It started around the time he turned 16. Everyone and everything started grating on Connor’s nerves. His mum, his dad, his teachers, even his best mate. Lately he just can’t help picking fights, slamming doors and flipping desks. Then his parents decide to dump him alone in a forest for a week. As unpredictable as Connor himself, The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You tackles the ticking time bomb of teenagerdom. Behind its sly and smart-arsed exterior is a searching exploration of adolescent anger, bound to strike a dissonant chord with anyone who’s ever caught a whiff of teen spirit. ‘Funny without being patronising, and serious without seeming earnest… The Violent Outburst That Drew Me to You develops a hallucinatory quality which, given Connor’s swirling brain chemistry, feels just right.’ Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald Views: 56
Amazon.com Review"A host of drug dealers meets a foe they cannot kill. The president accidentally invites demons into the country and watches the pope turn into a sabertooth tiger. A man, dead since 1920, lives again in present day Los Angeles to satiate a malevolent goddess. These tales by Michael Boatman will disturb, terrify and traumatize you. Boatman grabs you by throat and drags you kicking and screaming through his prose. With a dash of Lansdale and a smattering of Martin's Wild Cards, the tales within inhabit the dark and nasty side of our souls, and throughout Boatman infuses it all with a keen wit and an eye for detail. And when he lets you up to breathe, like God, you might just find yourself laughing. This is the sort of stuff I like to read as the bells sound midnight."--Paul Haines, award-winning author of Doorways for the Dispossessed"Boatman's debut collection will knock you down and kick you in the teeth. Alternatingly hysterical, grotesque, bizarre, and fantastic, Boatman's collection is a must-read for anyone itching to get their hands on fresh new fiction that pulls no punches."--Ronald Damien Malfi, author of The Nature of Monsters and The Fall of Never"Michael Boatman writes like a visitor from hell. Someone out on short term leave for bad behavior. I love this stuff. He's one of the new, and more than promising, writers making his mark, and a dark and wonderful mark it is."--Joe R. Lansdale Questions for Michael BoatmanJeff VanderMeer for Amazon.com: First off, please describe where you are as you're answering these questions. Boatman: I'm sitting in my office, which is downstairs in the basement of my house. The windows in my office look out over my backyard and a thick patch of woods. It's 9:00 AM on a foggy December morning. Amazon.com: How long have you been writing? Boatman: I've been writing for about 13 years. I started after I injured my leg in a freakish household accident. I was unable to work for about 12 weeks. One day, Don Cheadle, who is a good friend, stopped by for a visit. He took one look at me, fat, bearded, and depressed, and encouraged me to explore writing, as I had always expressed an interest in creating a screenplay. The screenplay was terrible, but I loved the process and I've been writing ever since. Amazon.com: Where do writing and acting intersect creatively? How do they influence each other in your life? Boatman: Acting and writing both stem from the most primal form of entertainment, which is storytelling. I've come to believe that I actually became an actor as a kind of creative misfire. I was always a voracious reader. To this day, I'm unable to go anywhere without a book. However, writing was something I'd never considered. It seemed too mystical, something working-class kids from the inner city weren't supposed to do. I stumbled into acting in high school (of course to meet chicks), and I discovered that I enjoyed being a part of a creative endeavor. After more than 20 years as an actor, I've realized that, at least for me, the two art forms are linked. An actor communicates his part of the larger story in which he participates, but a writer creates the story. Now I find telling my own stories more compelling than communicating other authors' stories. Amazon.com: Writing is a solitary activity. Acting is, I assume, solitary in the preparation but very social in its application--and dependent to some degree on the imaginations of other people. How easy is to navigate between those two worlds? Boatman: I find it easy to navigate the two worlds because I've been an actor for so long that it's part of who I am; I know my way around Hollywood sets and the professional theater. Also, being a writer helps me understand another writer's intention for his characters in a way that I didn't when I was just acting. Recently, I was presented with the opportunity to rewrite huge chunks of a feature film in which I was acting. When I was younger I never would have had the courage to insinuate my ideas into someone else's screenplay. However, during production we encountered some serious script problems. The director took my suggestions and applied them to the script. Ultimately we wound up rewriting a lot of the film. Writing novels and short stories and screenplays on my own gave me the confidence to step in and effectively address the problems. It was great fun and a huge confidence booster. Amazon.com: What writers have most influenced you in your fiction? Boatman: Tolkien opened up the door to entirely new worlds for me. The Hobbit was the first book that took me on a quest. I read it when I was nine years old and it changed my life. In a weird way, that book introduced me to literature in general and fantasy in particular. I read the entire Rings sequence every few years and learn something new every time. Stephen R. Donaldson's Covenant books are a continuing source of profound enjoyment. On the darker frontier, David J. Schow and Joe R. Lansdale are my heroes. I said in another interview that since Dave Schow has become my friend I am even more in awe of his talents. I feel like Dorothy exposing the Great and Powerful Oz only to discover that the man behind the curtain really is a wizard. Stephen King is another writer who I believe to be, in a strange way, underrated. I think The Stand really may be the great American novel. And the Dark Tower books are unlike anything I've ever experienced. Amazon.com: What projects do you have upcoming, both acting and writing? Boatman: My novel, The Revenant Road, will be published by The Drollerie Press in 2008. Of course I've got "A Father's Work" in Weird Tales coming soon, and stories in a couple of anthologies. Two screenplays I've written are being considered around Hollywood. On the acting front, I'm costarring in an independent film called The Killing of Wendy. It'll be in theaters next June. Also a film called American Summer, coming soon. Product Description"A host of drug dealers meets a foe they cannot kill. The president accidentally invites demons into the country and watches the pope turn into a sabertooth tiger. A man, dead since 1920, lives again in present day Los Angeles to satiate a malevolent goddess. These tales by Michael Boatman will disturb, terrify and traumatize you. Boatman grabs you by throat and drags you kicking and screaming through his prose. With a dash of Lansdale and a smattering of Martin's Wild Cards, the tales within inhabit the dark and nasty side of our souls, and throughout Boatman infuses it all with a keen wit and an eye for detail. And when he lets you up to breathe, like God, you might just find yourself laughing. This is the sort of stuff I like to read as the bells sound midnight."--Paul Haines, award-winning author of Doorways for the Dispossessed "Boatman's debut collection will knock you down and kick you in the teeth. Alternatingly hysterical, grotesque, bizarre, and fantastic, Boatman's collection is a must-read for anyone itching to get their hands on fresh new fiction that pulls no punches."--Ronald Damien Malfi, author of The Nature of Monsters and The Fall of Never "Michael Boatman writes like a visitor from hell. Someone out on short term leave for bad behavior. I love this stuff. He's one of the new, and more than promising, writers making his mark, and a dark and wonderful mark it is."--Joe R. Lansdale Views: 56
In an elegant and penetrating first short-story collection, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived, Lily Tuck's characters travel to unknown, exotic places and, while there, find themselves deeply immersed in observation — of the natives, the local customs, the foreign landscape — in an effort to discern some elemental truth about who they themselves are. Instead, these women meet with disorientation, confusion; they are disappointed by the people closest to them — lovers, husbands, family members. Finally, they arrive at the sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately optimistic realization that the answers they seek lie not in other people or places but within themselves. Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived is a brilliant collection from a writer of exceptional poise and insight. Views: 56
A Lambert and Hook mystery DS Bert Hook is cajoled into auditioning for a local Shakespearean play. Desperate to get out of it, he expects his boss, John Lambert, to forbid him from performing. No such luck. Hook meets a rather surprising and sinister cast of characters. And when the director is found murdered, Hook needs to find the truth and fast. Who is innocent, who is just playing a part and who is really rotten to the core? Views: 56
This school-based boy friendship story is "funny, fast-paced, and quite poignant" (R. J. Palacio, author of Wonder).Sam Lewis is going to get his butt kicked in exactly thirty-three minutes. He knows this because yesterday his former best friend Morgan Sturtz told him, to his face and with three witnesses nearby, "I am totally going to kick your butt tomorrow at recess."All that's standing between Sam and this unfortunate butt-kicking is the last few minutes of social studies and his lunch period. But how did Sam and Morgan end up here? How did this happen just a few months after TAMADE (The Absolutely Most Amazing Day Ever), when they became the greatest Alien Wars video game team in the history of great Alien Wars teams? And once the clock ticks down, will Morgan actually act on his threat?Told with equal parts laugh-out-loud humor and achingly real emotional truth, 33 Minutes shows how even the best of friendships can change forever. Views: 56
The third in Linda Fairstein's gripping and authentic series of crime novels featuring Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper. With aplomb, style and sharp compassion for her "clients" Coop again unravels the truth behind murder in partnership with homicide detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace. The victim is Deni Caxton, third wife to the heir of a steel baron and a leading New York art dealer in her own right. As Coop, Chapman and Mercer investigate her brutal killing they strip away the elegant and refined façade of her marriage and the international art world to reveal a tangle of cut-throat business dealings, over blown egos and distorted passions. They find that the rich have the same motives for murder as the poorest killer – money, revenge, love and hate – and they rapidly discover that a veneer of artistic 'civilisation' doesn't prevent the use of blackmail or violence, not even when officers of the law stand in the way. Views: 56
DCI Will Casey is asked by his parents to
investigate a double murder at the Fenland commune where they live
strictly unofficially. As if thats not enough, Casey also has to solve a
very unpleasant murder on his own patch: a John Doe found dead in a
dark alley. With the help of his knowing sergeant, Thomas Catt, Casey
must try to get to the bottom of both official and unofficial cases . . . Views: 56
As owner of a transportation company catering to the jet set, Logan O'Brien had reached a very comfortable cruising altitude in his business dealings. But his social life was another story—until he met his billionaire client's daughter. Jenna Fordyce seemed to be the kind of pampered princess he'd vowed to avoid, yet he just couldn't keep away from her. For Jenna, Logan spelled trouble—he made her feel like a real woman, dangerously, thrillingly alive. But with her eyesight failing, she had to be extra careful of commitment. Did Logan really love her, or did he pity her? If only she could see inside this inveterate bachelor's heart and find out the truth-before her father put the brakes on their fledgling affair! Views: 56
Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920s puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture.Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda Sayre first caught the eye of F. Scott Fitzgerald to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings, to the Manhattan speakeasies where patrons partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life. This is the story of America’s first sexual revolution, its first merchants of cool, its first celebrities, and its most sparkling advertisement for the right to pursue happiness.The men and women who made the flapper were a diverse lot. There was Coco Chanel, the French orphan who redefined the feminine form and silhouette, helping to free women from the torturous corsets and crinolines that had served as tools of social control. Three thousand miles away, Lois Long, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, christened herself “Lipstick” and gave New Yorker readers a thrilling entrée into Manhattan’s extravagant Jazz Age nightlife.In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America’s first celebrities—Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate—fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers.Dallas-born fashion artist Gordon Conway and Utah-born cartoonist John Held crafted magazine covers that captured the electricity of the social revolution sweeping the United States.Bruce Barton and Edward Bernays, pioneers of advertising and public relations, taught big business how to harness the dreams and anxieties of a newly industrial America—and a nation of consumers was born.Towering above all were Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, whose swift ascent and spectacular fall embodied the glamour and excess of the era that would come to an abrupt end on Black Tuesday, when the stock market collapsed and rendered the age of abundance and frivolity instantly obsolete.With its heady cocktail of storytelling and big ideas, Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade.From the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklyThis is an entertaining, well-researched and charmingly illustrated dissection of the 1920s flapper, who flouted conventions and epitomized the naughtiness of the Jazz Age as she "bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs." Cambridge historian Zeitz identifies F. Scott Fitzgerald as "the premier analyst," and his muse and wife, Zelda, "the prototype" of the American flapper. Others who invented aspects of the flapper mystique were New Yorker writer Lois Long, who gave readers a vicarious peek into the humorous late-night adventures of the New Woman; designer Coco Chanel, whose androgynous fashions redefined feminine sexuality as they blurred the line between men's and women's roles in society; fashion artist Gordon Conway, whose willowy and aloof flappers were seen by millions of American and European magazine readers; and Clara Bow, who breathed life into the flapper on the silver screen. The Klan, Zeitz relates, denounced flappers as evils of the modern age, and advertisers exploited the social anxieties of would-be flappers by appealing to the conformist at the heart of this controversial figure. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review This lively history looks at the Jazz Age through its greatest symbol, the flapper. A far cry from the staid Victorian angel of the house, flappers wore their hair short, dared to show their legs, drank, smoked, and cavorted with young men. Alhough he didn't invent the flapper as many suppose, F. Scott Fitzgerald did bring the modern woman into the public eye in his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. Zeitz explores the lives of the women who have come to personify the flapper ideal: Zelda Sayre, the southern belle who married Fitzgerald and became his muse; Lois Long, the sharp-tongued New Yorker columnist whose nightlife was often the subject of her writing; Coco Chanel, the elegant designer who carefully crafted her own backstory; and the actresses Colleen Moore, Clara Bow, and Louise Brooks, who brought the flapper to the silver screen only to be left in the dust when the following decade ushered in a less sexually confident feminine ideal. Zeitz's energetic writing does his subject justice, bringing to life the wild coed parties; the colorful, glitzy fashion; and the general energy and enthusiasm with which the decade embraced modernity. An essential exploration of the women Zeitz deems "the first thoroughly modern American[s]." Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 56
1910, South America. A time of racial tension and poverty. A time where forbidden love must remain a secret.Winnie Cox lives a privileged life of dances and dresses on her father's sugar cane plantation. Life is sweet in the kingdom of sugar and Winnie along with her sister Johanna, have neither worries nor responsibilities, they are birds of paradise, protected from the poverty in the world around them.But everything can change in a heartbeat...When Winnie falls in love with George Quint, the post-office boy, a 'darkie' from the other side, she soon finds herself slipping into a double life. And as she withdraws from her family, she discovers a shocking secret about those whom are closest to her. Now, more than ever, Winnie is determined to prove her love for George, whatever price she must pay and however tragic the consequences might be.A breath-taking love story of two people fighting to be together, in a world determined to break them apart.Acclaim for... Views: 56
From the hottest writers in Australia comes a scintillating new series. Enter the world of Sydney's elite, and find out what goes on behind the doors of the most exclusive addresses in the country...Meet the Housewives of Sydney. They are wealthy, elegant, poised, and constantly in the public eye. But what goes on behind closed doors, in the private homes and parties where the cameras and paparazzi aren't welcome? Delve into the most personal details of their relationships, their friendships and their lives. The only question is: can you handle the heat?Meagan knows food. In the kitchen, she's confident, cool, and in charge. But when it comes to presenting next season's dishes and delicacies to the owner of the exclusive restaurant where she is head chef, all of her insecurities boil to the surface. She knows that she's playing with fire with a special dessert that blows the restaurant's budget, but maybe, with the help of some unorthodox... Views: 56
After a tumultuous start to their relationship Carrie and David have settled into their lives together. With Christmas fast approaching David has a treat planned. A romantic getaway in a snowed in Chalet. But nothing is worse than an unrequited love and a woman scorned. Can love truly conquer betrayal? Or will it be the source of their undoing? Adult 18+ Views: 56
[Book Thirty-three of Dray Prescot] Dray Prescot is an Earthman, seaman and soldier, brought across four hundred light years to a planet of Antares. The Star Lords, a race advanced beyond our ken, needed him on that world called Kregen. Now, having at last returned to his home empire, to his wife and his friends, Dray was to learn that the vengeance of his defeated enemies had launched a final assault--with nine occult curses--against Vallia and all that Dray held dear. The first curse, the plague of murderous werewolves, took Dray by surprise. Could his valor and courage, though tempered on the battlefields of alien suns, stand up against an unprecedented onslaught of warring witchcraft? Views: 56
