On the evening of September 4, 1904, Fannie McCue was strangled, clubbed, shot, and drowned in her Charlottesville, Virginia, home. On February 10, 1905, in the last execution to take place in the old city jail, Fannie's husband, former Charlottesville mayor J. Samuel McCue, was hanged for her murder. The story has never died and still floats in legends. Some say McCue confessed after being told what a spider saw of the murder. And some say that McCue, in fact, escaped his hanging and died of old age. WHAT THE SPIDER SAW is a work of fiction built on the foundation of the original McCue murder case, but set in a different century and with, of course, an entirely different set of characters. It uses the loose structure of a selection of the facts of the original case as a foil to twist the crime and basic associated characters to whole new possibilities and uses. Wes Lederman, a private investigator from Harrisonburg, Virginia, has been hired by Charlottesville's commonwealth attorney, Thaddeus Thornton, to pin the murder of his wife, Suzanne Thornton, to a man who turns out to be the husband of Thornton's mistress. The web of events spins around downtown Charlottesville to the back roads of Earlysville, Virginia.

What the Spider Saw

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Kessler, Gary D.

Mystery

Cedar Creek Publishing

Skyline 2016, the third in a series of annual publisher’s anthologies produced by Cyberworld Publishing, showcases the prose and poetry talents of Central Virginia writers. There is no overarching theme for the works in this anthology, so each can be discovered and appreciated on its own context and merits. Over half of the works found here are works by Central Virginia writers that won or placed in various Virginia regional and statewide writing contests during 2014 and 2015. Also included in the anthology are other works selected from the portfolios of these contest selectees, and special contributor works by established writers in the region.

Skyline 2016: Prose and Poetry by Central Virginia Writers (Skyline Anthologies)

Literature & Fiction

Prum, Deborah M.

Stowe, Olivia

Honenberger, Sarah Collins

Kock-Sheras, Phyllis R.

Lancaster, Martha Jean

Solomon, Elizabeth Doyle

Ruggieri, Elaine

Morris, Brenda A.

Mirabella, Sigrid

United States

Cyberworld Publishing

<p>Despite having traveled all over the world in the last fifty years, with extended residences in Japan, Thailand, and Cyprus, the author of this anthology kept coming back, in person and imagination, to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He met his wife in Charlottesville, where they both attended the University of Virginia, and then, although drifting off in foreign service assignments with the U.S. government, the couple didn’t leave central Virginia before buying their own slice of paradise in the Piedmont foothills of the Blue Ridge and returning to the region again and again until finally retiring there. The twenty-six stories in this collection, written over a fifteen-year period, are all set within sight of this range of mountains, located on either side of the mountain chain, and extending from Front Royal in the north to Roanoke in the south. Most have won or placed in regional prose contests or are extracted from published anthologies. All were written with the presence of the Blue Ridge Mountains very much in mind.</p>

Shadow of the Blue Ridge: Short Stories from Central Virginia

Short Stories & Anthologies

An inspirational guide to lateral thinking when writing family and personal histories. Whether or not there’s a heaven or a hell, people will live on in the memories of those they’ve left behind. On that premise, along with the belief that we all have life stories, philosophies, and influences simply by “having been,” to pass on down to later generations—that we don’t have to have been celebrities—Gary Kessler offers up a collection of vignettes on his somewhat unusual and adventuresome life and the events that influenced that life. Most of the vignettes, in the form of essays, short stories, and poems, in this collection were entries in writing contests and/or published in anthologies. Others have been added to fill in holes on life-influencing events. The purpose of Of Me I Muse is both to pass on a slice of “who we were/what influenced us” from two generations before the author—to the extent they could be captured and preserved in the eleventh hour of losing them—and an encouragement to others to record in some fashion, the major points of their lives before letting them be lost to help keep themselves alive in the minds of their descendants. You don’t have to have been a celebrity to play.

Of Me I Muse

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Skyline 2017, the fourth in a series of annual publisher’s anthologies produced by Cyberworld Publishing, showcases the prose and poetry talents of Central Virginia writers. The title of the anthology is taken from the Skyline Drive, the parkway skipping along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and providing centering for the region in which the authors showcased here are living and writing. Thus far the editions have followed the seasons in cover image, with this being the summer edition. Other than the Skyline Summer contest works, there is no overarching theme for the short stories, poems, and essays in this anthology, so each can be discovered and appreciated on its own context and merits. Over half of the works found here won or placed in various Virginia regional and statewide writing contests between September 2015 and September 2016.

Skyline 2017 (Skyline Anthologies)

Black, David

Galloway, Stan A.

Krystosek, Joy Merritt

Lanterman, Susan M.

Dixon, Lori

Holden, Lois M.

Skyline 2018, the fifth in a series of annual publisher’s anthologies produced by Cyberworld Publishing, showcases the prose and poetry talents of writers who live or work in Central Virginia or otherwise have writing connections to the region. The theme for this edition and this year’s Skyline writing contest is “nighttime on the mountain,” which some invited authors and poets have also adopted as the setting of their pieces. There otherwise is no overarching theme for the short stories, poems, and essays in this anthology, however, so each can be discovered and appreciated on its own context and merits. Nearly half of the works found here won or placed in various Virginia regional and statewide writing contests between September 2016 and September 2017. The anthology is made up of fifty-five works by twenty-seven authors, presented in four sections: fiction (fourteen short stories), poetry (twenty-nine poems), nonfiction (eight essays), and, since this is a writer’s anthology, a section on writing and publishing (three essays and one poem). Nearly half of the authors here are represented by more than one work and in varied media to showcase their writing skills. Each edition of Skyline has lifted a featured writer or poet for recognition in addition to the works of invited established authors and contest judges, which are placed at the top of category sections. Skyline 2018 features and celebrates three male poets: Stanley A. Galloway, David Black, and Jack Trammell.

Skyline 2018: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by Central Virginia Writers (Skyline Anthologies)

Bush, Stephen

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