Amazon.com ReviewThe Subject Steve, Sam Lipsyte's remarkable debut novel, is an ebullient, bawdy, and idiosyncratic assault on American consumer culture. Like fellow mercurial satirists Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace, Lipsyte is an impressive stylist. His argot is the psychobabble of corporate jargon, advertising slogans, and sound bites. Wordplay rather than characterization is Lipsyte's métier and his language positively fizzes with invention. The characters here don't so much converse as exchange obtuse epigrammatic non sequiturs and indulge in linguistic quips. This should, of course, be utterly infuriating, but it isn't. The dialogue, like the rest of this savage, absurdist take on contemporary life (and more precisely our horror of death), is startlingly acute and unrelentingly funny. The eponymous Steve (who claims his name is not Steve) is a mild-mannered 37-year old ad man who pens slogans celebrating the "ongoing orgasm of the information lifestyle." Unfortunately, he's dying, but "he's dying of something nobody has ever died of before: he's actually going to die of boredom." The scientists (who may not be scientists although they do wear white coats) "calculate that there can be no calculations" about how long he has left to live. Faced with this eventuality he embarks on a particularly wayward sexual, narcotic, and religious odyssey. Lipsyte fills Steve's journey with so many oddball doctors, multimedia weirdoes, dysfunctional gurus, and bizarre sexual encounters that it's actually rather difficult to imagine anyone dying of boredom. Exhaustion, perhaps. Ludicrous and occasionally even a little bit sick, Lipsyte's surreal, intelligent black comedy proves that death really can be a laughing matter. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.ukFrom Publishers WeeklyLipsyte's latest is a dark satire in which a protagonist named Steve is diagnosed with a vague but deadly disease called Prexis that sounds suspiciously like terminal boredom with modern life. Steve's doctors, two shadowy figures known only as the Mechanic and the Philosopher, try a variety of equally vague experimental treatments on him until their programs are exposed as fraudulent. His bizarre illness sets off a panic and a media frenzy, and Steve finds himself drawn to a clinic in upstate New York called the Center for Non-Denominational Recovery and Redemption run by a shady former torture expert known only as Heinrich of Newark, who uses pain-based "treatments." The cultish clinic proves equally ineffective, so Steve takes a couple of stabs at alternative medicine before heading west into the desert to join a futuristic cult called the Realm, where he prepares to meet his maker through a strange series of therapy sessions and off-the-wall broadcasts. In the stretches between the erratic and often bizarre plot twists, the author explores the disaffections of a divorced middle-aged man, delving into his professional disappointments, the emptiness of his marriage and love life, and the death of his best friend. Lipsyte (Venus Drive) has come up with an intriguing experimental concept, but the absence of coherent, linear plot means the commentary must be particularly sharp and interesting, and much of what Lipsyte offers is rambling, self-absorbed and at times just plain annoying. The troubles of the alienated and estranged offer plenty of opportunities for an adventurous approach, but much of what Lipsyte submits is familiar, a mannered echo, product of a sensibility halfway between Lish and Vonnegut. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Innkeeper Summer Matthews was Orchard Hill's very own keeper of secrets—a font of wisdom and discretion when it came to her small-town neighbors. Of course, the biggest secret she kept was her own—a past life that had made headlines! So when fate deposited journalist Kyle Merrick on her doorstep, the man sparked her deepest suspicions...not to mention her deepest desires.Kyle was used to sniffing out stories, so untangling the threads around a beautiful, enigmatic woman was all in a day's work. But getting the scoop on Summer quickly took a backseat to exploring their white-hot attraction. Now Kyle was playing for keeps, and the breaking news was the love and trust that grew between them by the second.... Views: 36
Romance and adventure combine in a breathtaking reworking of a classic fairy tale.Darkness has fallen across a kingdom far, far away. The queen is dead - killed in the forest by a terrifying beast - and her daughter, Alexandra, suspects that the new woman in her father's life is more than she seems. Exiled and betrayed, Alexandra must face magic, murder and the loss of all she holds dear in a desperate struggle against evil. Views: 36
Condemned and shunned for black magic, Rachel Morgan has three days to get to the annual witches' conference and clear her name, or be trapped in the demonic ever-after . . . forever after. But a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy in one car going across the country? Talk about a recipe for certain disaster, even without being the targets for assassination. For after centuries of torment, a fearsome demon walks in the sunlight — freed at last to slay the innocent and devour their souls. But his ultimate goal is Rachel Morgan, and in the fight for survival that follows, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her. Views: 36
A discovery deep inside the Great Sphinx of Egypt reveals a secret that will send Gabriel Hunt racing to the Greek Isles of Chios and then on to a deadly confrontation atop Sri Lankaâs ancient rock fortress of Sigiriya. Views: 36
The fourth book in the Alan Lewrie series. 1783: His Majesty's secret agent... Back from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teeming Canton, Lewrie—reunited with his scoundrel father—discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy's hands, a King's privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea. Ladies' man, officer, and rogue, Alan Lewrie is the ultimate man of adventure, and Dewey Lambdin writes historical adventure fiction on par with C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian. In the worthy tradition of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin, Lewrie's exploits echo with the sounds of crowded ports and the crash of naval warfare. Views: 36
What ever happened to Darcy Steele?In high school, she was everyone's best friend. But times had changed for Darcy Steele. These days she was a single other living in the shadows following a marriage gone dangerously wrong. Not even her dearest friends knew what had become of her. Until one of the friends was murdered. . . Now Darcy was determined to get answer about her friend's death, even if that meant coming home and facing some hard truths. Like the fact that her beloved alma mater could be harboring the seeds of evil. And the one man she trusted might not be all that he seemed. Darcy should have run for her life. Except she couldn't — not when the lives of those she loved were at stake. . . Athena Force: They were the best, the brightest, the strongest — women who shared a bond like no other. . . Views: 36
This ebook is a compilation of
stories written from the female perspective. Don’t let that fool you into
thinking it’s like other romance novels out there. There is not one swooning lady in this book. There is a submissive, a dominatrix, a MILF,
a nympho, a stripper/hooker and a bored rich housewife. All these stories are shockingly graphic and
may surprise you they come from a woman.
Some situations really happened to the author, some are fantasies and
some are just sexy thoughts that came to her head out of thin air. One of the things Miss J says, “If my stories
give a guy a hard on, I’m happy. There’s
been plenty of times where I had to take a masturbation break while writing
these stories.” Maybe you’ll have to
take a masturbation break while reading like she did writing it.
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