Benbrook Public Library

Masks. Everybody wears them. Perhaps they are tangible, worn for a job or as part of a costume. More likely, they are metaphorical, shaped by the stories we tell each other and the lies we tell ourselves. This collection of twenty tales by members of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers explores what happens when we conceal ourselves behind carefully constructed identities. Why do we hide? What are we afraid to confront? And what happens when at last the...

Hold Still Fast is a collection of 200 short vignettes of 50 words and under, prose snapshots of a wide range of colorful characters. Moments of reckoning and realizations of loss, sensual celebrations of the physical world, and mysteries whose answers lie barely out of reach, these stories are complete in their telling yet rich in implication. They are the stories we tell when we see more than we say, when we feel more than we know. Immediate. Intimate....

When opportunity refuses to knock for restless hero Matilde, the devil comes knocking instead. Thrust into action by the hellish arrival, Matilde and storyteller Pitt will quest for renown, the soul of their community, and answers to the toughest question of all: "Who am I?" Inspired by the work of Hayao Miyazaki and set in the chaos of King Henry VIII's reign, GOSPEL is a thrilling fantasy adventure that explores the truth behind the stories we tell....

The basic needs of the human heart are,, reflected in the stories we tell. As women and men made in the image of God, all storytellers reflect his timeless truths-whether they realize it or not. In The Cross in the Culture, Ruth Buchanan explores how Christians engage with stories of every kind. Together, we will discover the image of God and the eternal truths of Scripture reflected in our shared narratives. In one way or another, every story connects...

An exploration of scarring thorns, the moments when healing buds, and, the remarkable fruits of our blossoming. Growth is ugly beautiful. It can take you to far destinations outside of and inside yourself. It is often deeply spiritual. The Exquisite Pain of Flowering takes you along that path within the context of relationships-where healing often takes place. The personal and interpersonal revelations of our journeys may even root out our purpose...

The stories we tell shape us, they express the limits of our hopes and disappointments, and they can even encourage and inspire us. These folk tales were collected mainly from people who lived in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and North Carolina. Many of the tales have been handed down for generations. Some are newly conceived. Laughter, especially, tickles our minds and lets us take a look at our feelings-at inconsistencies, at impossibilities,...

This is a book that champions older women's stories and challenges the limiting outcomes we seem to hold for them. The Book of Old Ladies introduces readers to thirty stories featuring fictional "women of a certain age" who increasingly become their truest selves. Their stories will entertain and provide insight into the stories we tell ourselves about the limits and opportunities of aging. A celebration of women who push back against the limiting...

Missing, dead, disappeared, or otherwise absent mothers haunt us and the stories we tell ourselves. Our literature, from fairytales like Cinderella and The Little Mermaid to popular narratives like Cheryl Strayed's recent book Wild, is peopled with motherless children. The absent mother, whether in literature or life, may force us to forge an independent identity. But she can also leave a mother-shaped hole and a howling loneliness that dogs us through...

Change the story and change the future - merging science and Indigenous knowledge to steer us towards a more benign Anthropocene As humanity marches on, causing mass extinctions and destabilizing the climate, the future of Earth will very much reflect the stories that Homo sapiens decides to jettison or accept today into our collective identity. At this pivotal moment in history, the most important story we can be telling ourselves is that humans...

Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire. Frank Exit is dead-or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures-interlaced with digressions...