The Grimpebbet Almanac

Dear Reader: This book will change your life when you read it, and might even induce you to send money to its creator. You've already picked up this book, and if you're reading the back cover, you must know that you are in the Celebrated Few who can spot great literature at a glance. Read this book, learn about everything mystical, magical and rewarding there possibly is. There are many dumb asses walking the earth, you know this. The Grimpebbet Almanac isn't for them. But you know. And so do we. Folks who read books are smarter than folks who don't, that's a mathematical certainty. Read this book and find out secrets that will change your life. There's no reason to let the dumb asses in on it--not just yet. They don't, after all, have much money. And the great wisdom in this book would be lost on them. The mere fact that you picked a book off a shelf indicates that you are far and above the...unfortunates. Buy this book and read it, or something very disturbing and wrong must be going on in your life. You pay money for dog food; you must pay money for a book this epic and life-changing. You're smart enough to buy and read the Grimpebbet Almanac. It is a beacon of light in a sea of dumb asses. --J.D. Baghead, Esquire.

I will die up here in the high mountains, she thought. And be like Solanda, Mothers old friend, who vanished as the deer vanish. (A demon tricked me by looking like a boy). You climb too high, the hunter said, squatting down on his haunches and leaning against a boulder. Nothing eat up here. Mira finally got her voice: Why are you here? I follow you. He smiled. Mira stared down the great mountain, knowing she was trapped, that she had climbed too high where monsters are. He had stalked her like a deer. And she had been as foolish as a deer. To kill me? He gave her a surprised, then puzzled look. Why I want to kill you? To give the gods their sacrifice. He looked at her for a long time, and Mira felt strange. He was handsome, his hair and beard night-black, his blue eyes arrogant, confident. A smile that was very close to a smirk. He was a savage-looking boy, but she saw that he was a boy, not two seasons older than her. His deerskin leggings were well-used and torn ragged, made by skillful hands, but not any of the river tribes. Slung over his back was a very ornate spear thrower. A brace of feathered arrows in a wolfskin pouch flared out of his back. His right fist gripped a long spear crowned with a tooth of flint. Rawhide thongs belted his leggings; on his waistbelt a stone hatchet and long stone knife were strapped. His arms and legs rippled with savage muscles. Mira clutched her little pointed stick. She edged down the mountain slope, to see what he would do. Why did you follow me? He was a shadow now, against the boulder, but she could see his white teeth grinning. You are very pretty, he called out of the evening. He didnt follow her. He wasnt going to hurt her. She scuttered down the slope, grinning now, heart pounding and sudden blood in her face. What he said to me! You climb too high, Pretty One! his voice echoed behind her, making a crazy thrill in her stomach. Run home before it gets dark. Her face burned red. Why! she called, grinning over her shoulder. Because a knife-tooth has come to this mountain.

Scientists Anton Singer and Heinz Kovalt have worked for years to create specimen #8107, a creature featuring the traits of some of the most savage animal predators on the planet. But with Singer dying from cancer, the cross-species monster, designed to kill American soldiers, is now for sale. Wendy Nugent, sheriff of Harrison County, Nebraska, grows suspicious when a government lab springs up on an abandoned farmstead near her own farm in the Blue River Valley, in the middle of nowhere. Despite being reassured by a colonel from the Pentagon, a representative of Homeland Security, and a Princeton scientist that it is simply a federal livestock research lab, she doesn't buy it. Nugent tries to investigate, only to be rebuffed by scientist Mark Sterns, with whom she begins a romantic relationship. Something beyond the normal research is obviously occurring in that compound, which sports its own Marine guards and security fences. She is kept in the dark until a powerful storm destroys the lab and unleashes a real terror that threatens her once-quiet county.

Her favorite color was black. She dressed in black jeans and black blouses, and wore a strange black veil cape that seemed to swirl a shadow mist behind her as she passed. Her form was never still; even when she rested, the darkness swam around her. She had a dangerous need to fl aunt herself in front of the cameras- to draw attention to herself, though her face was nearly always hidden behind the fluttering black veil. She wore black fingerless gloves and black eye shadow and a spider ring. Her visible body was covered in tattoos and piercings. The cameras called her Pin Cushion, and she sneered at them. The cameras called her Goth Girl, and she sneered at them. She was attractive, and her face and expressions fascinated men. But she made herself too scary and bitchy to find some stupid romance. She was not attracted to men or women; she was attracted to no one. She seemed determined to despise life; and sometimes she got a plummeting sense in her stomach that it was quickly coming to an end. She wanted no human to know her or any part of her lonely and uneventful existence. She wanted no one to know her secret, but those who worked with her suspected: She could read the cameras. Like her veil-cape, Cassandra fl owed through life in a dark mist. She had enrolled at San Diego State, but the superficial syrup of academia had soon turned her off. It was a place where professors taught knowing they were in the cameras. Where classmates laughed at her and chittered in the eyes of the cameras. She lived in an efficiency apartment just off El Cajon Boulevard, and most of her money went to the rent. She ate simple and cheap Paleofood: raw fruits and vegetables, unsalted mixed nuts. She did not want to, nor could she use her kitchen. She ate tuna out of the can after straining it. One day she talked about the curse; she didn't know why.

Representing the author's interest spanning over thirty-five years, the essays expose White's evocation of dimensions other than material reality, his preoccupation with epiphanies and mythmaking, and his constant forging of a poetic style.

"Country Music" consists of 24 stories, three of them novelette length, depicting rural life in America during the Great Depression and Army life during the Korean War of the 1950s. The stories are linked through setting and characters to produce the effect of two episodic novels-one concerning the basic training, combat experience and readjustment to civilian life of a group of Army draftees, the other a dissection of "small townism" during the stressful 1930s. Many of the stories are written in a colloquial and dialectal style, from the viewpoint of the characters.

Brokenirreparably broken. The violent deaths of her father and the young man she'd been engaged to marry, had irrevocably broken Cedar Dale's heart. Her mother's heart had been broken, as wellshattered by the loss of her own true love. Thus, pain and anguishfear and despairfound Cedar Dale, and her mother Flora, returned to the small western town where life had once been happy and filled with hope. Perhaps there, Cedar and her mother would find some resemblance of truly living lifeinstead of merely existing. And then, a chance meeting with a dream from her pastcaused a flicker of wonder to ignite in her bosom.As a child, Cedar Dale had adored the handsome rancher's son, Tom Evans. And when chance brought her face-to-face with the object of her childhood fascination once more, Cedar Dale began to believe that perhaps her fragmented heart could be healed.Yet, could Cedar truly hope to win the regard of such a man above men as was Tom Evans? A man kept occupied with hard work and ambitiona man so desperately sought after by seemingly every woman?

Practical ideas for teaching language through poetry. iCreative Poetry Writing/i is for teachers who would like to give students the opportunity to say something original, while practising new language.