Warm Stories For The Dark Season

In the darkest time of year you need hope and stories of wonder and light.Rob Vagle brings you eight tales to brighten the season. Stories, like warm burning lights, charm you and illuminate the dark.

In the darkest time of year you need hope and stories of wonder and light. Rob Vagle brings you eight tales to brighten the season. Stories, like warm burning lights, charm you and illuminate the dark.

Have you ever seen a big bell through blind eyes? Have you ever dropped an ice cream cone? Did you ever play in a creek? Is there a Black Sheep in your family history? Does the ghost of your dearly departed mother hang around? Then it may be you living in the stories in this book. The stories are captivating. The stories are rich with the detail of the author's imagination. Each of the stories is a different place and mood, displaying the variety we see each day. None of the stories contains foul language, violence, or implicit situations. This book is just plain a good read.

Caught in the middle of two very different love affairs, the narrator must choose between lovers—Dark-and-Brooding or Nice-and-Boring? The stories in Red Plaid Shirt span twenty years of Diane Schoemperlen’s challenging and innovative writing. Told in her fresh and often deadpan comedic voice, they offer a compulsively readable mix of deeply felt emotion and finely wrought intellect. This collection was shortlisted for the Upper Canada Brewing Company Writers’ Craft Award. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in e-book production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

The poems in Help in the Dark Season expose lessons of adult and childhood trauma, relationship joys and failures, and the all-around hard work of true togetherness. Help in the Dark Season explores the pathway of human love as it begins in the dark, moves into parental hands, transfers into to experiments of the heart, grows, breaks, and ultimately transforms us more than any other experience we withstand. Each poem walks us into Jacqueline Suskin’s world, where dreams and sacred visions are just as important as reality, where planet earth is an active character and spouse, and every attempt at love adds up as wisdom worth remembering. There are so many ways for us to access love; these poems map this personal process, uncovering the helpful tools and healing realizations that Suskin has gathered while conjuring up and relentlessly believing in love. Even when it hurts us the most and causes the worst confusion, even when it’s laughable and foolish, these poems aim to provide proof that human connection is crucial and always worth the risk.

In a North Carolina winter, new vistas appear through the bare trees. For Elizabeth Goodweather of Full Circle Farm, still a newcomer after more than twenty years, one terrible glimpse ignites a mystery that reaches back years into these hills, drawing together dozens of seemingly unconnected lives. Elizabeth sees a frail old woman on a high porch where dolls hang by twine. When the woman jumps, and Elizabeth reacts, there is no turning back. Nola Barrett’s ancient, sprawling house is spewing a dark past: of depravity, scandal and murder. Her land is at the center of multiple mysteries, ranging from a suspicious death to the brutal rape of a young woman to the legend of a handsome youth hanged for murder. But with Nola recovering from her self-inflicted wounds, Elizabeth has inherited her mad, violent drama—while a killer has a perfect view of it all.…

A strange varmint haunts the woodsman who lopped off its tail.

Soldier boys emerged from the darkness. Guns gleamed dully. Bullet bandoliers and scars draped their bare chests. Ugly brands scored their faces. She knew why these soldier boys had come. She knew what they sought, and she knew, too, that if they found it, her best friend would surely die. In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man--a bioengineered war beast named Tool--who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible. This thrilling companion to Paolo Bacigalupi's highly acclaimed Ship Breaker is a haunting and powerful story of loyalty, survival, and heart-pounding adventure.