Christ what the hell was Derrick Donavich doing in this arty farty place? Forced in by a unexpected rain storm it had been at least an hour since the last drop had fallen. Still, even though it was strange and disturbing, Derrick was fascinated by the dark subject matter. As Mr. Black, the owner and collector of the strange items talked , Derrick knew he should run into the daylight steps away. A chill went down his spine as a gravel voice announced "Mr. Donavvich! This should interest you" The way he stretched out his name seemed omnimous...
Things were starting to look pretty grim for Sam and Sally Edwards because he lost his job at the slaughterhouse and to top things off his wife never worked a day in her life so she wasn’t able to contribute to their marriage in a monetary way. Since they both lived in a small farming community called Cavendale and had nothing more than a high school education the handful of high-paying jobs would be out of their reach so they were both doomed to lead a poverty-stricken life unless they could get back up on their heels and turn things back around. Their electric bill would be due in the next couple of days and if they didn’t scrape up some cash quickly it would be lights out for the both of them. Knowing that in a couple of days, they would be without electricity they sat down at the kitchen table thinking of ways to get out of this devastating rut they both were in. Sam said “I know how we can turn things around, we can rent out one of our bedrooms, and that will bring in money so we can eat, and save us from having to spend the winter in the dark and freeze to death. His wife said, “That sounds like a good idea.” Sam kissed his wife and said, “I’ll head into town and see what interest I can drum up.” They both were starting to feel like help was on its way but no one in their right mind would want to rent a room at their house because they weren’t clean people and if something fell on the floor that’s where it stayed. They were just too lazy to clean up after themselves. Sam managed to bring back some interested people but when they stepped inside his home they held their breath and immediately turned around and told them they were not interested. Sam slammed the front door behind them as they got in their cars and drove off into the night. His wife told him, “Surely, we can think of something because if we don’t we’ll be living out in the streets soon.” Sam paced back and forth in the kitchen and said “I know we’ll ask our nice neighbors the Thompson’s to come over tomorrow night for dinner and rob them so we can stop the lights from being turned off.” His wife said, “If we must, then we must survive, and I’m not going to live out on the streets and beg for money and food.” Sam called the Thompson’s house on the phone and Mr. Thompson answered, and Sam invited him and his wife over for supper the next night, and Mr. Thompson’s response was “Sure, we’d be delighted to come over tomorrow night for dinner.” Sam hung up the phone and said to his wife, “They’ll be over for supper tomorrow night!” His wife said in excitement, “I can almost taste Mr. and Mrs. Thompson’s bloody heart in my mouth,” as she rubbed her belly.
Includes Killer's Gruesome Confession! "She had beautiful legs. I wanted to keep those legs." One by one, investigators found the women's bodies. Each one carefully posed. Each one brutally mutilated. An arm here. A leg there. A breast, nipples, a tattoo. The killer was cutting his victims to pieces. . . "At that point, I pretty much went for the head." For ten years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the killings went on. Women of slight stature were hunted down, bludgeoned and strangled. And what the killer did with their bodies in the privacy of his car, his home, his kitchen, and his shower-was beyond anything police could imagine. "I was pure evil." When investigators finally caught mild-mannered, Star Trek fan Sean Vincent Gillis, he couldn't wait to tell his story. In the presence of shocked veteran detectives, Sean told them every detail of his killings, everything he did with the bodies. . .. And he smiled the whole time. . . Includes 16 pages of shocking photographs Warning: Contains Graphic Details
Certain to appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich, Jennifer Crusie, and Katie MacAlister, Elise Sax’s hilarious series debut introduces matchmaker-in-training Gladie Burger, who stumbles into a dangerous quagmire of murder and red-hot romance. Three months has been Gladie Burger’s limit when it comes to staying in one place. That’s why Gladie is more than a little skeptical when her eccentric Grandma Zelda recruits her to the family’s matchmaking business in the quaint small town of Cannes, California. What’s more, Gladie is also highly unqualified, having a terrible track record with romance. Still, Zelda is convinced that her granddaughter has “the gift.” But when the going gets tough, Gladie wonders if this gift has a return policy. When Zelda’s neighbor drops dead in his kitchen, Gladie is swept into his bizarre family’s drama. Despite warnings from the (distractingly gorgeous) chief of police to steer clear of his investigation, Gladie is out to prove that her neighbor’s death was murder. It’s not too long before she’s in way over her head—with the hunky police chief, a dysfunctional family full of possible killers, and yet another mysterious and handsome man, whose attentions she’s unable to ignore. Gladie is clearly being pursued—either by true love or by a murderer. Who will catch her first? Praise for An Affair to Dismember “Elise Sax’s new Matchmaker series is off to a rousing start! . . . Sax gives the comic mystery genre a new spin. . . . A fun read sure to entertain.”—RT Book Reviews “Fans of laugh-out-loud romantic suspense will enjoy this new author as she joins the ranks of Janet Evanovich, Katie MacAllister, and Jennifer Crusie.”—Booklist “Elise Sax will win your heart.”—New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis “In the tradition of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, Elise Sax’s new novel is a funny, sexy ride.”—Valerie Frankel, author of Four of a Kind “What a fun book! It will leave readers begging for more.”—Kim Gruenenfelder, author of There’s Cake in My Future From the Paperback edition.
This book examines the intersecting communitarian endeavors of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Colette Peignot, known post-humously as Laure. Through detailed analysis of a series of interlocking texts that the four authors wrote on, for, and to one another on such topics as love, friendship, and fraternity, it explores these authors' theoretical elaborations of community, their actual communities, and the relation between the two.
Dismembered Rhetoric describes the rhetoric of devotional publications by the Catholic secret presses between 1580 and 1603. A myth persists of a chasm between the Protestant battle cry of "Bible" and the Catholic approach to the laity through sacrament rather than word. However, Catholic authors did employ formal rhetoric to guide the devotions of the reader. Writers such as Robert Persons, William Allen, Henry Garnet, Edmund Campion, and Robert Southwell recognized that these techniques did not emasculate the chaste prose of their "shining band of martyrs.".
While the number of federally recognized Native nations in the United States are increasing, the population figures for existing tribal nations are declining. This depopulation is not being perpetrated by the federal government, but by Native governments that are banishing, denying, or disenrolling Native citizens at an unprecedented rate. Since the 1990s, tribal belonging has become more of a privilege than a sacred right. Political and legal dismemberment has become a national phenomenon with nearly eighty Native nations, in at least twenty states, terminating the rights of indigenous citizens. The first comprehensive examination of the origins and significance of tribal disenrollment, Dismembered examines this disturbing trend, which often leaves the disenrolled tribal members with no recourse or appeal. At the center of the issue is how Native nations are defined today and who has the fundamental rights to belong. By looking at hundreds of tribal constitutions and talking with both disenrolled members and tribal officials, the authors demonstrate the damage this practice is having across Indian Country and ways to address the problem.
When a suicide terrorist strikes in Israel, the usual contingent of first responders that one might see anywhere in the world -- police, medics, firefighters -- are accompanied by another group, one found only in Israel. They wear yarmulkes, white coveralls, rubber gloves, and dayglo yellow vests. These are the men of ZAKA, an Israeli religious organization dedicated to dealing with the mutilated and scorched bodies and the severed limbs of the victims of violent death, mainly those killed by Palestinian terrorism. ZAKA arose, reached its peak, and gained fame during the two waves of suicide terrorism that characterized the intensification of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the last decade of the 20th century and the first five years of the twenty-first century. ZAKA has a few hundred all-male activists, typically volunteers, exclusively Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews. Well trained and equipped, they are among the first to arrive at the sites of unnatural death, especially the arenas of mass mortality, where they perform a scrupulous procedure, laden with symbolism. This involves collecting the corpses and body parts, sorting them, identifying them, and reassembling them while diligently preserving respect for the dead and for body parts, and preparing them for burial according to the rigid strictures of Jewish law. Gideon Aran has spent years embedded with the men of ZAKA, and in this gripping ethnography he takes readers inside the organization and on the ground with these men as they do their gruesome -- but, in their view, holy -- work.
Assessing the impact of Germany's defeat on the policing of Berlin, this book addresses the reconstruction of the police force as a crucial component of four-power government. As Mark Fenemore shows, getting four nationalities to work together to administer a complex major city was a unique undertaking, never before attempted. The situation was made even more difficult by the conditions of hunger and desperation that caused a spike in crime. The stage was a city in ruins, the capital of a defeated, divided, prostrate, occupied country. The audience the administrations were playing to was a population deeply scarred by Nazism, total war, cold, hunger and mass rape. Dismembered Policing explores postwar Berlin from the perspective of all four occupiers and of ordinary Berliners. Fenemore discusses how each occupation government sought to act as an advertisement for its country's respective cultural values, mores and system of governance. As an international, multi-archival study, the book draws on evidence in French and German as well as in English. Using law enforcement as a lens, it examines issues like mass rape, the black market, interracial sex and political violence. With hunger, sexually motivated assault and dismembered body parts featuring prominently, it is reminiscent of Ian McEwen's novel The Innocent, but based on real police files.
This book provides a detailed exploration of profit-driven biblioclasm, centring on the case of a Book of Hours, part of the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings until 2021. Facing financial difficulties exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum chose to deaccession and sell various pieces, among which was a manuscript from the Mary Benson bequest of 1919, later dismembered by an American dealer who had purchased it at auction. Whilst examining the moral complexities surrounding these sales and the destruction of irreplaceable European cultural artifacts, the book uncovers the identity of the original owner of the manuscript, and provides a digital reconstruction of the original text. This book not only brings to light a critical occurrence but also discusses wider issues of cultural conservation and ethical responsibility in the art world. Its global significance and focus on a notable event in art history render it an indispensable read for those dedicated to safeguarding our collective cultural heritage.
