Psychiatrist Nancy Adler never thought she'd have a patient like Markus Johnson, a young black man who passes out randomly and has flashbacks of a past he can't remember and that contradicts the few things he knows about himself. Oh, and also, he's a porn star. Matters are further complicated by Gary Zimmerman, a retired detective who's now a private investigator, who snoops into Johnson's past. Reaching into the depths of a porn star's mind, Smut Central weaves a tale that's at once disgustingly tantalizing and frighteningly demented. Views: 64
The celebrated career of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is well known to readers of French literature. This comprehensive collection — the first to be translated into English — introduces a distinct and dynamic voice to the Anglophone world. In many ways, Châteaureynaud is France’s own Kurt Vonnegut, and his stories are as familiar as they are fantastic. A Life on Paper presents characters who struggle to communicate across the boundaries of the living and the dead, the past and the present, the real and the more-than-real. A young husband struggles with self-doubt and an ungainly set of angel wings in “Icarus Saved from the Skies,” even as his wife encourages him to embrace his transformation. In the title story, a father’s obsession with his daughter leads him to keep her life captured in 93,284 unchanging photographs. While Châteaureynaud’s stories examine the diffidence and cruelty we are sometimes capable of, they also highlight the humanity in the strangest of us and our deep appreciation for the mysterious. Views: 64
Colin Harten and his parents had fled across the ocean to escape the Family wars in Andover and find a better life. But the New World proved no haven for the Hartens and their fellow refugees. Forced to undertake an expedition to the unexplored plains east of the newly settled coastal cities, the Hartens and their companions were not prepared for the dangers they would face. Pursued by plains dwellers known as the dwarren, the Hartens' wagon train fled to the very edge of a dark forest—a place they had been warned to avoid at all costs by a small band of Alvritshai warriors, the first race they had encountered on the plains. Colin survived the perils of the forest, rescued by spirits of Light, and transformed by the power of the Well of Sorrows, but he paid a very high price. For drinking the LifeBlood--the waters of the Well—changed Colin into something not entirely human. And whatever he has become, he might prove the only defense against the dark spirits of the forest and the Wraiths they had created to destroy humans, dwarren, and the Alvritshai alike. Views: 64
Hannah is stunned when a stranger stops her on the street to deliver a message from her long-dead mother. Susan Parker, Hannah learns, is a popular television medium whose accurate predictions leave fans and critics alike puzzled and intrigued. In spite of her scepticism, Hannah schedules a private reading. But on the morning they are to meet, Susan is struck by a hit-and-run driver. An accident? Hannah doesn't think so - especially when she discovers that more than one person had good reason to want Susan dead . . . Views: 64
Something—some power—is blooming inside Laurel. She can use flowers to do things. Like bringing back lost memories. Or helping her friends ace tests. Or making people fall in love.Laurel suspects her newfound ability has something to do with an ancient family secret, one that her mother meant to share with Laurel when the time was right. But then time ran out.Clues and signs and secret messages seem to be all around Laurel at Avondale School, where her mother had also boarded as a student. Can Laurel piece everything together quickly enough to control her power, which is growing more potent every day? Or will she set the stage for the most lovestruck, infamous prom in the history of the school? Views: 64
The new 'Sir Geoffrey Mappestone' mystery - When the former crusader knight Geoffrey Mappestone and his friend Roger of Durham try to slip out of England to the Holy Land, a ferocious storm destroys the ship they are on and casts them ashore. The two knights are unwillingly thrust into the company of other shipwrecked passengers, and while attempting to evade the unwelcome attention of the more dangerous members of the group, they become unwillingly drawn into a plot to overthrow the king and return England to Saxon rule . . . Views: 64
