Nomophobia - the fear of having our phones taken from us - is taking over our lives. The smart devices are in our homes, carried room-to-room as if glued to the hands of our family members. They meander into the bathroom, the laundry room, the shop, the garage, backyard and even into the bedroom where the adults once had their "alone time." Our teenage children require them to either be under their pillows, by their pillows or within arm's reach at a nightstand in order to even sleep at night. The cell phone must be visible for them to take tests at school without withdrawal anxiety. The phones travel where we do - school, the office, the gym, so that we are in constant contact with the virtual world - other people who also have no real lives outside of their phone. They are ringing in churches, movie theaters, restaurants, concerts, funerals. Nothing says "goodbye" to the recently departed like your ring tone from Metallica's Hardwired. Welcome to the world of smart phone addiction.

From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG! Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest people in the world. They hate everything—except playing mean jokes on each other, catching innocent birds to put in their Bird Pies, and making their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, stand on their heads all day. But the Muggle-Wumps have had enough. They don't just want out, they want revenge.

Nothing was as it seemed at first in this contemporary, heartwarming tale of a young woman who had come to a point in her life where everything was going downhill. Having to deal with an injured, petulant younger sister, a morose, grieving mother, and a recent breakup, Georgie Greene had only one choice left: to cope as best she could in her own way. She had thought the trip to her grandparent's ranch up north, supposedly for the benefit of her sister, would be nothing more than revisiting painful old memories. Little did she know that she would come to learn of a heart-wrenching secret her grandparents had thus far kept from the family. Apart from that was her family's mysterious involvement with the gorgeous-looking, impertinent ranger whose face she could not get out of her head. Just when things were starting to look up, she was tossed into a whirlpool of disconcerting circumstances which threatened to send her spirits plummeting once more. Would she get her life back on track, and perhaps, even kindle a little romance anew? She knew the man she wanted, but did he want her, now that he was holding the other woman's hand sparkling with a diamond ring?

It is a western, based in the late 1800s. A young woman moves to Ridgewater, TX from Juneau, Alaska. Escaping from her past, wanting to shut herself off from the world. Never wanting to lose her heart to a man that would hurt her. That's when Logan Williams comes into view.

Annella MacAdam loved a lie and didn’t know it. Mitchell Fallon was the lie … and knew it. When their world imploded, he walked away leaving her shattered and alone. Three years later, Annella is confronted with the man who broke her heart and destroyed her world. Against her will, and for the sake of her small sons and the safety of her family, she must allow him back into her life and worse, into her home but Annella swears to keep him at arm’s length … and never trust him again. SARCIS Detective Senior Sergeant, Mitchell Fallon, is forced to face the consequences of his betrayal and abandonment of Annella MacAdam when he is directed to work on her property to locate stolen livestock and bust a gang of reivers. When Annella’s father is released from prison, the crime wave intensifies. A steer, slaughtered by Midnight Butchers, a spy drone targeting Annella, ice and a restless ghost become features of Mitchell’s investigation. Conflicted by a resurgence of harrowing memories and emotions, Annella and Mitchell form an uneasy alliance as they deal with a small community wracked by drought, debt and drugs.

This book is fiction and could fill several niches in the marketplace. Reluctant readers, those learning English as a second language, trivia buffs, and fans of Beatles spring to mind. This Is as Big as It Gets tells the story of two boys who meet and pair up with two girls. The four of them then banter as they try to put the world to rights while coping with stepparents, sexism, abused parents, sick parents, a plague of rats, death, suicide, and a terrorist attackbut not necessarily in that order. Interspersed with these dramas is an offbeat modern fairy tale told by one of the boys; it is so well received that he decides to write a book. His friends try to help him with ideas, and they get sidetracked by idioms, song lyrics, jokes, palindromes, and trivia. However, the book is never penned, not in this story anyway. The entire text of the story is told using no words longer than four letters because it began life as a teaching exercise for primary school children in Australia. The language is not your average American English, and for that reason, a glossary is attached by way of a translation from the Australian and English idioms and vocabulary that the story is punctuated with. This Is as Big as It Gets will, hopefully, be followed by A Bit of This and a Bit of That and then, to complete the trilogy, Amen to All That. The pattern of using no words longer than four letters in the telling of the story will continue.

WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER • A true horde of fantasy tales sure to delight fans, scholars, and even the greediest of dragons—from bestselling authors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer Step through a shimmering portal ... a worn wardrobe door ... a schism in sky ... into a bold new age of fantasy. When worlds beyond worlds became a genre unto itself. From the swinging sixties to the strange, strange seventies, the over-the-top eighties to the gnarly nineties—and beyond, into the twenty-first century—the VanderMeers have found the stories and the writers from around the world that reinvented and revitalized the fantasy genre after World War II. The stories in this collection represent twenty-two different countries, including Russia, Argentina, Nigeria, Columbia, Pakistan, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, China, the Philippines, and the Czech Republic. Five have never before been translated into English. From Jorge Luis Borges to Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock to Angela Carter, Terry Pratchett to Stephen King, the full range and glory of the fantastic are on display in these ninety-one stories in which dragons soar, giants stomp, and human children should still think twice about venturing alone into the dark forest. Completing Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's definitive The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, this companion volume to takes the genre into the twenty-first century with ninety-one astonishing, mind-bending stories. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

David R. Mastbergen is the author of The Marvels of the Healer series. He was born in the Heartland in the city of Worthington, Minnesota. He was raised in Worthington until he enlisted into the United States Navy and spent the next twenty-plus years servicing his country. Upon retiring from the navy as a chief warrant officer, he spent nine-plus years working for the state of Minnesota. David has a Master of Arts degree in management from the College of St. Scholastica and a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Coleman College.

This is an anthology of a number of brilliant stories which include comedy, horror, fantasy, drama, romance and suspense with wonderful characters to make each one seem alive… and every one with a twist in the tail! You will be enthralled by them.

Emma has everything she wants. Good friends, family who loves her and the boyfriend of her dreams. She's also finally rid nemesis Bianca Smythe from her life. But life is full of twists and turns. The first is a phone call from her mother, the one who abandoned her twenty years ago. Suddenly she wants a relationship, to patch things up with the daughter she dumped. Will Emma let her in to her now happy life? The second is a chance encounter with Bianca in the school library. Their conversation will plant seeds of doubt about the only man Emma's ever loved. Could Bianca be telling the truth? And if she is, will Emma ever be able to forgive Zach?