Maximilian Funk is the new kid in school, and not much of a baseball fan, a deadly combination. He has to figure out a way to impress Molly Kinsman, the best pitcher in the city and the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. One little lie couldn't hurt, could it?This short story from the collection Guys Read: The Sports Pages is a winner.

CJ just blew the half-mile relay for his track team, but the race on his mind is the one that's happening off the field in this short story from all-star author Jacqueline Woodson.This short story from the collection Guys Read: The Sports Pages is a winner.

Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness . . . but can it really be stoppedMaster storyteller Diana Wynne Jones serves up twists and turns, introduces Querida, Derk, Blade, and Shona and a remarkable cast of wizards, soldiers, kings, dragons, and griffins, and mixes in a lively dash of humor. With all the ingredients of high fantasy, this unforgettable novel will delight fans old and new.

From the critically acclaimed author of Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have) and the Magic in Manhattan series comes a fun short story about taking the plunge on the high seas, where not everything is what it seems.Kristin is ready to take the next step. . . . The only problem is she hasn't found the right guy to take it with her. That's why she agreed to go on the ominously named Cruise to Nowhere with her best friend, Liz. There are plenty of cute guys on the ship to choose from if only Kristin can work up the nerve—and stop worrying about the reports in the tabloids that passengers on cruises have been mysteriously disappearing and that someone suspects it has to do with . . . vampires.Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.

Believing is seeing, as the title of this outstanding collection of fantasies proclaims. And "reading is seeing more than you've ever imagined when in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Diana Wynne Jones. Here are seven tales—seven doorways to bizarre, yet strangely familiar worlds—to transport one and all. In these worlds are a child born to an ordered society but preordained to spread Dissolution . . . a girl who so loves the sun that she renounces her humanity for eternity . . . a cat and a boy, held captive by an evil magician until they can find a bigger magic of their own . . . a woman imprisoned in a strange country dominated by three ravenous wolves . . . and many other characters and stories just as exceptional. These richly drawn, razor-sharp stories showcase the skills and sheer narrative power of one of the most esteemed fantasy writers of our time.

They're in the revenge business!Jess and Frank's father has stopped their allowances for four whole months! That means that Jess can't go anywhere or do anything with her friends. Worse yet, Frank owes money to Buster Knell, the bully. How can Jess and Frank earn some cash—fast?By starting a business, Own Back, Ltd. It specializes in revenge, which every kid needs to seek at some time, they figure. Most don't have the courage themselves. But Jess and Frank do—for a price!Lots of clients show up. But Jess and Frank soon discover that the revenge business can be pretty complicated, especially when it turns out that there's another one in town—owned by Biddy Iremonger, the fiercely competitive local witch!

Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones presents ariveting collection of unpredictable tales, including:A cat tells how the kindhearted wizard she owns is suddenly called upon to defeat a horrific Beast.When Anne has mumps, her drawings come to life, and she must protect her home from them.Four children become involved in the intrigue surrounding an innocent prince, an evil count, and a brave outlaw.These fifteen stories and one novella will enchant, startle, and surprise!

It been over a year since all the adults disappeared. Gone. In the time since every person over the age of fourteen disappeared from the town of Perdido Beach, California, countless battles have been fought: battles against hunger and lies and plague, and epic battles of good against evil. Light , Michael Grant sixth and final book in the New York Times bestselling Gone series creates a masterful, arresting conclusion to life in the FAYZ. And now, the gaiaphage has been reborn as Diana malicious mutant daughter, Gaia. Gaia is endlessly hungry for destruction. She yearns to conquer her nemesis, Little Pete, and then bend the entire world to her warped will. As long-standing enemies become allies, secrets are revealed and unexpected sacrifices are made. Will their attempts to save themselves and one another matter in the end, or will the kids of Perdido Beach perish in this final power struggle?

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys best friends are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.

Deep in an abandoned, shattered castle, an old man of the Old Magic muttered almost forgotten words. His purpose -- to create out of the insubstance of the air, from a shimmering of light and a fluttering of shadows. that most wonderous of spells, a Shaping. A Shaping in the form of a, young man who will be sent east on the road the old was to old to travel. To right the wrongs of a long-forgotten wizard war, and call new wars into being. Here is the long-awaited major new novel from one of the brightest stars in the fantasy and science fiction firmament.C.J.Cherryh's haunting story of the wizard Mauryl, kingmaker for a thousand years of Men, and Tristen, fated to sow distrust between a prince and his father being. A tale as deep as legend and a intimate as love, it tells of a battle beyond Time, in which all Destiny turns on the wheel of an old man's ambition, a young man's innocence, and the unkept promised of a king to come.

Sixteen years have passed since the dramatic events of Fortress of Dragons, and Cefwyn, king at last, must rebuild his devastated kingdom. The embattled ruler is aided by his powerful friend Tristen Sihhe and two surprising allies in a struggle he must win: his two young sons. Elfwyn Aswydd, the bastard son of Cefwyn and the sorceress Tarien Aswydd, has spent years unaware of his parentage, yet now it is his time to emerge and claim the gifted birthright he's been denied for so long. But a dark, sinister magic has crept close to the young man and seized hold of the kingdom. Nothing is as it seems, and the bonds of family strain against the powerful forces that would see them undone. It is up to an embattled four—Elfwyn; his half brother, Aewyn Marhanen; Cefwyn; and Tristen—to unmask and destroy the dark forces that threaten to unhinge the king's peaceful and fragile reign.

A young woman finds $200,000 in cash in a cardboard box delivered to her door. A man inherits a fortune from a father who died "penniless." Amy Parkens and Ryan Duffy have never met, but they are about to, as each discovers that found money can be a godsend--or a nightmare. Amy Parkens is a struggling single mother forced to abandon a career in astronomy for a practical computer job. She feels condemned to long hours, low pay, and no time to spend with her daughter. Then an unmarked package arrives. There's no card, no note, no return address. Someone has simply sent her a small fortune. Amy has no idea who--or why. She only knows her dead-end life has changed forever. Though she longs to keep the cash, Amy fears a mistake, a setup, or even a possible connection to her mother's mysterious suicide twenty years earlier. She has to find the source. But when she tries to look her gift horse in the mouth, someone snatches the money away--quickly, violently. Ryan Duffy is a decent, responsible man, a small-town physician from the plains of southeastern Colorado. Like Amy, Ryan has recently found unexpected wealth. His father's estate is worth more than Ryan could ever have imagined--millions more. Truth is, Dad was a hardworking electrician for forty-years. But in his attic, he hid a fortune. The Duffy family has been guarding this secret. Was it extortion, burglary, or some other shocking crimeAnd now that Ryan has the money, what should he doPainful as it is, Ryan is drawn to his father's dark past. Amy, on the same desperate quest for answers, soon crosses Ryan's path. Their search takes them through a labyrinth of deception and blackmail, leading to a man of unfathomable power. Yet the past is not what it appears. Heinous crimes touched their families years ago. Amy and Ryan must solve a treacherous puzzle to learn why the true victims never came forward, why the real wrongdoers went unpunished, and why certain people would kill to keep their secrets.

A strange and compelling unkillable woman decides to leave home, and the story begins. Fleur Pillager takes her mother's name, Four Souls, for strength and walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her reservation. But revenge is never simple, and she quickly finds her intentions complicated by her own dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her. The two narrators of Four Souls are from utterly different worlds. Nanapush, a "smart man and a fool," is both Fleur's savior and her conscience. He tells Fleur's story and tells his own. He would like a calm and discriminating love with his sweetheart, Margaret. He is old and would like to face death with his love beside him. Instead the two find themselves battling out their last years. When the childhood nemesis of Nanapush appears and casts his eye toward Margaret, Nanapush acts out an absurd revenge of his own and nearly ends up destroying everything. The other narrator, Polly Elizabeth Gheen, is a pretentious and vulnerable upper-crust fringe element, a hanger-on in a wealthy Minneapolis family, a woman aware of her precarious hold on those around her. To her own great surprise the entrance of Fleur Pillager into her household and her life effects a transformation she could never have predicted. In the world of interconnected novels by Louise Erdrich, Four Souls is most closely linked to Tracks. All these works continue and elaborate the intricate story of life on a reservation peopled by saints and false saints, heroes and sinners, clever fools and tenacious women. Four Souls reminds us of the deep spirituality and the ordinary humanity of this world, and is as beautiful and lyrical as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

The past's blood stains the presentThe opportunity of a lifetime awaits archaeologist EmmaFielding in the Berkshire foothills of Western Massachusetts: the chance to study the eighteenth-century diary of Margaret Chandler, the accused witch and murderess whose home Emma excavated only months before. However, the three other Shrewsbury Foundation fellows she must share the premises with are a disturbingly odd bunch, and before too long one of them is dead.But Emma can find no solace in the bleak beauty of thesurrounding wilderness, for there are dark secrets encoded in Madam Chandler's writings, and shocking parallels between an ancient slaying and the strange, brutal demise of her colleague.When the killer strikes again, Emma realizes her own life isat stake. And suddenly there is no choice left: she is driven to investigate bloody crimes past and present -- before her own death becomes a footnote in a chilling, three-centuries-old story.

Hailed by Utne Reader as "a visionary" and the San Francisco Chronicle as "the X-rated intellectual," Susie Bright is indisputably the sexpert of our times. Now, in a frank and intimate look at our own erotic experience, she delves into the most personal aspects of sex and shows us how our sexual passion can be a source of creativity and inspiration. By her own example and insight, she helps us to discover our own erotic story and sexual philosophy. How do talking, reading, and writing about sex affect your actual sex life What are the real differences between men's and women's sense of the eroticWhy is it so threatening to consciously address sexual desire in the first placeIs there a line to be drawn in erotic creativity--can you go too farIs the best erotic expression soulfulHow can articulate erotic expression make us better lovers and, more important, better peopleBright concludes with an "erotic manifesto" that is a call for everyone to reclaim sexuality, cast off sexual shame, overcome repression, and become true sexual beings. She offers up "rules to live by," which include debunking your own fantasy life, appreciating the simplest erotic gesture, and taking inspiration from everyone but instruction from no one. Bright's work celebrates the joy of sexual creativity--and the very uniqueness of each individual's sense of the erotic. Susie Bright is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including The Best American Erotica series, the first three editions of Herotica, Sexwise, and The Sexual State of the Union. She has written for Esquire, Playboy, Village Voice, New York Times Book Review, and is a regular columnist for the on-line magazine Salon. She lectures and performs at theaters and universities nationwide and currently lives in Northern California. How do you really feel about sex"I want to cut through all the labels and politics, and reveal what I've learned about sex - what has been transformational for me as a lover, a parent, a daughter, and an artist. I want to argue that sexuality is the soul of the creative process, and that erotic expression of any kind is a personal revolution." -- from Full Exposure Bestselling author and erotic pioneer Susie Bright boldly crosses our culture's most private boundary--our personal eroticism--and reveals the ways in which individual sexual expression has the power to inspire, challenge, and transform all aspects of our lives. Bright explores some of the most complex questions about sexuality today, including: how our emotional and sexual lives intertwine, how we can come clean about our true desire, and what sexual expression teaches us about our bodies. She offers an erotic manifesto of seventeen straightforward guidelines for gaining erotic freedom.

It's a tough life for witch Rachel Morgan, sexy, independent bounty hunter, prowling the darkest shadows of downtown Cincinnati for criminal creatures of the night.She can handle the leather-clad vamps and even tangle with a cunning demon or two. But a serial killer who feeds on the experts in the most dangerous kind of black magic is definitely pressing the limits.Confronting an ancient, implacable evil is more than just child's play -- and this time, Rachel will be lucky to escape with her very soul.

In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet—but very "American"—triumph. "You are born here, they will not hurt you"—so the gravedigger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true. In The Gravedigger's Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys.

Two brothers, as different as night and day: one, charming and ruthless, buys his way into Harvard, Wall Street, and high society; the other brother remains by his mother's side and makes his way to the top without the influence of money or prestige.Raised in separate worlds, these brothers are bound by a bitter rivalry for riches and power, but mostly, for the exciting, wildly captivating woman they fight all their lives to possess, a woman whose passion for one destroys her love for the other.Their story consumes an American century, spanning decades of splendor, struggle, upheaval, and war. It's an absorbing saga of innocent dreams and green desire corrupted by gilded temptation.

Nora and Blanche are conjoined twins. Nora is strong, funny, and deeply independent, thirsting for love and adventure. Blanche, by contrast, has been asleep for twenty years. Sick of carrying her sister's dead weight, Nora wants her other half gone for good—a desire that takes her from San Francisco to London in search of the Unity Foundation, a mysterious organization that promises to make two one. But once in England, Nora's past begins to surface in surprising and disturbing ways, pushing her to the brink of insanity and forcing her to question her own—and Blanche's—grip on the truth.

One of the most renowned figures in science fiction, C.J. Cherryh has been enthralling audiences for nearly thirty years with rich and complex novels. Now at the peak of her career, this three-time Hugo Award winner launches her most ambitious work in decades, Hammerfall, part of a far-ranging series, The Gene Wars, set in an entirely new universe scarred by the most vicious of future weaponry, nanotechnology. In this brilliant novel -- possibly Cherryh's masterwork -- the fate of billions has come down to a confrontation between two profoundly alien cultures on a single desert planet."The mad shall be searched out and given to the Ila's messengers. No man shall conceal madness in his wife, or his son, or his daughter, or his father. Every one must be delivered up." -- The Book of the Ila's Au'itMarak has suffered the madness his entire life. He is a prince and warrior, strong and shrewd and expert in the ways of the desert covering his planet. In the service of his father, he has dedicated his life to overthrowing the Ila, the mysterious eternal dictator of his world. For years he has successfully hidden the visions that plague him -- voices pulling him eastward, calling Marak, Marak, Marak, amid mind-twisting visions of a silver tower. But when his secret is discovered, Marak is betrayed by his own father and forced to march in an endless caravan with the rest of his world's madmen to the Ila's city of Oburan.Instead of death, Marak finds in Oburan his destiny, and the promise of life -- if he can survive what is surely a suicidal mission. The Ila wants him to discover the source of the voices and visions that afflict the mad. Despite the danger sof the hostile desert, tensions within the caravan, and his own excruciating doubts, Marak miraculously reaches his goal -- only to be given another, even more impossible mission by the strange people in the towers.According to these beings who look like him yet act differently than anyone he has ever known, Marak has a slim chance to save his world's people from the wrath of Ila's enemies. But to do so, he must convince them all -- warring tribes, villagers, priests, young and old, as well as the Ila herself -- to follow him on an epic trek across the burning desert before the hammer of the Ila's foes falls from the heavens above.Written with deceptive simplicity and lyricism, this riveting, fast-paced epic of war, love, and survival in a brave new world marks a major achievement from the masterful C.J. Cherryh.

There's no peace for Mason Hawke from the ghosts of his past. A drifter and a loner, he's not looking for trouble when he rides into Wyoming Territory –– but it's waiting for him nonetheless. Coming to the rescue of a wealthy landowner's daughter who was kidnapped by a pair of inept outlaws, Hawke finds himself an unlikely hero in a town called Green River. But his unsought celebrity has earned him some powerful enemies, including a land–hungry lady with a crooked official in her pocket and a ruthless killer on a leash. Justice, it seems, is an illusion in this place where fraud and fortune hunting dance with cold–blooded murder. But all that is about to change in a brutal hail of gunfire now that Hawke has come to play.