Throughout the 1920s the Common University provided a free and ready source of education to the working classes of England through various lecture series and the distribution of educative pamphlets in the East End. At the time it renowned as a philanthropic exercise noted more for its good intentions than its practice of asking for lecturers' credentials. In the mid 1930s it shut down amid a small furore over the nonsense it was teaching. It was assumed by all involved that that would be the end of it.

Then, toward the end of the 1990s the English poet A.F. Harrold discovered a box of papers in the attic of an elderly stranger. After exhaustive investigations, leads followed and clues uncovered he discovered that what he held in his hands were lecture notes, reports of speeches, lessons and seminars from the Common University long thought lost by educational historians. "Gosh," he thought, "This stuff's...[more]

What if the cataclysmic Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but by a microscopic black hole?

What if that fantastic object - smaller than an atom, older than the stars, heavier than a mountain - is still down there, orbiting deep inside the earth, slowly consuming the planet?

What if only a rookie government agent and an uncannily-insightful consultant stand between a renegade Russian billionaire and his plans to use the black hole to change history - or end it?

What if it's all true?

For an alternative view of the Tunguska event and to explore the...[more]

Odd Jobs is a comic caper love story about Mountie women and layabout men, house and family, script-writers and cat-burglars. A modern tale of movie magic in the wrong hands: the Big Lebowski meets Elmore Leonard's niece.

A domestic terrorist attack evokes a violent and oppressive response from the U.S. government... a labor dispute ends in violence... a young boy lies dying of a rare disease with no hope in sight. When the conflict focuses on a small town in West Virginia, Ken Murphy, Iraq veteran and Lieutenant Colonel in the West Virginia National Guard, must find a way to protect his family and community in a world turned upside down. In a future America terrifying to behold, Republic evokes the specter of civil war in a world that is simultaneously familiar and changed beyond recognition.

Republic is written and performed by Charles Sheehan-Miles (also author of Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War) with music produced by Luke Tripp.

Here's What Some People Have to Say About Republic:

The Podler Book Review, June 7, 2007
... vital, gripping, convincing ... compelling...[more]

Season Two presents twelve more bloody episodes from best selling author Scott Sigler. It features the 2008 Parsec finalists "Kissyman & Screamin' Jesse Dupre" and "Passenger" as well as Scott's unique satire of the Peanuts characters.

This peculiar comic novel concerns two men and a woman and looks at how they came to be where they were when they met and the effect that meeting had upon them.

One man is Epitome Quirkstandard, a benighted aristocrat in the Wodehousian tradition whose staff have abandoned him to go and fight in the First World War and who discovers the taste for learning - especially when he attempts to make his own breakfast.

The other man is Mr. Crepuscular, a man who has written a multitude of educative pamphlets that he kindly rents out to Quirkstandard. As an illiterate scamp he ran away to join the circus, but through a series of unlikely adventures he ends up as a wise quasi-Buddhist who understands that sometimes the circus just isn't the right place to be.

And the woman is Quirkstandard's aunt, Penelope Penultimate, a beautiful but severe lady of mature years who spent the...[more]

Three weeks ago, the U.S. president was murdered by a four-year-old boy.

Today, seven men stare at each other in a locked conference room. Kidnapped and brought to this underground facility, the strangers are sitting in silence, thunderstruck. Despite minor physical differences, they all appear to be the same man, with the same name ... and the same childhood memories.

Unwitting participants in a secret human cloning experiment, these seven "John Michael Smiths" have been gathered by their creators for one reason -- to capture the mastermind behind the president's assassination.

Their target? The man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith,...[more]

Salavandra is an isolated Caribbean island. Its products-coffee, lumber and flowers-are controlled by Penkava Inc., a New York based multinational commodity corporation. After discovering that Penkava is responsible for his father's death, as well as the abysmal working conditions on the island, coffee farmer Antonio Richards ignites a revolution in the midst of a harvest season. Branding his infant insurgency The United Front for the Liberation of Salavandra (UFLS), he begins fighting the unbridled capitalistic forces controlling his country.