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Amazon.com Review

"These stories," writes Cheever in the preface to this Pulitzer Prize winning collection of stories, "seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like 'the Cleveland Chicken,' set sail for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are."

From Wikipedia

The Stories of John Cheever is a 1978 short story collection by American author John Cheever. It contains some of his most famous stories, including "The Enormous Radio," "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Country Husband," "The Five-Forty-Eight" and "The Swimmer." It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979 - which makes it the only work of fiction, along with Rabbit Is Rich, to have achieved this literary triple-crown; the paperback version won the American Book Award for Fiction in 1981. Read more - Shopping-Enabled Wikipedia on Amazon

      In the article: Stories included in the collection

Product Description

Finley Jayne knows she's not 'normal'. Normal girls don't lose time, or have something inside them that makes them capable of remarkably violent things. Her behavior has already cost her one job, so when she's offered the lofty position of companion to Phoebe, a debutante recently engaged to Lord Vincent, she accepts, despite having no experience. Lord Vincent is a man of science with his automatons and inventions, but Finley is suspicious of his motives where Phoebe is concerned. She will do anything to protect her new friend, but what she discovers is even more monstrous than anything she could have imagined…

An ebook exclusive prequel to The Steampunk Chronicles.

Review

“To say this book was good would be an understatement – it was kick ass and a bag of chips on top. …As a new to me author she tick all my boxes with very descriptive language and with a clear structure to the plot – I was loving the little side stories that she used to gel the plot together while opening me up to a whole slew of characters that were just as easy to hate as they were to love.”
~ Erotic Horizons

“I enjoyed this story so much that I went back and reread it after reading it once. The characters just jump off the page, and I could picture each one clearly.”
~ Coffee Time Romance & More

“I’ve read about many amazing women in urban fantasy, but this is the first time I meet a stripper-bouncer-half werewolf-witch-friendly-crossbow sniper who is experiencing some serious memory issues. Impressive, isn’t she? But Alexa wasn’t the only super heroine in this novel; the author did some significant ass kicking too—with her writing of course.”
~ Pagan Culture

Product Description

Someone wants their perfect weapon back, only she’s not coming quietly.

Alexa Wells wants her life back. She’s just not sure what that life was. The memories inside her head—a stripper’s—aren’t hers, and before she humiliates herself onstage one more time, she sets out to collect the scattered pieces of her mind. The trail leads to Boston, charges of identity theft and murder, and the real bombshell: a forgotten werewolf lover who insists she’s a werewolf hybrid.

Matt York doesn’t care that she looks at him like he’s been smoking crack between court cases. Now that he has her back he’s not about to let her go it alone, even if she can easily kick ass and take names all by herself. Amnesia only scratches the surface of her problems, and like it or not, she’s stuck with him.

She’s also stuck with Robert Gamboldt, a venture capitalist who’s not above murdering his way to the top. He’s not about to lose his prize possession without playing dirty. It’s a simple enough offer. Be his personal assassin, or go to jail.

With options like that, it’s enough to make a hybrid go full-blood.

Warning: Delicious sexual tension with a werewolf who’ll wait as long as it takes for his hybrid werewolf mate to come around.

LAPD Detective Harry Bosch as we’ve never seen him before, in an exclusive eBook containing three brand new short stories

In this compelling novel set against the beautiful backdrop of Ogunquit, Maine, the bestselling author of Tuscan Holiday and One Week in December portrays an unexpected friendship, and its consequences for two very different women as time inevitably sweeps them into adulthood...

Over the course of one eventful summer, nine-year-old native Mainer Delphine Crandall and Maggie Weldon, a privileged girl "from away," become best friends. Despite the social gulf between them, their bond is strengthened during vacations spent rambling around Ogunquit's beaches and quiet country lanes, and lasts throughout their college years in Boston. It seems nothing can separate them, yet after graduation, Delphine and Maggie slowly drift in different directions...

With her MBA, Maggie acquires a lucrative career, and eventually marries. Delphine is drawn back home, her life steeped in family and the Maine community she loves. Twenty years pass, until one summer, Maggie announces...<

Every summer, Samantha Wheland joins her childhood friends—Isabel, Kendra and Mina—on a vacation, somewhere exotic and fabulous. This year it's a beach house in Honduras. But for the first time, their clan is not complete. Mina lost her battle against cancer six months ago, and the friends she left behind are struggling to find their way without her.

For Samantha, the vacation feels wrong without Mina. Despite being surrounded by friends, Mina's death has left Sam lost. Unsure what direction her life should take. Fearful that whatever decision she makes about her wealthy French boyfriend's surprise proposal, it'll be wrong.

The answers aren't in the journal Mina gave Sam before she died. Or in the messages Sam believes Mina is sending as guideposts. Before the trip ends, the bonds of friendship with her living friends, the older generation's stories of love and loss, and Sam's glimpse into a world far removed from her own will convince her to trust her heart.<

From Publishers Weekly

Twenty years after 11-year-old Daria Cato found a baby abandoned on a beach in Kill Devil Hills, N.C., she is still very much a part of the child's life. Daria's parent's had adopted the infant, but now they are dead and she has accepted responsibility for Shelly--who has grown into a beautiful, slightly handicapped young woman. Without consulting Daria, Shelly contacts Rory Taylor, host of TV's True Life Stories, to ask his help in finding her birth mother. Rory has a personal interest in Shelly's story since he'd been one of the many teenagers hanging out on the beach the summer the baby was found. Daria, meanwhile, has been keeping to herself the crush she's had on Rory for years--along with Shelly's true story. Here, as in previous offerings, Chamberlain (Breaking the Silence) creates a captivating tale populated with haunting characters. (Jan.)

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On her eleventh birthday, Daria Cato became a hero.

A deep hush had fallen over the Sea Shanty after the savage weather of the night before, and Daria woke very early, as usual, when the sky outside her bedroom windows held only a hint of dawn. She opened the window above her dresser to let the breeze slip into the room. The sound of the ocean was rhythmic and calm, not like the angry pounding of the night before, and she breathed in the smell of salt and seaweed. The sunrise would be spectacular this morning.

Quickly, she slipped out of her pajamas and into her shorts and tank top, then quietly opened her bedroom door and walked into the hallway. She tiptoed past her sister Chloe's room, and past the room where her cousin, Ellen, slept. Ellen's mother was asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and Daria's parents were in their room on the third story. Her father would be getting up soon for early mass, but her mother, Aunt Josie, Ellen and Chloe wouldn't be up for at least another hour. They didn't understand the early-morning allure of the beach, but that was fine with her. She preferred solitude as she watched the sand and sea change color and texture each morning. This morning would be special, not just because of the storm, but because it was her birthday. Eleven. Kind of a dull number, and still two years away from being able to call herself a teenager, but definitely better than ten.

Daria padded quietly on bare feet down the stairs, trying to avoid the step that always squeaked. Would anyone remember her birthday this year? She was certain it would be nothing like the year before, when her mother had arranged a party for her with all the other kids on the cul-de-sac. No, this year was destined to be different, because her mother was different. She'd changed over this last year, and this first gloomy, overcast week of summer in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, had done nothing to lift her dour mood. Daria's mother slept late almost every day and moped around the cottage once she did get up. She barely seemed to remember her daughters' names, much less their birthdays. Chloe wouldn't care, of course. She was seventeen this summer, the brainy one in the family, already finished with her freshman year at college and interested only in boys and what color nail polish she should use to paint her toes. That's when their mother started changing, Daria thought, when Chloe went off to college. "I'm losing my little ones," Daria had overheard her mother say to her aunt just yesterday.

And, of course, the kids on the cul-de-sac would balk at coming to the birthday party of an eleven-year-old this year, now that they were all teenagers. Every single one of them except her! It was a good thing she didn't mind being alone all that much, she thought as she opened the front door and walked onto the Sea Shanty's broad screened porch, because that was obviously the way it was going to be this summer.

From the porch, Daria could look directly across the cul-de-sac and see Poll-Rory, Rory Taylor's cottage. Even Rory, who had been her summertime buddy for most of her life, was now fourteen and pretty much ignoring her. He seemed to have forgotten all the hours they'd fished together, crabbed together and raced against each other while swimming in the sound.

There were no lights on inside Poll-Rory. She looked at the upstairs window she knew to be Rory's bedroom and felt a prickly pain in her heart.

"Who needs you, anyhow," she muttered, pushing open the screen door and descending the steps to the cool sand. She began walking toward the beach, where she could see the sky just beginning its silent, peach-colored glide toward sunrise.

All six cottages on the cul-de-sac were built on stilts, like most of the oceanside structures in the Outer Banks. The Sea Shanty, built by her father and uncle the year Daria was born, was only the second cottage from the water, so Daria quickly reached the low, grass-covered dune overlooking the beach. She glanced at the cottage where Cindy Trump lived, the only home on the cul-de-sac directly fronting the ocean, to make sure it had not been damaged by the storm. It was perfectly fine. She envied Cindy and her brother for living right on the water, but her father said the beach was narrowing in Kill Devil Hills and Cindy's cottage would one day plunge into the sea. Still, Daria thought it would be neat to be able to look out your bedroom window and see nothing but water below you.

The beach was beautiful! The storm had washed the sand clean, and the tide had left behind a deep, wide row of shells, waiting for her to sift through them. The sun was already a thin sliver of copper on the horizon above the water, which was so calm it looked more like the sound than the ocean. Nothing like last night's turbulent, frothy waves. She sat down on the dune to watch the sun's rapid ascent into the iridescent sky. The sand was cool and damp, and she dug her bare feet into it.

Large, brown, orb-shaped horseshoe-crab shells dotted the beach, an eerie spectacle in the coppery light. They looked like something from another planet. She had never seen so many of them at one time, but they only held her interest for a moment or two before she began thinking again about the social dilemma facing her this summer. Although the Catos had been at the Sea Shanty for less than a week, Daria could already see how this summer was going to shape up, and the picture wasn't pleasant. She went over the cul-de-sac kids in her mind, wishing she'd made a mistake in figuring out their ages. Chloe was seventeen and Ellen, who'd be with them for most of the summer, was fifteen. Cindy Trump was sixteen, her brother, Todd, thirteen. There were seventeen-year-old twins, Jill and Brian Fletcher, in the cottage next to Poll-Rory. Next door to them was that really quiet girl, Linda, who was fourteen and always had her nose stuck in a book. An old couple, the Wheelers, lived next door to Daria, and their three children were so grown-up, they were married. Last year, Daria had occasionally played with Rory's sister, Polly. Polly was fifteen, but she had Down's syndrome, so it was like playing with someone much younger. But even Polly seemed to have moved far beyond Daria this summer, at least in terms of physical development, if not interests. She had breasts that Ellen and Chloe were talking about with envy.

Once the sun was fully above the horizon, Daria set out for the inviting line of shells. Her shorts had deep pockets, so she would be able to carry whatever treasures she found. Her bounty would annoy her mother, who now complained about her collecting buckets of "useless" shells each summer, even though she'd never said a word about it before.

The sand was deliciously cool beneath her feet as she walked along the line of shells. She had progressed only as far as the Trumps' cottage when she spotted the largest horseshoe-crab shell she had ever seen smack in the middle of the broad strip of shells. The shell looked odd to her, raised up a bit, as though perhaps the crab might still be inside. Curious, she extended her leg, and with her sandcovered toe, kicked the brown globe onto its back. Daria blinked in disbelief. A bloody baby! She shrieked before she could stop herself, then took off across the sand, screaming and waving her arms, wishing now that she were not all alone on the beach.

She'd run the distance of several cottages when she stopped short. Had it really been a baby? Could it have been a doll, perhaps? She looked back over shoulder. Yes, she was certain it had been a real, human baby. And in her memory, she imagined the small, almost imperceptible movement of a tiny, blood-covered foot. Surely that had not actually happened. She stood rigidly on the beach, staring back at the shell. Okay, maybe it really was a baby, but it couldn't possibly be alive. Very slowly, she walked back to the overturned shell. The ocean was so quiet that she could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Standing above the shell, she forced herself to look down.

It was a baby, a naked baby, and not only was it stained with blood, it was lying next to what looked like a pulpy mountain of blood. And the baby was alive. There was no mistaking the tiny movement of its head toward the sea, no mistaking the weak, mewling sound escaping from its doll-like lips.

Fighting nausea, Daria took off her tank top and knelt in the sand. Carefully, she began to wrap the shirt around the baby, only to pull away in horror. The bloody mountain was attached to the baby! There was no way to leave it behind. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped the shirt around everything—baby, mountain and half a dozen shells—and stood up, cradling the bundle in her arms. She walked as quickly as she could up the beach toward the Sea Shanty. She stopped once, expecting to be sick, but she felt the trembling of the small life in her arms and forced her feet to continue walking.

Once in the Sea Shanty, she laid the bundle down on the kitchen table. Blood had soaked clear through the tank top, and she realized there was blood on her bare chest as she ran up the stairs to her parents' third-story bedroom.

"Mom!" She pounded on their bedroom door. "Daddy!"

She heard her father's heavy footsteps inside the room. In a moment, he opened the door. He was tying his tie, and his thick, usually unruly, black hair was combed into place for church. Behind him, Daria could see her mother, still asleep in their double bed.

"Shh." Her father held a finger to his lips. "What's the matter?" His eyes widened as he saw the red stain on her chest, and he stepped quickly into the hall, grabbing her by the shoulder. "What happened?" he asked. "Did you get hurt?"

"I found a baby on the beach!" she said. "It's alive but it's all—"

"What did you say?" Her mother sat up in bed, her brown hair jutting from her head on one side. She looked suddenly wide-awake.

"I found a baby on the beach," Daria said, pushing past her father to reach the bed. She tugged her mother's hand...

A young woman hopes moving back to the California coast her family left for the Midwest many years ago will lead to a fairytale, but a soap opera is waiting there instead.<