Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Giant's Garden
    Giant's Garden
    Giant's Garden
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Giant's Garden

    By Siondalin O'Craig

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A grant to do doctorate work in a bleak corner of Northern Ireland is Penny Gallagher’s last chance to find her wings and break free of her oppressive industrialist boyfriend.

    When she finds her time there has been engineered for her boyfriend’s profit, it takes a voiceless giant of a man to help her discover her own magic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChangeling Press
    Release dateJun 9, 2023
    Giant's Garden

    Related to Giant's Garden

    Titles in the series (5)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Wrong Shampoo

      Apr 10, 2022

      Brandy scoured the rows of bubble gum bright shampoo bottles. How much time had passed already? She looked to the front of the store but couldn’t see the checkout lines. She had only been to Jeff’s apartment once so far and didn’t remember what brand

      16 min read

    • Article

      The Freshening

      Sep 15, 2018

      My cashier’s black hair was beautiful. Though not unlike mine, it was shinier and thicker, and hung glamorously down to her waist. It looked strong, too, like Christopher Reeve’s in the Superman movies. A strand of Superman’s silvery hair could hold

      21 min read

    • Article

      Jason the Heat Guy

      Jan 11, 2021

      Jason the Heat Guy
      11 min read

    • Article

      The MISTAKE

      Aug 30, 2023

      The MISTAKE
      8 min read

    • Article

      Some Sweet Minutes

      May 19, 2021

      Some Sweet Minutes
      8 min read

    • Article

      How The Life Goes On

      Feb 4, 2021

      How The Life Goes On
      9 min read

    • Article

      Thieves

      Apr 11, 2018

      Thieves
      25 min read

    • Article

      Hot Tub Time Machine

      Feb 3, 2022

      Hot Tub Time Machine
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Change

      Aug 8, 2019

      The Change
      10 min read

    • Article

      Announcing The winners Of Our FLASH CONTEST

      Feb 29, 2020

      I sever the first two fingers of my left hand on a Tuesday. They fall to the ground at my feet, causing a momentary confusion as I wonder what tree has dropped this odd fruit. Then I see the crescent scar left behind by a fish hook and know that thes

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Temporary Arrangement

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Temporary Arrangement
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Killer

      Aug 21, 2020

      The Killer
      6 min read

    • Article

      100-WORD-STORY COMPETITION Winners

      Aug 16, 2022

      We’ve been delighted by the huge response to our 100-word-story competition. The entries have flooded in thick and fast during the past few months, but while we’ve enjoyed reading every story, only a few can come out on top! You, our readers, voted t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jack of Knives

      Jun 3, 2021

      WINNER £100 Jennifer is the author of four middle grade children’s novels published by Maverick (writing as Jenny Moore). Her latest book, The Misadventures of Nicholas Nabb, is set during the same period as her winning story and also includes a scen

      6 min read

    • Article

      In Love And War

      Jun 10, 2021

      April 1943 - Krakow, Poland Irena was bent over her needlework, stitching the frayed seam of her skirt when she heard a single gunshot ring out. She jerked and then scowled. After four years of war, she ought to be used to it. Why, the other night a

      11 min read

    • Article

      Six Dart Out

      Sep 10, 2023

      Marc figured the girl was a vegan. Her puke had overflowed the sink and run onto the floor—tomatoes and rice marinated in microbrew lager. He’d told Vegan Girl to slow down, but her friends had won the turning-21-peer-pressure battle. Admittedly, Mar

      9 min read

    • Article

      Fire Survivors Find 'A Lot Of Beauty In The World'

      Dec 19, 2017

      After the fire, they had nothing. To their surprise, they also had everything. You may recall the story of Jan LeHecka Pascoe and her husband, John, who spent six terrified hours in a neighbor's swimming pool, slipping below the surface to avoid the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Best

      Oct 29, 2022

      Best Of The Best
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mrs. Robinson

      Dec 10, 2022

      “Do you think she will like me?” The question slipped from between my lips and hung suspended in the air. My gloved hands were in my lap, and I was wringing them. As the carriage conveyed us and we neared my new husband’s ancestral home, Ashby Hall,

      20 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2019

      He was an angry man, and he was an ugly man, and he was tall, and he was pacing. Not much space for it in the new home, just a few rooms lined up in a row, underneath a series of slow-moving ceiling fans, an array of antique clocks ticking on one wal

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Midsummer’s Night

      Sep 10, 2023

      Niki thought she could sense it on all their minds, hovering between the four of them as they threw cushions and sandals into the boat, lowered the wine bottles in, and collected the long pole, but it wasn’t until they were out of the city that they

      14 min read

    • Article

      Share Your News

      Jan 6, 2022

      To feature in subscribers’ news contact: tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk ‘I’ve loved writing ever since I was a child,’ writes subscriber Glenda Young. ‘I live in the north-east and my novels are set in the coalmining village of Ryhope where I was born a

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Giant's Garden

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Giant's Garden - Siondalin O'Craig

      Chapter One

      Penny

      The Giant’s Causeway

      Sean Feeney took another long drag from his pocket flask. Heavy gold chains around his wrist grated against the flask’s metal rim. Penny Gallagher watched him sway unsteadily in his skinny designer jeans and black Converse high tops.

      He reached out and draped his bony arm around her shoulders -- she couldn’t tell whether it was to keep from falling over or an awkward maneuver meant to be making a pass at her.

      She hoped it was the latter. First off, they were standing at the top of a cliff. Not just any cliff, but a bare, windswept cliff tumbled with black hexagonal stone columns jutting out into the North Channel of the Irish Sea between the north coast of Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. If Sean dropped onto those lichen-pocked rocks it would mean a fatal mess involving a lot of paperwork and long, dim conversations with uniformed authorities. And if I fell… no, she told herself firmly, we’re not going down that line of thinking right now.

      Secondly, she hadn’t gotten laid since James Carbill threw her over six months ago for some new interior designer he had fallen for. And to tell the truth, she had not been laid decently for months before that. James’s steel-blue eyes had started wandering elsewhere long before that ugly day when he’d told her that she needed to move out of the Beacon Hill apartment he had been keeping her in, and that both of her positions -- as his personal assistant, and as his sexual partner and dinner party arm candy -- were terminated effective immediately.

      James had softened the blow a bit by pulling some strings to secure this grant so she could finish her doctorate degree in psychology from Boston’s Fauntel University, and that’s how she wound up standing on top of a windy cliff, watching Sean’s long, shaggy blond hair blow into his eyes, which were fixed vacantly on the horizon.

      She reached up to her shoulder and twined the fingers of her right hand with Sean’s, hoping to lower the odds that they’d both go off the cliff. The smell of salt spray on stone mingled with alcohol fumes. She reached for his flask with her left.

      Give me a hit of that, she said, raising her voice over the wind. You can’t have all the fun yourself.

      He handed her the flask absent-mindedly, its cap dangling from a little silver chain. She took a swig. Smoky, peaty whiskey spread across her tongue and throat, seeping straight into her bloodstream. She would swear it never even hit her stomach.

      All this, Sean said, gesturing broadly with a wobbling sweep of his arm. Penny braced her feet, but they did not topple over. When you write your… your… thing.

      My thesis.

      Your thee, your thing. On all this. You’ll make millions of dollars. We’ll all make millions of dollars. Because everyone will want it.

      Penny took another hit of the whiskey. It felt mellower this time, as if she and the whiskey were getting acquainted. No one ever made millions of dollars on their psychology doctorate thesis, she said.

      Oh, but you will. Sean turned around, his face close to hers, and poked her hard in the chest with the point of his index finger. You will. I will. Everyone will. Because this, he swept his arm out again along the horizon, this is the Giant’s Causeway. You’ll write about why it makes people feel so good -- you feel good, right?

      Penny nodded skeptically. He didn’t wait for her response before rambling on.

      Because it makes people feel so good they will all want to stay here, and I’m selling my land to an American developer who will build them all places to live -- just as soon as you are done.

      Penny smirked and shook her head. It’s true that her doctorate proposal had talked about the intersection of landscape and psychology, and the grant that James had helped her secure had sent her to this bleak, forsaken, vertical drop-off to write about it. But, point of fact, she had not yet started writing, and now that she was here, she could not for her life figure out what to write about.

      Sean, you handsome devil, she said. It’s a pile of rocks. Basalt, she noted to herself, recalling one of the guidebooks she’d read on the plane. Lava from a volcanic episode, cooled slowly, formed hexagonal columns. Why do people find the myths more interesting than the science?

      It’s the Giant’s Causeway, Sean insisted, taking his flask back. It was Benandonner as started it. Leave it to the Scots to start a fight. He took a swig and pulled Penny closer. The hand on her shoulder started wandering forward, his fingers walking down over her white wool sweater, toward her breast. She shifted slightly and tossed her bouncing red ringlets, encouraging him. His eyes stayed fixed on the sea.

      Right over there. He gestured with the flask toward a distant trace of land on the horizon. Benandonner, the bloody bastard, challenged Finn MacCool to a duel. Then he’s running around all over Scotland like a right git saying it will take years for Finn to build a boat and by that time he will have forgotten all about the duel. But Finn, our man Finn, he wasn’t going to… yeah. Bullshit. So anyway, he built with knocked down rocks and paving stones, the causeway, right there, see it?

      I can see you’re pretty excited about this. He’s too drunk to string two sentences together. His right arm had become a bony kink around Penny’s neck as his hand continued meandering around with a mind of its own. God, it’s like he’s in high school, Penny thought. She lifted his hand off her shoulder, slid it around her waist and under the bottom of her sweater. The hand climbed straight to her breast. She reached through the neck of her sweater and slipped her bra strap down. His cold fingertips grabbed her nipple like it was a pencil eraser. She gasped.

      And Finn MacCool walked over it, right across the North Channel, and kicked Benandonner’s ass and screwed his pretty daughter with his enormous cock.

      Sean pivoted and pulled Penny’s back against his chest. She felt his erection pressing against her thighs, and though it did not feel enormous, she hardly cared about that. Beggars can’t be choosers. She did, however, care that she now stood even closer to the edge of the cliff.

      You want a piece of that, Sean hissed in her ear. If you were riding that rod I bet you’d see what I mean.

      That’s a little confusing, Penny thought, but he is cute. And available. She turned her head to find his thin, pink lips, but they were wrapped around the neck of the flask, which he was apparently holding in his teeth. He tilted his head back, swallowing loudly, both hands now clutching at her breasts. The sound of waves on rock grew louder in Penny’s mind.

      Why don’t we head over to my place and see about that, she said, leaning back against him, walking them both back from the cliff. I can drive.

      He laughed and released her so abruptly that for a moment she swore she was falling. She caught herself and turned to find him several steps ahead of her, striding back to the car, keys dangling from his hand.

      …stop for a wee dram at the Oak. It’s just on the way, he was saying as she caught up to him.

      Penny grabbed at his arm, but he kept charging forward, a man on a mission. At least he’s moving away from that Goddamned pile of rocks and a sharp drop to sudden death, she thought. So that’s something anyway. I’ve got wine at the cottage, she said, trying to sound inviting. Let’s not stop at the bar.

      Everyone will be there, he said, throwing himself into the driver’s seat of the little gray Camry and starting the engine. You’ll love… The car door slammed shut.

      Penny sprinted to the passenger side door and threw herself in as the car lurched into reverse, backing onto the road. God help me,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1