A boxer who brings his legs with him comes to the ring with the strength and stamina to make it through every round of a tough fight. In this new collection, winner of the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Darrell Spencer delivers fiction with just that kind of power.Bring Your Legs with You contains nine interconnected stories set in Las Vegas. Featuring various perspectives and narrators, they are filled with unforgettable characters, including Carl T. Plugg, a sharp-dressed, smooth-talking, non-hustling pool shark; Spinoza, the philosophical day laborer with "Department of Big Thoughts" lettered on the door of his pickup; Jacob, an arrogant lawyer who learns too late the dangers of swimming with the sharks; Gus, a man who has never seen his son fight despite his insatiable fascination with the sweet science; and Jane, a woman wary of her ex-husband, but still in love enough to share her bed with him.Above them all looms Tommy Rooke, retired prizefighter and self-employed roofer. Undefeated in the ring, Rooke walked away from boxing at the top of his game, to the confusion and consternation of his friends and family. As his father, former manager, and various other hangers-on encourage him to stage a comeback, Tommy moves through the gated communities and sun-blasted strip malls of Las Vegas, wrestling with personal choice, the caprices of fate, and the price the gods demand for our sins.More than a book about boxing, gambling, luck, and broken dreams, Bring Your Legs with You delves deeply into the life of its flawed but intelligent hero, a man deeply devoted to his friends but lost in a violent world. A writer unafraid to show the connections between people, Spencer delivers a hard-hitting collection filled with rich dialogue and spare prose.
Praise for One Mile Past Dangerous Curve: "This book aims to be about the best of us as it shows us at our least. Thank goodness for Darrell Spencer, the only writer in America to be trusted on the subjects of faith, love, weal and woe." ---Lee K. Abbott " . . . absolutely dire and dear, his best book, a novel about American life right now. . . . this book is accurate, acerbic, and heartfelt at once." ---Ron Carlson Praise for Darrell Spencer: "Mr. Spencer's writing crackles with freshness and lucidity, featuring characters who slide into one another in random encounters and relationships." ---New York Times Book Review "[Spencer] possesses a remarkable ear for the cadence of everyday speech." ---Michael Chabon From the acclaimed author of Caution: Men in Trees and A Woman Packing a Pistol comes a tale of kinship, love, and lawlessness. One Mile Past Dangerous Curve is the story of the Dancers---a family on the verge of collapse. Glen Dancer has come to Ohio to set up another in a series of Snapper franchises. But in the midst of construction, Glen finds himself fighting a painful and futile battle with cancer. His son Eddie, recently divorced, moves from Las Vegas to help. A sign painter by trade, Eddie finds only intermittent work in town until the day a mysterious and wealthy businessman commissions a series of twenty road signs, each different, all featuring odd, cryptic messages. It is on a back-country road, where Eddie has gone to assemble one of the signs, that some previously vague threats become concrete. Though Eddie doesn't know it, the neighboring woods hide a secret, a secret that a gun-toting rural gang wants to keep at any cost.
The nine stories of CAUTION Men in Trees capture the pressure, need, and frequent helplessness of people confronted with intractable reality. As suggested by the collection's epigraph from Superman—"Did you say kryptonite?"—the characters in these stories have reached a point where they realize that parts of their lives are coming undone, and that their own thoughts and actions—or, frequently, the failure to act soon enough—are the cause. Though settings and situations vary, the same sense of overwhelming urgency recurs throughout the collection. The stories reflect a world distressed by conflict and settings fraught with the occurrences of personal violence. Against the background of the O. J. Simpson trial, a man refuses to assist in a friend's suicide and realizes that he has been avoiding many unpleasant truths about himself and his life. A son faced with his father's debilitating stroke sees that he must ultimately confront the mortality and feelings of grief that he has been concealing. In the title story, the film Bugsy and talk about the disappointing reality of pop-culture heroes set the scene for a husband's frightening confrontation with his own limitations. The shock of stark revelation combines with tightly wound chains of suggestive events to create a collection of gripping, edgy stories about characters who, however battered, survive.
Boomtowns of Utah and Nevada, these stories tell about lust, about living together, about the perils of everyday life. A convenience store clerk confronts a deranged customer and a far more frightening girl-friend in "Let Me Tell You What Ward DiPino Tells Me at Work." In the fast-paced, powerful "Union Business," union boss Dick Handy teaches his son what women really want, and a son learns a profound lesson on his own: even fathers lie. A young golf whiz winds up.
This guide is designed for the intermediate to advanced Maya user. It provides a strong grounding in texture and shader fundamentals, and teaches readers how to combine texture elements, utility nodes, and MEL expressions. Readers can also create procedural texture effects, animated textures, and complex materials.
This academic preparation text uses interactive discussion techniques to cover over 100 strategies for academic success.Each chapter includes Case Studies that demonstrate how some students have overcome academic hurdles; Take It Away summaries that recap strategies and encourage students to apply them to academic and personal life; and Questions for Critical Thought which allow students to practice critical-thinking skills, reflect on their own difficulties, and assess the strategies most likely to work for them.
For all introductory genetics courses. Known for its focus on conceptual understanding, problem solving, and practical applications, the bestselling Essentials of Genetics strengthens problem-solving skills and explores the essential genetics topics that today’s students need to understand. The 10th Edition has been extensively updated to provide comprehensive coverage of important, emerging topics such as CRISPR-Cas, epigenetics, and genetic testing. Additionally, a new Special Topics chapter covers Advances in Neurogenetics with a focus on Huntington Disease, and new essays on Genetics, Ethics, and Society emphasise ethical considerations that genetics is bringing into everyday life. The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.
David's life is forever altered after his parents die in a tragic accident, and he comes to live with his grandmother, Estelle, in Texas. The tragedy places him on a course to learn the truth about why his parents were taken from him and who's to blame. He sets himself on a quest to learn about the good God that his parents talked so much about, and with the help of his friends, Mia, Mason, and that of a mysterious teacher, he becomes a part of a like-minded group of kids who come to be known as "The Apostles." God's display of His awesome miracle-working power through this group of mere children has come to the attention of Satan himself who has commanded his demons to disband this group before they reach adulthood for fear they will once again turn the world upside down, sparking a worldwide revival that will cost him millions of souls. No option, including death, is off the table. So while the demons work to undermine the efforts of the Apostles, angels are dispatched from heaven to keep them safe, battling the forces of man and demon on their behalf, while behind the scenes, the Holy Spirit guides them in the completion of their missions through the employment of the gifts of the Spirit. The good fight of faith is on.
The impact of globalization of financial markets is a highly debated topic, particularly in recent months when the issue of globalization and contagion of financial distress has become a focus of intense policy debate. The papers in this volume provide an up-to-date overview of the key issues in this debate. While most of the contributions were prepared after the initial outbreak of the current global turmoil and financial crisis, they identify the relative strengths of the risk diversification and risk transmission processes and examine the empirical evidence to date. The book considers the relative roles of banks, nonbank financial institutions and capital markets in both risk diversification and risk transmission. It then evaluates the current status of crisis resolution in a global context, and speculates where to go from here in terms of understanding, resolution, prevention and public policy.
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