Torn away from the world he knew and told to take what was rightfully his, Tom is transported through time, finding himself safely at home. But home isn't what he thought it to be. Forces out of his control are at work, his seventeen-year-old mind is trapped in his eight-year-old body. Even more agonizing it's the first day of third grade! Is there any way he can get out of elementary school to keep his family together?
Busted. Tom Stinson didn't steal that garage door. He's determined to prove that he's innocent no matter what his father thinks. Fat chance, the ‘Life Sucks’ achievement has been unlocked. His single dad can’t handle him anymore and sticks him behind a desk, reading Shakespeare and doing algebra for the entire vacation in summer school. Then an airplane crashes into his schoolyard and strange orange smoke billows from the wreckage. The pilot appears to walk away unscathed but attacks the first responders who morph into tentacle-faced flesh slurping creatures before his eyes. Now they’re coming into the school. Is this his wish come true, a chance to prove himself? If he can survive, there's no way his dad will make him go back to summer school.
After surviving Mars, the adventure continues. Worse than Lizardmen from Mars and tentacle-faced flesh slurping creatures, stupid jocks are making Tom's senior year of high school a living nightmare. On a field trip to the beach, his dreams of revenge come true when monsters from the deep take his class, and all hell breaks loose in his sleepy seaside community. Tom, the only survivor, must dodge grieving parents, fight against a DHS cover up, and lead his friends in a quest to discover the truth.
Torn away from the world he knew and told to take what was rightfully his, Tom is transported through time, finding himself safely at home. But home isn't what he thought it to be. Forces out of his control are at work, his seventeen-year-old mind is trapped in his eight-year-old body. Even more agonizing it's the first day of third grade! Is there any way he can get out of elementary school to keep his family together?
Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a love story triangle akin to The Marriage Plot and Freedom, only with a gay main character who charms gays and straights alike. I Loved You More is a rich, expansive tale of love, sex, and heartbreak, covering twenty-five years in the life of a striving, emotionally wounded writer. In New York, Ben forms a bond of love with his macho friend and foil, Hank. Years later in Portland, a now ill Ben falls for Ruth, who provides the care and devotion he needs, though they cannot find true happiness together. Then Hank reappears and meets Ruth, and real trouble starts. Set against a world of struggling artists, the underground sex scene of New York in the 1980s, the drab, confining Idaho of Ben’s youth, and many places in between, I Loved You More is the author’s most complex and wise novel to date.
In William Golding: Some Critical Considerations, fourteen scholars assess various aspects of the Nobel Prize-winning author's writings. Their essays include criticism of individual works, discussion of major themes and technical considerations, and bibliographical studies. Separately, the essays help us understand the intricacies and impact of Golding's art; together they show the breadth of his purpose.
The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. Members of bands like the Byrds, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Turtles, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Steppenwolf, CSN, Three Dog Night and Love, along with such singer/songwriters as Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Taylor and Carole King, lived together and jammed together in the bucolic community nestled in the Hollywood Hills. But there was a dark side to that scene as well. Many didn’t make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians and intelligence personnel – the same sort of people who gave birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all the canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.
