The Vasectomy Doctor is the fascinating story of the first doctor to provide a vasectomy in Ireland, and his struggle to facilitate his patients' family-planning in the face of the Church's hold on issues of birth control and abortion.The barrel of a .22 rifle is coming into the room, quickly followed by a short dark man with his right index finger on the trigger. He mutters something incoherent like, "You ruined my life eight years ago, so I am going to take yours now." Then he comes straight at me and holds the muzzle of his rifle two inches away from my lower forehead, straight between my eyes.Dr. Andrew Rynne is not a man afraid to face conflict. When he was shot by a disgruntled vasectomy client in 1990, he visited the man in prison to talk things over. He parted without animosity from the man who had shot at him six times. In The Vasectomy Doctor, we explore the man behind the surgical mask. We see him touring the North England folk clubs... Views: 47
From New York Times bestselling author David Mack comes a visionary World War II-era adventure. The Midnight Front is the epic first novel in the Dark Arts series.On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front—the Allies' top-secret magickal warfare program—and become a sorcerer himself.Unsure who will kill him first—his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick—Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines. But he learns too late the true price of revenge will be more terrible than just the loss of his soul—and there's no task harder than doing good with a power born of ultimate evil.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. Views: 47
Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidenceof Walkers power to depict black womenwomen who varygreatly in background yet are bound together by what they share incommon.Taken as a whole, their stories form an enlightening,disturbing view of life in the South. Views: 47
Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release. Six years ago, Julie's world had turned upside down; she had married Michael Pemberton and left England – and her secret love, Robert. Now Michael is dead, and Julie and her small daughter have come home again – only to learn that Michael has appointed Robert as the child's guardian. How can Julie bear to accept him as part of her life again? True, he's soon to be married to the so-suitable Pamela Hillingdon, but doesn't that only add to the agony? Especially when Julia is forced to admit her attraction to Robert is as wild and strong as ever... Views: 47
I'm marked for death. If I can get this Deathmark removed, I can help save the world from total ruin. Only thing is, Brent Hume, Grim Reaper and love of my life, is hot on my trail, zeroing in on the mark that beckons him. The Reaper's instinct cannot be denied. He would sooner stop breathing than ignore a Deathmark's call. He's a tireless supernatural hunter, and I'm his top prey. If I don't find a way to stop him from doing his job, everything and everyone I love will suffer. The world will suffer. And I'm sick of letting people down, dammit. But even as I run from him, I want to run toward him.The Deathmark series is best enjoyed in order. Series Order: Book #1 The Reaper's Kiss Book #2 The Reaper's SacrificeBook #3 The Reaper's Embrace Views: 47
The author of the critically acclaimed novel The World as I Found It brilliantly reimagines the scandalous life of the pioneering, proto-punk poet Arthur Rimbaud. Arthur Rimbaud, the enfant terrible of French letters, more than holds his own with Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde in terms of bold writing and salacious interest. In the space of one year--1871--with a handful of startling poems he transformed himself from a teenaged bumpkin into the literary sensation of Paris. He was taken up, then taken in, by the older and married poet Paul Verlaine in a passionate affair. When Rimbaud sought to end it, Verlaine, in a jealous rage, shot him. Shortly thereafter, Rimbaud--just shy of his twentieth birthday--declared himself finished with literature. His resignation notice was his immortal prose poem A Season in Hell. In time, Rimbaud wound up a prosperous trader and arms dealer in Ethiopia. But a cancerous leg forced him to return to... Views: 47
A sharply honest and moving debut perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Ask the Passengers.Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley isn't exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in über-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley's life.On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it's really like to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley's starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley's real identity, threatening exposure. And Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a... Views: 47
A superb new collection from the greatly admired storyteller whose work "recall[s] such past masters as Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Mansfield" (Jim Baker,Newsweek). The Last Lovely City begins with nine stories whose settings range from San Francisco to a North Carolina college town to a run-down Mexican resort. In "His Women," a college professor and his ex-wife play an extended game of let's-kiss-and-make-up, revealing the history of their flirtations and infidelities. In "The Islands," a young widow mourns the loss of her cat more profoundly than the recent death of her husband. And in the title story, a view of San Francisco from the beach brings an old doctor, known for his generosity, to the sudden realization that the glory, innocence, and passion the city once represented to him are now lost forever, as he faces up to the way he has accrued the money to support his good works. The four stories in part two take on the shape of a novel. Lila Lewisohn, a divorced psychiatrist, finds her private life beginning to fuse with the lives of her patients, their husbands, and their lovers. A brilliant collection that envelops us in the richness of the worlds that Alice Adams has so masterfully created. Views: 47
There’s something wrong with Estrella Del Mar, the lazy, sun-drenched retirement haven on Spain’s Costa Del Sol. Lately this sleepy hamlet, home to hordes of well-heeled, well-fattened British and French expatriates, has come alive with activity and culture; the previously passive, isolated residents have begun staging boat races, tennis competitions, revivals of Harold Pinter plays, and lavish parties. At night the once vacant streets are now teeming with activity, bars and cafes packed with revelers, the sidewalks crowded with people en route from one event to the next. Outward appearances suggest the wholesale adoption of a new ethos of high-spirited, well-controlled collective exuberance. But there’s the matter of the fire: The house and household of an aged, wealthy industrialist has gone up in flames, claiming five lives, while virtually the entire town stood and watched. There’s the matter of the petty crime, the burglaries, muggings, and auto thefts which have begun to nibble away at the edges of Estrella Del Mar’s security despite the guardhouses and surveillance cameras. There’s the matter of the new, flourishing trade in drugs and pornography. And there’s the matter of Frank Prentice, who sits in Marbella jail awaiting trial for arson and five counts of murder, and who, despite being clearly innocent, has happily confessed. It is up to Charles Prentice, Frank’s brother, to peel away the onionlike layers of denial and deceit which hide the rather ugly truth about this seaside idyll, its residents, and the horrific crime which brought him here. But as is usually the case in a J.G. Ballard book, the truth comes with a price tag attached, and likely without any easing of discomfort for his principal characters. Cocaine Nights marks a partial return on Ballard’s part to the provocative, highly-successful mid-career methodology employed in novels such as Crash and High Rise: after establishing himself as a science fiction guru in the 1960s, Ballard stylistically shifted gears towards an unnerving, futuristic variant on social realism in the 1970s. Both Crash and High Rise were what-if novels, posing questions as to what the likely results would be if our collective fascination with such things as speed, violence, status, power, and sex were carried just a little bit further: How insane, how brutal could our world become if we really cut loose? Cocaine Nights asks a question better suited to the ’90s, the age of gated communities and infrared home security systems: Does absolute security guarantee isolation and cultural death? Conversely, is a measure of crime an essential ingredient in a vibrant, living, properly functioning social system? Is it true, as a character asserts, that “Crime and creativity go together, always have done,” and that “total security is a disease of deprivation”? Suffice to say that the answers presented in Nights will be anathema to moral absolutists; the world of Ballard’s fiction, like life in the hyperkinetic, relativistic 1990s, abounds with uncomfortable grey areas. On the surface, Cocaine Nights is a whodunit and a race against time, but as it proceeds – and as preconceived conceptions of good and evil begin to dissolve – it evolves into a thoughtful, faintly frightening look at under-examined aspects of 1990s western society. As is his wont, Ballard confronts his readers with some faintly outlandish hypotheses unlikely to be embraced by many, but which nonetheless serve to provoke both thought and a bit of paranoia; it’s a method that Ballard has developed and refined on his own, and as usual, it propels his novel along marvellously. Cocaine Nights doesn’t have either the broad sweep or brute impact of the landmark Crash, but it retains enough social relevance and low-key creepiness to more than satisfy Ballardphiles. As is often the case in Ballard’s alternate reality, it’s a given that his most appealing, human characters turn out to be the most twisted, and that even the most normal of events turn out to be governed by a perverse, malformed logic; that this logic turns out to be grounded in sound sociological and psychological principles is its most horrific feature. David B. Livingstone Views: 47
