Killing Games

Killing Games
Author: Reis Asher
Publisher: NineStar Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1648902510

Edgar Tobias works as a freelance computer programmer in the city of Anver. Desperate to escape his deceased fathers’ fame as a hit singer-songwriter duo, he left the city of Kasyova and the arts behind. He doesn’t know he’s about to be targeted in a vicious murder game where the prize is a million dollars in cryptocurrency to the first person who can capture his murder on video. Reis Asher lost everything in the Anverite civil war ten years ago, including their mother. Their father created the agreement known as Unification, which joined Anver and Kasyova to create the Twin City-States of Anver-Kasyova, ending the civil war and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity. When they discover the Killing Game, they know that it represents a threat to everything they hold dear and set out to stop it. But powerful forces are at work that refuse to be undermined by one stubborn soul and their sense of justice. Someone wants Edgar dead, and they’ll stop at nothing to see him six feet under… even if that means Reis and other innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

Assassination Generation

Assassination Generation
Author: Kristine Paulsen
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0316265969

The author of the 400,000-copy bestseller On Killing reveals how violent video games have ushered in a new era of mass homicide -- and what we must do about it. Paducah, Kentucky, 1997: a 14-year-old boy shoots eight students in a prayer circle at his school. Littleton, Colorado, 1999: two high school seniors kill a teacher, twelve other students, and then themselves. Utoya, Norway, 2011: a political extremist shoots and kills sixty-nine participants in a youth summer camp. Newtown, Connecticut, 2012: a troubled 20-year-old man kills 20 children and six adults at the elementary school he once attended. What links these and other horrific acts of mass murder? A young person's obsession with video games that teach to kill. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who in his perennial bestseller On Killing revealed that most of us are not "natural born killers" - and who has spent decades training soldiers, police, and others who keep us secure to overcome the intrinsic human resistance to harming others and to use firearms responsibly when necessary - turns a laser focus on the threat posed to our society by violent video games. Drawing on crime statistics, cutting-edge social research, and scientific studies of the teenage brain, Col. Grossman shows how video games that depict antisocial, misanthropic, casually savage behavior can warp the mind - with potentially deadly results. His book will become the focus of a new national conversation about video games and the epidemic of mass murders that they have unleashed.

The Killing Game (An Alexa Chase Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

The Killing Game (An Alexa Chase Suspense Thriller—Book 1)
Author: Kate Bold
Publisher: Kate Bold
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1094374717

Alexa Chase, 34, a brilliant profiler in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, was too good at her job. Haunted by all the serial killers she caught, she left a stunning career behind to join the U.S. Marshals. As a Deputy Marshal, Alexa—fit, and as tough as she is brilliant—could immerse herself in a simple career of hunting down fugitives and bringing them to justice. “This is an excellent book… When you start reading, be sure you don’t have to wake up early!” —Reader review for The Killing Game THE KILLING GAME (An Alexa Chase Suspense Thriller—Book 1) is the debut novel in a new series by mystery and suspense author Kate Bold. When a notorious serial killer escapes from a prison transport, it crosses the jurisdictions of the U.S. Marshals and the FBI’s BAU. The two departments are forced to come together on a new joint task force to hunt down the fugitive serial killer and bring him to justice. Alexa, to her dread, finds herself forced to confront the thing she fears the most—entering a killer’s mind. Doing so again, she knows, may just drag her down for good. Alexa and her new partner, each territorial, don’t take well to each other. Between their tension and all the clues leading to dead ends and the bodies piling up on the killer’s spree, Alexa knows that she, up against a ticking clock, can’t afford to get this wrong. Especially when she realizes that she herself may be the next target. To find this diabolical killer, Alexa will have to do what she fears most—enter his twisted mind, before he can strike again. It’s a life-and-death game of cat and mouse, and it’s winner takes all. But will the darkness swallow her whole? A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured Deputy Marshal, the ALEXA CHASE series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night. Books #2-#6 in the series—THE KILLING TIDE, THE KILLING HOUR, THE KILLING POINT, THE KILLING FOG, and THE KILLING PLACE—are also available. “This book moved very fast and every page was exciting. Plenty of dialogue, you absolutely love the characters, and you were rooting for the good guy throughout the whole story… I look forward to reading the next in the series.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Kate did an amazing job on this book and I was hooked from the first chapter!” —Reader review for The Killing Game “I really enjoyed this book. The characters were authentic, and I see the bad guys as something we hear about daily on the news... Looking forward to book 2.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “This was a really good book. The main characters were real, flawed and human. The story went along quickly and wasn't mired in too many unnecessary details. I really enjoyed it.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Alexa Chase is headstrong, impatient, but most of all brave with a capital B. She never, repeat never, backs down until the bad guys are put where they belong. Clearly five stars!” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Captivating and riveting serial murder with a twist of the macabre… Very well done.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “WOW what a great read! Talk about a diabolical killer! Really enjoyed this book. Looking forward to reading others by this author as well.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Page turner for sure. Great characters and relationships. I got into the middle of this story and couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to more from Kate Bold.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Hard to put down. It has an excellent plot and has the right amount of suspense. I really enjoyed this book.” —Reader review for The Killing Game “Extremely well written, and well worth buying and reading. I can't wait to read book two!” —Reader review for The Killing Game

Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy

Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy
Author: Christopher Bartel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350121894

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the issue. Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies.

Killing Monsters

Killing Monsters
Author: Gerard Jones
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2008-08-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0786723610

Children choose their heroes more carefully than we think. From Pokemon to the rapper Eminem, pop-culture icons are not simply commercial pied pipers who practice mass hypnosis on our youth. Indeed, argues the author of this lively and persuasive paean to the power of popular culture, even violent and trashy entertainment gives children something they need, something that can help both boys and girls develop in a healthy way. Drawing on a wealth of true stories, many gleaned from the fascinating workshops he conducts, and basing his claims on extensive research, including interviews with psychologists and educators, Gerard Jones explains why validating our children's fantasies teaches them to trust their own emotions, helps them build stronger selves, leaves them less at the mercy of the pop-culture industry, and strengthens parent-child bonds. Jones has written for the Spider-Man, Superman, and X-Men comic books and created the Haunted Man series for the Web. He has also explored the cultural meanings of comic books and sitcoms in two well-received books. In Killing Monsters he presents a fresh look at children's fantasies, the entertainment industry, and violence in the modern imagination. This reassuring book, as entertaining as it is provocative, offers all of us-parents, teachers, policymakers, media critics-new ways to understand the challenges and rewards of explosive material. News From Killing Monsters: Packing a toy gun can be good for your son-or daughter. Contrary to public opinion, research shows that make-believe violence actually helps kids cope with fears. Explosive entertainment should be a family affair. Scary TV shows can have a bad effect when children have no chance to discuss them openly with adults. It's crucial to trust kids' desires. What excites them is usually a sign of what they need emotionally. Violent fantasy is one of the best ways for kids to deal with the violence they see in real life.

Killing

Killing
Author: Jeff Sparrow
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0522859348

How hard is it to kill, as a hunter on a Kangaroo cull, as a worker in an abattoir, as an executioner in a prison, as a soldier at war? Ninety years after World War I, police in a Victorian country town uncover the mummified head of a Turkish soldier, a bullet-ridden souvenir brought home from Gallipoli by a returning ANZAC. The macabre discovery sets Jeff Sparrow on a quest to understand the nature of deadly violence. How do ordinary people—whether in today's wars or in 1915—learn to take a human life? How do they live with the aftermath? These questions lead Sparrow through history and across Australia and the USA, talking to veterans and slaughtermen, executioners and writers about one of the last remaining taboos. Compassionate, engaged and political, Killing takes us up close to the ways society kills today, meditating on what violence means, not just for perpetrators, but for all of us.

Not Your Average Zombie

Not Your Average Zombie
Author: Chera Kee
Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1477313184

A thorough analysis of zombies in popular culture from the 1930s to contemporary society. The zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened—yet—but zombies are all over popular culture. From movies and TV shows to video games and zombie walks, the undead stalk through our collective fantasies. What is it about zombies that exerts such a powerful fascination? In Not Your Average Zombie, Chera Kee offers an innovative answer by looking at zombies that don’t conform to the stereotypes of mindless slaves or flesh-eating cannibals. Zombies who think, who speak, and who feel love can be sympathetic and even politically powerful, she asserts. Kee analyzes zombies in popular culture from 1930s depictions of zombies in voodoo rituals to contemporary film and television, comic books, video games, and fan practices such as zombie walks. She discusses how the zombie has embodied our fears of losing the self through slavery and cannibalism and shows how “extra-ordinary” zombies defy that loss of free will by refusing to be dehumanized. By challenging their masters, falling in love, and leading rebellions, “extra-ordinary” zombies become figures of liberation and resistance. Kee also thoroughly investigates how representations of racial and gendered identities in zombie texts offer opportunities for living people to gain agency over their lives. Not Your Average Zombie thus deepens and broadens our understanding of how media producers and consumers take up and use these undead figures to make political interventions in the world of the living. “Kee provides a compelling synthesis of theory and criticism . . . useful for horror scholars interested in how portrayals of zombie intersect with race and gender.” —Popular Culture Studies Journal “Kee’s Not Your Average Zombie is an important book . . . Put simply: if it's the one book you read about or cite on zombie, you've made an excellent choice.” —American Quarterly “[Not Your Average Zombie] offers a fresh theoretical framework to a fast-growing field . . . A fascinating contribution to the critical conversation about the zombie as a fantastic figure.” —Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts “I’m impressed by Kee’s scholarship across several fields—film history and gender and critical race studies, especially—and her cultural and historical contextualizing of the current zombie renaissance.” —James H. Cox, University of Texas at Austin, author of The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and Indigenous Mexico

The Will To Kill

The Will To Kill
Author: James Alan Fox
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1506365957

"Written in an engaging manner that challenges critical thinking throughout, the text is very readable and balances providing facts grounded in research with case examples." —Minna Cirino, Shenandoah University Now with SAGE Publishing, The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder explores extraordinary and seemingly inexplicable cases of homicide—not to sensationalize them—but to educate students about these crimes. Authored by renowned experts, the Fifth Edition places recent crimes in context by reviewing current homicide laws, introducing the latest theories that seek to explain murder, and presenting up-to-date statistical data that identify homicide patterns and trends. Students develop a foundational understanding of a variety of topics, for example, domestic and workplace homicide, cult and hate killings, murders committed by juveniles, and serial slayings. Students also examine various criminal justice responses to homicide, including the strategies and tactics employed to apprehend, prosecute, and punish killers. New to the Fifth Edition Up-to-date research and data offers students the latest statistics on homicide patterns and trends in recent years. New illustrative cases cover various forms of homicide, focusing on crimes that drew significant interest from the public and policymakers alike and provide students with unique insights into violent behavior. Updated coverage of recent controversies, legislative changes, and Supreme Court decisions includes heightened concern over mass shootings, hate-motivated homicide and terrorism; new laws, shifting policies, and Supreme Court rulings pertaining to gun rights, juvenile offenders and the death penalty; and advances in surveillance technology, computer-aided investigation, and DNA forensic testing. Early introduction of theories helps students to understand the definition of homicide/homicide laws before developing a theoretical framework to explain violence.

The Killing Game

The Killing Game
Author: Iris Johansen
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2003-08-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553898248

A merciless killer on the hunt...an innocent child in his sights...a woman driven to the edge to stop him... The killer knows Eve Duncan all too well. He knows the pain she feels for her murdered daughter, Bonnie, whose body has never been found. He knows that as one of the nation's top forensic sculptors she'll insist on identifying the nine skeletons unearthed on a bluff near Georgia's Talladega Falls. He knows she won't be able to resist the temptation of believing that one of those skeletons might be her daughter's. But that is only the beginning of the killer's sadistic game. He wants Eve one on one, and he'll use his ace in the hole to make sure she complies. And he won't stop playing until he claims the prize he wants most: Eve's life.

Seven Games: A Human History

Seven Games: A Human History
Author: Oliver Roeder
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324003782

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.