Short Century

Baby boomers enjoyed the most benign period in human history: 50 years of relative peace, cheap energy, plentiful grain supply, and a warming climate due to the highest solar activity for 8,000 years. The party is over - prepare for the twilight of abundance.

In this engrossing account, Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and West.

Though best known for his classic novel of Edwardian childhood The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley was also a master of supernatural and macabre fiction, the best of which is collected in The Travelling Grave and Other Stories. This volume demonstrates Hartley's versatility, ranging from traditional ghost stories like "Feet Foremost" and "The Cotillon" to the wonderfully black humor of the horror masterpieces "The Travelling Grave" and "The Killing Bottle". Originally published in 1948 and long out of print, this collection features 12 of Hartley's best tales.

Julia is very short for her age, but by the end of the summer run of The Wizard of Oz, she'll realize how big she is inside, where it counts. She hasn't ever thought of herself as a performer, but when the wonderful director of Oz casts her as a Munchkin, she begins to see herself in a new way. As Julia becomes friendly with the poised and wise Olive and with her deeply artistic neighbor, Mrs. Chang, Julia's own sense of self as an artist grows.

Previous edition--#4, Amazon free love/romance! (Scotland, 1766) Edgar, Laird MacReiver, had never regretted his decision to wed Isobel, daughter of Clan Kilburn’s laird…until she bit his tongue and drank his blood. Will bondage and discipline tame the wild child of the infamous vampire clan? Or are some women impossible to tame? (short story; previously published as Bridling His Vampire by Ellora's Cave) WHAT OTHERS THOUGHT OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS Five stars..."engaging Scottish tale..." --Author Phylis Ann Warady (Amazon.com) Four stars... "A nice refreshing read...just enough sexy bits....

By Award-Winning Author Desperate widow Olivia accepts a position as a mail-order bride, yet refuses to accept any male’s proposal. Fighting demons of his own, Sheriff Stark sees a second chance for love. This widower vows to win the widow or die trying…and almost does. Olivia Rose Baker abandons her dying hometown in Massachusetts to become a mail-order bride in male-dominated Seattle, Washington. Her abusive husband died in the Civil War and left Olivia wary of marriage, so she hopes to take a teaching position rather than become a bride. But the man who purchased her ticket to ...

Percy Ellis Whittingham III didn’t believe in violence until he found himself bound and set afoot in the Black Rock desert in Nevada. Now this tenderfoot must use his wits to survive blistering heat, dehydration and starvation. Not to mention an Apache and the gunmen after him.

Avram Davidson was widely regarded as one of the most outstanding authors of short fantasy fiction in our time. This collection comprises his distinctive historical fantasies - tales of strange Mitteleurpoas, of magic in Victorian England, and on the American frontier. Here are "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire", "Traveller from an Antique Land", and "What Strange Stars and Skies"; here are dragons, cameras, and "The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach".

Unable to have children, spinster, Clementine Crowell, has immersed herself in the noble calling of placing street orphans in happy homes. After ten years riding the rails as an agent for the Gotham Foundling Asylum Society, Clementine is disheartened by evidence that many of the children she’s helped place are little more than slave labor. On a stopover in Nebraska, she’s pushed over the edge when farmers, Rollie Everhart and Boyd Hammond, get into a fistfight over who will get the older, stronger boy. Rollie came for an orphan boy to help him work his beleaguered farm. He needs help, ...

With a wide range of themes and styles, ranging from traditional ghost stories to contes cruels, black humor, tales of dark fantasy and surreal nightmare, and perhaps the best story about a ventriloquist and his dummy ever written, there are stories here to suit the tastes of any connoisseur of horror and weird fiction.

Welcome back to Mill Ridge for a special holiday treat! A woman hiding her beauty - An ex-ranger hiding his flaws - Can these two misfits find the spirit of Christmas this holiday or will they run in the opposite direction? Erin Steel knows the people of Mill Ridge can't stand her and she's not complaining. As the former representative from the Teachers Association, she knows moving to Mill Ridge will enable her to live her life in solitude. Hiding her beauty is one thing, but when a man with an eye patch draws her out of her shell, she is determined to avoid him at all costs. Former Texas ...

Carl Brooke, a scholar of ancient Near Eastern languages, now spends his twilight years chronicling the adventures of his youth as a leading member of the Agora Society, a society dedicated to the betterment of man. Fans of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot will enjoy Carl Brooke and his Agora Society in these five very different cases.

Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and authors whom listeners may be surprised to learn were "in the life", Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published.

Nellie’s beliefs about a woman’s place in society are challenged when she must find employment to save her family’s home, and unexpectedly encounters opposition by local businessmen. She is thrilled when Jacob McKenzie agrees to hire her for his furniture shop, but is wary of the stirrings he raises within her heart, feelings she thought long buried. Jacob McKenzie, a woodworker, is determined to make his furniture shop a success. With a painful past and no family nearby, he delves into his work as the one meaningful part of his life. When he meets and hires Nellie for his shop, he ...

With the talents on display the most difficult task is choosing only ten. Their virtuosity, their craft and ambition scare belie the difficulties that society places upon most women. Their words cannot be denied, their literary heritage is safe forever.

"The Shortstop" is a novel by Zane Grey a baseball insider about a 17 years old boy, who fights his way to success, and saves his mother and brother out of poverty. Excerpt from the book: "I am going to be a baseball player." He waited quietly for her refusal, her reproach, her arguments, ready to answer them one by one. "I won’t let you be a ball player." "Mother, since father left us to shift for ourselves I’ve been the head of the house. I never disobeyed you before, but now - I’ve thought it out. I’ve made my plan."

Mister Tidwell is a scholarly Oxford professor snatched out of his bookish world and pressed into service aboard Lord Nelson’s legendary British fleet - in the position of schoolmaster. Such is the life of the land-loving, seafaring Mister Tidwell, Gunner. Thrust into service at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Tidwell soon finds himself directly in the line of fire and way out of his depth. Fate has cast him into a terrible and terrifying spot - alone on deck to face the fearsome approach of a French man-o’-war.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the 18th Century and its male authors whose time has now come again.

This century is crammed full of talents that showcase an enviable array of stories and genres. Across a hundred years the short story develops, becomes yet more emboldened, more accessible to a wider audience as these female authors challenge the literary bastions.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.