Ridiculously good' (New York Times) author Thomas Pierce's debut novel is a brilliantly dazzling and poignant love story that answers the question: What happens after we die? (Lots of stuff, it turns out.) Will we meet again? I believe we will, but as for proof I can only offer my story, nothing more. Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age thirty. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights or angels, Jim wonders what - if anything - awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the spectre of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love. Funny, fiercely original and gracefully moving, The Afterlives will haunt you. In a good way. Praise for The Afterlives 'A bracingly intelligent, beautifully rendered meditation on ghosts, technology, marriage, and the afterlife. This is a remarkable novel' Emily St. John Mandel 'Inventive, romantic, and unsettling, The Afterlives is a story of two people who take extraordinary measures to answer the Big Questions: What is the soul? Do we ever really die? Flabbergastingly original and sublimely satisfying' Amity Gaige
Everyone has a breaking point . . . “Probably no other suspense writer takes readers as deeply into the heart of darkness as Cook.” —Chicago Tribune There are no witnesses nor evidence to link him to the crime, but the police are sure that vagrant Albert Jay Smalls killed a child. Their interviews have led nowhere, but now—with a 6:00 a.m. deadline looming at which he must be released from custody—they will try one more interrogation. Detective Pierce, whose own daughter’s death has left a hole in his heart, and Detective Cohen, still broken from what he saw in World War II, will look into the abyss of Smalls’s troubled mind in a frantic last-ditch effort to extract a confession. Their effort will bring answers they never expected—and blur the line between innocence and guilt . . . “Cook adroitly weaves back and forth between the crime itself, the subsequent investigation and the halting questioning of the suspect. More compelling, however, is his portrayal of how the crime affects Pierce and Cohen, as well as several secondary characters . . . Down to the cleverly hatched, melancholy ending, Cook again takes readers down a dark, treacherous road into the heart of human fallibility and struggle.” —Publishers Weekly “[An] irresistible premise.” —Kirkus Reviews “Well-plotted . . . The psychic pain of these characters is piercing.” —The New York Times Book Review
Fed up with the sarcastic, opinionated, and disrespectful women he comes across, Ellery Pierce decides his only choice is to build the perfect woman. A technician at an animatronics firm, Ellery has the experience and tools ready at his fingertips. After years of experiments and fine-tuning, Ellery feels he finally has created an artificial woman who can pass as real -- Phyllis. According to Ellery, Phyllis is the perfect wife, fulfilling his every wish, from gourmet meals to sexual pleasure. Unfortunately for Ellery, he may have made her too closely in his image for his own good: Phyllis leaves Ellery with dreams of Hollywood. Soon she's a bona fide box office sensation. But then Phyllis sets her sights on the ultimate goal -- presidency of the United States. It's no surprise when Phyllis wins the election, but Ellery rightly begins to wonder if this time she's gone too far.
Now a SHOWTIME Original Motion Picture starring William Baldwin, Kelly Lynch, and Peter Gallagher, Brotherhood of Murder chronicles the dramatic true story of Tom Martinez, a man who was undercover for the FBI in one of America's most dangerous white supremist terrorist groups. Given the recent tragic hate-crime shootings, this classic non-fiction book is more relevant than ever. Growing up poor, white and angry on the mean streets of Philadelphia, Tom Martinez was ready for action. And he found it with Bob Mathews, founder of the most violent secret racist society in America, The Order. The charismatic Mathews was a leader Martinez could follow to hell and back. And he did - through counterfeiting, knowledge of bombings, robbery and murder, and, finally, horrified awareness. Martinez had been seduced by the rhetoric into a group whose racial hatred resulted in the largest armored car robbery in American history, and the killing of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg. Here is his riveting story: the vivid, harrowing details of life inside The Order, and how he regained his conscience and his manhood by going undercover for the FBI to bring the group down. Thomas Martinez has refused the security of the Witness Protection Program. To this day he journeys across the country, a marked man, risking his life to warn of the dangers of the neo-Nazi right. His extraordinary story packs the power of a first-rate thriller. But in America today, it is the bone-chilling truth. Updated for iUniverse.com by the author, this story packs the power of a first-rate thriller!
The True Stories of Monetary Scandals in the Oval Office that Robbed Taxpayers to Grease Palms, Stuff Pockets, and Pay for Undue Influence from Teapot Dome to Halliburton
The True Stories of Monetary Scandals in the Oval Office that Robbed Taxpayers to Grease Palms, Stuff Pockets, and Pay for Undue Influence from Teapot Dome to Halliburton
Presidents with little oversight short of checks and balances have abused funding, misdirected money, misused personal funds, and misappropriated tax payer contributions for personal gain. This history of presidential monetary abuse details the biggest, often blatant, abuses of power where political influence was bought and sold, lucrative contract handed out to friends and political support is up for purchase. The tales are shocking examples of the oval office politicking gone wild and the damage it has done to the credibility of presidents. It also reveals, with more than 40 archival images, the sheer volume of tax payer money that goes awry for politicians’ personal gain with the presidential stamp on it or simply a purposeful presidential oversight.
Ninety miles from Florida, the island of Cuba has since long before the Castro revolution focused its attention upon, and drawn the attention of, the United States. American interest can be traced to President Jefferson; events since 1959 have kept the two nations constantly at odds. This encyclopedia places persons and events in the context of Cuban relations with the United States and vice versa. An introduction and chronology provide a background. From ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY to ZAYAS, ALFREDO, entries cover such topics as policies (e.g., Isle of Pines Treaty, 1931 International Sugar Agreement), leaders (e.g., Fulgencio Batista, John F. Kennedy) and events (e.g., Bay of Pigs invasion, Baltimore Orioles vs. Cuban All-Stars in A999). Many see references interconnect the entries.
A beautiful young blonde running away from home winds up dead in a seedy hotel. Gemson police detective John Knox is assigned the case and must work his way through the underworld of Gemson, all the while keeping the interfering politicians at bay. Racing toward a final showdown with the killer, Knox will put his life on the line to catch the killer of the working blonde.
This is an exhaustive regional history of the parent county of nine present-day Virginia or West Virginia counties. It features several hundred detailed genealogical and biographical sketches of early families of old Frederick County. With an improved index
Thomas Middleton is one of the few playwrights in English whose range and brilliance comes close to Shakespeare's. This handsome edition makes all Middleton's work accessible in a single volume, for the first time. It will generate excitement and controversy among all readers of Shakespeare and the English classics.
The Civil War surgeon faced a unique challenge: to answer to two very different authorities. On one hand, he was bound to uphold the principles of medical tradition, while on the other required to obey the regulations of the army. In the former realm, it was his duty to follow the customs and ethics of his profession and his responsibility to maximize his skills in the diagnosis and treatment of wounds and sickness. In the latter arena--a world unfamiliar to most doctors--he was to learn and follow the Articles of War, the Regulations of the Army, and the customs of military life. Not every doctor was able to rise to the challenge of these dual responsibilities and many Civil War surgeons ended up facing official sanctions for their alleged medical and/or procedural failures. it is all too easy today to look back on the medical practices of the Civil War era with the smug superiority of 135 years of hindsight. Modern medical knowledge and technology make the practices of late-nineteenth-century medicine seem downright primitive. But Civil War doctors and surgeons were no less knowledgeable than their civilian colleagues. The Civil War doctor did not think of bacteria because no one thought of bacteria. He did not strive for a sterile operating field because that concept would not arrive for another twenty years. For the same reasons, he did not x-ray his patients or order transfusions or examine their blood for parasites of prescribe antibiotics. We know of these things, but no one in 1861-1965 did. When Civil War surgeons arrived to perform their duty, they met a challenge for which medical training could not have prepared them: doing things the army way. The two main sources of information for enlisted men, The Articles of War and the Regulations of the Army, offered little or no guidance to Civil War surgeons. The customs of the army depended on an oral tradition, a learning by experience, but a vast citizen army raised almost overnight had no collective memory--and therefore no way to inform itself. This ignorance was the basis of several court-martials. Undoubtedly, some of these surgeons were guilty of negligence, perhaps even worse. But the great majority of Civil War surgeons did their duty. Even those who fell short raise the question: Could we, with the same challenges and the same limited knowledge, have done better? -- Inside jacket flaps.
The author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California’s wine trade in the once isolated pueblo now called Los Angeles. Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! With incisive analysis and a touch of dry humor, The City of Vines chronicles winemaking in Los Angeles from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century through its decline in the 1950s. Thomas Pinney returns the megalopolis to the prickly pear-studded lands upon which Mission grapes grew for the production of claret, port, sherry, angelica, and hock. From these rural beginnings Pinney reconstructs the entire course of winemaking in a sweeping narrative, punctuated by accounts of particular enterprises including Anaheim’s foundation as a German winemaking settlement and the undertakings of vintners scrambling for market dominance. Yet Pinney also shows Los Angeles’s wine industry to be beholden to the forces that shaped all California under the flags of Spain, Mexico, and the United States: colonial expansion dependent on labor of indigenous peoples; the Gold Rush population boom; transcontinental railroads; rapid urbanization; and Prohibition. This previously untold story uncovers an era when California wine meant Los Angeles wine, and reveals the lasting ways in which the wine industry shaped the nascent metropolis.
In this suspense thriller by the author of The Screaming Room, New York City is terrorized by a serial killer leaving boneless corpses in his wake. A sociopathic killer is using the internet to lure seemingly random women to their gruesome deaths in New York City. During his heinous murderous spree, this madman is extracting the bones of his victims. His sheer brutality has the Big Apple’s residents in panic mode. Who is this twisted psycho who’s abducted a housewife in broad daylight only to dispose of her lifeless body alongside a lake in Prospect Park, nailed the boneless remains of a nameless drifter to the underside of a boardwalk at Rockaway Beach, allowed the gutted corpse of a single parent to wash ashore under the Brooklyn Bridge, and has had the audacity to leave the desecrated body of the Magnolia Tea heiress rotting atop trash at one of the city’s sanitation dumps? NYPD’s top cop, Homicide Commander Lieutenant John W. Driscoll has never witnessed such savagery. Hammered daily by the district attorney, the mayor and the police commissioner, the lieutenant, who’s battling his own inner demons, must use every resource available to put an end to the killings. In a race against time, Driscoll, aided by Sergeant Margaret Aligante and Detective Cedric Thomlinson, sets out on a rollercoaster of an investigation to first identify the villainous fiend, and then take him down. Praise for Bone Thief “Sweeps the reader along its breathless, tumbling course.” —Peter Straub, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of A Dark Matter “Sharp as a scalpel, chilling as ice.” —Gayle Lynds, New York Times–bestselling author of The Assassins
Medical researcher McKenzie Ashford is delighted with her new job with a major California pharmaceutical company, until she discovers that her gorgeous new boss man be the man responsible for her mother's untimely death. Original.
The friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither marry? Might they have been gay? Or was their relationship a nineteenth-century version of the modern-day "bromance"? In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them. While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics.
Unparalleled coverage of U.S. political development through a unique chronological framework Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History explores the events, policies, activities, institutions, groups, people, and movements that have created and shaped political life in the United States. With contributions from scholars in the fields of history and political science, this seven-volume set provides students, researchers, and scholars the opportunity to examine the political evolution of the United States from the 1500s to the present day. With greater coverage than any other resource, the Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History identifies and illuminates patterns and interrelations that will expand the reader’s understanding of American political institutions, culture, behavior, and change. Focusing on both government and history, the Encyclopedia brings exceptional breadth and depth to the topic with more than 100 essays for each of the critical time periods covered. With each volume covering one of seven time periods that correspond to key eras in American history, the essays and articles in this authoritative encyclopedia focus on the following themes of political history: The three branches of government Elections and political parties Legal and constitutional histories Political movements and philosophies, and key political figures Economics Military politics International relations, treaties, and alliances Regional histories Key Features Organized chronologically by political eras Reader’s guide for easy-topic searching across volumes Maps, photographs, and tables enhance the text Signed entries by a stellar group of contributors VOLUME 1 ?Colonial Beginnings through Revolution ?1500–1783 ?Volume Editor: Andrew Robertson, Herbert H. Lehman College ?The colonial period witnessed the transformation of thirteen distinct colonies into an independent federated republic. This volume discusses the diversity of the colonial political experience—a diversity that modern scholars have found defies easy synthesis—as well as the long-term conflicts, policies, and events that led to revolution, and the ideas underlying independence. VOLUME 2 ?The Early Republic ?1784–1840 ?Volume Editor: Michael A. Morrison, Purdue University No period in the history of the United States was more critical to the foundation and shaping of American politics than the early American republic. This volume discusses the era of Confederation, the shaping of the U.S. Constitution, and the development of the party system. VOLUME 3 ?Expansion, Division, and Reconstruction ?1841–1877 ?Volume Editor: William Shade, Lehigh University (emeritus) ?This volume examines three decades in the middle of the nineteenth century, which witnessed: the emergence of the debate over slavery in the territories, which eventually led to the Civil War; the military conflict itself from 1861 until 1865; and the process of Reconstruction, which ended with the readmission of all of the former Confederate States to the Union and the "withdrawal" of the last occupying federal troops from those states in 1877. VOLUME 4 ?From the Gilded Age through the Age of Reform ?1878–1920 ?Volume Editor: Robert Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago With the withdrawal of federal soldiers from Southern states the previous year, 1878 marked a new focus in American politics, and it became recognizably modern within the next 40 years. This volume focuses on race and politics; economics, labor, and capitalism; agrarian politics and populism; national politics; progressivism; foreign affairs; World War I; and the end of the progressive era. VOLUME 5 ?Prosperity, Depression, and War ?1921–1945 ?Volume Editor: Robert Zieger, University of Florida Between 1921 and 1945, the U.S. political system exhibited significant patterns of both continuity and change in a turbulent time marked by racist conflicts, the Great Depression, and World War II. The main topics covered in this volume are declining party identification; the "Roosevelt Coalition"; evolving party organization; congressional inertia in the 1920s; the New Deal; Congress during World War II; the growth of the federal government; Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency; the Supreme Court’s conservative traditions; and a new judicial outlook. VOLUME 6 ?Postwar Consensus to Social Unrest ?1946–1975 ?Volume Editor: Thomas Langston, Tulane University This volume examines the postwar era with the consolidation of the New Deal, the onset of the Cold War, and the Korean War. It then moves into the 1950s and early 1960s, and discusses the Vietnam war; the era of John F. Kennedy; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Civil Rights Act; Martin Luther King and the Voting Rights Act; antiwar movements; The War Powers Act; environmental policy; the Equal Rights Amendment; Roe v. Wade; Watergate; and the end of the Vietnam War. VOLUME 7 ?The Clash of Conservatism and Liberalism ?1976 to present ?Volume Editor: Richard Valelly, Swarthmore College ?The troubled Carter Administration, 1977–1980, proved to be the political gateway for the resurgence of a more ideologically conservative Republican party led by a popular president, Ronald Reagan. The last volume of the Encyclopedia covers politics and national institutions in a polarized era of nationally competitive party politics and programmatic debates about taxes, social policy, and the size of national government. It also considers the mixed blessing of the change in superpower international competition associated with the end of the Cold War. Stateless terrorism (symbolized by the 9/11 attacks), the continuing American tradition of civil liberties, and the broad change in social diversity wrought by immigration and the impact in this period of the rights revolutions are also covered.
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