In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...

A unit of the Seventh Cavalry is on a mission over Afghanistan when their plane is hit by something. The soldiers bail out of the crippled plane, but when the thirteen men and women reach the ground, they are not in Afghanistan. Not only are they four thousand miles from their original destination but it appears they have descended two thousand years into the past where primitive forces fight each other with swords and arrows. The platoon is thrown...

The Union ambassador is missing. More than a hundred years after the McClellan-Davis Accords ended the Civil War, tensions are still high between the Union and the Confederacy. But recent trade agreements and personnel exchanges have made both sides hope that good relations can be restored. That is, until the Union ambassador vanishes one night from the embassy in Perdition. Two agents are sent to investigate his disappearance. Delilah Thorn, a video...

In a world forever altered by the Great Flood-a catastrophic event triggered by nuclear fallout and fueled by rampant greed and corruption-society has rebuilt itself aboard ships like The Tempest, where the old world's hierarchies have been replaced by a strict matriarchal order. Men serve as servants, bound by a code that demands their obedience and restricts their power. Women and children, on the other hand, hold the reins of leadership, guided...

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Book Review Favorite Book of the Year Since her girlhood, Prudence Winship has gazed across the tidal straits from her home in Brooklyn to the city of Manhattan and yearned to bridge the distance. Now, established as the owner of the enormously successful gin distillery she inherited from her father, she can begin to realize her dream. Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn,...

The year is 1929 and the German republic, born out of the ashes of the First World War, looks to the future with optimism. After a turbulent beginning the republic has become the economic powerhouse of Europe once more with Berlin as the cultural centre of the continent. Many call it a golden age.However, the ghosts of the republic?s formation refuse to be laid to rest. On the right, a jealous Prince awaits an opportunity to reign as Kaiser in a restored...

A terrible curse strikes the White House: its occupants, whoever they may be, will not serve for very long...Alex Richards' imaginative and witty homage to Tom Anderson's 'The Curse of Maggie' takes the concept stateside, with hilarious results. After all, everything's bigger in America.

In this Flash Fiction story, a 60-year-old hitchhiker gets hit by a car in Wichita Falls, Texas in July 1995. After receiving treatment in the local hospital, he decides to enter a talent contest to help out a ten-year-old girl, Melanie, when he learns her father is dying. What happens next has the town and the media buzzing.If you like alternative fiction, you will enjoy this short-short story.

It is 1914 and war has just broken out in Europe. When a British agent disappears in Constantinople, new recruit Eugenia Cranston is sent to the capital of the Byzantine Empire to investigate his death. Soon she is drawn into plots and conspiracies, hunting a British traitor and working hard to prevent Europe?s oldest empire becoming part of this very modern war. Being constantly undercover and dealing with incompetence weighs heavily on Eugenia,...

A free sampler of books written by award-winning journalist and editor Don Canaan