Savaging the Dark

Savaging the Dark
Author: Christopher Conlon
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Mona Straw has it all—beautiful daughter, caring husband, lovely home, fulfilling job as a middle-school teacher. But one day a new man enters Mona’s life and turns it upside-down, their passionate affair tilting her mind to the edge of madness—and murder. Her lover’s name is Connor. He’s got blonde hair, green eyes…and he’s eleven years old. *** “One of the 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time” —Paste Magazine “Top Ten Horror: 2015” —Booklist (starred review)

Man in the Dark

Man in the Dark
Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2008
Genre: Historical fiction
ISBN: 0312356587

"I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness." So begins Paul Auster's brilliant, devastating tale about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget ? his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union, and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death. Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a story of our moment, an audiobook that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

Kaboom

Kaboom
Author: Matt Gallagher
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2010-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0306818981

When Lieutenant Matt Gallagher began his blog with the aim of keeping his family and friends apprised of his experiences, he didn't anticipate that it would resonate far beyond his intended audience. His subjects ranged from mission details to immortality, grim stories about Bon Jovi cassettes mistaken for IEDs, and the daily experiences of the Gravediggers-the code name for members of Gallagher's platoon. When the blog was shut down in June 2008 by the U.S. Army, there were more than twentyfive congressional inquiries regarding the matter as well as reports through the military grapevine that many high-ranking officials and officers at the Pentagon were disappointed that the blog had been ordered closed.Based on Gallagher's extraordinarily popular blog, Kaboom is "at turns hilarious, maddening, and terrifying," providing "raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in" (Washington Post). Like Anthony Swofford's Jarhead, Gallagher's Kaboom resonates with stoic detachment and timeless insight into a war that we are still trying to understand.

Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0316535621

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Royal Savage

Royal Savage
Author: Victoria Ashley
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-03-23
Genre:
ISBN:

ROYAL SAVAGE I CAN'T CLOSE MY EYES... I refuse to. Every time I do, all I see is blood, death, and pain. I can feel it - almost taste it, bringing me back to that night. It doesn't matter that I'm still breathing; I no longer need it, I no longer want it. I despise it along with everything else around me. The only thing I long for is to fade away. I've given up. Until her at least... AVALON. She comes into my world, knocking me on my a@s. It turns me on to have her around me. Makes me want to wrap my hand around her tight little throat and fu@k her until she feels my pain, feels the monster in me, but also makes me want to protect her from the very thing that she should be afraid of... me. Once she sees the damage that I'm capable of; she'll look at me like everyone else around me does: with fear. AVALON KNIGHT HIS EYES... THE DARKNESS IN them draws me to him, making me want to taste him, feel him... and save him. I shouldn't have gotten on the back of his motorcycle that day. I know that now. Colton warned me. I was told it was dangerous. I was told that nothing would be the same. He was right. ROYAL is dangerous, dark, and seductive; the very thing that keeps me hanging on, willing to give my last breath just to touch him... breathe him in. He's savage, inked, and highly captivating. So different from his brother... He's hazardous to my health, mind, and body, yet the only thing that I crave. I want to free him. I want to change his mind, but I'm afraid that he's already too faded...

Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness
Author: Eric Schlosser
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2004-04-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 054752675X

New York Times Bestseller: The shadowy world of “off the books” businesses—from marijuana to migrant workers—brought to life by the author of Fast Food Nation. America’s black market is much larger than we realize, and it affects us all deeply, whether or not we smoke pot, rent a risqué video, or pay our kids’ nannies in cash. In Reefer Madness, the award-winning investigative journalist Eric Schlosser turns his exacting eye to the underbelly of American capitalism and its far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays—pot, porn, and illegal immigrants—Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He also draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, and how big business learns—and profits—from the underground. “Captivating . . . Compelling tales of crime and punishment as well as an illuminating glimpse at the inner workings of the underground economy. The book revolves around two figures: Mark Young of Indiana, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his relatively minor role in a marijuana deal; and Reuben Sturman, an enigmatic Ohio man who built and controlled a formidable pornography distribution empire before finally being convicted of tax evasion. . . . Schlosser unravels an American society that has ‘become alienated and at odds with itself.’ Like Fast Food Nation, this is an eye-opening book, offering the same high level of reporting and research.” —Publishers Weekly

The Oblivion Room

The Oblivion Room
Author: Christopher Conlon
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

A woman finds herself alone in a pitch-black room without doors or windows, completely cut off from human contact…A man wakes one morning certain that today is the day he must commit and unspeakable atrocity…A gifted jazz musician runs from her past—but even she has no idea how lethal that past really is. The Oblivion Room: Stories of Violation collects six of Christopher Conlon’s most nightmarish works, tales in which the horrific can come from anywhere—or from everywhere at once. “Every piece in the volume bears the stamp of Conlon’s gift for combining subtle terror with unforeseeable plot twists. Connoisseurs of cutting-edge horror will not want to miss it.” –Booklist

The Boy

The Boy
Author: Marcus Malte
Publisher: Restless Books
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1632061716

Winner of the prestigious Prix Femina, The Boy is an expansive and entrancing historical novel that follows a nearly feral child from the French countryside as he joins society and plunges into the torrid events of the first half of the 20th century. The boy does not speak. The boy has no name. The boy, raised half-wild in the forests of southern France, sets out alone into the wilderness and the greater world beyond. Without experience of another person aside from his mother, the boy must learn what it is to be human, to exist among people, and to live beyond simple survival. As this wild and naive child attempts to join civilization, he encounters earthquakes and car crashes, ogres and artists, and, eventually, all-encompassing love and an inescapable war. His adventures take him around the world and through history on a mesmerizing journey, rich with unforgettable characters. A hamlet of farmers fears he’s a werewolf, but eventually raise him as one of their own. A circus performer who toured the world as a sideshow introduces the boy to showmanship and sanitation. And a chance encounter with an older woman exposes him to music and the sensuous pleasures of life. The boy becomes a guide whose innocence exposes society’s wonder, brutality, absurdity, and magic. Beginning in 1908 and spanning three decades, The Boy is as an emotionally and historically rich exploration of family, passion, and war from one of France’s most acclaimed and bestselling authors.

Mhorag

Mhorag
Author: Sarah Kennedy
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2019-09-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1796058564

An Ancient Evil A Promised King A World Besieged Mhorag’s name is whispered in every land. For some there is no greater dread; for others no greater hope. But in this new age of rage and wonder, what is hope? In growing darkness, Sgarrwrath’s quest for domination of the world is interrupted by these whispers and prayers, and stars aligning to reveal the Living Flame. All hangs in the balance as the forbidden desire that started it all culminates in a battle of wills that will darken the stars, shatter the Sun and raise the dead.

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers
Author: Wislawa Szymborska
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0811229726

At once kind and hilarious, this compilation of the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s advice to writers is illustrated with her own marvelous collages In this witty “how-to” guide, Wislawa Szymborska has nothing but sympathy for the labors of would-be writers generally: “I myself started out with rotten poetry and stories,” she confesses in this collection of pieces culled from the advice she gave—anonymously—for many years in the well-known Polish journal Literary Life. She returns time and again to the mundane business of writing poetry properly, that is to say, painstakingly and sparingly. “I sigh to be a poet,” Miss A. P. from Bialogard exclaims. “I groan to be an editor,” Szymborska responds. Szymborska stubbornly insists on poetry’s “prosaic side”: “Let’s take the wings off and try writing on foot, shall we?” This delightful compilation, translated by the peerless Clare Cavanagh, will delight readers and writers alike. Perhaps you could learn to love in prose.