Nominated for the British Science Fiction Award 2020 In Gareth L. Powell's Ragged Alice a detective in a small Welsh town can literally see the evil in people's souls. Orphaned at an early age, DCI Holly Craig grew up in the small Welsh coastal town of Pontyrhudd. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to London and joined the police. Now, fifteen years later, she’s back in her old hometown to investigate what seems at first to be a simple hit-and-run, but which soon escalates into something far deadlier and unexpectedly personal—something that will take all of her peculiar talents to solve. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This collection highlights the complexities of fatherhood and how to raise young kids while bearing witness to the charged movements of social injustice and inequities of race in America. Memory, culpability, and our very humanness course through this book and strip us down to find joy and inspiration amid the darkness.

From the acclaimed cultural historian Philip F. Gura comes Truth's Ragged Edge, a comprehensive and original history of the American novel's first century. Grounded in Gura's extensive consideration of the diverse range of important early novels, not just those that remain widely read today, this book recovers many long-neglected but influential writers—such as the escaped slave Harriet Jacobs, the free black Philadelphian Frank J. Webb, and the irrepressible John Neal—to paint a complete and authoritative portrait of the era. Gura also gives us the key to understanding what sets the early novel apart, arguing that it is distinguished by its roots in "the fundamental religiosity of American life." Our nation's pioneering novelists, it turns out, wrote less in the service of art than of morality. This history begins with a series of firsts: the very first American novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1789; the first bestsellers, Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, novels that were, like Brown's, cautionary tales of seduction and betrayal; and the first native genre, religious tracts, which were parables intended to instruct the Christian reader. Gura shows that the novel did not leave behind its proselytizing purpose, even as it evolved. We see Catharine Maria Sedgwick in the 1820s conceiving of A New-England Tale as a critique of Puritanism's harsh strictures, as well as novelists pushing secular causes: George Lippard's The Quaker City, from 1844, was a dark warning about growing social inequality. In the next decade certain writers—Hawthorne and Melville most famously—began to depict interiority and doubt, and in doing so nurtured a broader cultural shift, from social concern to individualism, from faith in a distant god to faith in the self. Rich in subplots and detail, Gura's narrative includes enlightening discussions of the technologies that modernized publishing and allowed for the printing of novels on a mass scale, and of the lively cultural journals and literary salons of early nineteenth-century New York and Boston. A book for the reader of history no less than the reader of fiction, Truth's Ragged Edge—the title drawn from a phrase in Melville, about the ambiguity of truth—is an indispensable guide to the fascinating, unexpected origins of the American novel.

»A Tale of the Ragged Mountains« is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, originally published in 1844. EDGAR ALLAN POE was born in Boston in 1809. After brief stints in academia and the military, he began working as a literary critic and author. He made his debut with the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838, but it was in his short stories that Poe's peculiar style truly flourished. He died in Baltimore in 1849.

In order to hide from his unwanted fame as the spitfire-pilot-monkey who emerged from a computer game to defeat the nefarious corporation that engineered him, the charismatic and dangerous Ack-Ack Macaque is working as a pilot on a world-circling nuclear-powered Zeppelin.But when the cabin of one of his passengers is invaded by the passenger’s own dying doppelganger, our hirsute hero finds himself thrust into another race to save the world – this time from an aggressive hive mind, time-hopping saboteurs, and an army of homicidal Neanderthal assassins!

One virgin + three wolf shifters = e-reader delight! It’s 1936. Thirty-year-old Alice has given up on finding a husband. Between civil engineering and mountain climbing, her interests are so masculine, she scares men away. A poor route choice strands her—lost, hungry, and scared—next to Lon Chaney’s cabin deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Jed senses a woman stumbling down the steep, inhospitable mountain behind his borrowed cabin. Her scent tantalizes and excites him. Mates are scarce these days, and if his nose is right, she’s his fated one. His and his two pack mates, that is, who are mercifully gone at the moment. Jed crafts a careful strategy, knowing the mate bond might not be enough to convince her to stay once she finds out it will link her to all three of them—forever. Alice adds Jed to her list of problems when he melts out of the shadowed darkness. At first she declines his offer of help, but he keeps talking until she ends up inside the cozy log cabin in front of a roaring fire. His skilled hands and a shot of whiskey heat her blood to molten, and her carefully tended world explodes into desperate hunger to make love with the man rubbing her weary feet. As caught up in lust as Alice, Jed takes a chance. A big one. Will mating with her before disclosing everything turn out to be a huge mistake? PRAISE FOR THE WOLF CLAN SHIFTER SERIES: ” Let’s hear it for the mate bond. WHEW!! What an ALPHATASTIC story! And WOW! I don't know how my tablet didn't melt!” Goodreads review “Ann Gimpel does a great job of making the characters speak like they are in the correct time period. The story was credible of its era. She also set a good foundation for the series explaining the relevance of the hunters and the lack of mates.” Goodreads review “This story is super HOT and it kept me intrigued through each and every chapter. I love Ann's writing style and Alice's Alphas definitely did not disappoint. Highly recommend this steamy shifter tale!” “I was intrigued to read something from this time period and wasn't disappointed. I found myself several times looking up things like flashlights, cars and phones out of curiosity. This is the first book I've read by this author and it won't be the last. I liked her take on the Shifters and Hunters; and the magic was something unique too.” Rainy Day Reader Fans of the following books and series are known to enjoy this semi-historical shifter ménage series: a kingdom of exiles a shade of vampire academy of magic dragon's gift accidentally in love attack by magic dragon's gift awakening dragon born in fire burning tower call of the dragon choose love covert fae crime of magic dragon's gift crimes against magic dark stranger the dream darkness bound dragons of the darkblood secret society druid enforcer ghostwater goddesss choice golden age greyriver shifters hotbloods hour of darkness house of darken iron and magic jinn's dominion junkyard druid Kate Daniels’ Magic Series master of magic dragon's gift natural mage natural witch obsidian son raised in fire rogues of magic shadow keeper shadow kissed space knight 4 twisted fate unchained undercover magic dragon's gift war god's mantle wheel of time wild hunger Keywords related to this semi-historical, shifter ménage series: Shifter romance, Shifter ménage romance, Fantasy Books, Epic Urban Fantasy series, Werewolves and Shifters, Animals & Nature, Popular Series, Paranormal Fantasy Books, Top Rated Books, Tricks, Fantasy Omnibus, Spells & Charms, Romance Books, Backcountry, Fantasy Romance Books, Essential Reads, Epic Fantasy, Omnibus Bundle, Paranormal Romance Series, Adventure Books, Mythology and Folklore, Top Rated Fantasy Collection With Shapeshifters, Fantasy Bundle, Heroine, Supernatural and Occult, Sword And Sorcery, Shifter Romance, Fantasy Stories, Shifter Series, Fantasy, Shifter Omnibus, Best Rated Omnibus, Omnibus Collection, Paranormal Romance Books, Magical Adventures.

Titled after a small gallery of the same name found in Rome, the poems are devoted to meditations on religious relics and works of art. They explore the narrative power these objects carry—the way we imbue totemic figures with both meaning and story, and the potential they have to define the world.

“It is an evil born of war. It is the end of all things.” Four hundred years ago, Ed and Alice Rico threw themselves through a mysterious portal on the London Underground, hunting for Ed’s lost brother—Alice’s husband—Verne. Now, starship captain Katherine Abdulov embarks on a desperate race against ruthless rival captain—and her former lover—Victor Luciano, to try and earn back her family’s trust. Tomorrow, all their lives will be thrown together by disaster, as an ancient evil stirs among the stars, threatening the survival of all life…