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    One Thousand and One Nights
    One Thousand and One Nights
    One Thousand and One Nights
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    One Thousand and One Nights

    By Ruth Browne

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Sheri spends her days fighting zombies and her nights chained to a wall, earning her every breath by telling stories to her captor Aleksy-stories that make them both forget the ruined world. Sheri could put up with the conditions-at least she knows her sister is safe in the community Aleksy leads-until she realizes she's falling for him...even though he wants her dead.

    When Aleksy allowed Sheri and her sister into his compound, he didn't know about the zombie bite on her back. It's only a matter of time before she turns into one of the rising dead and threatens their existence, but Aleksy has a secret need for Sheri and her stories. For everyone's safety, he chains her to his bedroom wall, hoping for just one more day. But how long will the community allow Aleksy to ignore his own rule: always kill the infected. Always.

    Previously released on Entangled's Ever After imprint - September 2013

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 30, 2013
    ISBN9781622663316
    One Thousand and One Nights

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    Reviews for One Thousand and One Nights

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    • 4/5
      I liked this Novella! It had a great concept that kept my attention from start to finish. It's a very quick read that is packed full of action. Definitely recommend this one. I received an ARC from the publisher for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      4.5*Book source ~ Many thanks to Entangled for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.Sheri and Dani have been in the foster care system since their parents were killed. Sheri is a bit of a rebel who loves stories and she’ll do anything to protect her little sister. When the zombie apocalypse begins Sheri packs up supplies and a shotgun, steals her foster brother’s motorcycle and takes off with Dani. For five years they survive until one day Aleksy comes across the mountain cabin they’re living in while he’s out scouting for supplies and offers to take them back to his Midwestern mountain range fortress where he and some others are protected from the infected. Sheri agrees for Dani’s sake, but once inside the fortress the others discover Sheri has a zombie bite. She’s bitten, yet she hasn’t turned. Aleksy always kills the infected. What is he going to do about Sheri?This is a retelling of Arabians Nights set in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies. I love stories about unusual characters and this story delivers. Sheri is a rebel yet she loves stories. She reads whatever she can get her hands on, but her real talent is in the telling. When Aleksy reluctantly decides he must kill her he’s on his way to her cage when he hears her telling Dani a story of the Beauty and the Beast with Aleksy as the Beast and Sheri as the Beauty. He’s hooked. For four months Sheri tells him stories while chained to his bedroom wall and he occasionally lets her out of the fortress to search for books in libraries and supplies they can use. Despite having been bitten multiple times, Sheri has not turned. She’s pale as death, doesn’t menstruate, is strong and fast with excellent sight and hearing and yet she’s still a living breathing human, not a zombie. I would have liked to know more about why she hadn’t turned, though I’m sure the characters are just as confused as I am. What has kept her human? The way she treated her bites? Her genetic make up? Her very active brain? A combination of many things? We don’t know. Aleksy’s treatment of her is cruel, but he doesn’t want to be. Conflicted much? This is a great short story that would have been awesome as a longer version with more detail.

    Book preview

    One Thousand and One Nights - Ruth Browne

    Zombie hunter by day.

    Storyteller by night.

    Sheri spends her days fighting zombies and her nights chained to a wall, earning her every breath by telling stories to her captor Aleksy—stories that make them both forget the ruined world. Sheri could put up with the conditions—at least she knows her sister is safe in the community Aleksy leads—until she realizes she’s falling for him...even though he wants her dead.

    When Aleksy allowed Sheri and her sister into his compound, he didn’t know about the zombie bite on her back. It’s only a matter of time before she turns into one of the rising dead and threatens their existence, but Aleksy has a secret need for Sheri and her stories. For everyone’s safety, he chains her to his bedroom wall, hoping for just one more day. But how long will the community allow Aleksy to ignore his own rule: always kill the infected. Always.

    Previously released on Entangled’s Ever After imprint – September 2013

    Table of Contents

    Dedication

    Chapter One

    About the Author

    Discover more paranormal romance from Select Otherworld...

    Waking up Dead

    Less than Perfect

    Ruby Hill

    Christmas Past

    Temping is Hell

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

    Copyright © 2013 by Ruth Browne. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

    Entangled Publishing, LLC

    2614 South Timberline Road

    Suite 109

    Fort Collins, CO 80525

    Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

    Select Otherworld is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

    Edited by Kaleen Harding

    Cover design by Frauke Spanuth

    ISBN 978-1-62266-331-6

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    First Edition September 2013

    For Daniel

    Chapter One

    Inside, it was black as a witch’s belly. The moon glimmered through the window she’d smashed, but the generators were long dead and the shelves blocked out the rest of the light. A zipper purred as she opened her backpack, and the beam of a dimmed flashlight pooled on the floor. Then, boot heels clicking, she moved amongst the shelves.

    The last haul had been pretty slim, just a couple of paperbacks in some no-account town that didn’t even have its own gas station. On the dirty grey board by the highway, the town’s name looked like it had been scraped off with fingernails, and she could only make out the faded postscript: Population 63.

    Some of them had still been there.

    But this place was better, bigger, complete with a strip mall, a used car dealership, and an adult toy shop. It also had a library.

    Paper rustled underfoot as she searched, running the flashlight over rows of spines with their little printed tags. Books had fallen or been wrenched out at random, trampled and left to rot. She picked her way between them, scowling in the dark. What a waste.

    Her eyes had adjusted to the light, and when she came to the end of the row she could see the bulky Formica-topped counter where library clerks used to check out books. Over by the exit loomed the frame of a metal-detector. From here she could also see the doors, which had been jammed shut with broken bookcases and furniture. Covering the flashlight with her hand, she stood for a moment and listened intently. There was no sound, so she kept moving.

    Passing several aisles of non-fiction, she turned into the children’s section and smiled to herself as the flashlight lit up a small collection of dusty bound volumes. Yes! Grimm’s Fairytales, a misplaced copy of the Odyssey, and something more rare: most of One Thousand and One Nights. Greedily, she lifted them down and examined them. They were all part of a set dedicated to the library nearly twelve years ago by the Minchin family.

    Bless you, Minchins, she murmured, and packed the books quickly into her backpack. This library’s size had seemed promising, but it was heavy on autobiographies and wildlife. Not to mention it was never wise to hang around in one place for too long. Time to go.

    She started back along the aisle towards the broken window where she’d made her entrance, her quick stride decisive on the floor-tiles. Then, sweeping before her as she walked, the flashlight beam picked up a crumpled form on the floor ahead. It twitched, and gave a stifled moan.

    Shit!

    A dead boy wearing torn Spiderman pajamas rose like a stringless puppet, gangly with its jaw gone. She was so focused on him, his pathetic clutching hands, she almost missed the stumbling footfall behind her as something came lurching out of the dark. Almost.

    There was the whisper of a leather holster, a double-click, and a shotgun blast; the walls rang, drifts of paper billowed, and a corpse with no head slid away in a spray of sticky blood. She pivoted on her back foot as the boy reached for her, and blew him away too. Through the whining white noise in her ears, she heard a chorus of sighs and dry throaty rattles. Well, that was just great. The townspeople must have used the library as a safe place way back when it first happened. She guessed they hadn’t heard about the bitten yet those days, and now the place was crawling with them.

    Come on out, bitches! She hefted the shotgun and sprinted up the aisle. They clotted together to block her escape and she blasted them aside like cornstalks. Grannies in knitted cardigans, yoga-moms in stretch pants, acned teenaged louts in hoodies…she wasted them all. No discrimination, though she sometimes took pity on the legless ones. Ammunition was limited.

    She hurdled the bodies, watching her step on a floor slippery with clotted blood, and boosted herself up and out of the smashed window. Broken glass cut her palms, even through the military-issue gloves she wore, but she gritted her teeth and bore

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