Amid the flames, a killer is waiting . . .Appearances are deceiving when it comes to Dr. Lilah Graham, a hardworking, uncompromising genetic researcher who is driven by uncontrollable impulses that even she can't understand. When she suddenly becomes the target of a deranged firebomber while studying the link between genetic makeup and violent behavior, her tough outer shell begins to crumble and those around her suspect that something is amiss. Dan Merrick, the lead arson investigator assigned to the case, begins to rule out suspects while also developing an interest in Graham, which eventually leads him to the discovery of a startling past she has never mentioned. When her parents' home is set on fire and her father is killed, Graham is forced to confront her repressed childhood memories of the death of her twin and her own sexual abuse.An inferno of sex and danger, action and desire, Touched by Fire is a taut, fast-paced thriller that races to a final, fiery climax. Views: 74
Jenny Cain would never forget the hot Massachusetts summer day fate knocked at her door. Fate was a teenaged boy with rumpled clothes, a motorcycle, and a shocking but credible story: Jenny's husband, Geof, was his biological father. The boy, David Mayer, wasn't looking for an emotional reunion, but he did have an agenda. His parents -- and he was quick to make the point that Geof was nothing to him -- died earlier in the year, a murder/suicide according to the police. The cops were wrong, David said, and Geof was a cop, and he owed it to David to prove that Ron Mayer did not kill his invalid wife and then himself. As David lured Jenny and Geof to carefully placed clues, including two bizarre videotaped confessions of "sin," another murder was committed. And Jenny knew that no matter what the truth was about David Mayer's parents, her own life and marriage would be altered forever.... Views: 74
Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens just lost his first election in seventeen years. Maybe folks in the Arizona Territory were ready for a change...and then again, maybe Stringer ought to go have a look-see. The trouble is, Perry's vanished and everyone who knew him is either dead or vanished too. But when hot lead and hard knuckles start flying, Stringer's belt-buckle deep in ghostly mystery and willing women. And even if the ghosts may be hokum, the women are flesh-and-blood beauties! Views: 73
Picayune is a story about an anthropomorphic mouse and his dreams of going on a grand adventure, but never believing in himself enough to fulfill the dreams. When a friend goes off and doesn't return, he over-comes his shyness and goes out into the world. His dreams continue on his adventure until he finally realizes all he had to do was believe in himself to succeed. Views: 73
JEAN Paul Sartre's No Exit was first performed at the Vieux-Colombier in May 1944, just before the liberation of Paris. Three characters, a man and two women, find themselves in hell, which for them is a living-room with Second Empire furniture. Each of the characters needs the other two in order to create some illusion about himself. Since existence, for Sartre, is the will to project oneself into the future-to create one's future-the opposite of existence, where man has no power to create his future, his hell. This is the meaning of the Sartrean hell in the morality play No Exit. Garcin's sin had been cowardice, and in hell he tries to use the two women, who are locked up forever with him in the same room, under the same strong light, as mirrors in which he will see a complacent and reassuring picture of himself. This play, an example of expert craftmanship so organized that the audience learns very slowly the facts concerning the three characters, is Sartre's indictment of the social comedy and the false role that each man plays in it. The most famous utterance in the play, made by Garcin, when he says that hell is other people, l'enfer, c'est les autres, is, in the briefest form possible, Sartre's definition of man's fundamental sin. When the picture a man has of himself is provided by those who see him, in the distorted image of himself that they give back to him, he has rejected what the philosopher has called reality. He has, moreover, rejected the possibility of projecting himself into his future and existing in the fullest sense. In social situations we play a part that is not ourself. If we passively become that part, we are thereby avoiding the important decisions and choices by which personality should be formed. After confessing her sins to Garcin, Inès acknowledges her evil and concludes with a statement as significant as Garcin's definition of hell. She needs the suffering of others in order to exist. (Moi, je suis méchante: ça veut dire que j'ai besoin de la souffrance des autres pour exister…) The game a man plays in society, in being such and such a character, is pernicious in that he becomes caught in it. L'homme s'englue is a favorite expression of Sartre. The viscosity (viscosité) of such a social character is the strong metaphor by which Sartre depicts this capital sin and which will end by making it impossible for man to choose himself, to invent himself freely. The drawing-room scene in hell, where there is no executioner because each character tortures the other two, has the eeriness of a Gothic tale, the frustration of sexuality, the pedagogy of existentialist morality. The least guilty of the three seems to be Garcin, and he suffers the most under the relentless intellectualizing and even philosophizing of Inès. At the end of the play, Garcin complains of dying too early. He did not have time to make his own acts. (Je suis mort trop tôt. On ne m'a pas laissé le temps de faire mes actes.) Inès counters this (she has an answer to everything, Garcin is going to say) with the full Sartrean proclamation: "You are nothing else but your life." (Tu n'es rien d'autre que ta vie…) No further argument seems possible after this sentence, and the play ends three pages later when the full knowledge of their fate enters the consciousness of the three characters and Garcin speaks the curtain line: Eh bien, continuous… ("Well, well, let's get on with it…"). This ultimate line which, paradoxically, announces the continuation of the same play, was to be echoed ten years later in the concluding line of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The two plays bear many resemblances both structurally and philosophically. Views: 73
Seven romantic tales of marriage proposals. Featuring authors Charmaine Pauls, Ellyse Roberts, Elena Kane, Tara Fox Hall, Caroline Andrus, Louise Redmann, and Katie Stephens. Views: 73
SUMMARY:ldwin races to a Boston hospital with a young woman whose normal labor has suddenly become a matter of life and death. As she struggles to save both mother and baby, she doesn't know that two other women have already died under horrifying identical circumstances. And so begins Sarah's own nightmare, as she learns that the prenatal herbal vitamins she prescribed are the only thing these women have in common. Soon Sarah is fighting to save her career, her reputation--her life. For she's certain there must be some unknown factor linking these women, and as she gets closer to the truth, it becomes clear that someone will do anything--even murder--to keep a devastating secret. Views: 73
An intellectual memoir by the author of the acclaimed Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson is one of the leading historians of nationalism and Southeast Asia. His seminal book Imagined Communities has changed the way we think about the reason why people live, die and kill in the name of nationhood.Born in China, Anderson spent his childhood in California and Ireland, was educated in England and finally found a home at Cornell University, where he immersed himself in the growing field of Southeast Asian studies. After field work in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, he was banned from Suharto's Indonesia for disputing the legitimacy of the 1965 coup. In his memoir, he brings to life the intellectual formation of a life spent open to the world, resisting the easy comforts of imagined homes: the joys of learning languages; the importance of field work; the influence of the New Left upon global think-ing; and the satisfactions of... Views: 73
When brilliant gemstones and colorful crystals appear in seemingly random places starting on a Pacific beach, then in a California forest, they cause excitement. People think the gems are valuable jewels. But they appear in more places, causing chaos and danger. Why are they appearing? What are they? Who is doing it? Follow scientists Dan Ophelder and Nora Jonston as they race to find the answe Views: 73
Mike Shayne has 24 hours to find out the truth and save a man from death row 3 years ago, Miami Chief of Detectives Peter Painter made the greatest arrest of his career—one that led to Sam Harris being put on death row for killing Rose Heminway's husband. So when Harris's wife discovers evidence that she believes could save her husband's life, Painter does what any corrupt cop would: He sits on the evidence, waiting for the electric chair to do its work. Finally, Mrs. Harris has no choice. She contacts Heminway, who was never fully convinced of Sam's guilt, though she testified against him, and they take the final course of action of desperate women across Miami: They hire Mike Shayne. The most daring detective in the United States, Shayne has just 24 hours to clear Harris's name, or an innocent man will fry. Saving Harris will mean the wrath of the entire Miami police department, but Shayne isn't worried. He's tougher than any electric chair. Views: 73
It all starts on Mother's Day. In a quiet New England town, the Newhalls live an uneventful life with their adopted daughter. When the child's birth mother is murdered, the first suspect is the adoptive father. Views: 73
