Book Three of the ‘Pieces Of Eight’ series. The pirate Province of Maudlin lies in tatters. Those who remain hear Whispers of a fleet that roves back and forth across the harbour and an army closing in over land, ready to cut down anyone who dares flee. Cap’ns Silus de Senza, Samira Dalal, and Shay-yo, Three o’ the Eight, flounder inside this grand trap, all far from their glorious prime. Billy, the undead crow’s nest girl, hunts down the Whisper who killed her, determined to get the last laugh this time. Even in death, however, Pear cannot be shaken off easily, and her eyes glare from the deep shadows that have become her new home. Silus also finds himself haunted. His old crewmates Razor Jane and Pinhead Pete, whose souls he sold in exchange for Billy’s, grow in strength and fury. They lurk in mirrors and glassy reflections, talons reaching for the chance for revenge. It makes his need to hide from an entire Province of desperate pirates a tad more tricky. Samira waited too long for her friend Silus to come to his senses: the net around Maudlin may now be too tight. She must escape at any cost. There’s a price on Silus The Curse’s head, a big price. A horde of coin might be her only opportunity to escape in one piece… Shay-yo is as broken as the Province around her. She knows what Silus did for Billy, and is determined to tap into the same dark magic. But she must hurry, as time tightens the noose around all their necks.

Mary Kate Dupree has reached a crossroad in her lifeless life. Literally. While running an errand for her oppressively controlling husband, she encounters a handsome hitchhiker whose siren-like lure tempts her to do the unthinkable: pick up a strange man on the side of the road and keep on driving. Like the mesmerizing lip of Niagara Falls, which has tempted many an unsuspecting soul to plunge to an icy demise, the hitchhiker woos Mary Kate from her mundane existence into an adventure she could never before have imagined. Randy “Smoothie” Cunningham is abandoning convention. After one too many life surprises thrown his way, he’s decided to chuck it all and take to the road. When meek and mousy Mary Kate unexpectedly picks him up, the two downtrodden souls embark on a road trip that eventually leads them to the source of Mary Kate’s temptation: Niagara Falls, where they confront the fabled water’s edge in search of elusive redemption. What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books: "A fun, sassy read! A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a chocolate cupcake…you just want more." --Meg Cabot, NY Times bestselling author of Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble and more, on Sleeping with Ward Cleaver "As Sweet as a song and sharp as a beak, Bite Me really soars as a memoir about family--children and husbands, feathers and fur--and our capacity to keep loving though life may occasionally bite." --Wade Rouse, bestselling author of At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream "With a strong yet delightfully vulnerable voice, food critic Abbie Jennings embarks on a soulful journey where her love for banana cream pie and disdain for ill-fitting Spanx clash in hilarious and heartbreaking ways. As her body balloons and her personal life crumbles, Abbie must face the pain and secret fears she's held inside for far too long. I cheered for her the entire way." --Beth Hoffman, NY Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt on Slim to None "Jenny Gardiner has done it again--this fun, fast-paced book is a great summer read." --Sarah Pekkanen, NY Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Me, on Slim to None Keywords: women’s fiction, romantic comedy, humor, contemporary romance, modern fairy tale, new adult, second chances, romance, love, chick lit, chicklit, wedding, marriage, self-discovery, family issues

A fathers decision to undertake a do-it-yourself-project for his daughter is made not with love, but spite; a daughter returns to the home of her childhood not so much to attend her fathers funeral, as to carry out a long-planned revenge; once a month a professor leaves campus to look in on her senile mother, only to find herself caught in a test of will and wit, and unaware that it is a contest in which the winners always lose; a waitress who nightly pines for the one she had allowed to slip away, uncharacteristically reaches out for one intense moment of intimacy with a mysterious stranger. Those are the stories of just a few of the people whose lives are played out in Moon Alley. David Applebys carefully crafted stories are written in what the New England Review has termed, an easy, fluid style, and that, entwined with compassion, and an acute awareness of language, provides the reader of Moon Alley with a compelling look into the lives of those who live there. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING Grady Harp, Los Angeles, CA United States David Appleby is no newcomer to the field of writing, having composed two monographs stimulated by his experience as a grant recipient in creative writing, history and literature. But none of this incidental information prepares the reader for the solidly unique voice contained in the pages of MOON ALLEY, his first novel. Appleby writes with lucidity yet at the same time requires of the reader full attention to the microweavings of his narrative, a fine, almost Joycean rambling of apparent stories that on first appearance seem to be a collection of short stories only to capture us in his ever expanding web of time and place and atmosphere and recognition into a true novel. MOON ALLEY is a dark book, a journey into the Irish American neighborhood of Philadelphia complete with all the detritus that the passage of time and industrial changes in America wreck on once tender ethnic havens of new immigrants. Moon Alley is a dead end dirty place where sundry characters live, drink, face failure, struggle for escape from the destiny that has befallen the neighborhood. The gathering places, in Applebys gifted hands become visual, complete with the stench of old beer, dank rooms, the neighborhood bar McFaddens Saloon containing The Ladies Room approached through the back entrance where the women gather to drink away their lives and gossip like a feminine mirror of the sots in the front bar, Charlies Diner, St Apollonias parish and highschool, the el (elevated train) which carries the noisy trains along The Avenue which dims the squalor and arguments to a muffled frustration, and the apartments and homes that house the down and out folks who live here. The characters, while similar in environmental shadows, are as varied as any fine novel: Irish Tom drinks his life away, Fiona tends the customers, Megan is a waitress in the Diner and confronts her lonely solitude in strange ways including attempting to befriend a flasher, Johnny One Ball and his thwarted dreams of having a son, Old Lady Ryan, and Soapbox Cathy Malloy and Kathleen OConnor who managed to advance to higher education only to be pulled back into the home they escaped due to a parent with senility or a father who died a strange death preburied in cement. Each character moves from a minor set decoration in one story to the focal figure in another and another, so that by the end of the novel we know all sides of these degraded people. As one character phrases the conditions of Moon Alley and The Avenue Kathleen had likened the emotionally impoverished lives lived on The Avenue to a disease - something like polio, or tuberculosis - something so severe that, if she didnt escape its gray and gloomy view of life, with its mute acceptance of poverty, and its blind obedience to St. Apollonias, that if she followed her mothers lead and contented herself wi

Mordecai Goldman is a man born of chaos. His life changes when Simmy, his little brother, comes home with a knife stuck in his shoulder. After turbulent years in a Christian high school in Poland and his military service, Mordecai finds himself manning a tank for the Soviets in the Second World War. After he fights his way to Germany, Mordecai falls in love with his future wife and emigrates to Canada. Saying goodbye to everyone he loves, Mordecai moves on with his life and toward the inevitable conclusion that awaits us all. But will his life end like it began: in violence? This story is based on true events, and Mordecai Goldman was a real person. This is the story of a man tough, passionate and stubborn - to the end.

More than once, Carl Reiner has had friends say, "Hey, Reiner, you ought to write those things down." And at eighty, he finally has. In this funny and engaging memoir, one of the best raconteurs on the planet recalls his life in show business in short comic takes. Reiner tells of how, after answering an ad for free acting classes on his brother Charlie's advice, he forsakes a budding career as a machinist for an acting career. In "Sidney Bechet and His Jazz Band Meet Franz Kafka," he captivates the legendary jazz man and his band with an unusual reading of The Metamorphosis, during a thunderstorm at a Catskills resort in 1942. Reiner also recalls the highlights of the succeeding decades: his first sweaty audition, impersonating a dog impersonating movie stars; his forays into the theater; his work on Your Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke Show during TV's golden days; and his long friendship and collaboration with Mel Brooks which gave birth to the Two Thousand Year Old Man. In "A Recipe to Remember," he recites a recipe for cream cheese cookies to a star-studded audience that includes Paul Newman, Leonard Bernstein, and Barbra Streisand. In "The Gourmet Eating Club," he gives an insider's take on the now-legendary group that included Mario Puzo, Joseph Heller, Zero Mostel, and other luminaries. Mary Tyler Moore, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Carson, Cary Grant, Dinah Shore, Ann Bancroft, Jean Renoir – the list goes on and on – also appear in what Reiner calls the "literary variety show" that captures the highs and lows of his extraordinary life. Through it all, Reiner displays the wit and warmth that have made him one of the most beloved figures in the entertainment business. This charming memoir will delight anyone who wants a behind-the-scenes look at five decades of Hollywood and television history.

When Ben kissed Angel the music in her soul moved over, but would love be enough? Her piano had been her life since she was four. Her only life.

In the late 1930s, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway wrote novels that won critical acclaim and popular success: The Grapes of Wrath, Native Son, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. All three writers were involved with the Left at the time, and that commitment informed their fiction. Milton Cohen examines their motives for involvement with the Left; their novels’ political themes; and why they separated from the Left after the novels were published. These writers were deeply conflicted about their political commitments, and Cohen explores the tensions that arose between politics and art, resulting in the abandonment of a political attachment.