Short Story Press Presents Valerie's Tale by Alicia Pesce Valerie’s Tale is a story about a little girl with a heart filled with courage and strength living in a world plagued with war and where magic is divided by Clerics who believe in using magic conservatively and mages who use it for whatever their heart’s desire. Valerie is force to grow up quickly when her mother contracts a life threatening illness, one that a Cleric cannot heal. With hopes of saving her, Valerie would have seek out an old wizard, a gentle man with a silly personality and unusual powers to heal her, but ends up getting frozen and brought to the future filled with odd machines powered by steam. She meets up with an old friend offers to help her through this dark new world, mostly occupied by Dark Mages who dominate the land with their dangerous magic, and find the kindly old wizard who helped her in her childhood. In her adventure, she must learn to accept things that she can’t control and she learns of patience, death and the toll that one takes when one messes with forces in which they don’t understand. But could magic really be such a dangerous force to mess with? Short Story Press publishes short stories written by everyday writers.

Short Story Press Presents Love In 3D by Valerie Lizotte What happens when you lose all hopes in yourself and in the world? Well, you become vulnerable and that’s what happened to Eddie, only he does not really know what is wrong with him until a meeting that will literally change his world and, in a very real way, his life. One day, as it is his habit, Eddie has stepped in a virtual travel cabin looking for a distraction from his bleak life and on an impulse he has made the journey to the era of 1950’s. An era that is so very different from his universe, somewhere in a not so distant, cold and unfriendly future, that Eddie is immediately fascinated with what he sees, with this much simpler and warmer life. He feels himself becoming alive again. There he also meets Marylyn, a pretty waitress working in a snack bar. She is so different from the women he has been keeping company with that Eddie feels himself attracted to her, attracted to how real and transparent she is. However, his engineer’s mind immediately sees the problem: Marylyn is not real and is the product of sophisticated computer coding. He tries to rationalise his attraction for her, but nothing can convince his heart and that is where the trouble starts. Short Story Press publishes short stories written by everyday writers.

This rhythmic showcase of dances from all over the world features children of diverse backgrounds and abilities tapping, spinning, and boogying away! Tap, twirl, twist, spin! With musical, rhyming text, author Valerie Bolling shines a spotlight on dances from across the globe, while energetic art from Maine Diaz shows off all the moves and the diverse people who do them. From the cha cha of Cuba to the stepping of Ireland, kids will want to leap, dip, and zip along with the dances on the page!

Short Story Press Presents An Unexpected Revenge by Valerie Lizotte Mark is handsome and he knows it. He is also ruthless and arrogant. It is often a very dangerous combination, and Mark is no exception. He uses his good looks to seduce beautiful women and do terrible, unspeakable things to them. He enjoys it immensely and considers this occupation the real purpose of his life. Then, one night as he is on the prowl for his next victim, he spots Jasmine. She is beautiful, intriguing, and he wants her. Her appetite for life is an irresistible turn-on for Mark. Soon, he makes his move and Jasmine lets herself be seduced by that handsome, confident, and refined man. They go back to her place. After an amazing night spent with Jasmine, things unexpectedly start to change for Mark. Strange, unsettling, inexplicable things start happening to him. His apartment is no more the sanctuary it used to be. He first tries to deny it, but he soon finds himself afraid of stepping into his apartment and, worse, questioning his sanity as he comes to believe that Jasmine is behind what is happening to him. Short Story Press publishes short stories written by everyday writers.

Ninth-grader Jess Westmark had the best of intentions when she started Operation Oleander to raise money for a girls’ orphanage in Kabul. She named her charity for the oleander that grows both in her Florida hometown and in Afghanistan, where her father is deployed. But on one of her father's trips to deliver supplies to the orphans, a car bomb explodes nearby and her father is gravely injured. Worse, her best friend’s mother and some of the children are killed, and people are blaming Operation Oleander for turning the orphanage into a military target for the Taliban. Is this all Jess’s fault?

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE • Set in 1828 on a Louisiana sugar plantation, this novel from the bestselling author of Mary Reilly presents a “fresh, unsentimental look at what slave-owning does to (and for) one's interior life.... The writing—so prised and clean limbed—is a marvel" (Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved). Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress. Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.

Josefina and her sisters have been struggling ever since Mama died a year ago. When Mama's sister, Tia Dolores, comes to live on their rancho, the girls are overjoyed. At last, they have someone to help and teach them as Mama used to. Tia Dolores has lots of new ideas, too! When Papa's sheep are killed in a flood, Tia Dolores comes up with the idea to start a weaving business. And Tia Dolores wants to teach the girls to read and write, something Mama never learned to do. Josefina worries that all these new ideas will mean there's no room for the old ways. Will Tia Dolores's changes make Josefina forget Mama? Book jacket.