Drenching in Mirage, is to denote the idea of dwelling in hopeless or imaginary situations as I have attempted to drench in the memory of my mother and even endeavoured to immortalize her in these verses. It might present you the rare beauty, as if a mirage, of 'insight', against the 'bare sight', to imagine or to muse the literal things such as theory, human, hay-man, virus, creatures, and rose in the light verse of my choice. The anthology would serve as a cocktail treat to the poetry lovers, for they would rejoice in its music, aesthetics, pathos, romance, reflectivity, imagination, insight and information.

Since Mirage Varcqa was a child, she’s had recurring visions of her father dying. While she’s midway through her training as a pharmacist, intending to follow in her father’s footsteps, the tragedy comes to pass. Unable to bear this loss, she collapses and suffers a head injury so severe that she is briefly declared dead. Mirage slips past life and encounters her father, who pushes her back into life so that she can heal, seek her true purpose, and accomplish a cryptic mission. This is just the beginning of the mind-bending experiences in Mirage’s life. Her drive to find answers leads her on a metaphysical quest that takes her to a master yogi in the Himalayas, a secret island school near Belize, and beyond her own reality. As every answer seems to lead Mirage to a deeper layer of secrets, she must judge who to trust, where the truth lies, and what her role is in the path to a better world.

Custer confronts his destiny at Little Big Horn and his legend lives on through his Cheyenne son. Never one to proceed cautiously when an impetuous move could win him glory, Custer marched his famed Seventh Calvary against the Sioux in June 1876. He was thirty-six, already a mythic hero to some, with the possibility of a presidential nomination looming in his future; while to others he was an arrogant and dangerous fool, misguided in his determination to subjugate the Plains tribes. What should have been his greatest triumph became an utterly devastating defeat that would ring through the ages and serve as a turning point in the Indian Wars.

When a witch is born, a doppelganger is created. For the witch to master her powers, the twin must be killed. But what happens when the doppelganger survives? Mirage, a bounty hunter, lives by her wits and lethal fighting skills. She always gets her mark. But her new mission will take her into the shadowy world of witches, where her strength may not be a match against powerful magic. Miryo is a witch who has just failed her initiation test. She now knows that there is someone in the world who looks like her, who is her: Mirage. To control her powers and become a full witch, Miryo has only one choice: to hunt the hunter and destroy her.

From Brazil’s most acclaimed young novelist, the mesmerizing story of how a troubled young man’s restorative journey to the seaside becomes a violent struggle with his family’s past —So why did they kill him? —I’m getting there. Patience, tchê. I wanted to give you the context. Because it’s a good story, isn’t it? A young man’s father, close to death, reveals to his son the true story of his grandfather’s death, or at least the truth as he knows it. The mean old gaucho was murdered by some fellow villagers in Garopaba, a sleepy town on the Atlantic now famous for its surfing and fishing. It was almost an execution, vigilante style. Or so the story goes. It is almost as if his father has given the young man a deathbed challenge. He has no strong ties to home, he is ready for a change, and he loves the seaside and is a great ocean swimmer, so he strikes out for Garopaba, without even being quite sure why. He finds an apartment by the water and builds a simple new life, taking his father’s old dog as a companion. He swims in the sea every day, makes a few friends, enters into a relationship, begins to make inquiries. But information doesn’t come easily. A rare neurological condition means that he doesn’t recognize the faces of people he’s met, leading frequently to awkwardness and occasionally to hostility. And the people who know about his grandfather seem fearful, even haunted. Life becomes complicated in Garopaba until it becomes downright dangerous. Steeped in a very special atmosphere, both languid and tense, and soaked in the sultry allure of south Brazil, Daniel Galera’s masterfully spare and powerful prose unfolds a story of discovery that feels almost archetypal—a display of storytelling sorcery that builds with oceanic force and announces one of Brazil’s greatest young writers to the English-speaking world. Look for Daniel's new book, The Shape of Bones.

Thru the Wringer is a story of personal transformation based on real people and events. Follow along as the Society of 9, an organization made up of highly successful yet anonymous people, share its secrets– powerful secrets that change lives and fortunes for the better. If financial security, happiness and emotional fulfillment are your goals, this is a must read.

“Never before has the case been more compellingly made that America’s dependence on a free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.” —Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald “Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.” —Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History “With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.” —Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West. Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard. Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes. From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.

These poems, written from 1955 to 2014, are a reflection on the period by someone who lived through it and, of course, aged in the process. Various world tragedies knocked the poetry out of him a time or two. He says: Somewhere between 1955 and 2000 humanity took a further seriously wrong turning. The twenty-fi rst century started in farce that gave unlimited power to people intent on mass murder. We let it happen. Poetry was once the great harbinger of understanding and poets were once listened to because they had something important to say.