The Grinch hated Christmas ! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all. May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
The Black Dog of Depression has descended over the adults of Dublin. Uncles are losing their businesses, dads won’t get out of bed, mothers no longer smile at their children. Siblings Raymond and Gloria have had enough and set out one night with one goal in mind: to stop the Black Dog, whatever it takes. In a chase through the streets and parks and beaches of Dublin, the children run after th…
This is a book that I wrote when I was heartbroken. I’d imagine that’s how many books get made. We lose something we love and it seems natural to try to reconstruct it mulling over memories, sorting through missteps, bleeding our expired hopes and habits onto paper, hoping some part of what we’ve loved will still be salvageable. If only I can make this pain pretty, we tell ourselves,…
A medieval Middle-Eastern literary epic which tells the story of Scheherazade, a Sassanid Queen, who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, the King, to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stor…
Gurney: What was the face value of the policy? Gorham: One thousand dollars. Gurney: Do you know how much money Morlock owed at the time of his wife's death? Gorham: Certainly not. Gurney: But you do know that he was heavily in debt and that he was being hounded by his creditors. * * * The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Direct testimony of George Gorham. I…
We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were …
Despite intermittent upsurges of climate change scepticism among conservative politicians and journalists in the Anglosphere, there is now a near consensus among climate scientists – and indeed amongmost other scientists – that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Rec…
We also enjoy reading, watching, or listening to stories that we know are not true, but whose characters, places, and events spark our imagination and allow us to experience different worlds as if they were our own. These are the kind of stories we call ‘fiction.’ Many people like to watch series or soap operas on TV. And even more people like to watch movies, whether…
Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenzaâ€â€¦
Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe. One terrible morning, Jude and her sisters see their parents murdered in front of them. The fearsome assassin abducts all three girls and brings them to the world of Faerie. Mocked …