Showing results by narrator "Lisa Flanagan" in All Categories

It is August in Rosetown, Indiana. Ten-year-old Flora is having a calm and busy summer filled with old friends and new projects, dear pets, and, of course, many hours at her favorite place: Wings and a Chair Used Books. It is her constant and her comfort. But change may be ahead for Wings and a Chair, and Flora is uneasy about what it will bring.

Live by the power of the moon and fulfill your true potential with this guided journal offering magical prompts for self-reflection and personal growth.

In the wake of her father's death, Rose Newlin finds solace in her work as a book restorer. Then, one rainy Connecticut afternoon, a struggling painter appears at her door. William Lomazzo brings with him a 16th-century treatise on art, which Rose quickly identifies as a palimpsest: a document written over a hidden diary that had purposely been scraped away. Yet the restoration sparks an unforeseen challenge when William - a married man - and Rose experience an instant, unspoken attraction.

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

In 1897, Odd Einar Eide returns home from a near-death experience in the Arctic only to discover his own funeral underway. His wife, Inger, stunned to see him alive, is slow to warm back up to him, having spent many sleepless nights convinced she had lost both him and their daughter, Thea, who traveled to America two years earlier but has yet to send even a single letter back to them in Hammerfest, their small Norwegian town at the top of the earth.

Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of 11. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen.

A Is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull, along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan’s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind....

Here is a celebration of the bizarre and beautiful, and a marriage of unlikely worlds. From a reverence of the dead to the sacrifices the living make to unspeakable gods, from clockwork dreams to tales of merciless revenge, Kiernan blurs the artificial lines of genre, and shows us a world where there is no division between the light and dark.

In 1895, a 22-year-old Italian seamstress named Maria Barbella was accused of murdering her lover, Domenico Cataldo, after he seduced her and broke his promise to marry her. Following a sensational trial filled with inept lawyers, dishonest reporters and editors, and a crooked judge repaying political favors, the illiterate immigrant became the first woman sentenced to the newly invented electric chair at Sing Sing, where she was also the first female prisoner. Enter Cora Slocomb, who launched the first campaign against the death penalty to save Maria.

Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea's warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers.

Hollywood, 1946. The war is over, and 18-year-old Clara Berg spends her days shelving reels as a vault girl at Silver Pacific Studios, with all her dreams pinned on getting a break in film editing. That and a real date with handsome yet unpredictable screenwriter Gil. But when she returns a reel of film to storage one night, Clara stumbles across the lifeless body of a woman in Vault 5. The costume, the makeup, the ash-blonde hair are unmistakable - it has to be Babe Bannon, A-list star. And it looks like murder.

Ava is a tribute to a legendary life. Authors Kendra Bean and Anthony Uzarowski take a closer look at the Academy Award-nominated actress' life and famous screen roles. They also shed new light on the creation and maintenance of her glamorous image, her marriages, and friendships with famous figures such as Ernest Hemingway, John Huston, and Tennessee Williams.

When a Harvard Architecture School superstar plunges off the balcony at a graduation party, the police see an accident, not foul play. But fellow-student Iris Reid knows that any jealous member of the ruling clique would have relished pushing him off. Twenty years later, a reunion is luring the same cast of characters back to Cambridge. The opening night dinner is being held in a Modernist house that Iris has designed. She hopes to untangle the events that led to her friend's death. But the murderer has other plans.

Ella is nearing 30, and not yet living the life she imagined. Her artistic ambitions as a student in Minnesota have given way to an unintended career in caregiving. One spring, Bryn - a retired carpenter - hires her to help him care for Jill, his wife of many years. As Ella is drawn ever deeper into the couple's household, she is profoundly moved by the tenderness Bryn shows toward Jill. Ella is startled by the yearning this awakens in her, one that complicates her feelings for her girlfriend, Alix, and causes her to look at relationships of all kinds in new ways.

From the bottom of a lake, deep in the Back Country, death takes a turn. Within a day of being struck down by Hansel, Anika has risen. The cruel, addictive infection of Marlene's poison has protected Anika from the finality of death. But the resurrection is not without a price. She has a new hunger, and its lure is irresistible. Anika sees suicide as the only option, until she learns of a new terror in the world, one related to the Witch of the North and which threatens the lives of her children.

The lives of writers can often best be understood through the eyes of those who nurtured them and made their work possible. In The Sweetest Fruits, these three women tell the story of their time with Lafcadio Hearn, a globetrotting writer best known for his books about Meiji-era Japan. In their own unorthodox ways, these women are also intrepid travelers and explorers. Their accounts witness Hearn's remarkable life but also seek to witness their own existence and luminous will to live unbounded by gender, race, and the mores of their time.

Letters to a Young Feminist is a visionary message from a leading feminist to the next generation of feminists, both women and men. Phyllis Chesler discusses basic aspects of feminism, explains feminism's relevance in a world that has taken it for granted and derided it and helps the next generation reclaim feminism for itself. Chesler examines sisterhood, sex, families, motherhood, work, feminist heroism and the economics of power, providing guidance to the generation to come.

It may seem that being a homemaker and climbing the corporate ladder are two mutually exclusive goals. But according to Julie-Anne Lutfi - wife, mother, and kick-ass corporate attorney - you don't have to choose. With the right attitude and strategies, you can achieve a successful career and a happy personal life.

Almost a year has passed since Anika and Gretel's horrifying night in an abandoned cannery in the Back Country and the subsequent beginning of their quest to the Old Country for answers to the mysteries of Orphism. But rumors are reaching the far shore that the evil Witch of the North, presumed dead since that night of terror, is alive and strong. And hunting again. But this time, no one is safe. Everyone Gretel loves is in danger, and she must summon a new level of power and conviction to end her family's nightmare forever.