author Eliza Sherlock

Rapture

In these twelve stories, a brain injured young man rebels against his diminished life, a doorman at one of London’s exclusive hotels impersonates a deceased client, a retired banker tries to renew his importance by sculpting and erecting an enormous spire in his front yard, a young wife discovers the betrayal going on under her own roof, and in the concluding story railing against her daughter’s self-destructive life and wasted potential, the grieving mother longs to recapture the past.  The characters in this short story collection are possessed by varying degrees of obsession and madness.  The loneliness, longing and emptiness that lead to the search for meaning and connection in the midst of tumultuous personal change are achieved in unusual ways.  From diverse walks of life and settings, young and old, the characters’ every love relationship, every betrayal tests their assumptions and reshapes the future. 

author Eliza Sherlock

Rapture

( this is only a part of the first story )

Top Man

The windows in their flat were so fogged by condensation Emma and Jonathan couldn’t see out - the hot August day and boiling vegetables competed with weak central air for ascendancy. Jonathan had suggested salad for Sunday lunch but she couldn’t bring herself to serve Martin such an insubstantial meal. She checked her watch; he was due in half an hour, just enough time to mash the potatoes, set the table and change.

When the doorbell rang at noon, Emma buzzed him in. She listened to the familiar voices in the entryway, Jonathan’s low and calm, Martin’s voluble. As they entered the kitchen, Martin brusquely kissed her cheek and handed over the weekly bunch of flowers, a mix of white carnations and daisies, dyed strangely blue, which she felt compelled to admire extravagantly while arranging them in a vase. Last week’s bunch, wilted and tilting at different angles, splayed in a pickle jar on the kitchen counter.

Jonathan offered Martin a glass of sherry, and Emma, hurt by her brother’s coldness, began to dress the salad. Martin leaned against the kitchen counter and ignoring her, recounted his week. Jonathan murmured encouraging replies. Listening, she knew that though he resented Jonathan, he hoped to impress him, and she forgave Martin’s attempt to exile her for finding a new man. Conversation with Martin never an easy proposition, guiltily, she smiled at Jonathan, receiving in return a look she couldn’t interpret.

They moved from the kitchen through the dining area and into the living room, all three spaces interconnecting without walls. Cramped, they sat in a row on the sofa, Emma in the middle. She picked her cuticles, trying to think of something Martin would like to talk about. An avid moviegoer, he loved to discuss plots, and often gave them a blow by blow account, which drove Jonathan mad.

“Seen any movies this week?” she said.

He turned to her, his mood now improved.

“I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” He looked at Jonathan to gauge his reaction.

“Part two hundred and seventy one,” Jonathan said rolling his eyes.

Martin laughed.

“You have to admit, there’s been no more successful story,” Emma said.

“Do you mind if I put on some music?” Martin asked, kneeling before the CD player.

“Whatever you’d like,” Emma said.

Jonathan offered refills and Emma joined him in the kitchen to serve. She dug him in the ribs with her elbow at the stove, feeling conspicuous with only the dining area and the music to shield them. She wanted Jonathan to embrace Martin, too, to know and love him as she did, though without the perspective of the good years, she knew how hard he found it.

“Please,” she whispered, “be gentle with him.”

 “I am trying. If only it wasn’t every Sunday.” 

“He looks up to you.”

“Little does he know.”

She smiled. “You didn’t know him then. He could have been just like you, a professor of English. He was so smart. And,” she gulped, “it breaks my heart that he thinks Harry Potter is something you’d like to talk about.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “The man is impossible to pin down. There are so many versions I have to take into account.”

“Sshh. We all have versions; don’t make it sound like he alone has changed.” 

Jonathan gave her a hug. “I promise I’ll do better.”

She served the salad followed by dinner. Emma forced herself to eat the hot food and Jonathan, perspiring, ate with little appetite. But Martin relished his meal, attacking each item individually - first his peas followed by carrots, potatoes, and finally chicken. She knew from childhood he ate in order of least preferred.

After lunch they sat in the living room with bowls of ice cream on their laps.

Jonathan, ashamed now of his callous attitude, rose gamely to the responsibility of getting to know Martin better.

“What do you like to read?” he said, as Martin shuffled through the CDs, scattered on the floor.

“Oh, I like most anything. You may find this strange,” he said, taking in Jonathan’s receptive smile, “but what I like most is reading maps.”

“Old maps?”

“I like new maps best.”

“Martin has mastered the whole of London while it’s all I can do to get to work and back,” Emma said, grateful for Jonathan’s about-face. She squeezed his hand.

“Not so,” Martin said. “But I can surely try.”

“It’s a noble aim. London, though I’ve lived here for a long while, is not easy to navigate,” Jonathan said.

Martin looked up and smiled. “Well, the important thing is I know how to get here.”

Emma and Jonathan exchanged glances.

“Martin, you know that nothing stays the same,” Emma said.

“Of course I do.”

In the face of his optimism, she found herself unable to go on.

“How would you feel if we were related, old chap?” Jonathan said, coming to the rescue.

Martin’s face suffused with the creep of a blush at the shock of this. For a long moment, he didn’t reply. “Well, that’d be fine,” he said at last. He scrambled to his feet, stuffing a couple of CDs into the rucksack he’d brought the flowers in. “You don’t mind if I borrow these, do you? I’ll bring them back next time.”

“Of course I don’t,” Emma said with a sigh.

She was proud of Martin’s independence, the way he worked a full-time job and lived in a flat from which he walked to work every day, living at the height of his capability - beyond her parents’ wildest dreams. Substituted by the Sunday ritual, the relationship she craved with her younger brother, though unfair, even foolish in its impossibility, didn’t stop her wishful thinking, the lunches not only filling Martin’s emptiness but attempting to fill hers. The past remained too close, reminding her not only of their loss but of their fleeting happiness. Martin once her closest friend, their love in some way unassailable, had vanished. Now that boy was gone and Martin had taken his place.

She walked him to the Sloane Square tube station.

“Is it true,” he said outside the entrance, “that you’re going to marry Jonathan?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it won’t change things between us. I’ll be married, that’s all.”

“When?” he said.

“We’re going to put the flat on the market first. We plan to list within the month. And once it’s sold and we’ve bought a house we’ll get married.”

He looked at her, trying to retain his composure. “He’s a good bloke.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“He finds me a chore, I think, even though I try my hardest.”

“That’s just not true,” she said firmly. “You don’t know each other yet, that’s all.”

“If you say so.”

Martin, she thought, despite his limitations, could not be taken in that easily.

Though he made the trip weekly, he consulted the map, placing his finger on the first connection. Looking up he smiled wryly, as though making fun of himself.

“Bye, Emma.” His smile enigmatic, not that of a man who had suffered a traumatic brain injury, his normal appearance a trick life played on her. She hugged him with too much feeling and he pulled away impatiently. In an attempt to recover, she stooped to examine her hemline and smoothed her cotton dress.

“Well, bye then, Martin,” she said. “Same time next week?”

“Right-o,” he said briskly. He glanced at his watch, kissed her and then began his descent into the station, lifting his arm to wave without looking back.

author Therese A. Kraemer

Masquerade

Monte Bolstridge, the third, last in line to carry on the family name must marry in six months or his father’s
fortune will go to the servants. Overhead by a butler, he and the other servants plot to keep the young man from
 marrying. Their scheme falls on the shoulders of a servant whose daughter is coming from America. Cynthia Pratt
travels to London to see her mother. No longer a skinny, ugly duckling but a matured beautiful swan, she’s
 disguised into an overweight, plain Jane. When he discovers her disguise, Monte’s outraged but realizes he
loved her before discovering her beauty and has to court her into his arms.
Editors Note:
Many characters in this book have accents and or different speech patterns. The author has attempted to illustrate this phonically. These are not spelling errors.

author Felicity Harley

Portraits and Landscapes

Portraits and Landscapes

is an eclectic collection of short stories about all of us.  The first stories in the collection are about failed romance and how many of us constantly and painfully search for connection in our lives.  Other stories take us across the globe, and speak in a variety of voices, which give us brief glimpses of individuals who struggle to make sense of our world.   The human beings described in these stories will make you laugh, weep and sometimes they’ll make you throw up your hands in utter disbelief.

author James Bryron Love

Demon Soup

You find yourself in an alien world. You don't have any memory of how you got there. All you know is that you live in fear of the other inhabitants. Some are vicious and others benign. All you have left are the memories you brought with you. Surviving becomes the only thing you have to look forward to.
Demons are everywhere but they may be just as confused as you

author Therese A. Kraemer

Defiant Heart

Tory, an orphan at the age of ten is taken under the wing of a duchess as servant but the Duchess has her own motives.
Her teenage son, Lyndon Annicott protests and tries everything to make her runaway but Tory is just as strong willed.

Maybe she is the daughter of a Duke or perhaps a princess , after all an orphan has to dream.
Sometimes you find someone that truly loves you but it is rare for it to happen twice.
Years later, Tory has grown into a beautiful woman, who inherited everything that should have been his. Although bitter fighting erupts between them over the estate, Lyndon is attracted to Tory as she is to him.

author James Bryron Love

SciFi Anthology 1

A collection of 7 short stories about twisted worlds. Life is portrayed in the best and the worst that the universe has to offer.

Seven different stories that deal with human and non human alike
Is greed the same everywhere
Are all politicians ruthless
The happy endings only seem to happen in myths

When the heroes don't survive you know the universe is in for a rough ride

author Elizabeth Collins

Live Assertively Love Your Life

This book targets adults who need more skills to be assertive or who have the skills but feel guilty or uncomfortable being assertive.
It contains a range of strategies and exercises to help people be assertive.
A number of scenarios about situations where people are aggressive or passive rather than assertive are given to illustrate these behaviors.
Examples are then given to illustrate assertive responses instead.

author Therese A. Kraemer

Timeless Love

Book Five in the Time Travellers Series

Adam Bryant born on April 9th, 1865, grew up in New York City as a private practicing doctor.
One day his brother was shot and his mother suggests that he use the watch that had transported her to the
past to take his brother to the future in order to save his life. There his brother is operated on by a
beautiful, young Creole doctor who he immediately becomes attracted to. Dannie La Pierre tries
hard to fight off the attraction she feels for the handsome doctor from the Big Apple.
Adam takes Dannie back to the eighteen hundreds to meet his parents and before they return to 2014,
he and Dannie are mixed up in abduction, gangsters and more time traveling.
The story continues in sequel, Keeper of My Heart.
Editors Note:
Many characters in this book have accents and or different speech patterns. The author has attempted to illustrate this phonically. These are not spelling errors.