For purple martins, culture and tradition is all that keeps them safe from outside threats. So, when Hilton, a pigeon from the city, is swept into their territory by a fierce storm the martins do all they can to avoid contact. It takes the kindness of a young marlin, Riley, an outsider among even his own colony, to nurse the injured pigeon back to health, sparking a friendship that would challenge the beliefs of his society. But winter is coming, and Riley can feel the Calling, the urge to travel south. Will he submit to his instincts and the will of the colony elders, or stay with his new found friend?

The Calling

Rob Kiefer

Punkin House

A love story told as a horror story and a horror story told as a love story, Ashes to Angels is as raw and edgy as the hipster characters whose blended voices color much of the ink like a literary tattoo. Auryn, an angel, cuts off her wings - with scissors - in an ill-advised deal made with her demon twin sister looking for bail out of hell. Auryn falls out of the sky to earth, where she falls for Asher, failed artist. This is the story of the evolution and dissolution - a vicarious nuclear catastrophe - of their bizarre relationship: angel falls for atheist, poet steals from his own Muse, mortal rapes a supernatural, immortal commits suicide. As a paranormal dark romance, it makes subversive comment in poetic meditation on the impossibilities of love, the most lethal threat to human existence.

Ashes to Angels

Natalie McCollum

Hektr Pastrovich, journalist and aspiring poet, is traveling by train to the frontline of his country's long-standing war when he meets a beautiful woman who's so shrouded in mystery she won't even tell Hektr her name. He decides to call her "Helena" after a childhood friend, not suspecting that she would eventually ask for Hektr's assistance in making her way to the front. Hektr's motivations for reaching the front are two-fold: He has been given the task by his editor of writing firsthand accounts of the fighting (no one trusts that the government's reports are accurate), and he hopes to gather more lurid details for some sensational stories to be published by his editor's chief rival. In particular, Hektr hopes to find out more information regarding a vagabond he'd met who referred to himself as the "Prince of Ithaka." After a time, Hektr begins to wonder if Helena is also searching for the Prince of Ithaka.

Men of Winter

Ted Morrissey

<p>Twenty something Rey Ovitz moved to the city for one reason: To be a hero in a luke-warm world. Into the Everything is the story of a man trying to understand the tragedy and majesty of life, looking everywhere outside of himself to find what it means to be himself, and failing wildly. He is the epitome of the Everyman who falls backward into the ocean of ordinary life and floats where it flows, equally impressed and disturbed by the world, and celebrating his plummet the entire way.</p>

Into the Everything

Jeff Mark

<p>The Price of Loyalty is the story of Trey Kauffman, a young man at odds with himself after the death of his young lover, Aimee. Leaving the memories of Aimee and his small town roots behind, Trey goes off to college where he is drawn into a mysterious and possibly dangerous group of men. As he clings to this group of new friends, Trey struggles with his past and present as he attempts to define the bonds and limits of friendship.</p>

The Price of Loyalty

Adam Kershaw