Urged onward by the mysterious Sentinel Queen, Albert, Brandy and Nicole venture ever deeper into the Temple of the Blind...and into the greatest danger they have yet faced. Endless miles of twisting passageways and perilous chambers stand before them, and with Albert's box of clues finally exhausted, they will have to navigate the dark corridors utterly blind. And time is ticking as a dangerous beast stalks them with murderous intent. Meanwhile, Wayne struggles to catch up to them with a warning that all may not be as it seems. Someone is lying to them. Is it the mysterious old man who aided Wayne in his journey into the Wood? Or is it the kindly Sentinel Queen? Together, the six of them must decide who to trust. The very fate of the world may hinge on the actions they take this night.85,000 words. Horror, Suspense, Dark Adventure. Views: 51
When centuries-old vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski was staked in Wales in 1915, the last thing he expected was to reawaken in Memphis, Tennessee, sixty years later. Reborn into a new world of simmering racial tensions, the cunning nosferatu realizes he must adapt quickly if he is to survive.Finding willing victims is easy, as Zginski possesses all the powers of the undead, including the ability to sexually enslave anyone he chooses. Hoping to learn how his kind copes with this bizarre new era, Zginski tracks down a nest of teenage vampires. But these young vampires have little knowledge of their true nature, having learned most of what they know from movies like Blacula.Forming an uneasy alliance with the young vampires, Zginski begins to teach them the truth about their powers. They must learn quickly, for there’s a new drug on the street—a drug created to specifically target and destroy vampires. As Zginski and his allies track the drug to its source, they may unwittingly be stepping into a fifty-year-old trap that can destroy them all . . .From Publishers WeeklyFirst published by Night Shade in 2006, this dark tale of vampires in 1970s Memphis is marred by racial stereotypes and grim perversions. Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski, stabbed with a crucifix in 1915, reanimates 60 years later when pathologist Patricia Johnson withdraws the cross from his mummified corpse. The racist and self-absorbed Zginski kills his African-American resurrector and heads out into the world. He joins up with a gaggle of young vampires, including lecherous black teens Olive and Leonardo, who speak almost entirely in clichéd blaxploitation patois (Don't be a jive turkey, sweetheart) and use telepathy to seduce and kill unsuspecting humans. Coroner Danielle Roseberry almost becomes the pair's latest prey until Zginski realizes they all need her help to trace the origin of a mysterious vampire-killing dust. Bledsoe (The Sword-Edged Blonde) employs a suave, creepy style that suits the story but can't mitigate his appalling treatment of female and minority characters. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"Bledsoe’s debut urban fantasy is an intoxicating brew of mystery, humor, and horror."--Library Journal on *Blood Groove*“I love vampire stories, both reading them and writing them, and when one comes along that’s as new and fresh as Blood Groove, well, it’s just plain delicious. One very sweet read. ”—Whitley Strieber, New York Times bestselling author“Hot and sticky and tangy as a slab of Memphis ribs. A trippy vamp-noir seventies feed-fest, complete with the requisite sex, drugs, and vintage rock.”—E.E. Knight, bestselling author of Vampire Earth on Blood Groove“An edgy, visceral page-turner that had me laughing one moment and shivering the next. Alex Bledsoe is a writer to watch!”—Jeri Smith-Ready, award-winning author of Wicked Game on Blood Groove Views: 51
Billionaire John Farrington is obsessed with the idea of offending God to the point that God would want to confront him in person. Farrington has abducted priests and nuns to commit sexual atrocities with the most grievously genetically deformed people he can find. Views: 51
The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe. Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked. Views: 51
Before Larten Crepsley was a vampire general…Before he was Darren Shan's master… Before the War of Scars… Larten Crepsley was a teenager. And he was sick of the pomp and circumstance of fusty old vampires telling him what to do. Taking off on his own with his blood brother, Wester, Larten takes off into the world to see what his newly blooded vampire status can get him in the human world. Sucking all he can out of humanity, Larten stumbles into a violent, hedonistic lifestyle, where cheats beckon, power corrupts, and enemies are waiting. This is his story. Views: 51
