On a cold December night, a gentleman named Jonas Faulkner, stumbles into the town of Esk, gunshot wounds leaving a trail of blood in the show behind him. Despite making an eerily miraculous recovery at the hands of a young and inexperienced nurse, named Anya, and his decision to carve out new life for himself in Esk, he is unable to escape his past, and the host of strange and supernatural creatures that follow him like shadows. As they search for the truth, Anya must question her beliefs and risk her life in order to protect her family, her friends, and those she loves.
Death. Destruction. Despair. These are the hallmarks of the Dread Fleet. It is an unstoppable force that, when summoned to do so, will scourge the galaxy in a Holy Reckoning. It is up to Queen Kalila Akira, Calvin Cross, and the others to stop it. Meanwhile a dark figure lurks in the shadows whose path must cross Calvin's, it is an intersection that could end in death.
When Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, he became much more than the shy, introverted high school student he had always been. Now possessed of the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider, he sought to use his newfound abilities to achieve wealth and fame. But after his beloved Uncle Ben was murdered, the grief-stricken youth soon realized that with great power comes great responsibility. Now Peter wages a one-man crusade against crime...in the costumed identity of the amazing Spider-Man!
For untold years Norrin Radd has surfed the galaxy, exploring the darkness between stars, witnessing the rise and fall of vast civilizations. Now his ride is about to come to an end. It starts with a small spot - a blemish that will spread until he is no more. Until then, the Silver Surfer would undertake his final voyage - to the one destination that has always eluded him. His journey starts where it began. Guest-starring the Fantastic Four! Collects Silver Surfer: Requeim (2007) #1-4.
In the tragicomic mode of his best-selling Louisiana Power & Light, a hilarious and tenderhearted novel about a son's attempts to save his family. John Dufresne takes us to Requiem, Mass., heart of the Commonwealth, where Johnny's mom, Frances, is driving in the breakdown lane once again. She thinks Johnny and his little sister Audrey have been replaced by aliens; she's sure of it, and she's pretty certain that she herself is already dead, or she wouldn't need to cover the stink of her rotting flesh with Jean Naté Après Bain. Dad, truck driver and pathological liar, is down South somewhere living his secret life. And Audrey, when she's not walking her cat Deluxe in a baby stroller, spends her time locked in a closet telling herself stories. Johnny, meanwhile, is hell-bent on saving the family from itself. In his "truly original voice" (Miami Herald) and with the "miraculous beauty of his tale-telling" (New York Times Book Review), Dufresne brings his unparalleled eye for the tragic and the absurd to the dysfunctions and joys of family in this powerful new novel.
Requiem for a Lost City shows us the reality of Civil War Atlanta from the eve of secession to the memorials for the fallen, through the memories of a participant. Sallie Clayton would have been the same age as the fictional Scarlett O'Hara during the Civil War. Sallie Clayton's memoirs, however, are not a work of fiction but bittersweet reminiscences of growing up in a doomed city in the midst of losing a war. Although her memoirs provide invaluable detail on Civil War Atlanta, they also tell of her personal experiences on a plantation in Montgomery, Alabama, and in postwar Augusta and Athens. Sallie Clayton belonged to one of Georgia's wealthiest and most prominent families. Her memoirs are colored by the losses suffered by her family. Robert Davis's introduction to this work illustrates the background of the Claytons, Sallie's writings, and Civil War Atlanta, providing a balanced account of life at "the crossroads of the Confederacy." The introduction also provides a corrective to the popular, Gone With the Wind view of Civil War Atlanta.
On the surface, the galaxy seems peaceful. Humankind prospers from the Capital World to the far reaches of the Corridor. But to those who can see the signs, it's clear something is wrong. Long, dark fingers are pulling strings inside the military, making clandestine deals with enemy states to fulfill a dark design. Calvin is an intelligence agent working for the Imperial government. He's young, his methods are unorthodox, but he gets results. So when a former military hero steals a warship and threatens to start a war, Calvin is sent to eliminate him. But as he chases his prey across the stars, he realizes they are both pawns in a shadowy chess game that shakes kingdoms, divides empires, and threatens civilization everywhere. And if he is to uncover the mystery and expose the conspiracy he must confront—and embrace—the darkest elements of the galaxy and throw himself and everyone he loves into the line of fire.
Celebrated in history and song, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company—the Rock Island Line—was a powerful Midwestern railroad that once traversed thirteen states with its fast freights and Rocket passenger trains but eventually succumbed to government regulation and a changing economy. Gregory Schneider chronicles the Rock Island’s painful decline and along the way reveals some of the key problems within the American railroad industry during the post–World War II era. Schneider takes readers back to a time when railroads still clung to a storied past to offer new insight into the devastating impact of economic policymaking during the 1960s and 1970s. Schneider recounts the largest railroad liquidation in American history—as well as one of the most successful reorganizations in American business—to depict the demise and ultimate collapse of Rock Island as part of a broader account of hard times in the railroad industry beginning in the 1970s. Schneider weaves a complex story of how business, politics, government bureaucracy, and individual greed helped to limit the economic possibilities of the railroad industry and catapult the Rock Island Railroad into oblivion. Weakened by a troubled economy, the Rock fell victim to inept management and labor union intransigence; but Schneider also reveals how government regulations and price controls prevented innovation, hindered capital acquisition, and favored other forms of transportation that lie beyond the scope of regulation. Railroads were even hurt by taxation of property and real estate while competitors were able to use government-subsidized highways and airports without having to pay taxes to fund them. Now that America has gone on to witness the collapse of such mammoth firms as Enron and Lehman Brothers, not to mention the bankruptcy and bailout of General Motors, the story of the Rock provides an instructive lesson in how a major American enterprise was allowed to fall victim to forces often beyond its control—while the bailout of the Penn Central, at the expense of smaller lines like Rock Island, helped initiate the era of “too big to fail.” For economic historians and railroad buffs alike, Rock Island Requiem is a well-researche
