A terrible tragedy sends her home to heal. Will his unexpected love convince her to stay?
After a devastating loss, wild game hunter Rexanna Brennan returns home to her family's ranch to heal. She never expects to learn her crazy aunt has left her a pink pistol with an even crazier legend. But more unsettling, a Hollywood cowboy has moved onto the ranch, stealing her family's hearts and maybe her legacy, too.
False accusations throw Roan Bertoletti into scandal and yank him out of his movie star life. His reputation shredded, he grasps at the second chance the Brennan family gives him. With his roots firmly planted, he's living his dream to be a cowboy again, and he has no plans to leave the ranch anytime soon.
But Rexanna's grief pulls at him. So does her insistence she can't stay. Can he convince the beautiful heiress to claim what has always been hers? Time is running out, and so are his options.
After a failed petition to change his career, Bill, the local pottery maker and town drunk, is coerced by his neighbors and king to join an expedition to hunt down and slay a mighty dragon that plagues their village.
In this dark comedy novelette from 13 Acorns- Modern Short Stories for Thoughtful Adults, will Bill try to evade his duty and hide in his cave? Will he be thrown into a pit full of spiders for refusing to fight? If he bravely agrees to go, will his neighbors finally remember his name?
Find out if old Bill will muster the courage to fight and miraculously and unexpectedly overcome the great beast (despite being half drunk with a rusty sword), or if he will die trying!
WINNER Fiction: Novella 2023 International Book Awards
Sixteen-year-old Lava lives peacefully enough with her imperfect mother, Lila, and their boarder, Cody, an Iraqi war vet suffering from PTSD. Lava’s ex-addict father, Jesse, is released from prison, and Lava’s life in Detroit is upended when Jesse pressures Lava for her urine so he can pass his mandatory drug tests. After an altercation, Lava is sent to live with her mother’s cousin Lola in Seville. Lola is a larger-than-life flamenco dancer who teaches Lava the language of flamenco dance; Lava’s life opens outward as she becomes fluent in flamenco’s structure, giving her new modes of expression as she experiences first love, friendship, and betrayal, and uncovers family secrets. Rich with lyrical, sensual prose, Duende is a coming-of-age novella about mothers and daughters, about legacy, about self-expression, about defining a way to live.
Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Whit Coombs seeks peace, quiet, and healing. Scarred spiritually by the death of his wife, who died cursing him for not euthanizing her, and physically from an IED in Iraq, he just wants a simple life in his cabin by a lake, miles from a hard road. Then, on a nighttime hike, he witnesses a grisly murder and finds himself with a dilemma: report the crime and lose his privacy-and maybe his life-or let the killers get away with it. As the killers and the attractive female county sheriff get closer to discovering what he saw, he realizes that maybe Keeping to Himself won't give him the peace he needs.
Troubled family relations, modern social justice issues, deeply personal choices.
Activist Xander Wallace and his straitlaced father do not have an easy relationship. Jim’s views on race, immigration, gender, sexuality and even Millennials alienate his son no matter how hard Xander tries to find common ground. Toss in Jim’s second marriage ten months after Xander’s mother died and it’s a volatile cocktail. How, against this backdrop, will Xander ever dare to bare his soul and reveal his greatest secret?