Seventeen-year-old Julie fell in love with Sam the day she met him, and planned to attend college with him; but Sam died, and getting rid of his things, trying to erase him from her life is not working, so desperate to hear his voice one more time, Juliecalls his cellphone expecting to hear his voicemail--but then Sam answers, and suddenly their cellphones become the living connection between them, a connection Julie finds impossible to let go.

Mikey Callahan is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration. He struggles to establish human connections, and is reconnecting with 'The Gunners,' his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey hopes that confronting secrets about his own past-- and his father's--...

Scenes & Interludes...From an Improbable End A New Series in the Flashback Universe "I'm not a killer, if that's what you mean," he retorted, then turned away and watched the fire, hands on his hips. "Nor will I let any of us be. I mean, if I've said it once I'll say it again: this isn't about bloodshed. It's not even about rebellion. It's more about ..." He paused-as though saying anything else could only lead to regret. "I thought it was about nothing,"...

YOUR CALL TO CTHULHU IS IMPORTANT TO US. PLEASE HOLD. Red tape. Catch-22s. Circular chains of command. Whether you're a customer or co-worker, bureaucracies drive us all insane. Even management is just a cog in a vast machine. Information, items, and even people get lost in the system, never gone but never found. No one seems to notice the insanity surrounding them... or if they do, they keep it to themselves. After all, those who notice and call...

When Patti Smith was plagued with writer's block - "scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems" - playwright Sam Shepard advised her, "When you hit a wall, just kick it in." In these pages, Abercrombie shows readers how to do just that. Like a workout with a top trainer, her writing exercises warm up, stretch, and build creative muscle. Quotes from famous writers inspire each day's exercise. Though Abercrombie says readers...