Stories

Before Admirer X and Menorah, twelve-year-old Elijah Silverman loves books, mysteries and the certainty that every puzzle has an answer. At Oakfield, he expects difficult classes, a brilliant library and very little peace and quiet. He does not expect things to start disappearing.

As suspicion spreads through the Year Seven dormitory, Elijah finds himself drawn into his first real mystery.

For a hundred and fifty years, Jack has walked a Connecticut county that has forgotten him, a farm boy who bartered his soul at a crossroads and paid for it twice over. Refused by Heaven, unclaimed by Hell, he has nothing to light his way but a stolen coal, and nothing to fill his nights but windows he can watch and never touch.

Then he finds Julian's.

Nineteen, chronically ill, and certain no one would notice if he stopped waking, Julian is exactly the kind of loneliness Jack was never allowed to love. As October tightens toward Halloween, the veil between them begins to thin, and an old bargain comes due.

When my best friend asks me to help her boyfriend experiment sexually, I'm not on board. Obviously. They say your college years should be the time to have fun and do stupid stuff. Live, laugh, love and all.

But that always seemed too careless for me. Sue me for being cautious! Unlike others, I do think about the consequences.

I will do my best to resist. Even if his magnetic eyes make me lose my sense of self-control. It's going to be the hardest thing to deal with in my life, but I'll fight it. Because it's my heart I'm trying to protect.

Shy Aussie teen finds his first love in small country town

Seeing clearly what others ignore, feeling the weight of history, and refusing to lie to yourself about what the world has become.

Behind the Iron Curtain, Poland, 1983. The country is under martial law. This is not a war of armies and battlefields, but a conflict between the state and its own society. In a remote military unit, twenty-one-year-old Janusz is trying to survive the army, the system, and himself. Then Rafał arrives. What begins as fascination soon becomes something far more dangerous: desire, fear, tenderness, and a relationship neither of them fully understands.

In a world where "magic" is just fear and misunderstanding, Shem is the worst swordsman in the valley. When goblins raid a nearby farm, he rides out with a bar mace he doesn't know how to use, a feral child who bites first and speaks second, and a crush who keeps stealing his left glove. The monsters aren't what they seem. Neither is he.