Desolation Argonauts

Desolation Argonauts
Author: Clive Radford
Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 162420693X

Pipedream meets reality along Route 66. Charged up with expectation, Henry Collins, a man with a subconscious Magnum fixation, and his band of argonauts explore the beat generation trail. Searching for the ghosts of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, they rub shoulders with next generation beats in roadhouses and speakeasies, and survivors from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Recognising their romantic visions of beatdom are tainted with fallacy and paradox, after six weeks on Route 66 travelling from Chicago to LA and returning to the Windy City on a northerly route, they exit the world of intellectual and down and out beats, flushed with an appreciation that no counterculture, no matter how seductive, approaches perfection.

The Spiral Staircase & Other Novellas

The Spiral Staircase & Other Novellas
Author: Clive Radford
Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1955784442

Differing themes and voices, some classic, some contemporary, others though mysterious, planted firmly in reality. All used to depict an assortment of psychological suspense thrillers, coming of age sagas and modern satires.

The Path of the Argo

The Path of the Argo
Author: R. J. Clare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2002-05-16
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521810364

An innovative critical study emphasizing thematic and narrative complexities arising from the poet's use of language.

The Greek Dialogues

The Greek Dialogues
Author: Betty Mallett Smith
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 146910704X

The Greek gods, goddesses, and heroes come alive as they fight, love, bicker, and give advice to confused human beings in these imaginative dialogues. It is easy to find their experiences and emotions reflected in our own lives. The author, Betty Mallett Smith, brings a trained philosophical mind, as well as a long study of Greek literature and art, to bear on the ancient myths. The work also reflects her deep experience of modern depth psychology, especially that of C. G. Jung.

Slender Fantasies

Slender Fantasies
Author: Richard Hicks
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2001-03-07
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1453582665

Meet Ralph Plotkin—a Los Angeles lawyer whose career has gone into the tank. A recovering compulsive gambler who has stolen from his client's trust fund, Ralph is under investigation by the State Bar, and owes money to a Korean Mafia loan-shark. Reduced to crashing posh Hollywood parties to forage for food, Ralph is about to skip out to Mexico, when he encounters Iris Labelle, a wannabe actress and resigned anorexic and bulimic, who suggests that maybe her eating disorder stems from her childhood doll. The Bobbie Doll. Not to be confused with Barbie, this child-like androgynous doll (who sometimes wears a nose-ring and tattoo) is flat-chested and Twiggy-thin—just like Iris. Enter Charlie Kim—a Swarthmore grad posing as the head of the Korean Mafia who wants to be the next Steven Spielberg—and his cleaver wielding cousin, Genghis. When they threaten to make kimchi out of Ralph's index fingers, Ralph promises payment from the proceeds of a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the Bobbie Doll. It seems the doll suffered from a design defect—it was unnaturally thin—which caused young women to suffer from anorexia and bulimia. "A sure winner. We're suing for millions," says Ralph. Readers who join Ralph in his efforts to promote a nuisance suit into a nationwide class action, will encounter intrigue, conspiracy, agents and double-agents, and a bizarre cast of malady-ridden characters that include a militant woman's movement, a knuckle-cracking, megalomaniac defense attorney, the octogenarian, hypochondriac Chairman of a Korean conglomerate and his shaman priestess, a forensic psychiatrist suffering from agoraphobia, and thousands of emaciated young women who started out life with the Bobbie Doll—the doll of the Eighties and Nineties. Slender Fantasies is a fast paced satire of the legal profession, that will keep you turning pages until the final plot-twisting denouement, when Ralph, facing insurmountable odds, stands alone in a David and Goliath courtroom confrontation to prove that playing with dolls—at least the Bobbie Doll—-really can be dangerous to a young girl's health.