George Grosz: Life And Work

My grandfather was a thief. He stole my grandmother’s name and her identity. He used them to escape a poor, forgotten corner of the rural West, then ran off with another woman. He became a law professor, standing at podiums and lecturing about justice. She became a famous painter, giving interviews about integrity. My grandmother spent her whole life trapped in that same dying farmland. Everyone called her an old maid. She never stopped waiting for him. Not even on her deathbed. Fifty years later, I clawed my way out of that godforsaken place on the strength of two generations, my grandmother and my mother. I made partner at a top law firm. It was graduation season. I sat in the lead interviewer’s chair. Across from me sat a girl. Polished. Confident. The most outstanding graduate from the best law school in the state. I opened her résumé and flipped through it page by page. Then I stopped at the family information section. I stared at that name for a very long time. I looked up at her and said quietly, “You didn’t get the job.”

René Huang is a French-Chinese Painter who lives in France. He lives alone there when his parents are living in China. He is famous, rich, and handsome. Everything in his life was perfect until finally, unexpected events started happening in his life. He painted some paintings in his sleep, and there was a secret behind them. He wanted to find out the secret, and when he became a guest lecturer in an art university, he met a student who was related to the paintings. Their relationship was not good at first, but when they were investigating the paintings together, the romance started blooming. Note: This novel is inspired by my fanfiction that was posted on another platform. The idea and the story are mines. No plagiarism. Cover by MichelleLeeee

Dmitri Volkov is the heir to one of New York’s most ruthless Russian mafia families—cold, controlled, and carrying scars no one is allowed to see. He has spent his life obeying blood oaths and burying every part of himself that doesn’t serve the syndicate. Love, especially love for a man, is a weakness he cannot afford. Ethan Moreau is a twenty-two-year-old French art student on scholarship at NYU—soft-spoken, openly gay, and painfully trusting. He came to New York to chase beauty in a city full of sharp edges, never expecting one of those edges to look back at him with ice-blue eyes. Their worlds collide by chance in Central Park. A fleeting encounter becomes stolen nights, desperate kisses in shadowed alleys, and whispered promises neither of them can keep. For Ethan, Dmitri is intensity and danger wrapped in tenderness he’s never known. For Dmitri, Ethan is the first crack of light in a life built on darkness—and the one thing that could destroy everything he’s been raised to protect. But secrets have weight. Dmitri’s family is closing in, a rival syndicate is circling, and every touch between them pulls the noose tighter. Misunderstandings fester into silence, jealousy into rage, and love into something that hurts to hold. When blood finally stains the canvas of their fragile world, Ethan will have to decide if he can love a man who was born to break hearts—and Dmitri will have to choose between the family that raised him and the only person who ever made him want to be free. In a city that devours the innocent, their story is a slow bleed of devotion, betrayal, and the kind of love that can ruin you completely.

I was a sketch artist acting for the police. On a secret mission, I was discovered by a murderer. My eyes were gouged out, and my body was dismembered, unceremoniously dumped in a garbage bin. On the brink of death, I called my boyfriend, a criminal investigator. However, he hung up on me because he was busy accompanying his first love to a prenatal checkup. A few days later, he received a painting that was a vital clue to finding the murderer, but he thought I was playing tricks on him. In his anger, he tore that portrait to shreds. After he found out the truth, he spent the whole night searching through the garbage to piece it back together.

On the day of Zephyr’s art exhibition, I saw people stand around a portrait of myself. My cheeks were flushed, and I was bare. My posture was the one we used in bed last week for fun. Zephyr even got the mole on my chest right. As people stared at me mockingly, I demanded, “Why did you do this to me?” He was unbothered. “It’s not as if I asked you to sleep with someone else.” But he did let people see how I looked when I was having an intimate moment with my own boyfriend! “It’s just a painting. Why are you being so petty?” I was stunned by the mockery in Zephyr’s gaze. Then, I called my assistant. “I’m attending the international art festival as the organizer.”

Established in August 1941 what was known as The Independent State of Croatia, A puppet state of Nazi Germany Imprisoned 70,000 - 100,000 Jews, Croats, Serbs, Roma, and Bosnian Muslims. Amidst chaos and war, late summer into early winter as Chrysanthemum flowers bloom so is the deep affection of Hannele daughter of a german soldier, chief in charge of the Jasenovac concentration camp. and Budo a jew prisoner longing for freedom. Will their forbidden summer fling come to an end as the winter season starts? Will they defy tradition and fate? Can this hot summer fling survive cold winter nights?