Michel De Montaigne: 29 books

What came first, the shadow or the leaf it falls upon, the sunlight or the pain? Painted yellow, what calls, and what echoes, and what cries through the valley; And what strains the surface of things when joy surges and the depths reach up, and the wet sand dries and blows unseen to the dune ... And what settles over my head, misty and mysterious, indivisibly fine ...

How to push on? I don’t really know. Like her, the world wishes me gone. There is so much work yet. I pound the keys with one hand, the other thrust up, middle finger extended. She reproves me, but I know deep down she feels the same way. I can feel it. Momentum and energy.

A world falls to war. A young man watches helplessly as his sister is eaten by a giant demon right before his eyes. He narrowly escapes death himself; buoyed by the current of a corpse-filled canal, he bears horrified witness to the complete destruction of his country, Theseus. The invaders...

The airplane Professor Ray Wilms was in just exploded. Somehow he survived the fireball and tons of burning metal as it blew away into the night air over San Diego, California. He has no idea how he's still conscious. He's strapped to his seat and hurtling straight for the Pacific Ocean thousands...

When he was a mortal, Ray Wilms had no time or patience for children. Despite being an educator, he couldn't stand them. As an angel of death, his very first assignment back to Earth is to save a sixteen-year-old girl from her family and church. Her name is Deanna, and she's thinking...

I can see the world each morning with fresh eyes. I can write—even if no one is reading. I can speak out—even if no one is listening. I can laugh—even though I feel like crying. I can cry—even though the rest of the world plods numbly along. I can thrust both middle fingers defiantly at the...

Love and hate, loss and betrayal, inspiration and perspiration. God and nature. Poetry that isn't saturated or diluted or made safe for general consumption. Read and be enlightened, enraged, enraptured, or educed. What you won't be is neutral.

Queen Walmar Seburbia is determined to kill six heroes she has foreseen can destroy her. Three are in one universe; three are in another. Her weapon is a powerful Vortex Cannon, and her ammunition is none other than the Muse itself, who goes by the name Zappee. She has weaponized Zappee, filling the...

The Imaginariverse, the source of all imagination in the Multiverse, has been taken over by an evil queen named Walmar Seburbia. Her plan? To destroy six potential heroes in two different universes who could thwart her intention to rule forever. She traps the Conductor of Dreams, the spark...

The search for one's calling takes great patience and courage. Choosing that calling, once it becomes apparent, takes even more. Pursuing a calling is a deadly enterprise, for it will inevitably claim one's life. It allows for no other choice. Rejected and abused by her parents, Elizabeth...

Looking past the end of one’s nose is very difficult. The rules are set up to punish those who do. In every moment, the chance to choose. If I never hear the cries, or see the suffering, did they really happen? If I turn my back, does the sun ever really set? If I live in that infinitely circumscribed realm forever, have I really lived at all?

The city comes and goes slowly and haltingly. The trolley seems in no particular hurry: it’s like a great earthworm creeping over saturated soil, stopping to inspect morsels of rotting food. The stops aren’t identical, but they may as well be. The people aren’t identical, either. But they, too,...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." So said Socrates, or so the legend goes. Well, he was right. In these short essays, I look at the big L, Life. Since no one lives in a vacuum, there is much inside these pages for everyone, from health and happiness to pursuing one's...

Obituaries and funerals are always the same. It does not matter if the deceased was a great man or a monster; those eulogizing him will proclaim the same thing: that he was an awesome guy, a loving father, and a valued member of the community. Few people question any of it, especially surviving relatives....