Important Note: This post is dated Saturday, January 28, 2012, and the titles mentioned here may remain free only until midnight PST tonight.

A glimmer of hope. A pinch of horror. A sprinkle of desire and a journey of mixed emotions. This is a compilation of short stories and additionally features a special selection of books and blogs for you to discover.

Story 1 – Mirror Me Martha
Hawley Mansion was to have been the beginning of their lives together but a nasty accident leaves Martha moving into the mansion alone and desperately grieving. She gets off on the wrong foot with her service staff and starts to experience strange incidents. She even claims that a red robin is spying on her. Has grief swallowed Martha’s sanity or does Hawley Mansion really have a secret?

Story 2 – Drive On Hope
Mary and Brian had it all planned out as they headed for the city of bright lights, London from the small coastal town of Scarborough. They had the drive to succeed, the will to be different and the brevity to move away from their past. Success was theirs and nothing or no one could stop them. But one year later and still living in their car would they ever be able to drive on hope?

Story 3 – Jane Holden is like any other student at Pickering University. Away from home for the first time, she looks forward to having her social calendar packed with activities and to meeting new people. But an unexpected enemy changes all of this. She goes from scholarship recipient to social outcast. Will life be normal again? Will she ever recover from the cat that barked?

Story 4 – Globetrotting With Cathy Dixon
Meet Cathy Dixon from Frequent Traveller. From the blue oceans of Antigua to the bustling streets of Vietnam, the racing adrenaline at the Green Hell, the devastating natural disaster in Japan and the stunning architecture in Germany, Cathy finds herself in a whirlwind of fine dining, plush clothes and sheer extravagance. But is perfection a mask for untold disaster?

Special Feature – Books, Blogs & Smiles 1
January to March 2012. A daily dose of books, blogs and quotes from all corners of the BlogSphere. Whether you’re having a good day or a bad day, this eBook is bound to offer you a smile or two.

Are you mad as hell?

At last, Stephen Windwalker provides the concise tell-it-like-it-is narrative for which we have all been waiting: How did we get here, how much worse is it going to get, and what can we do to protect ourselves, our families, and our future?

The time for seeing the world through a rose-colored lens is long over. Simple truths that run deep through Windwalker’s writing come directly from years of helping working and retired people stand up for economic justice as one of the country’s top community organizers. Readers of Windwalker’s books on technology and commerce have come to appreciate the thoughtfulness and intellectual depth with which he has illuminated those subjects. Now he applies the same intelligent focus to a far more daunting task: helping us all to see how, together, we can climb out of the deep hole that we have dug together for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. With a succinct explanation of the relentless waves that continue to drown national economies around the world, he clears the fog of denial to reveal a rolling global depression that could last through much of the coming decade.

Table of Contents

Preface: Iceland 2008, and Six Degrees Of Global Thermonuclear Economic Collapse

Part One
What’s Really Going On Here?

1. What Does This Have to Do with Dominoes?
2. Arm Yourself with Knowledge and Curiosity
3. Don’t Declare Victory at Halftime
4. Prepare for Pain
5. Get Your Head Around the Numbers and the Zeroes
6. It’s a Wonderful Life – Not!
7. Pop Goes the Bubble
8. Economic Collapse, One State at a Time
9. Over 20 Million Unemployed and Underemployed
10. How Deflation Turns Into Inflation
11. Expecting to Fly: The Problem with History
12. Perhaps You’ve Heard This One Before: The Markets Always Recover
13. The Collapse of Safe Havens
14. Say No to Child Abuse
15. Rise Above the Hard Bigotry Of Hard Times
16. This is Not a “Mental Recession”
17. Don’t Believe in Jobs That May Never Come Back
18. Don’t Be the Ostrich That the Wise Guys Want You to Be
19. Rampant Private Corruption
20. The Cyclical Nature of Electoral Politics and The Myth of the Republican Political Narrative
21. Funny Money
22. Rise and Collapse of a Casino Economy
23. The Stock Market and Equity Value Crash
24. The Consumer Credit Crisis (Credit Cards and Beyond)
25. The Collapse of Savings and Retirement Funds
26. The Overbuilt Economy and the Resulting Collapse of Consumer Demand
27. New Waves of Business Bankruptcies
28. The Stagnant Stock Market of the 2010s
29. Collapse of Bond Markets
30. Private Sector Layoffs
31. The Shrinking Tax Base
32. Public Bankruptcies and Bailouts
33. Public Sector Layoffs
34. Deflation
35. The National Debt Crisis
36. The Money-Printing Crisis
37. Climate Change And the Failure of Human Ecologies
38. Domestic Polarization Around Religion, Ethnicity, Culture, and Politics
39. The Safety Net Insolvency Crisis
40. Breakdown of Political Civility
41. Failure of Political Support For a Responsible Tax Policy
42. Lack of Victim Nations or Populations On Which U.S. or Other Dominant Nations Can Impose Economic or Political Will
43. U.S. Military & Diplomatic Weakness, Declining Nuclear Security, and the Proliferation Of Non-State Terrorist Agency
44. Inefficacies and Spiraling Costs of Private and Public Sector Bailouts and Rescues

Part Two: Personal Prescriptions for a Financial Crisis That Seems Like It Will Never End

1. Changing Your Borrowing Habits
2. Stop Giving 100%: We’ll Do Just Fine with a 75 Per Cent Economy
3. What Do You Really Need to Enjoy Life?
4. A Top Ten List of Basic Needs
5. Home Maintenance and Energy Costs
6. Consider Renting a Home
7. Geographical Cures
8. Reduce Your Economic Radius
9. Thinking Through Tax Implications To Get the Most out of What You Spend
10. Harvesting Cash from What You Don’t Need
11. Renting Out Part or All of Your Home
12. Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
13. Leadership Must Lead: Expect the Best, Not the Most, from Government