Happy Endings: Uplifting End of Life Stories by Lorna Bell is a collection of 40 stories about people who said goodbye in unique and uplifting ways. This is not to say their narratives—generously shared with the author by families and caregivers—are without pain and sorrow. Yet, the final stage of life holds remarkable possibilities to strengthen bonds between loved ones and confirm our faith in the hereafter.

An elderly woman prepares a magnificent deathbed of rose petals from bouquets in her sickroom…a young boy climbs aboard a pony only he and his mother can see…a delirious man hands his daughter a piece of tissue in the perfect likeness of an angel.

Dying is the natural conclusion to life, and these 40 stories invite you to re-examine your own perception of death. Most of all, they remind us that, while our time here on earth is temporary, our spiritual existence is not.

The publication of Happy Endings led to the discovery of more stories in the same vein and a second volume, More Happy Endings, containing an additional 45 stories, followed the first. E-Reads is publishing both volumes in a single package but maintaining the separate tables of contents and layout. Both volumes are divided into five chapters based on “Hospice Truths”: They Choose When They Are Ready; Final Gifts; Messages From Heaven; The Animals Are In On It and Angels Lead the Way.

About the author:
A nurse for 47 years and hospice nurse since 1995, Lorna Bell’s first book, Gentle Yoga: For People with Arthritis, M.S., Strokes and Wheelchairs (co-authored with Eudora Seyfer), was motivated by her desire to help those with mobility problems. She considers herself a storyteller rather than an author and since she’s been a hospice nurse, Lorna has wanted to help break the uncomfortable silence that often surrounds those concluding their lives. Happy Endings “exemplifies the beautiful, hopeful side of a difficult, sad subject,” she says. “Stories like these have been kept a secret long enough.”

Profane Men by Rex Miller

Profane Men brings the dark and searing energy of such Miller horror classics as Slob and Chaingang to a story set in Vietnam during the late 1960’s. The novel is clearly informed by Miller’s personal experience. In fact, it’s filled with autobiographical touches (the central narrator character has a developing career in broadcast radio, among other things).

A rootless young man drifting through life and facing the likelihood of being drafted decides to choose his own destiny, seeking a way to avoid becoming cannon fodder. Unfortunately, he finds himself thrust into some of the worst corners of Vietnam, working with a team of assassins tracking a pirate radio broadcaster who seems to be supplying intelligence to the Viet Cong. And then things get complicated…

Other books by Rex Miller

Harvey Tattelbaum was a village rabbi. But what a village! And what a rabbi! He’s written a delightful book that makes a perfect Chanukah gift. It’s avaiable either in paperback or e-book format.

In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and “cool”: brownstones and beatniks, coffeehouses and college students, folksingers and freethinkers, poets and “prophets.” Into this fascinating mix of cultural archetypes came a young rabbi, Harvey M. Tattelbaum, who became known as the Village Rabbi of the Village Temple.

The spirit of Sholom Aleichem infuses his Tales of the Village Rabbi, a touching and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of his tenure at a small synagogue in the heart of Greenwich Village. Though his years in this magical place were productive and soul-filling, rabbinical training hadn’t exactly prepared him for the bikers, thieves, ex-cons, eccentric old ladies, drug-users, cleavage-baring brides and other Village denizens he encountered while serving the congregants of his spirited little temple.

Rabbi Tattelbaum shares his insider’s tales-both downtown and uptown-of wayward weddings (and funerals), contentious temple boards, irreverent interfaith shenanigans, heartaches and triumphs. But the Tales also reveal a deep personal struggle with some of the most profound philosophical problems of ancient and modern religion and are filled with a warm, humane and rational approach to spirituality and religious meaning.

RC

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Song of Sorcery is another light-hearted contemporary fantasy adventure that will please the author’s many fans. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch’s granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by the cat. She hears the song, which happens to concern her recently married sister and a gypsy. Convinced that she has to save her sister, she takes the minstrel, the cat and her magical resources to Rowan Castle. The story is rich with descriptive details of setting and encounters with magical and fantastic creatures such as a talking cat, a lovesick dragon, and a bear prince. The characters speak in contemporary slang which plays nicely against the traditional fantastic settings.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough was born March 23, 1947, and lives in the Puget Sound area of Washington. She won a Nebula Award in 1989 for her novel The Healer’s War, and has written more than a dozen other novels. She has collaborated with Anne McCaffrey, best-known for creating the Dragonriders of Pern, to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna Series.

The Master Fiddler

Naïve Jacquie Grey thought that her life would just work itself out. But now that she’s stuck in Tombstone, Arizona without a dime, she’s beginning to rethink that strategy. Her vulnerability and gullible nature make Jacquie the perfect mark for handsome Choya Barnett, who can’t help but use her innocence to his advantage. Now that Jacquie’s body and soul are laid bare, will Choya regret his cruelty?

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The Ivory Cane

From the moment they met in the streets of San Francisco, Sabrina had mixed feelings about him. Bay Cameron was strong and noble, but insufferably rude. Moments after he saved her life, he had insulted her pride–an unforgivable crime as far as she was concerned. Sabrina Lane was blind, but she could easily see that this man brought out her most passionate impulses. She might even fall in love with him–if she could stand his company.

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In Sweet Promise, Erica Wakefield’s torrid past is behind her–she has finally escaped her self-destructive ways. She knows that she has found the perfect man: handsome, rich and completely in love with her. Forest is exactly what Erica’s millionaire father wants for his beautiful daughter. So why is this Texas spitfire still thinking about her estranged husband, Rafael de la Torres? Wasn’t the Mexican lover just a ploy to get Daddy’s attention? When Erica has to find Rafael and make him sign the divorce papers, she runs the risk that he will reignite the passion that smolders in her memory?

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough has written more than a dozen novels, one of which, The Healer’s War, won a Nebula Award in 1989. She has collaborated with Dragonriders of Pern author Anne McCaffrey to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna Series.

Like The Godmother, Song of Sorcery is a light-hearted contemporary fantasy adventure. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch’s granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by a cat. It gets wilder and wilder from there including encounters with a lovesick dragon.

And don’t miss Scarborough’s aptly named collection, Scarborough Fair and Other Stories.

RC

In Tangled Vines by Janet Dailey, elegant 90-year-old Katherine Rutledge runs her family’s Napa Valley winery. Her estranged son runs a rival winery and an alcoholic neighbor, Len Dougherty, lives on 10 acres of the Rutledge vineyard given to his family as compensation for the accidental death of his father. Meanwhile, beautiful, ambitious Kelly Douglas, a rising TV newscaster is assigned to prepare an in-depth report on the Rutledge winery, which is in negotiations to merge with a French winery. Kelly long ago escaped Dougherty, her physically abusive father and doesn’t want to go back home. Then, there’s a murder in which her father is the prime suspect while complications arise via a budding romance with Sam Rutledge, Katherine’s grandson and the manager of the Rutledge winery.

E-Reads publishes over fifty Janet Dailey novels. Visit her author page for a full selection.

A Valentine’s Day gift for Janet Dailey fans: E-Reads is happy to bring back her classic novel Aspen Gold.

Kit Masters, born and brought up on an Aspen ranch, left to pursue an acting career in Hollywood but she still possesses a strong sense of family, loyalty, and integrity and has deep ties to the land where she grew up. After ten years, she returns home to settle her father’s estate and realizes she must choose between her career and Tom Bannon, a man she has not seen for ten years, the man who broke her heart by marrying someone else—the man she still loves. Kit has gotten a golden opportunity, the lead role in a movie opposite famous actor-producer-and legendary seducer John Travis. The movie will be filming in Aspen. She meets Bannon again and they rediscover their romance even though she still feels the pain of his betrayal, while he is haunted by the memory of his dead wife. But now, Travis has begun to pursue Kit ardently.

E-Reads publishes over fifty Janet Dailey novels. Visit her author page for a full selection.

This book that will enable you to watch the final convulsions of civilization from the veranda of your country estate. When the last trumpet sounds and the end of the world is nigh, remember to pick up your dry cleaning, cancel your subscriptions and call your mother. And don’t forget to pack your copy of Richard Curtis’s How to Prosper In the Coming Apocalypse. It’s available in e-book and will be in paperback before long.

From the introduction.

“The most important things for you to concern yourself with in the coming bad years is, Who’s responsible and how can I get even? It is essential that we find someone to blame and really beat the hell out of him. Sure, the tragedy of the past is that we are condemned to repeat it, but does that make you feel any better? No! Your first task is to find a scapegoat.” (You can click here to read the complete introduction, “What is an Apocalypse, and Why Can’t People Just Call It Doomsday?)

And if you enjoy Curtis’s brand of whacked-out humor, read his satires on authors, agents and publishers in The Client From Hell.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough has written more than a dozen novels, one of which, The Healer’s War, won a Nebula Award in 1989. She has collaborated with Dragonriders of Pern author Anne McCaffrey to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna Series.

The Godmother puts a new twist in contemporary fantasy with the story of a fairy godmother who works in in a social-services agency in Seattle and has to handle contemporary renditions of such Grimm tales as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and Cinderella. Scarborough’s fully realized settings and humor make The Godmother a thoroughly entertaining modern fantasy story.

Other Scarborough works available on E-Reads are the novel Song of Sorcery and a collection, Scarborough Fair and Other Stories.

RC