The house on the cliff has been vacant and is supposed to be haunted. Then it is reported to be the abode of criminals. Mr. Hardy starts to investigate and disappears, so the boys set to work to see what they can do. _______________ When Mr. Hardy disappears while investigating a mystery surrounding a vacant house rumored to be either haunted or an abode for criminals, the Hardy Boys search for the truth. ______________ About the Author Franklin W. Dixon was the pseudonym devised by Edward Stratemeyer for the author of a series of mystery books he was developing which became the Hardy Boys series. The first book, The Tower Treasure, originally published in 1927, was ghostwritten by Leslie MacFarlane who went on to write 19 more, including #2 through #16. In all, there are 58 titles in the original Hardy Boys Mysteries series published between 1927 and 1979 written by 17 different men and women. Many of the books were later revised, adding another four Hardy Boys Mystery Stories to the total. Views: 38
In the world of PR, there's only one crime worse than killing a deal—killing a client.Aspiring actress and office temp Isobel Spice finds a warm welcome at Dove & Flight Public Relations, thanks to her old school friend Katrina Campbell. However, the atmosphere chills considerably when Isobel unwittingly serves an important client a deadly dose of poisoned coffee. Her stalwart temp agent, James Cooke, rushes to her aid, but balks when he learns that the victim was the fraternity brother who got him expelled from college. News that Dove & Flight is being acquired by an international conglomerate quickly supplants the murder as the hot topic of office gossip, but Isobel is convinced the two events are related. When all roads of inquiry lead back to Katrina, Isobel is forced to consider the possibility that her friend's killer instincts go beyond public relations. Views: 38
Jeanette LaFleur, newly graduated and quallified as an ophthalmic technologist, starts her dream job as Clinical Coordinator for the Epi Project. When she discovers irregularities in record keeping for the project, she chalks it up to her predecessors' lack of organization and sets about fixing the problems. But when she finds that records are missing or maybe never even existed, she takes her concerns to her boss, Dr. Byron Rutherford, the charismatic head of the project and a nationally renowned corneal specialist. While he expresses his concern, he assures her that it must all be a matter of poor record keeping and gives her carte blanche to fix the problems. Except the problems aren't easily fixed. As she digs deeper with the help of her current boyfriend, lawyer Charles Carter, and her deceased husband's best friend, Dr. Scott Fontenot, she becomes convinced that the project is a front for illegal activities. Medical negligence, fraud, and money laundering are just the tip of the ice berg. It is when the trio discovers that illegal body parts, and not just the corneas needed for the Epi Project, are being brokered through a corporation owned by Dr. Rutherford and a South American doctor that murder raises its ugly head. Now Jeanette is running for her life, as Scott endangers his by traveling to Brazil to find enough evidence to convict the highly esteemed Rutherford. From the corrupt streets of New Orleans to the steamy plains and jungles of Brazil, Blind-Sided twists and turns as torturously as the snakes that swim the bayous of Louisiana. Views: 38
In Everyday Psychokillers spectacular violence is the idiom of everyday life, a lurid extravaganza in which all those around the narrator seem vicarious participants. And at its center are the interchangeable young girls, thrilling to know themselves the object of so much desire and terror. Views: 38
Kerry Spence is unfulfilled by her soulless career in advertising, disappointed by her dysfunctional relationship, and horrified by the ever-increasing size of her ass. Ever since her gorgeous, self-absorbed boyfriend Sam demoted her to late night hook-up status, she has fortified herself with prime-time TV and blissful binges on cream cheese frosting, awaiting an epiphany that will reveal her next move.
Of course, everybody in her life is full of advice. Her free-spirited divorcee mother–when not necking furiously with her much younger boyfriend– sagely counsels her daughter to do whatever it takes to snag Sam back, since, quite frankly, he is the best she can do. Her friends ply her with fruity cocktails and dispense bits of ‘Cosmo’ wisdom like “Divide your age in half and add seven–that’s the youngest man you are allowed to date” and “Scotch tape can eliminate forehead wrinkles.” And then there is Kerry’s shrink, the calm, unflappable therapist who suggests she start “a diary of past encounters with men that may be contributing to her negative and dysfunctional quasi-relationship.” Or, as Kerry sees it, a journal of mortifying moments.
Beginning with a kissing game gone bad in grade school, the journal jump-starts Kerry’s stroll down memory lane of man troubles. But just as Kerry decides her poorly dressed therapist is as crazy as everybody else in her orbit, she begins to realize the journal may actually make some sense–as she plumbs the depths of her most embarrassing experiences on a quest for personal awareness that will give her the strength to turn her life around–and just maybe find love again.
The Journal of Mortifying Moments is a hysterically funny glimpse into the quirky, slightly obsessive, and completely lovable mind of Kerry Spence. But somewhere amidst the laugh-out-loud hilarity of Kerry’s exploits emerges the story of a woman who learns to stop trying to be someone she’s not, and start loving the wonderful, quirky person she is, once and for all.
**From Publishers Weekly
"It was my therapist's idea—the journal of mortifying moments." Thus begins Kerry Spence's revisitation of all the most miserable episodes in her life in an effort to overhaul her self-defeating dating habits. It's not just her love life that's a problem: her career in advertising is going nowhere, and her friends are making choices she cannot begin to comprehend. Just in case the journal doesn't do the trick, she visits Ramona the psychic, who helps her to "read what our intuition already knows," and consults Dr. Rainbow Hashawarma's book You Get What You Give. Primed with plenty of advice, she decides to break the unhealthy hook-up cycle with her hot semiboyfriend Sam, take up yoga and volunteer somewhere meaningful. The latter goal brings the "high- to medium-risk teen" Tiffany into her life. Kerry begins to gain perspective on her own life as she coaxes her angst-ridden mentee through teenagehood. She also meets the charming Nick, who almost makes her forget about Sam. Just when it seems that Kerry's life is sorting itself out, she's confronted with an unexpected turn of events that appears to solve her problems. But is it that easy? Of course not. Kerry's cringe-worthy worst memories are laugh-out-loud funny, and chick-lit fans will applaud her honest efforts to break bad behavior patterns.
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From the Inside Flap
Kerry Spence is unfulfilled by her soulless career in advertising, disappointed by her dysfunctional relationship, and horrified by the ever-increasing size of her ass. Ever since her gorgeous, self-absorbed boyfriend Sam demoted her to late night hook-up status, she has fortified herself with prime-time TV and blissful binges on cream cheese frosting, awaiting an epiphany that will reveal her next move.
Of course, everybody in her life is full of advice. Her free-spirited divorcee mother–when not necking furiously with her much younger boyfriend– sagely counsels her daughter to do whatever it takes to snag Sam back, since, quite frankly, he is the best she can do. Her friends ply her with fruity cocktails and dispense bits of ‘Cosmo' wisdom like "Divide your age in half and add seven–that's the youngest man you are allowed to date" and "Scotch tape can eliminate forehead wrinkles." And then there is Kerry's shrink, the calm, unflappable therapist who suggests she start "a diary of past encounters with men that may be contributing to her negative and dysfunctional quasi-relationship." Or, as Kerry sees it, a journal of mortifying moments.
Beginning with a kissing game gone bad in grade school, the journal jump-starts Kerry's stroll down memory lane of man troubles. But just as Kerry decides her poorly dressed therapist is as crazy as everybody else in her orbit, she begins to realize the journal may actually make some sense–as she plumbs the depths of her most embarrassing experiences on a quest for personal awareness that will give her the strength to turn her life around–and just maybe find love again.
The Journal of Mortifying Moments is a hysterically funny glimpse into the quirky, slightly obsessive, and completely lovable mind of Kerry Spence. But somewhere amidst the laugh-out-loud hilarity of Kerry's exploits emerges the story of a woman who learns to stop trying to be someone she's not, and start loving the wonderful, quirky person she is, once and for all. Views: 38
KATE SHUGAK is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her. KILLING GROUNDS. If it's summer, it must be fishing season and Kate, working as a deckhand on Old Sam Dementieff's fishing boat Freya, finds a body in the water. It's a fisherman who has been beaten, stabbed, strangled and drowned. Overkill. But why? Views: 38
In this timely, highly original, and controversial narrative, New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky discusses nonviolence as a distinct entity, a course of action, rather than a mere state of mind. Nonviolence can and should be a technique for overcoming social injustice and ending wars, he asserts, which is why it is the preferred method of those who speak truth to power. Nonviolence is a sweeping yet concise history that moves from ancient Hindu times to present-day conflicts raging in the Middle East and elsewhere. Kurlansky also brings into focus just why nonviolence is a “dangerous” idea, and asks such provocative questions as: Is there such a thing as a “just war”? Could nonviolence have worked against even the most evil regimes in history?Kurlansky draws from history twenty-five provocative lessons on the subject that we can use to effect change today. He shows how, time and again, violence is used to suppress nonviolence and its practitioners–Gandhi and Martin Luther King, for example; that the stated deterrence value of standing national armies and huge weapons arsenals is, at best, negligible; and, encouragingly, that much of the hard work necessary to begin a movement to end war is already complete. It simply needs to be embraced and accelerated.Engaging, scholarly, and brilliantly reasoned, Nonviolence is a work that compels readers to look at history in an entirely new way. This is not just a manifesto for our times but a trailblazing book whose time has come.From the Hardcover edition.About the AuthorMark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award—winning author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; The Basque History of the World; and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell; as well as the novel Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue and several other books. He lives in New York City.From the Hardcover edition.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.IImperfect Beings"We expect to prevail through the foolishness of preaching." —William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the Peace Convention of Boston, 1838The first clue, lesson number one from human history on the subject of nonviolence, is that there is no word for it. The concept has been praised by every major religion. Throughout history there have been practitioners of nonviolence. Yet, while every major language has a word for violence, there is no word to express the idea of nonviolence except that it is not another idea, it is not violence. In Sanskrit, the word for violence is himsa, harm, and the negation of himsa, just as nonviolence is the negation of violence, is ahimsa—not doing harm. But if ahimsa is “not doing harm,” what is it doing?The only possible explanation for the absence of a proactive word to express nonviolence is that not only the political establishments but the cultural and intellectual establishments of all societies have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society’s key components, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself. It is not an authentic concept but simply the abnegation of something else. It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous.Advocates of nonviolence—dangerous people—have been there throughout history, questioning the greatness of Caesar and Napo- leon and the Founding Fathers and Roosevelt and Churchill. For every Crusade and Revolution and Civil War there have always been those who argued, with great clarity, that violence not only was immoral but that it was even a less effective means of achieving laudable goals. The case can be made that it was not the American Revolution that secured independence from Britain; it was not the Civil War that freed the slaves; and World War II did not save the Jews. But this possibility has rarely been considered, because the Caesars and Napoleons of history have always used their power to muffle the voices of those who would challenge the necessity of war—and it is these Caesars, as Napoleon observed, who get to write history. And so the ones who have killed become the ones who are revered. But there is another history that manages to survive.It survives, but nonviolence is in fact a marginal rejection of a marginalized concept. Political theorist Hannah Arendt, in her 1969 study On Violence, pointed out that while it can be universally agreed that violence has been one of the primary movers of history, historians and social scientists rarely study the subject of violence. She suggested that this was because violence was such a mainstay of human activity that it was “taken for granted and therefore neglected.” Violence is a fundamental of the human condition, whereas nonviolence is merely a rarified response to that reality. What does this mean? If we lived in a world that had no word for war other than nonpeace, what kind of world would that be? It would not necessarily be a world without war, but it would be a world that regarded war as an aberrant and insignificant activity. The widely held and seldom expressed but implicit viewpoint of most cultures is that violence is real and nonviolence is unreal. But when nonviolence becomes a reality it is a powerful force.Nonviolence is not the same thing as pacifism, for which there are many words. Pacifism is treated almost as a psychological condition. It is a state of mind. Pacifism is passive; but nonviolence is active. Pacifism is harmless and therefore easier to accept than nonviolence, which is dangerous. When Jesus Christ said that a victim should turn the other cheek, he was preaching pacifism. But when he said that an enemy should be won over through the power of love, he was preaching nonviolence. Nonviolence, exactly like violence, is a means of persuasion, a technique for political activism, a recipe for prevailing. It requires a great deal more imagination to devise nonviolent means—boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, street theater, demonstrations—than to use force. And there is not always agreement on what constitutes violence. Some advocates of nonviolence believe that boycotts and embargoes that cause hunger and deprivation are a form of violence. Some believe that using less lethal means of force, rock throwing or rubber bullets, is a form of nonvio- lence. But the central belief is that forms of persuasion that do not use physical force, do not cause suffering, are more effective; and while there is often a moral argument for nonviolence, the core of the belief is political: that nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work.Mohandas Gandhi invented a word for it, satyagraha, from satya, meaning truth. Satyagraha, according to Gandhi, literally means “holding on to truth” or “truth force.” Interestingly, although Gandhi’s teachings and techniques have had a huge impact on political activists around the world, his word for it, satyagraha, has never caught on.All religions discuss the power of nonviolence and the evil of violence. Hinduism, which claims to be the oldest religion, though its founding date is unknown, as is its founder, does not take a clear stand on nonviolence. This ambiguity is not surprising for an ancient religion that has no central belief or official priests and has a plethora of scriptures, gods, mythologies, and cults. Hindus often repeat the aphorism “Ahimsa paramo dharmah,” nonviolence is the highest law, but this is not an unshakable principle of the religion. Violence is permissible in the Hindu religion, and Indra is a warlike Hindu god. But there are also many writings of Hindu wise men against violence, especially in a book known as the Mahabharata. Hindu sages tended to see nonviolence as an unattainable ideal. Perfect nonviolence would mean not harming any living thing. The sages encouraged vegetarianism to avoid harming animals. The Jainists, followers of a religion admired by Gandhi, keep their mouths masked to insure that they do not accidentally inhale a tiny insect. But Hinduism recognizes that even the strictest vegetarians harm plants, killing them in order to live. A saint, it is said, would live on air, but Hinduism recognizes that this is impossible. Complete ahimsa is not attainable. Gandhi wrote, “Nonviolence is a perfect stage. It is a goal towards which all mankind moves naturally, though unconsciously.” He believed human beings were working toward perfection. Violence was a barbaric retrogressive trait that had not yet been shed. The human being who achieved complete nonviolence, according to Gandhi, would not be a saint. “He only becomes truly a man,” he said.This concept of man as an imperfect being who is obligated to strive for an unattainable perfection runs through most of human thought. The nineteenth-century French founder of the anarchist movement, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, wrote in his 1853 Philosophie du progrès, “We are born perfectable, but we shall never be per- fect.” The often repeated argument against nonviolence, that it is in our nature to be violent—no doubt why violence deserves its own word—lacks validity in light of the ubiquitous moral argument that it is our obligation to try to be better than we are.Hinduism and Gandhi insist that nonviolence must never come from weakness but from strength, and only the strongest and most disciplined people can hope to achieve it. Those who are incapable of defending themselves without violence, those who lack the spiri- tual strength to match their adversary’s physical brutality, either because of their own weakness or the determined brutality of the enemy, are obligated to use physical violence for defense. In Hinduism, passive submission to brutality is usually considered a sin.Whenever the Chinese denounce the pacifist tendencies in their culture, they usually blame these tendencies on Buddhism. This is because Buddhism is the only important Eastern religion in China that is of foreign origin. Buddha, the sixth-century b.c. founder, was born near the Indian-Nepalese border. If pacifism is a national weakness, many Chinese have contended, surely it is the fault of foreigners. And so Hu Shi, the Columbia University–educated Chinese scholar (1891–1962), said, “Buddhism, which dominated Chinese religious life for twenty centuries, has reinforced the peaceful tendencies of an already too peaceful people.” His implication was that the rejection of violence makes people passive, and many early-twentieth-century Chinese believed their people had become too passive. This ignored the fact that most religions and philosophies that reject violence do not encourage passiveness but activism by other means—nonviolence.Buddhism forbids the taking of life, but there seems to be a wide range of interpretations of this stance. In some countries it means vegetarianism, but in Tibet, perhaps because of a lack of vegetables, it means that animals must be slaughtered “humanely.” To a Tibetan Buddhist, however, this means the opposite of what it means to a Jew. To Jews, humane slaughter is the clean slitting of the animal’s throat and the removal of all blood, whereas in Tibet it means death by suffocation, to avoid the spilling of blood.While the Buddhist interdiction on taking life was frequently interpreted in China as a condemnation of militarism, this was not the case in medieval Japan. In Japan Buddhism developed the “medi- tation school” commonly known as Zen. In ... Views: 38
Mystery/Crime. 52282 words long. Views: 38
Open a psychic doorway to the spirit world . . . .That's exactly what happened to Paul Elder following a near-death experience at the age of 41—a psychic doorway opened and his ordinary life has never been the same. Except that Paul Elder's life has never been ordinary.A former television news reporter and mayor of a Canadian city, Elder gained international recognition. Now, as a result of his spiritual experiences and publication of this book, he will be known as a brave pioneer and outspoken advocate for the personal and scientific study of the spirit world around us.Passing repeatedly through that psychic doorway, Elder returned with a series of stunning revelations as to our true nature and purpose in the universe. A compelling, inspiring, and important book, Eyes of an Angel integrates near-death and out-of-body experiences in a way that has never been done before. A story of hope and courage that can instantly change millions of lives, it will give... Views: 38
Faith is joy is love is hope in this novel of exquisite power and everyday miracles, reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver's THE POISONWOOD BIBLE.Thomas can see things no one else can see. Tropical fish swimming in the canals. The magic of Mrs. Van Amersfoort, the Beethoven-loving witch next door. The fierce beauty of Eliza with her artificial leg. And the Lord Jesus, who tells him, "Just call me Jesus."Thomas records these visions in his "Book of Everything." They comfort him when his father beats him, when the angels weep for his mother's black eyes. And they give him the strength to finally confront his father and become what he wants to be when he grows up:"Happy." Views: 38
