Strange Highways

Strange Highways
Author: Dean Koontz
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1472202902

One wrong turn changes everything... Strange Highways is a brilliant collection of dark and suspense-filled short stories from the international bestselling author Dean Koontz. Perfect for fans of Stephen King and Richard Laymon. One rain-swept Sunday night when he was twenty years old, on his way back to college after a weekend with his family, Joey Shannon took the wrong highway - and from that moment, nothing ever went right for him again. Now, exactly twenty years later, on another rain-swept night, Joey finds himself at the same crossroads, looking down the road never taken. Which is odd. Because that road no longer exists. A superhighway replaced it nearly twenty years ago, and the old state route - which had crossed a web of perpetually burning, abandoned coal mines - was condemned as too dangerous and was torn up. But now the highway is exactly as it was on that long-ago night, and when Joey turns on to it, he begins an eerie, terrifying journey toward a truth so dark and stunning that it will change everything he believes about himself, his past, and the nature of life... The first of thirteen short stories sets the pace for a thrilling read. What readers are saying about Strange Highways: 'One of the most thought provoking, terrifying yet enjoyable books I have ever read' 'Each story is as compelling and equally disturbing as the next' 'Great stories from when Dean Koontz was at the peak of his powers. There's suspense, horror, and a great atmosphere of something nasty lurking in the cubby holes of your mind'

Strange Highways

Strange Highways
Author: Jerry Coleman
Publisher: Whitechapel Productions
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2003
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN:

Trucker Ghost Stories

Trucker Ghost Stories
Author: Annie Wilder
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2012-08-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765330350

A collection of firsthand accounts from truckers who have driven all over the United States and have encountered strange and unusual phenomenons which can only be described as paranormal.

Blue Highways

Blue Highways
Author: William Least Heat-Moon
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2012-04-03
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0316218545

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Killer on the Road

Killer on the Road
Author: Ginger Strand
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2012-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292744560

Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.

Strange Highways

Strange Highways
Author: Samwise Didier
Publisher: Insight Comics
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781683831259

The first installment in a new series of illustrated dark fantasy novels from New York Times best-selling author Micky Neilson and legendary Blizzard Entertainment artist and director Sam Didier. Welcome to Texas! Well, the new Texas, that is. After seceding from the oppressive USA, the Lone Star Nation has been reduced to a desolate wasteland full of biker gangs, strip clubs, and run-down towns where justice usually comes in the form of a bullet—and lots of ’em to boot. In this new Texas, the bizarre is commonplace, and every soul on the road has something to hide. Growing up as a freak in a traveling carnival, one might expect to have it rough. But being beaten, shot, hung, and left for dead by the very people who raised you? That’s downright extreme. Unfortunately for his attackers, Jo Jo, the former “Feral Kid,” is very hard to kill. And now he’s out for that most basic of human desires: payback. Traveling the strange highways of this new Texas, Jo Jo comes across an eccentric gallery of freaks and rogues: a young dancer on the run from her depraved father, a messianic head of a biker cult, and a gruesome collection of outcasts, cutthroats, and assassin clowns. Each confrontation brings Jo Jo closer to his ultimate target: the Rambling Man—the sinister ringleader of the dark carnival and the man who wants Jo Jo dead more than anyone. ’Course that’s just fine with Jo Jo, ’cause he feels the exact same way.

Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS

Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS
Author: William Least Heat-Moon
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0826273254

Winner, Distinguished Literary Achievement, Missouri Humanities Council, 2015 The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than thirty years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper—the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book. Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happenedis an adventure story of its own, a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil but from a letterpress in Tennessee.” Readers will not find a collection of abstract formulations and rules for writing; rather, this book gracefully incorporates examples from Heat-Moon’s own experience. As he explains, “This story might be termed an inadvertent autobiography written not by the traveler who took Ghost Dancing in 1978 over the byroads of America but by a man only listening to him. That blue-roadman hasn’t been seen in more than a third of a century, and over the last many weeks as I sketched in these pages, I’ve regretted his inevitable departure.” Filtered as the struggles of the “blue-roadman” are through the awareness of someone more than thirty years older with a half dozen subsequent books to his credit, the story of how his first book “happened” is all the more resonant for readers who may not themselves be writers but who are interested in the tricky balance of intuitive creation and self-discipline required for any artistic endeavor.

Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967

Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967
Author: John Boston
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2013-01-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1434447464

Science Fantasy blends science fiction AND fantasy, so it tends to be bolder and more highly colored than pure science fiction. In the middle of the last century, the British magazine SCIENCE FANTASY created its own distinctive strains of fantasy narrative, most famously by such writers as Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock, and Thomas Burnett Swann, among others. This book looks closely at the whole trajectory of that lost magazine, from its birth in 1950 through 1967, when it was briefly called (SF) Impulse. John Boston provides a brilliantly insightful and often every funny account of the rise, evolution, and final fall of SCIENCE FANTASY, its writers, and its quirky editors. Boston is joined by writer and critic Damien Broderick, adding his own waspish and nostalgic comments. This volume, the first of three dealing with the history and development of the major British SF magazines, is a compelling night journey into the past, where the future took a turn down paths not often explored. It's a trip not to be missed.

The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway
Author: Amor Towles
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735222371

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates

Brutal

Brutal
Author: Samwise Didier
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 164700179X

The ï¬?rst monograph by the art director for leading video game company Blizzard Entertainment Brütal: The Art of Samwise is a career-spanning art book that assembles the many artistic creations of world renowned artist Samwise Didier into one volume. For nearly thirty years, Samwise’s unique art style, which combines the use of bold colors, visual storytelling, and a touch of humor, has been featured in numerous art books, illustrated novels, album covers, comic books, and video games, and is instantly recognizable to his legions of fans. Brütal: The Art of Samwise celebrates all the artistic creations of Samwise’s imagination, including many images never seen before from his personal archives. This book also contains selections of Samwise’s favorite and most iconic images he created for the video game company, Blizzard Entertainment, where he has worked since 1991. As a senior art director for Blizzard, Samwise was responsible for directing the art style for Warcraft, StarCraft, and Heroes of the Storm, as well as for creating artwork for the World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo franchises.