Baby Ging Ching had been cranky most of the night. She was a little over one year old and usually slept through the night. What could be wrong? As Ng Shee comforted the child in her arms, she felt the new life stirring within her. She didn't mind living in the cramped room behind the Fook Wo Tong store, but it was difficult to keep the little girl quiet. She stared out of the window into the dimness of the pre-dawn, gently rocking the baby in her arms. Another movement rocked her whole body. Then a chunk of the plaster ceiling fell just behind her.The loud sound woke Hoo Chun, "Can't you keep that baby under control?" he yelled from his makeshift bed.

Ng Shee was confused, "It wasn't the baby!" she said just as the building began to tremble even harder.

In one jump Hoo Chun reached the window, "It's an earthquake. We must leave." Grabbing the bag with important papers, he started for the door in his night clothes. "Come, wife! Bring the child."

Ava Hart thought she lived a normal life working the night shift as a labor and delivery doctor, but she discovers that her life is anything but normal. As a result of a traumatic childhood, Ava's psyche has been split, creating alternate personalities that are ruining her life. In order to gain control over her life, Ava has to dig deep into her memories to discover what happened to her as a child. What will she learn, and can she face the truth without losing herself completely?

Fleeing from justice across the ancient dust-oceans of Mars, Brant had no way of knowing that he was running toward the most fantastic adventure any man had ever lived!

Manas Roy Chowdhuri was an unknown writer who was never exposed as one. Even so, he had a dream to publish a collection of stories dealing with subject matters very commonly visible in our society. The reader may experience all these stories in their daily lives, occurring all around them.

As always, society is dynamic and constantly changing. These twelve stories reflect our society from many different angles. This author was hopeful that acculturation and modernization might ultimately have a positive influence on our society.

A bold and beautiful compilation of short stories, unsent letters, and confessions, Sand Nigga is Bula Barua's much-anticipated first published work. Bula's heartfelt writing is captivating, humorous, frank, subtle, and courageous. The book's title story is a sharply poignant tale, which addresses imposed racism by older generations upon their unwilling and younger counterparts. 'Dear Auntie X - You can choose to be racist against Africans and Muslims, if you'd like. That is your prerogative. I still love you. However, when I was 15 years old and I received that racist note wedged in my locker, I chose to take my focus off the color of a man's skin, and instead focus on the content of his character. I chose to believe in the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and live by the great words of our own Mahatma Gandhi.' Bula's finely tuned ear for combining irony and humor with compassion is very telling. With each story, she creates believable and honest experiences in ordinary situations, which become extraordinary. The range of her talent and imagination is broad and yet focused. She has the unique ability to artistically create the worlds of the immigrant and the native, the man and the woman, the priest and the sermon, and the trillion-dollar corporations who seemingly rule the world. Sand Nigga is an art piece, which symbolizes the loves, losses, and many triumphs of the human spirit.

Minnesota is known for frigid weather, thousands of lakes, and Scandinavian humor. But in this anthology of ten short stories, J. L. Larson shows a different side of the state via unique tales of conflict, adventure, and intrigue that often transport characters outside it borders.

In July of 1970, at a benign looking intersection in the middle of Minnesota farmland, a fateful mishap occurs yet again What is it about this seemingly nondescript junction that makes it such a repetitive and bloody deathtrap? Is it the terrain, the weather, the drivers-or a combination of these and maybe a few other factors? In another story, a paper company executive and his wife must cope with an empty nest and the loss of his job. He's doing fine ... until he receives a strange, late-night call about his self-centered, malicious nemesis from the old job. In tale after tale, Larson showcases eclectic characters who embark on adventures that include a disaster on a popular lake, an emotional confrontation in a university classroom, the mysterious travel exploits experienced by a young man with his uncle, and the recurring, dramatic impact on a young teen as his life moves forward following a seemingly insignificant encounter.

"The Accident at Sanborn Corners and Other Minnesota Short Stories" is an entertaining compilation of situations and themes that illustrate how various characters cope with the unexpected in life.

grandmother. About The Book Gems of the imagination flow effortlessly from the pen of Fran Edelstein in this powerful collection of short stories. Composed of seven tales, Set to Music takes you on a dramatic journey into the very depths of the human heart.

Spanning six countries and two continents, the title short story, "Set to Music," tells of Anne, a pianist faced with an overwhelming obstacle that only love-and perhaps even a miracle-can transcend. An island resort provides a quiet retreat for a parent's soul-searching in "Head Over Heart," while "Deedu" is a tender and engaging story about a special friendship between a child and a Russian immigrant.

Sweeping away time, two World War II survivors uniquely relive their past as they meet again in "Lilacs," and life and death in a hospital morgue create a curious dialogue about how we as humans navigate this world in "The Paper Boat." In "The Road Ahead," doubts and fears turn to triumphs for a group of actors encountering a major detour as they head for the Eiffel Tower, while "The Mantilla" tells the riveting story of how a lace mantilla spreads mischief.

Vivid, heartfelt, and beautifully written, Set to Music creates an emotional tapestry of the human soul.

The book is a combinations of life moving stories, poetry and heart warming quotations. It is written in a way to enticed you into reflection and emotional soul searching. Some of those stories could be your friend and acquaintance or even a family member. But I wrote them in a way to stimulate soul searching, respect without judgement and mutual understanding.

This edition collects and prints all of Oscar Wilde's short fiction, principally the three collections of tales published in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The first of these was The Happy Prince (1888), a volume which was aimed at the children's market, and which capitalized on the growing popularity of fairy stories in nineteenth-century Britain. This edition then prints Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891), Wilde's volume of short tales satirizing the manners and morals of London's elite in the last decades of the nineteenth century-those 'upper ten thousand', as Max Beerbohm later called them. In many ways these stories anticipate both the themes and the devices of Wilde's later and highly successful society comedies, including Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. This edition also includes Wilde's second volume of fairy stories, A House of Pomegranates (1891); this volume comprised tales written for adults, and contained Decadent and what can be seen as highly sexualized themes. The textual and printing history of each of these volumes is described and explored in detail. The substantial commentary provides a full critical annotation of each story. Wilde also wrote stories which were not collected, most importantly a jeu d'esprit on the identity of the addressee of Shakespeare's Sonnets-'The Portrait of Mr W.H.', a piece which appeared in periodical form in the late 1880s. Wilde expanded his story, turning it into a hybrid of fiction and criticism, and in the process used it as a vehicle to describe his view of the relationship-physical, artistic, and spiritual-between Shakespeare and a (fictitious) boy-actor in his company, the 'Mr W.H.' of the title and of the dedication of the first printing of Shakespeare's Sonnets. This revised and expanded piece, which remained unpublished in Wilde's lifetime, represents his most sustained and eloquent exploration of male-male desire. The edition prints in full for the first time Wilde's manuscript of that story. Like the other works it prints, the edition also contains full critical annotation which documents Wilde's reading on Renaissance philosophy and theatre history. The lengthy introduction describes in detail Wilde's metamorphosis from a jobbing journalist, whose work often appeared anonymously in the penny press of the 1880s, to an accomplished writer of fiction.