Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by Charles Dickens, and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin. Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century. The alternate title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress. In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirizes the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s.

A scholar and explorer, Dr. Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend professional hunter Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent — still not fully explored — with the help of a balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern-day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern-day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna.

This piece is connected to the Big Homer project, which was both a rock opera performed by 3how and a book by Stephen Black. The story, originally set in 1960s Singapore, is about a pigeon who is trying to get back home.

Long ago, in the Higher Realms, Alexikan, the Dark Prince of Malice, peacefully schemed to murder his dad with much glee and satisfaction. But one night, an old beggar woman came to the star palace of the Prince, and offered him a lily in return for shelter from the cold. The Prince sneered: he could clearly see that she was a Fay in disguise and mocked her for presuming that she could teach him some quaint moral lesson with her tricks. So the old woman up and punched him through dimensions, all the way to the Lower Realms. And there the Prince roams still, looking for a way home...

A talented and well known tattoo artist struggling with his past, has an awkward one night stand with a writer.

There is a legend that, once upon a time, a beautiful fairy, the Snow Queen, lived on the highest, most solitary peaks of the Alps. The mountain folk and shepherds climbed to the summits to admire her, and everyone fell head over heels in love with her. Every man would have given anything, including his life, to marry her. Indeed, their lives are just what they did give, for Fate had decided that no mortal would ever marry the Snow Queen. But in spite of that, many brave souls did their best to approach her, hoping always to persuade her.

Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good, found a robber’s stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of money, which the bank held for him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson.

This short story comes from a dusted drawer located at the desk of Daphne, a down-to earth journalist who lives in a small town in the States. Her life turns upside down when one day she decides to visit the Natural History Museum in order to cover a story for the new weekly issue. A tiny click from her camera is the trigger for the plot to begin unraveling in front of her stunned eyes. A sweet mixture of ancient greek mythology and real life as we know it creates multiplte layers of reading in this retelling of goddess Diana's myth, or else, goddess Artemis. Disclaimer: everything in the story is fictitious. Only a few elements relate to the real mythology written in formal scripts.

Gary is a young ambitious broker. He lives in Takoma near Seattle. The weather forecast has shown that hurricane Sandy would hit the NY coast in the next few hours. He grabbed the opportunity. He knew what he did. He bought “Corner Constructions” stocks with all the money in the account he was managing. It was a construction company based in New York. Phil was the owner of a small tavern in New Jersey whose all belongings were lost when the eye of the storm hit his neighbour. The stories in news reports and the tragic figure of Phil, touched the avaricious Gary’s heart and changed his life forever.