Pulling up to the gated community known as Belladonna—nestled comfortably in the foothills of South Carolina—one is confronted by a logo featuring a wide-eyed Cleopatra surrounded by the legendary poisonous plant. It’s the sort of place that has a hammerlock on the American Dream, featuring a championship golf course, prizewinning lawns, Tuscan architecture, compulsory three-car garages, faux cobblestone sidewalks, and an Assisted Living Center.Belladonna’s inhabitants are a colorf...

It was a true delight to select these stories and compile an anthology of work from around the world. Covering themes as wide as death to dancing, magic to mystery, nostalgia to neurosis, time travel to traveling through time, and science fiction to society, these stories venture outward and inward to form a permanent collection built by the temporary gathering of talent. The authors came together, submitted these stories, and have separated back onto their respective paths. What is left i...

Equal is Equal, Fair is Fairis about Vermont's push during the last 25 years for equity in education, marriage benefits for same-sex couples, and health care services. Why Vermont, and why success in the first two areas but not the third? What's the history behind these movements? Key is Vermont's constitution, the least amended of any state constitution in the country. It contains a vision for equity that's created through citizens' equal access to society's privileges and benefi...

A quirky assortment of materialistic suburbanites trying to supersize and spend their way to happinessAn affectionate satire of the culture of self-indulgence, The Final Days of Great American Shopping exposes the American obsessions with money, mass marketing, and material objects. In Belladonna, a gated subdivision in upstate South Carolina, readers meet acolorful cast of characters doing their best to buy happiness in a series of sixteen closely linked ...

If the short story collections of John Cheever and Flannery O'Connor had a love child, it would be The Beasts of Belladonna. Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, Gilbert Allen's collection of fifteen linked stories explores every corner of the suburbanized foothills of South Carolina. Belladonna--a gated community with Tuscan architectural covenants--boasts a championship golf course, compulsory three-car garages, faux cobblestone sidewalks, and a lively assortment of cats, dogs, birds...

Gathering Auld Licht Idylls, A Window in Thrums, and The Little Minister, this illustrated trilogy presents Barrie's imagined Scottish weaving town of Thrums with affectionate precision and comic irony. Its sketches and narrative episodes explore Calvinist "Auld Licht" piety, domestic ritual, poverty, gossip, courtship, and communal memory, moving from episodic local-color portraiture toward the fuller romance and social drama of The Little Minister. Written in a supple blend of Scots-infl...

J. M. Barrie's 'Complete Peter Pan Books, Novels, Plays, Short Stories, Essays & Autobiography' is a comprehensive collection that showcases the full range of the author's literary talents. From the beloved tale of Peter Pan to his other novels, plays, and essays, this compilation offers readers a deep dive into Barrie's imaginative world. His writing style is marked by whimsy, nostalgia, and a keen understanding of the complexities of childhood, making his works timeless classics in the l...

J. M. Barrie's 'The Complete Thrums Trilogy' is a collection of three captivating works, including 'Auld Licht Idylls,' 'A Window in Thrums,' and 'The Little Minister.' Set in the fictional Scottish village of Thrums, these literary gems offer readers a glimpse into the quaint and idyllic life of the town's inhabitants. Barrie's writing style is characterized by its vivid descriptions, well-developed characters, and emotionally charged storytelling, making the trilogy a true masterpiece of...

J. M. BARRIE Ultimate Collection: 90+ Titles in one Volume (Illustrated) gathers the remarkable breadth of Barrie's imagination: plays, novels, stories, sketches, and essays that range from the wistful enchantments of Peter Pan to the sharp social observation of his Scottish fiction. Read together, these works reveal a writer of delicate irony, theatrical instinct, and emotional ambiguity, poised between late-Victorian sentiment and modern psychological unease. Born in Kirriemuir, Scotland...

Urban Fantasy meets Future NoirOnce people have messed with a man's DNA, what can he do but become a private eye? And when a gorgeous thing like Elizabeth Savoy comes gliding into his office and blinks her big baby blues, what can PI Mike Heller do but say sure—even though he sees just what she is, and knows what a bad idea it could be? Not that Heller has a clue just how bad. But by the time he suspects that Lizzie's troubles might bring the end of life as he knows it, he's already...

A lady’s secret threatens her land—and reunites her with the man she loves—in this historical Scottish romance by the New York Times bestselling author.Years ago, Lady Annys MacQueen deceived her own people in order to keep her land safe. But now, with Glencullaich on the brink of war, a cruel kinsman threatens to expose the truth. To shield her young son from the sword and her people from devastation, Annys must once again turn to the one man she could ne...

Robert McCammon, Norman Prentiss, Shawntelle Madison, Graham Masterton, and Richard Christian Matheson scale new heights of horror, suspense, and grimmest fantasy in Dark Screams: Volume Two, from Brian James Freeman and Richard Chizmar of the renowned Cemetery Dance Publications.THE DEEP END by Robert McCammonEveryone thinks the drowning death of Neil Calder in the local swimming pool was a tragic accident. Only his father knows better. Now, on the...