Fifteen-year-old Maryanna Duncard’s life is a delicate balance of school and trying to steer clear of her abusive dad, Ethan. When she meets Faron, their connection quickly ignites her life, and they fall deeply in love. Maryanna is over the moon, and things are going well. Her future looks bright. Until, that is, her father catches them in her room one fateful night and hunts Maryanna’s first love down in cold blood with his Winchester repeater. Maryanna turns to the police who, for some strange reason, refuse to believe a word she says. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they claim Faron’s murder was just a horrific accident. On the run now and fearful for her life, Maryanna must learn how to survive on her own in a cruel world that has taught her to trust no one. The next years force her into a downward spiral that almost takes her life. Along the way, she meets a new friend, James, and her journey to love again leads her somewhere she never expected. Can Maryanna learn to take control of the darkness she carries within, or will it devour her before she can claim her happy ending?

THUSDAY'S CHILD is a deeply personal and often painful account of growing up gay in a small town in rural Maryland in the middle of the 20th Century, and the influence of this past on the author's later life. After two life-altering events, he realizes at fourty-four that he's confused about the nature of love and enters psychotherapy where his life story is told in actual sessions between him and his therapist. This story includes many of the issues gay men of this period were forced to face: the realization that he could never have what he calls "a normal life;" the trauma of coming out to friends, familly and business associates; the stigma of a disgraceful discharge from the US Army even after successful completion of two highly skilled and classified specialties; the anguish over the break-up of an early affair of the most abandoned type; and the resultant reluctance and struggle to ever risk intimacy again.

I want the world to know about my true childhood friend Anthony, and what I learned sharing his story. The sharing of the love, friendship, kindness, forgiveness and a shared connection - precious times that were like sparkling jewels are transformed into this book called "Anthony". My childhood friend - my Angel, if only we knew just how short his life would be, I wouldn't have let all those years pass by without having some more fun; playing together and sharing more, and without learning more from my friend. I would have told him, he was such a good friend to me and I would have told him "I love you."

An exhaustive look at the final hours of the Confederacy’s most audacious general. May 1863. The Civil War was in its third spring, and Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson stood at the peak of his fame. He had risen from obscurity to become “Old Stonewall,” adored across the South and feared and respected throughout the North. On the night of May 2, however, just hours after Jackson executed the most audacious maneuver of his career and delivered a crushing blow against an unsuspecting Union army at Chancellorsville, disaster struck. The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson recounts the events of that fateful night—considered one of the most pivotal moments of the war—and the tense vigil that ensued as Jackson struggled with a foe even he could not defeat. From Guinea Station, where Jackson crosses the river to rest under the shade of the trees, the story follows Jackson’s funeral and burial, the strange story of his amputated arm, and the creation and restoration of the building where he died (now known as the Stonewall Jackson Shrine). This newly revised and expanded second edition features more than 50 pages of fresh material, including almost 200 illustrations, maps, and eye-catching photos. New appendices allow readers to walk in Jackson’s prewar footsteps through his adopted hometown of Lexington, Virginia; consider the ways Jackson’s memory has been preserved through monuments, memorials, and myths; and explore the misconceptions behind the Civil War’s great What-If: “What if Stonewall had survived his wounds?” With the engaging prose of master storytellers, Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White make The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson a must-read for Civil War novices and buffs alike.

Design of Darkness tells the interlocking stories of two supremely gifted people, one that ends in tragedy and one in triumph. In the words of her fianc, the medical doctor and narrator Larry Freeling, Maryanna McKenna is the smartest and sweetest woman he has ever met. She earns her doctorate in astronomy at 22, while Eddie Swinton, her best friend from childhood, learns from her father how to make a fortune in construction. Maryanna is about to marry the narrator when mosquito-borne encephalitis wrecks her intellect, reducing her to infancy. A woman who has mastered the most advanced mathematics for her doctoral dissertation is incapable of understanding even picture books for babies. Maryannas parents guard her with the same great love for the next several decades that they provided through her upbringing. Meanwhile, Eddie Swinton flourishes when his life becomes the American Dream. He marries the homecoming queen, raises three additional homecoming queens, and earns $100 million through construction in a life filled with beauty, wit, and charm. By juxtaposing such extremes of fate, Design of Darkness has few rivals for the way it turns existence back into a riddle that defies religious answers. Tell it as a love story! Tell it as a tragedy! Tell it as a triumph! Tell it as a mystery! are the last words of Maryannas father to the narrator. Larry pours his own hearts blood and memories of love into a tale as powerful and haunting as the lives of Maryanna and Eddie.