Eric Starling shot to fame landing a two-seater bi-plane on a Calais street in darkness. From this inauspicious start he became one of that select breed who pioneered commercial flying in Scotland. This is his story.

Originally published: London: Electric Monkey, 2017.

Ira DeSoto doesnat see himself as a hero. A hero is fearless, and flawless. He never makes mistakes. His lip never trembles. He never stutters, stumbles, trips or falls. A hero is always in control. He never, ever, ever says, aUm.a Consequently, Ira has no idea why the fingers of God have grabbed him by the seat of the pants and dragged him in such an unexpected direction, placing him at the center of a mission that lies within the purview of heroes. Ira thinks he knows his limitations. His Carinite brother Stuart never fails to remind him. Even so, he finds himself fighting toe to toe with ruthless, heartless powerful people for no other reason than he knows what is right, and what one must do when confronted with the exploitation of the innocent. More than that, he knows that his own life isnat as important as those whom he has been chosen to protect.

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone. Obviously Starling is for ActionScript 3 developers, especially those involved in 2D game development; of course you will need to have a basic understanding of ActionScript 3. By its design (lightweight, flexible and simple), Starling can be used also be used for other use cases like UI programming. That said, everything is designed to be as intuitive as possible, so any Java™ or .Net™ developer will get the hang of it quickly as well.

Darling is a small isolated town, made up of small-town people who have small-town kids who rarely leave; it is the last place anyone would expect to find a visitor from another world, but that is what Starling Rust claims to be, and the town-folk, led by their corrupt mayor, are terrified--the Wilding sisters, Delta and Bee, are determined to protect Starling from the town's escalating xenophobia but the growing feelings between Starling and Delta may prove to be the greatest threat of all.

Princess Lily thought of fairies the way some girls think of "bad boys." If a fairy had shown up at Castle Starling wearing a motorcycle jacket and a disrespect for authority, Princess Lily would have been head over heels before he spoke a word with his pouty, mutinous mouth. So when two fairies ask for help escaping their master, Prince Alexander, who has come to court her, Lily is forced to rescue herself along with them. Fleeing to Queen Persephone's halfway castle for Lost Girls, Lily follows the cryptic advice of a magical Book, befriends a dragon with a knight bodyguard, and hides from the bounty-hunting gang of princes chasing her hand in marriage. As The Knightly Times' coverage of her flight gets more and more sensational, Lily starts to doubt her choices. How can she sort out her own opinion from the tabloids, gossip, and fairy tales?

June is physically and emotionally abused by her stepmother, and the only person June feels safe telling is her friend Blister, but when a shocking tragedy occurs June finds herself trapped, potentially forever.