With her copper red hair and inquisitive personality, Mary is an anomaly in her Amish community in western New York. She tries to join in the fun with the other youth as they gather for hymn singings and games, but she finds it all rather dull. None of the young men are interested in her and she's even less interested in them. With each passing year, she feels more and more out of place and stifled by life as a misfit in a rural Amish community. When...

Ilene Cooper's fourth story of a boy and his beagle takes Bobby and Lucy into the wild playing fields of grade-school soccer.
Every kid loves soccer, right? Not Bobby. He likes to watch sports, but he doesn't really like to play them. He'd rather play with his beagle puppy, Lucy. But when Bobby's friend Shawn begs him to join up, Bobby finds himself stuck on a soccer team with a stern coach and several kids who have a knack for the...

Stepping Stones, as its title suggests, leads the reader on a haphazard and unpredictable route across a landscape of different topics and themes and emotions through its 60 poems. A quarter of these, which emerged from the first lockdown in 2020, reflect the impact of that time—a personal response exploring a personal emotional turmoil but which will have a generic, universal resonance. The poems appear in alphabetical order, each one a stepping...

As the youngest child of three, Isabella is lucky enough to have a very happy childhood within her close family. The family live a privileged life due to the fact that their dad works very hard and their mum plays the traditional role of a wife and mother. There are many family fun times, and this just makes Isabella want her dream of becoming a mummy just like her own and living a happy life with her adoring husband all the more. Unfortunately, the...

The educational system in South Africa has failed the young learners of this new nation, says author Bryan Britton who has contributed this work as a very small step in the giant leap necessary to rehabilitate our highly susceptible youth and help them make sound and moral judgements. There has been little concern for the aspirations of the young people of South Africa. The benefits of learning, character building, moral education and religion were...

Six unique inspirational messages to make people think about what they've been taught. Four of the parables discuss "what could have happened next" in relation to small stories taken from scripture and extrapolated. A fifth is a creation narrative and the sixth shares how to view the Creator from the perspective of an old eastern legend. It is the Author's wish that in sharing her stories, the reader may open their hearts to the love, joy, and hope...

Forced to leave her sister in a dungeon, Michela goes with her guardian's to take part in the 'King's Test.' Does the king really believe she can spin straw into gold?Michela denounces the 'King's Test' as a charade. Will she find death, or will she find love?

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. When a drug-smuggling ring rocks a small coastal town, the DEA sends Agent Owen Matthews to shut it down. A single father with a deaf son, Owen senses that the town's number one suspect the high school's new principal doesn't fit the profile. Miriam Hunter hoped to shrug off the stigma of her hearing impairment when she returned to Stepping Stones, Maine. But her recurring nightmares dredge up old memories that could...