It's the second decade of 21st Century Earth's 29th Configuration. Zack Carver, an alcoholic archeologist, discovers a craft, apparently built for flight, dating back amillion millennia. Carver teams up with Leslee Myles, an attorney, and a stunning, alien humanoid to battle the most malevolent forces in the universe, including bio-terrorists, shadow-military operatives, a renegade administration and Dax Wolf, a sociopath genius. However, the trio'smost daunting challenge is to outfox the Custodians-supreme beings who were born out of galactic cataclysm and whose sole purpose is to find civilizations that have reached their doom-point and then delete all evidence of their existence so that an entirely new life-form may emerge. As with Earth's previous 28 Configurations, the current 29th is rushing toward self-annihilation. Can Zack, Leslee and their otherworldly companion prevent the Custodians from activating the Null Quotient? Is it possible for the three heroes to convince the Nine Custodians to spare their blue-and-green planet and not revert it to the stardust that is the essential ingredient of the primordial slime?Philip Margo is a founding member of The Tokens, the vocal group that made the classic recording of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Mr. Margo has worked as a record producer with eleven gold records to his credit, is a songwriter, television producer and writer and a personal manager for celebrities. He is currently writing the sequel to his novel and lives in Beverly Hills, California with his wife of forty-three years, Abbie. They are the proud parents and grandparents of three children and seven grandchildren.

The story of a family divided by conflicting ambitions. Ann Lockly's realization that she no longer loves her husband, Silas, forces her to live her life in the way she feels is right for herself and best for her children.

Stories deal with childhood friends, settlers in Africa, home movies, infidelity, children, alcoholism, town life, and depression

Some readers will have already met GP Sue, her daughters Frankie and Lola, her husband Matthew, and their unexpected surprise addition to the family, Tom. In this delightful sequel, we are a year on... Sue is a GP, her busy life filled with demanding but lovable patients, demanding but lovable children, a husband, and a new dog. But she has just enough time to notice the rather gorgeous neighbour who walks his black lab in the park. Frankie is about to do her GCSEs, and is absolutely certain that no-one is as stressed as she is, nor as in love, nor as confused. Lola is eleven, and endearingly aware of those around her, including all her friends (and whether they are, or not), her Granny, her pain-in-the-neck but scrumptious new baby brother, and the fact that her Dad is spending a lot of time texting. And when she sneaks a peek at his calls, there are far too many to someone called Laura. Suddenly, Lola feels overburdened with guilt and responsibility, so just what is she to do? WHAT ABOUT ME, TOO? is a searingly honest account of life in a normal London household, of how perceptive children can be, and how the dismantling of a marriage can be both devasting and liberating at once. 'An uproarious read that will have women everywhere nodding in wry recognition' You Magazine 'Funny, touching and all too familiar' Woman & Home

Armchair Fiction presents extra large editions of classic science fiction double novels. The first novel is by sci-fi/fantasy master Frank Belknap Long, "Woman From Another Planet." This is the unusual and sensual story of David Loring, an artist, and his beautiful fiancée, Janice Reece. David loved Janice but the Martian Empire had a plan to entice David away from his beloved. With their plan for world domination at stake the Martians selected these two lovers' for their first attack. Together, David and Janice became involved in a highly emotional and physical conflict that broke through the barriers of outer space itself. Join renowned horror and sci-fi author Frank Belknap Long for a 1960 sci-fi tale he wrote for Chariot Books, a book company famous for their sexually provocative paperback novels. Although this tale is fairly tame by today's standards, it's interesting to see how Long weaves the elements of sex and science fiction together. The second novel is "Homecalling," by Judith Merril. The ship had crash landed on an alien world, burning to death the two parents of two small children on board. Although thoroughly jostled and bruised, Dee and her little brother Petey had somehow survived. Comprehending their horrible situation wasn't easy for a child of eight! But, gathering up all the courage she could muster, she set off exploring the area near the ship. What she found, was a large garden, and a lot of very big, ugly, and overly curious, bugs! Veteran science fiction author Judith Merril has presented here a fascinating and convincing picture of the thought-processes of a different species on a far-off world. It's a tale filled with unusual adventure and thought-provoking situations.

Stories deal with a mysterious child, a daydreamer, a mermaid, fortune telling, obsessive love, women writers, aliens, children and parents

PILGRIM STATE is a stunning memoir which tells the story of Dorothy Walker - equal parts beautiful, headstrong, brave and tragic. Her life is lovingly recreated by her daughter Jacqueline in homage to the remarkable woman she was. In the haunting opening pages, set in Pilgrim State mental facility in New York State in 1951, Dorothy has been forcibly sectioned and is battling to keep her children and her sanity. She will struggle all her life to retain both. Dorothy and her children return to Jamaica before finally making a home in post-Windrush London in the early 60s. Dorothy and her children face prejudice and loss but are bound by incredible love and their unique sense of family. This will prove to be Dorothys greatest gift. Stories like PILGRIM STATE dont come along that often. And when they do you recognise you have something very special. And when a voice is this strong and original, you stop to listen. PILGRIM STATE celebrates place, the life-affirming nature of family and the bonds between mothers and daughters that can never be broken. The story is haunting and powerful and speaks for generations of women, resonating long after the story ends. Jacqueline Walker has done her mother proud.

Gotz and Meyer, two noncommissioned SS officers, are entrusted with an assignment, "not a big one," but one that "requires efficiency." Their task is to transport five thousand women, children and elderly, one hundred at a time, from a concentration camp near Belgrade in a hermetically sealed truck, in which they are gassed. As Albahari's anonymous narrator, a teacher, obsessively pursues the truth of this systematic annihilation, he shares his findings with his students. Their school bus becomes that truck, and as the memory of Belgrade's lost Jewish souls is evoked, the students are bewildered. Their teacher, worn down as much by the task of making history come alive as by the toll his research has taken on him, is overwhelmed by the horror of his own imaginings. A harrowing, masterfully written story, full of compassion, irony, and lyricism.

A fast-moving and sometimes very funny story of three loving sisters who have separate lives but live together in one house, each in her own apartment. The story is divided into three parts: Sara, Perri, and Lucy. Two of the sisters are beautiful, the third one is not. Into their lives comes Carlo, a handsome Italian male au pair, hired to help out with Sara's children.

Boris Akunin has been hailed as Russia's answer to both Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his beloved Fandorin mystery series. After five years spent abroad building up a business as something of a private investigator, the handsome, stuttering Fandorin is back in Moscow--and in for a case that entangles him with the highest echelons of Romanov royalty. Grand Duke Georgii Alexandrovich arrives in Moscow with three of his children for the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, who is fated to become the last Emperor of Russia. During an afternoon stroll in the park, Georgii's daughter Xenia is dragged away by bandits, only to be rescued by an elegant gentleman and his Japanese sidekick. The passing heroes introduce themselves as Erast Petrovich Fandorin and Masa, but panic ensues when the party realizes that four-year-old Mikhail has been snatched in the confusion. A ransom letter arrives from an international criminal demanding the handover of the Count Orlov, an enormous diamond on the royal scepter which is due to play a part in the coronation. Can the gentleman detective find Mikhail in time? The Coronation is a fantastically entertaining and deftly plotted take on the hostage novel, not to be missed.

“Jewish stories,” writes Adam Biro, “resemble every people’s stories.” Yet at the same time there is no better way to understand the soul, history, millennial suffering, or, crucially, the joys of the Jewish people than through such tales—“There’s nothing,” writes Biro, “more revelatory of the Jewish being.” With Is It Good for the Jews? Biro offers a sequel to his acclaimed collection of stories Two Jews on a Train . Through twenty-nine tales—some new, some old, but all finely wrought and rich in humor—Biro spins stories of characters coping with the vicissitudes and reverses of daily life, while simultaneously painting a poignant portrait of a world of unassimilated Jewish life that has largely been lost to the years. From rabbis competing to see who is the most humble, to the father who uses suicide threats to pressure his children into visiting, to three men berated by the Almighty himself for playing poker, Biro populates his stories with memorable characters and absurd—yet familiar—situations, all related with a dry wit and spry prose style redolent of the long tradition of Jewish storytelling. A collection simultaneously of foibles and fables, adversity and affection, Is It Good for the Jews? reminds us that if in the beginning was the word, then we can surely be forgiven for expecting a punch line to follow one of these days.

Nun, Gimel, Hey, Shin Sara finds Chanukah celebrations boring. When her Tante Miriam arrives and gives her a Golden Dreydl, everything changes. The dreydl, an enchanted princess in disguise, takes Sara on a journey to a magical world. When the princess is taken by the Demon King, who possesses the power of the Tree of Life, it is Sara who must use her wit to save the princess and return her to her parents -- King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. A delightful holiday tale that weaves together threads of Jewish folklore and tradition with fantasy and humor.

A "shamelessly funny" ( Kirkus ) and utterly original new novel from Mark Leyner about a father and his intense and devout relationship with his daughter and with alcohol. An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capital of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater). The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite," when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters. Somehow emanating from the letters on an optometrist's eye chart, from karaoke screens in the bar, and from posters on a piazza that's the scene of phantasmagorical and unending mob wars, Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit relentlessly pulls the rug out from under itself, leaving you suspended in a state of perpetual exhilaration. Leyner, one of the most blazingly imaginative and influential writers of the last thirty years, has not only written his funniest novel, he's broken through to something entirely unprecedented. Imagine tripping on a hallucinogen made by an alien intelligence and then wanting to immediately call your dad (in this world or the next) and tell him that you love him--that's what reading Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit is like. It's a novel about the deep pleasures of reading and drinking, the tumultuous reign of a cabal of mystic mobsters, and, of course, the transcendent love of a father for his daughter. Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit is like nothing else you've ever read before.

"The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield is an often laugh-out-loud comedy of conflicting manners, values, and customs, set against the backdrop of a Russian immigrant family's struggle to assimilate, their newfound love of capitalism, and their insistent push for their children's tangible success. Emma Kaulfield escaped the Soviet Union in the 1980s when she was 10--hers was one of the last Jewish families to be let out. Now a gorgeous young woman, going to grad school at NYU, chaffing at the cultural restraints of her heritage, Emma is engaged to someone just like her--a handsome young Russian Jew--but then a steamy encounter with a stranger in a restaurant bathroom turns into a torrid love affair. She wrestles with what she knows she should do (career vs. art); who she should love (one of her own vs. the exotic temptation), to remain loyal to her family, her people--after all they have suffered--or cut ties and defy those who love her. The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield builds in power and suspense, easily becoming an all-night binge read, impossible to put down. Fishbeyn's debut novel is sexy, hilarious, heartbreaking, and breathtaking"--back cover.

Lois Ackerman watched her friends changing around her, and watched herself change as she sturggled to come to terms with her own intelligence in a time when intellignce and womanhood weren't supposed to mix; as she fell happily into the baffling predicaments of sex; and as she made her way nimbly around the compromises and capitulations that were claiming the brightest and best of her companions. This funny, touching novel radiates the aura of a fondly remembered, vanished age — a time not so innocent (and not so distant) as we might be tempted to believe.

"I have never read a text which goes even half as far as this one in expressing the particular poignancy which lay at the heart of the impressionist movement. I say this as an art critic. As a novelist I would simply like to pay my tribute to the mastery of language, portraiture and storytelling which Figes has now at her command." John Berger ?Reprinted for the first time in nearly 25 years, this shimmering short novel gives an extraordinary portrait of a day in the life of an artist at work and at home. In prose as luminous as the colors Monet is using to portray his beloved garden, Eva Figes guides us through the day, from the dawn ('midnight blueblack growing grey and misty') through midday ('the sun was high now...shrinking what little shadow remained, fading colours, the pink rambler roses on the fence by the railway track looked almost white, and the grass had turned a tired yellow') to evening ('the tide of shadows rising as the sunset glow faded outside and the room grew dark.'). Monet's wife, Alice, grieving for a lost daughter; a living daughter, Germaine, fretting that she will not be able to marry the young man she loves; their friend, the abbe, eating and drinking with them, observing the essential faith of the painter's art; two children, playing, closest to Monet in the freshness and certainty of their vision; all experiencing in very different ways the richness of the light that Monet works unceasingly to pin down in his last, great paintings.

In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the lives of the Jews of New York's Lower East Side. The Open Cage collects sixteen of her best stories and excerpts from her autobiography to illustrate her extraordinary storytelling gift as well as her personal experience as an immigrant woman. Along with her novel Bread Givers, the work gathered here constitutes her enduring achievement. Included are "The Fat of the Land," Children of Loneliness," America and I," The Lost 'Beautifulness, '" and other stories; vignettes from Red Ribbon on a White Horse: My Story; and four remarkable stories of old age. The introduction by Historian Alice Kessler-Harris and the afterword by Yezierska's daughter and biographer, Louise Levitas Henriksen, place the writings in a rich and valuable context.

Five short stories which describe what it was like to grow up in Jerusalem in the first half of the twentieth century.

"Judith Arcana's remarkable feat in Hello. This is Jane. is to paint, tile by tile, a complex mosaic of compelling linked stories- children's playgrounds and adult tattoo parlors, ill-advised lovers and underground abortion activists. In the mainstream and on the edges, you'll feel the urgency of the struggle for reproductive justice as you turn these pages." -Cindy Cooper, Founding Director of Words of Choice and The Reproductive Freedom Festival, Judith Arcana has taught and written about motherhood and reproductive justice for decades. The prose and poetry of Our Mothers' Daughters, Every Mother's Son, and What if your mother are feminist classics. The stories in this new collection, rooted in her experience as a Jane in Chicago's pre-Roe v. Wade underground abortion service, were written as the United States has moved relentlessly into constraining motherhood and denying reproductive justice. By necessity, these stories reach from the past into the future, offering history and hope. "I'm profoundly grateful to Judith Arcana for writing these vital, electrifying stories. With abortion rights in America being stripped away-state by state, clinic by clinic-we need to hear from those who've fought this battle before. Arcana is a Jane; her work in the pre-Roe abortion underground has provide the seeds for her fiction, stories rooted in essential history to spark action in our terrifying present." -Leni Zumas, Author of Red Clocks