These Strange & Magic Things: Short Stories

These Strange & Magic Things: Short Stories
Author: Peter M. Ball
Publisher: Brain Jar Press
Total Pages: 216
Release:
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

For fans of the weird and enchanting, Peter M Ball returns with a third collection of speculative fiction stories that dance along the borders between horror, fantasy, and science fiction. These Strange and Magic Things collects fifteen tales showcasing why he’s among the finest writers of the strange and fantastic working in Australia right now. A zombie survival kit started as a private joke takes on new meaning in a failing marriage. A trip to the moon goes wrong when dinosaurs attack the anti-grav train in transit. The difficulties of high school prove much worse when Mike learns he’s a werewolf. A drunken party trick goes wrong when a boy with bats in his head decides to show everyone he can catch a bullet with is bare hands. Hit man to the supernatural, Keith Murphy, comes up against a demon who draws power from the wrestling ring. He’s too tough to gun down and impervious to magic, which means Keith’s only got one option - step up, play by the rules of the ring, and accept the possibility he might just be the local hero the Gold Coast needs. In These Strange and Magic Things Ball spins magic, horror, and pop culture together into an unforgettable collection of tales featuring rogue jinn, uncanny rock bands, magic bees, flying crocodiles, laundromat ghosts, haunted coins, cyberpunk gangs, and lost loves.

Growing Up NASCAR

Growing Up NASCAR
Author: Humpy Wheeler
Publisher: Motorbooks
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1610600398

In 1949, when Humpy Wheeler was 11, he attended the very first NASCAR race. For the next ten years, he spent as much time in the pits as he could, and came to know many of the sport’s pioneers. Eventually, Wheeler began promoting races at Carolina tracks such as Concord Speedway, Robinwood Speedway, and Starlight Speedway. Racing was so rough back then he kept a gun by his side when he paid the purse, and often used his fists to keep order. By the time Wheeler retired in 2008, he had helped NASCAR become the six-billion-dollar-a-year industry it is today. Filled with photographs from Wheeler's personal archives, Growing up NASCAR presents the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at NASCAR from the consumate insider.

Echoes

Echoes
Author: Margaret Adkins
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1462835864

This book is about my life from the age of two years on.I wrote this book so that those that come after me understand what life was like growing in a family of seven children with a perfact stay at home mother and a father that was a stranger to his children. The depression years and living in a small town effected out lives until the 1040s. Our struggles and rewards were about equal.I hope those who read my stories can at some point identify with the characters and events and laugh or cry as the story effects them.

The Informationist

The Informationist
Author: Taylor Stevens
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-03-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307717119

Governments pay her. Criminals fear her. Nobody sees her coming. Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information—expensive information—working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she's never looked back. Until now. A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget. The first book in the Vanessa Michael Munroe series, gripping, ingenious, and impeccably paced, The Informationist marks the arrival or a thrilling new talent. “Stevens’s blazingly brilliant debut introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander….Thriller fans will eagerly await the sequel to this high-octane page-turner.” —Publishers Weekly, starred, boxed review

Red Dirt

Red Dirt
Author: E.M. Reapy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-06-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1784974668

A group of young Irish migrants leave a man called Hopper for dead on an outback road in Australia. They barely know him; no-one will miss him in their world of hostels, wild nights on cheap wine and grinding work on isolated farms. In this powerful novel about the discovery of responsibility, three young people – Fiona, Murph and Hopper – flee the collapse of their country's economy. In the heat and endless spaces of Australia they try to escape their past, but impulsive cruelty, shame and guilt drag them down, and it is easy to make terrible choices.

Going Viral

Going Viral
Author: Brent Coker
Publisher: Pearson UK
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1292087951

The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed. Everyone wants their voice to be heard above the noise of other brands. But how do you get your messages to spread far and wide? It’s not just down to luck. If you want to make an impact, you need to make your marketing messages magnetic and, in this fascinating book, Brent Coker will show you how. Packed full of practical techniques, expert research and real-life examples, you’ll quickly uncover the nine secrets of irresistible marketing that will work whatever the size of your company. Discover the science behind the world’s most viral ideas, learn how to create messages that people can’t resist sharing and effortlessly build your brand.

Hair On Fire...In the 50s and 60s

Hair On Fire...In the 50s and 60s
Author: P. T. "Doc" Carney
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2018-04-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1732208417

Joe Ruff is an exceptional young man, raised in rural Mississippi, who is conflicted by events in his emotional childhood, but who goes on to experience the hair-raising thrill of flight, motorcycle racing, and challenges with a learned distrust of women and inexperience with romance.

Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yourself on the Road

Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yourself on the Road
Author: Zoe Farrell
Publisher: Balboa Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-12-01
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1982296178

Travelling Australia in a vintage Volkswagen Kombi van with a cranky old couple changes your life (and could change the world) for the better. This is a hybrid book of standalone funny stories of life on the road in a campervan, interlaced with a journey of self-reflection and discovery. The journey leads to eight simple steps of self-change that can have dramatic positive effects on your life: and the world! It concludes with an experiment to prove that individual happiness can have collective consequences. This book aims to entice the unsuspecting spiritual rookie, under the guise of a light-hearted read, shrewdly planting the seed for personal growth along the way. Read, laugh, learn, and grow. Let’s change the world for the better, one person at a time.

NASCAR Legends

NASCAR Legends
Author: Robert Edelstein
Publisher: ABRAMS
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2012-02-28
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1468300873

“A book that should be required reading for everyone who considers themselves to be a NASCAR fan” from the author of Full Throttle (SB Nation). NASCAR Legends traces the story of stock car racing through the courageous, record-breaking drivers who made it the number one spectator sport in America. NASCAR’s sixty-year history is rich with varied lore about heroic racers, incredible races, and love of family. There are profiles of true NASCAR stars: Bill France; Bobby and Davey Allison; Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt, Jr.; Tony Stewart; Richard, Kyle, and Adam Petty, among other legends of the speedway. TV Guide motorsports reporter Robert Edelstein’s painstaking journalistic work, combined with his encyclopedic knowledge and love of the sport, make NASCAR Legends an essential book for anyone drawn to the roaring magic of the track. “A true delight to read, and the writing in each chapter is pitch-perfect. Not only did it educate me, but it entertained me. It will stay on my bookshelf as a handy source of reference or a refresher on history, too.” —SB Nation

Tar Heel Lightnin'

Tar Heel Lightnin'
Author: Daniel S. Pierce
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1469653567

From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina boasted some of the nation's most restrictive laws on alcohol production and sale. For much of this era, it was also the nation's leading producer of bootleg liquor. Over the years, written accounts, popular songs, and Hollywood movies have turned the state's moonshiners, fast cars, and frustrated Feds into legends. But in Tar Heel Lightnin', Daniel S. Pierce tells the real history of moonshine in North Carolina as never before. This well-illustrated, entertaining book introduces a surprisingly varied cast of characters who operated secret stills and ran liquor from the swamps of the Tidewater to Piedmont forests and mountain coves. From the state's earliest days through Prohibition to the present, Pierce shows that moonshine crossed race and economic lines, linking men and women, the rebellious and the respectable, the oppressed and the merely opportunistic. As Pierce recounts, even churchgoing types might run shipments of "that good ol' mountain dew" when hard times came and there was no social safety net to break the fall. Folklore, popular culture, and changing laws have helped fuel a renaissance in making and drinking commercial moonshine, and Pierce shows how today's producers understand their ties to the past. Above all, this book reveals that moonshine's long, colorful history features surprises that can change how we understand a state and a region.