English Hearing

Danny is shy and quiet and doesn’t have many friends. He doesn’t like to share his musical talents, afraid that people will laugh. His story is a great way for parents to talk with children about self-esteem and self-confidence.

Billy is a wonderful story of learning to love your gifts even in the face of peer pressure. Author K Wendt brings to life Susie’s friend Billy as he learns to be proud of his special talents.

Written for children seven years old and younger, Susie is the tale of one father-and-daughter love for baseball with a bit of self-assurance and self-esteem rolled in to give parents a fun way to start important discussions with their children.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Aggie is looking forward to her yearly ritual of curling up on the couch in front of the television while eating ice cream. However, this year, her friends Betty and Roger have talked Aggie into spending an evening out on the town. Then, to her surprise, Officer Tom Wood had also asked her out. Wearing a very uncomfortable, slinky red dress Betty picked out for her and a ruby red pocketbook to match, Aggie stumbles into a dangerous Valentine’s Day she’ll never forget.

A week before Christmas, Aggie bumps into Officer Tom Wood, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, at a new exclusive restaurant. Unfortunately, Tom is not dining alone. A beautiful young woman accompanies him. Tom introduces her as an old friend. Even though Aggie plays it off as not being jealous, her friends Betty and Roger want to learn more about this mysterious woman. Will this beautiful old friend ruin Aggie's festive mood?

It's St. Patrick's Day, and Aggie, Betty, and Roger are celebrating at an Irish pub in Palm Springs when Betty's leprechaun love interest drops dead. Could it be murder? Join Aggie and friends as they embark on a celebration they won't soon forget.

Buck Johnson, along with his slow-moving and slow-thinking sidekick Skeeter Evans, currently plies his trade as a dragon wrangler on Terul and is busting out a bunch of dracs for the repulsive Terullian Karposh. But when an unruly Red Kraken throws Buck, events take an unexpected turn.

A dragon drive is a grueling and chancy undertaking - far tougher than trailing longhorns to Kansas City. So when Buck, Snort, and Skeeter approach the drive's end at Skrintax, they're looking for a big paycheck and a little fun. But the Terullian Karposh reappears and throws some obstacles in their path. Still, after some ingenious planning on bootleg vendor Quincy Poindexter's part, it all works out in the end.

Buck, Snort, and Skeeter are still trailing a herd of dragons to Skrintax in hopes of selling them for enough to get off Terul and maybe get better pay, easier work, and something to drink. But the obstacles keep mounting - including a tcheka-smoking interlude, hungry dragons, insolent Terullians, and... well, you'll see.

Buck Johnson: The Dragon Drive? is the second short story in the Buck Johnson series. This time Buck and Skeeter and Snort are trailing a herd of dragons to Skrintax. If everything goes as planned, they'll sell the dragons for a good price and finally be able to get off Terul. But things seldom go as planned, especially when dragons are involved.

She had a family to consider, and she had done he right thing. I did it, she told herself, for the good of society. Then she called out to her husband: "Honey, come in here and take a look at this." The man put on his best bright face and strolled into the kitchen. He put his hand on his wife's shoulder and gave her a whisper of a kiss on top of her head. He had always loved the smell of her hair, but now – now, it smelled more like disinfectant and alcohol than the tropical scent he loved.

They give you just enough to keep you comfortable and quiet...if you're willing to put up all the burdensome regulations and intrusions into your private. And most people do. But is it worth it? At long last, William Oudeis didn't think so. But then it cost him everything. "SlumberJoy, a global matress-manufacturing company, had its largest US plant in Doulosville, Oklahoma, where William Oudeis lived. And William worked there, had for the past 30 years. He was a forklift operator. Out of a hopeless sense of irony, his co-workers called him 'Billy the Kid.'"

Two Weird Tales of the Dystopian Present and Future is a two-story bundle - two prescient short stories that treat of what is and what may be. Both scenarios will likely come to pass, and neither will be very pleasant. So be warned...be prepared...and watch.

Just a few years down the road, the new health-care plan is firmly entrenched. A new bill, Ethical Assessment of End-of Life Care, has also been enacted into law. And the authorities are ruthlessly implementing it throughout the land - no more medical resources wasted on the defective and dying, equitable distribution of quality medical care, no more lingering half-lives sustained by expensive machinery. The "thanatos solution" has arrived. But there are, as always, unexpected ramifications, especially for those who wanted it.

We all think we want 20/20 vision, don't we? But in the metaphysical and psychological realms we often prefer our accustomed blindness. It's far more comfortable. Here are two stories that take a close, 20/20 look at these things.

"It was that most loathsome of all things: an uncanny, routine-disrupting inconvenience and anomaly." That's what, as the result of an unforeseen event, unexpectedly invades and upsets Elmore Wiggins' safely ordered life. For Elmore had never reckoned on the paranormal or the preternatural. But now that he's had his accident, he is "seeing" certain events in the near future - including his own (although he doesn't know it yet).

When you're a fast-failing organic farmer in New Hampshire, with a known termagant for a wife, an event like this - digging up a human hand in your potato patch - can be devastating to your small profits when the news gets out, especially since that ancient hand has peculiar "qualities." This discovery sets off a chain of inexorable events that lead Leonard Johnson to rash action resulting in a terrible kind of justice. A balance must be restored and a lesson learned.

The original Ferris wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Roughly 280 million people visit theme parks every year and take approximately 1.7 billion rides. And there are slightly fewer than 10 Ferris wheel-related deaths each year. So the odds are generally in your favor. But Cody Jackson wasn't aware of any of this.

Two Tales of Horror and the Paranormal is a two-story bundle. In it you'll see that things aren't always as they seem - that there's a lot more to some humdrum, everyday lives than the people living them ever dared to imagine. And the implications are, well, sometimes frightening...

Eve is a nobody - just a dirty, mentally challenged homeless woman who stands on a street corner in her rags and "prophesies." But she knows exactly what she possesses - what most of those who pity her don't have. Eve refuses to take advantage of the social programs and for a good reason. Eve has an important lesson to teach Andrew Thurston, Director of the Social Equity and Rehabilitation Department, who is determined to help her. It's a lesson he learns the hard way.