, suicide, Armageddon, cruelty to animals, abuse of children, children willing to falsely accuse fathers of sexual abuse and a plethora of vampiric female figures eager to suck the life out of men. Opening with "Bluesberry Jam," Wolfe (The Book of the Long Sun series, etc.) creates an intriguing speculative future in which an entire culture arises from people who have been stuck in a traffic jam for decades. This conceit is ultimately negated, however, by the most tired of clich?s in the closing story, "Ain't You 'Most Done," which is set in the same world. Also included are two Christmas stories: "No Planets Strike," a relatively sweet tale in which genetically modified animals aid the next Christ child, and "And When They Appear," which is less sweet, involving wonderful, mythic figures who visit, but cannot save, a small boy from a world gone mad. While Wolfe's prose is exceptional and there are a few gems here, such as "Useful Phrases," which delights in how words lead us to and reveal mysteries, there are also several tasteless and misogynistic entries. Chief among them is "The Ziggurat," in which a mother coaches her daughters in the art of false accusation and the father--whose wife leaves him broke-eventually regains all by finding a woman he can dominate and a technology he can steal. All too frequently in this volume, even when women show men "the pleasures of Hell," biting them till they bleed, men emerge loutish and triumphant. (Jan.) FYI: Wolfe is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. From Library Journal Two tales featuring a pair of musicians wandering down an endless highway filled with stalled cars ("Bluesberry Jam"; "Ain't You Most Done?") frame this collection of 15 short stories by the award-winning author of the "Book of the New Sun" series. Wolfe's eclectic talent runs the gamut from Russian folk tales to modern horror as he explores a landscape filled with ghouls, aliens, and chess-playing deities. Representing a decade of groundbreaking speculative fiction by a master of the genre, this volume belongs in most libraries. From Booklist Wolfe's latest collection holds 16 pieces that have appeared in an amazing variety of publications during the last decade. Their inspirations range from music in "Bluesberry Jam" to comic books in "Ain't You Most Done?," a tie-in to Neil Gaiman's famous Sandman series of graphic novels, which are about as far removed from caped-crusader stuff as one can imagine. But then, Wolfe occupies a distinguished position on the frontiers of both sf and fantasy by virtue of originality of subject, capable handling of detail, and command of language. Plot summaries don't do his work justice, but the only caveat to make is that some of the protagonists are initially repulsive, and at short length, there isn't much time to assimilate their complexities. Roland Green From Kirkus Reviews Fifteen stories, 199097, all more or less unclassifiable, gathered under an eminently appropriate title: Wolfe's first collection since Endangered Species (1989). The more science fictionflavored entries include: a woman pursued by the robot she helped develop; a collapse-of-civilization yarn about a little boy abandoned in a computerized house; and a strange trio of time-traveling female invaders. Yarns leaning toward fantasy: a far-future campfire horror story; an amusing yarn based on a Russian folk tale; an excruciating dilemma on the road to Hell; a human boy enslaved by the queen of the ghouls; some weird goings-on in a magic dollhouse; and, in a knottily Borgesian yarn, a phrase-book for an unknown language draws odd visitors to an old-fashioned bookshop. Elsewhere, there are two talking-animal clowns trapped on a planet where humans are oppressed by alien elves; a strange school in a low-tech future where a dead man thinks in Latin; and a space war controlled by God's chess game with the Devil. Finally, in the last story, a man, deprived of dreams in life, dies, only to become a character in the lead-off yarn about a permanent traffic jam that's developed a culture of its own. Painstaking and precise, though often wrought without recourse to ordinary logic: for readers who enjoy oblique, magisterial puzzles that don't necessarily have solutions. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "The greatest writer in the English language alive today . . . there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning."--Michael Swanwick "Aladdin got three wishes from his genie. From Gene, you get fifteen, and they all come true."--Orson Scott Card About the Author Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by The Washington Post. A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing. Gene is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and many other awards. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He lives in Barrington, Illinois.

In December 2015, I started a free monthly competition challenging my blog visitors to provide me with prompts for me to choose my favourite and write their story in around 500 words. The three pieces published here are the winning prompts from the Dec 2015 / Jan 2016 competition, as well as those that came second and third. The prompts submitted can be found at the end of each story.In December 2015, I started a free monthly competition challenging my blog visitors to provide me with prompts for me to choose my favourite and write their story in around 500 words. The three pieces published here are the winning prompts submitted from 16th December to 15th January, as well as those that came second and third in that month. The prompts supplied can be found at the end of each story.The winning story, 'A Handle at One End, a Spout at the Other' features Danny and Penny, and is about two friends, a grandmother's will, a silver teapot and an abandoned shopping trolley stuck in the sand, one wheel running for its life but destined to never go anywhere other than the scrapyard if Mickey O’Flanagan got hold of it.The second-placed story, 'Don't Cry, Don't Cry', is of a couple, Mara and Jaime, skiing late in the season but making a pitstop of a Café Allongé and petit pain au chocolate, their encounter with a French family, and Mara trying to keep her composure.'Sweeping the Coast', the third-placed story, features Hugh, a disillusioned deutanope (he suffered with red-green colourblindness) whose escape to the coast doesn't go according to plan... not that he had one.

World-renowned novelist Mark Helprin offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language, and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators. Mark Helprin anticipated that his 2007 New York Times op-ed piece about the extension of the term of copyright would be received quietly, if not altogether overlooked. Within a week, the article had accumulated 750,000 angry comments. He was shocked by the breathtaking sense of entitlement demonstrated by the commenters, and appalled by the breadth, speed, and illogic of their responses. Helprin realized how drastically different this generation is from those before it. The Creative Commons movement and the copyright abolitionists, like the rest of their generation, were educated with a modern bias toward collaboration, which has led them to denigrate individual efforts and in turn fueled their sense of entitlement to the fruits of other people’s labors. More important, their selfish desire to “stick it” to the greedy corporate interests who control the production and distribution of intellectual property undermines not just the possibility of an independent literary culture but threatens the future of civilization itself.

Filmmaker Seth Carter is a maverick, poised to shatter boundaries with his latest project—a cinematic masterpiece set to bring the black experience to the silver screen like never before. But when reporter Lanie Price arrives on set to interview Seth, a near-fatal accident exposes a sinister plot of sabotage. Each incident risks a life and pushes the production closer to collapse. Seth's dream is under siege, and the stakes couldn't be higher.Seth pleads with Lanie to keep the sabotage under wraps, plunging her into an ethical and professional quagmire that could ruin her career—and sever her relationship with the man she loves.