Great book at a great time!

This book was given to me by a friend a few months ago and I have had it lying around the house ever since.  While I was trying to get some This book was full of short stories, that are fun and easy to ready without an investment of hours and hours of reading a book to get to the ending.  These stories always had a surprise ending, and it was fun to get that type of story in such a small amount of time.  They all had their own element of mystery and surprise at the end, but to tell any of the story would ruin it for you.   done before we had guests over for a get together on Labor Day, I found it and started reading it after I had cleaned up from everyone leaving that night.  The book is called Long Stories Short by Karen Black.  The cover does not reveal any of the contents inside and if I discuss them now, it will ruin them for you.  There are many stories contained in a book that is not all that large, and they were all fast enough to read in less than an hour each.  This made them a great find over the weekend, because even when I am busy, I can take a time out and get in a good story before I have to take care of something else that needs to be done before our guests arrive.

Science Fiction Fans Will Love These Stories!!!!

This past week, I found myself with not much to do around the house, with the kids going back to school, so I decided to try to read a science fiction book.  I am not typically a fan of science fiction, but I was feeling like trying something different, and found this book that had four short stories in it.  It was not too long altogether, so I figured if I was not impressed after the first story, I would stop.
As I read further and further into this book, I was pleasantly surprised to find interesting exciting stories were contained in it's pages.  The book was called,Timescan: Science Fiction Short Stories by Alexai Vavioski.  The title fascinated me for some reason, I can't explain it, but I'm glad I read this book:)
These short stories were reminiscent of The Twilight Zone shows. They were not too long, your can easily read one in a weekend or weeknight of reading, and each had a twist at the end that was unexpected--at least to me. Each story was told in its own unique way, and there were a few places where I just could not put this book down until I was finished reading the story I was on. If you are a fan of The Twilight Zone, I highly recommend these stories to you.

Whether you like science fiction or not, I recommend these stories.

Secretly Smiiten by Colleen Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Diann Hunt and Denise Hunter

Secretly Smitten is a collection of short stories that revolves around the Thomas family, a group of women who are all looking for love and they each find it in these stories, all set in the small town of Smitten.  The story begins when the girls find dog tags belonging to a man that is not their grandfather and they start unraveling the story behind the man that owns the dog tags, leading Tess to love.  She begins to get closer to David, a widower with a young daughter, in order to gain access to his attic where she can uncover some of the story for her grandmother.  Before she knows it, she has fallen in love with him.

Zoe is Tess’s sister and she wants to start a matchmaking service in Smitten to help people find love.  While she is busy getting her business off the ground, she meets the new city manager, William.  While he is a thorn in her side at first, doing everything he can to make sure she follows all of the city codes and keeps safety as her number one priority, even if it mean shutting down her first social event for her matchmaking service.  Once she starts to understand where he is coming from, they begin to see how compatible they are for each other.

Zoe and Tess’s mother, Anna, owns a knitting shop in Smitten and loves to socialize with all of the women that come to her store to shop and to knit.  She enjoys their company and even does not mind helping out the son of one of her customers, Michael, after he hurts his ankle and has trouble getting around.  As she checks in on him and runs errands for him, she becomes more and more fond of him.  Before she knows it, she is visiting him well after his ankle has healed and he even helps her with her new business venture, raising sheep in order to harvest the wool to spin yarn.  He even lets her use an empty barn that he owns to raise the sheep in, and helps her care for them as well.  As time goes on, they soon realize that they are in love.

Clare, Zoe and Tess’s sister, works at the local nursery and hopes to one day own her own nursery and do what she truly loves, landscaping and yard remodels.  When her boss goes out of town and she hires a drifter from out of town, she is not very optimistic that he will work out, let alone take over things when she faints at work and is forced to stay in bed until she gets better.  Not only does Ethan do a good job, but goes above and beyond when she gets sick and saves the day.  As they work closely together each day, she realizes that he is lonely and begins to invite him to dinner with her family, and eventually they fall in love.

When the story began, the dog tags were a mystery and the man that owned them was believed to be dead, until a secret is revealed that Aunt Violet had seen him and tried to confess her love for him, he was not dead after all, he just left town when his true love had married another man.  This is a heartwarming story and I recommend it to anyone who  likes a good love story.