A sister's doll doesn't take kindly to insults, and proves it.A puppet maker believes his creations are out to get him.A mother can't stand her son's new favorite toy… and for good reason.In Michael Crane's latest collection of terrifying and darkly comic drabbles, you'll find out why Playtime is only fun for those with vicious intentions. In these 30 100-word stories you'll run into deranged toys with old scores to settle, homicidal sociopaths and other unapologetic ...

TomKat: Double Impact has been described as Jack Reacher meets Hanna with a touch of Thin Man savoir vivre tossed in. A story that had to be told. A love story of tremendous impact. A story about a small group of people willing to risk everything to stop the most serious threat to Western Civilization in modern history. There comes a time when a citizen must fulfill the constitution's requirements if the government fails to meet its obligation. TomKat: Double Impact is one of these stories...

"We had a look around, through periscopes, at the remains of recent fighting. The dead were on top, and we, the living, were below the general ground-level. The usual order of life and death were reversed."So wrote Alec Riley in his account of an ordinary soldier in an extraordinary conflict, the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915.A signaller with the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, Riley was well placed to serve as an eyewitness to the sharp end of the campaign, being with the in...

Charles Watkins sailed for the Dardanelles with the 1/6th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915. War, he said, was a welcome escape from hard labour in a Lancashire cotton mill. Fifty years later, he wrote his memoir, a 'hotch-potch of Gallipoli memories.'"In perpetrating this literary outrage, some apology is due. I could give many plausible excuses for recording moments of this disastrous campaign, but the real truth is the selfish pleasure I find in recalling one crowded hour o...

An increasing number of Australians want to be assured that the food and fibre being produced on this continent have been grown and harvested in an ecologically sustainable way. Ecologically sustainable farming conserves the array of species that are integral to key ecological processes such as pollination, seed dispersal, natural pest control and the decomposition of waste. Wildlife Conservation in Farm Landscapes communicates new scientific information about best practice ways to integrate ...

Harold Hart Crane was born on the 21st July 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio.Crane was drawn to literature at an early age, becoming a voracious reader and pursuing self-education rather than attach himself to a more formal college education, although he did attend East High School in 1913. His developing love of poetry was nurtured with the works of the English Romantics and the French Symbolists, as well as near contemporary American poets.Much of his youth was spent shuttling...

Stephen Crane was born 1st November, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey and was the eighth surviving child out of fourteen. Incredibly he began writing at the age of four and was published several times by the age of sixteen.Crane only began a full-time education when he was nine but quickly mastered the grades needed to catch up and move forward. Although educated at Lafayette and Syracuse he had little interest in completing university and was keener to move on to a career, declaring col...

Harold Hart Crane was born on the 21st July 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio.Crane was drawn to literature at an early age, becoming a voracious reader and pursuing self-education rather than attach himself to a more formal college education, although he did attend East High School in 1913. His developing love of poetry was nurtured with the works of the English Romantics and the French Symbolists, as well as near contemporary American poets.Much of his youth was spent shuttling...

The horror of war repeats itself from one generation to the next. That’s why modern readers will empathize with the struggle of the Civil War soldiers depicted in this gritty short story by Stephen Crane, The Upturned Face. As they scramble to give their comrade a proper burial while the war rages on around them, their feelings of confusion and inadequacy could not be clearer. The story paints a stark and enduring contrast between war’s tender sadness and it’s relentless brutality...

If the past came knocking, would you open the door?Abigail has spent twenty years holding her life together with stubborn determination and strong tea. But her small cafe is struggling, her daughter is about to leave for university, and the future feels suddenly uncertain.Then the man she thought she’d never see again walks back into her life.Jack Chance was once her best friend. The boy she trusted with everything. The person she’s been in love wit...

The Balkan Wars, the Rwanda genocide, and the crimes against humanity in Cambodia and Sierra Leone spurred the creation of international criminal tribunals to bring the perpetrators of unimaginable atrocities to justice. When Richard Goldstone, David Crane, Robert Petit, and Luis Moreno-Ocampo received the call - each set out on a unique quest to build an international criminal tribunal and launch its first prosecutions. Never before have the founding International Prosecutors told the beh...

How can environmental regulators use information on 48-hour toxicity tests to predict the effects of a few minutes of pollution? Or, at the other extreme, what is the relevance of 96-hour toxicity data for organisms that may have been exposed to a pollutant for six months or more? Time to event methods are the key to answering these types of questi