Short Family

Joshua and Daniel Duncan love Halloween. The unhealthy snacks, gory horror films, and corny decorations warm their teenage hearts like no other holiday ever could. However, on this Halloween night, someone special is at their front door. Someone they've known their whole lives. There's always room for family.

A high-security luxury housing estate in the Thames Valley is the setting for a disturbing outbreak of violence in this compelling novella from the acclaimed author of ‘Cocaine Nights’ and ‘Super-Cannes’. Pangbourne Village housing estate is exclusive, expensive and protected from the outside world by the very latest in security systems. It should be the perfect place to bring up a child.

The story before the story...What happened before A Family Affair began? Best-selling author Mary Campisi answers this question in her new Park Bench series. These short stories make the perfect park-bench listen and are named after her signature park-bench covers.

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Willa Cather is considered to be one of the best chroniclers of pioneer life in the 20th century. She had a long and distinguished career writing essays, poems, short stories, and novels. This story is a powerful example of a frequent theme: the haunting, sometimes painful, contrast between city and country life.

A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the "baby years", whether you're having one or not.

Few winter stories are more affecting than Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Written in 1848, and strictly speaking a New Year's Eve story, it showed so clearly then, as it does now, that the Christmas holidays do not represent fireside, food, and presents for all. This story never fails to move, yet it somehow avoids serious sentimentality.

Many writers used Christmas as a backdrop for their stories: among them none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This delightful Sherlock Holmes story is one of the first that he authored, appearing in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is, fittingly, a wild goose chase through London!

These twelve short stories dive deep into imaginary worlds where everyday life is marked and marred by war. They speak of wounded love, captured women, confinement, talismans, borders, wolves. They give expression to the voices of Afghan women who would like to change the fate of people like Nâzboo, Khorshid, Hamid and so many others. Originally published by Éditions Le Soupirail in 2019, this collection was the first volume of short stories by Afghan women to appear in France.

Starting in the proper East Coast city of Dover, Delaware, then at age seven being thrust onto Fox Island, a small secluded island in southern Puget Sound, Daniel relays his humorously clumsy adventures in this wonderful autobiography. Although he wrote this book for his children and grandchildren, it is a roller-coaster ride that you will enjoy and never want to leave.

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

You can always rely on your father to protect you. Who do you turn to when you need protecting from him?

Henry “Digger” Diller has never been anyone’s MVP - he’s the guy who gets called up from jayvee soccer when the star player gets hurt and who volunteers to take his crush’s best friend to the prom. But Digger is pretty happy with life in the middle of Warfield High’s pecking order. Then, he strikes up a friendship with Carlos, a new student from Honduras, who faces his own set of difficulties beyond the drama of adolescent life.

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines.

Vladimir has always been the oddball among the Frazier kids. With his love for reptiles, gothic appearance, and devil-may-care attitude, he can be easily separated from the rest of the Frazier bunch. At 22, he is standing on solid ground and trying to create a life of his own. However, it does get lonely sometimes. He is young, but knows his days of partying and sleeping around cannot last forever. He is slowly running out of options when it comes to the female population of Tyler, Texas. Until Carrisa Abbott walks into the pet store where Vladimir works.

Viciria is an actual person who lived. She is real and her son, Marcus Nonius Balbus, actually became the first citizen of Herculaneum. Before this wealthy resort city was buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, she was known as The Witch. At title well-earned for sure. But why? What could happen in her life that could change such a gentle creature? Find out in the accompanying short story to Threatened Loyalties also by J F Ridgley.

With their wedding less than a week away, Jeremy and Tiffy discover they’re not on the same page when it comes to raising their son and dealing with the challenges that come their way. In true Friessen fashion, when Jeremy tries to establish ground rules, he soon learns that Tiffy isn’t the kind of woman anyone can tell what to do, and his strong personality could have her calling off the wedding and walking the other way.

Girl meets boy on the worst night of her life, when she's decided to take a drastic step that there is no going back from. Girl is used to sitting by, letting fate deal cruel hand after cruel hand to good people with soft hearts, and she's had enough. Girl thinks it's time to fight back against fate and against men who aren't careful with all the precious things a woman in love has to give him. Fate shows girl who's boss and turns her world and plans upside down without breaking a sweat.

The audiobook is divided into units on self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem; friendship; love and meaningful relationships; finding meaning, purpose, and direction in life; giving, sharing, and making a difference; encouragement and success; and coping with pressure, stress, and tough issues. Real teens reviewed this work, and the authors completed it with the collaborative feedback of those teens.

Hawthorne approached the Romantic notion of the ability of science to destroy art (or beauty) in the form of fictive "horror stories" of biological research out of control. This story is the best of that group. A devoted scientist marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his attempts to remove it via his scientific skills, thus rendering his bride perfect.