In October 2013 Felix Dennis was told he had terminal cancer. He was in the midst of a 30-day poetry reading tour, and characteristically he chose to continue, performing to sell-out audiences with his legendary verve and enthusiasm. He also began compiling this, his tenth, book of verse. Divided into two parts: the first, 'Premonitions', is a selection of poems written over the years when, in Dennis's words, 'the heart knew what the mind dared not perceive'. Having always lived on the edge, he intuited an early death. The second part, 'A Verse Diary', consists of poems slected by Dennis from the many he wrote between the date of his terminal diagnosis and his death. Poems which, he felt, were possibly the best he had ever written. Topped and tailed with the Author's Notes, this book takes readers on a physical, emotional and psychological journey. Sadly, Felix Dennis did not live to see its publication.
During the summer of 1974, fourteen-year-old Chuck Moretti works in his father's funeral home in a small eastern Kentucky mining town. He finds himself in situations that few adults could handle, encountering life-and-death events, exhilarating emergencies, and profound tragedies in the family business. But Chuck also yearns for resolution of his own adolescent issues and longs for his mother who died six years ago. Confused by his father's seeming lack of emotion as he carries out his funeral director's duties, Chuck frequently seeks solace and advice from Bart, an effeminate waiter at the ill-reputed Blistered Cat, a honky-tonk cafi across the street from the funeral home. In between hair-raising ambulance rides and fulfilling the most morbid duties of a mortician's assistant, Chuck wants to remain a teenager. He strives to maintain his bond with his best friend, Andy, and to develop his first romantic relationship with Molly Sue, a local preacher's daughter. He longs for the thrills of teenage antics, yet finds them somehow unsatisfying. Throughout the summer, Chuck draws on a spiritual connection he has formed with his mother and looks to her for answers he can't get from anyone else. In the end, he learns to listen to-and trust-the answers that come from heaven.
“Inside information on a wondrously droll, highly classified yarn from WWII . . . A well-told, stranger-than-fiction tale that could make a terrific movie.” —Kirkus Reviews The plan: attach small incendiary bombs to millions of bats and release them over Japan’s major cities. As the bats went to roost, a million fires would flare up in remote crannies of the wood and paper buildings common throughout Japan. When their cities were reduced to ashes, the Japanese would surely capitulate . . . Told here by the youngest member of the team, this is the story of the bat bomb project, or Project X-Ray, as it was officially known. In scenes worthy of a Capra or Hawks comedy, Jack Couffer recounts the unorthodox experiments carried out in the secrecy of Bandera, Texas, Carlsbad, New Mexico, and El Centro, California, in 1942-1943 by “Doc” Adams’ private army. This oddball cast of characters included an eccentric inventor, a distinguished Harvard scientist, a biologist with a chip on his shoulder, a movie star, a Texas guano collector, a crusty Marine Corps colonel, a Maine lobster fisherman, an ex-mobster, and a tiger. The bat bomb researchers risked life and limb to explore uncharted bat caves and “recruit” thousands of bats to serve their country, certain that they could end the war with Japan. And they might have—in their first airborne test, the bat bombers burned an entire brand-new military airfield to the ground. For everyone who relishes true tales of action and adventure, Bat Bomb is a must-read. Bat enthusiasts will also discover the beginnings of the scientific study of bats.
When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the Coquihalla highway that winds through the mountains in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why he died. Hunter Rayne, a fellow trucker and retired RCMP detective with daughters of his own, is compelled to help her find answers. As he uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be an international smuggling ring. But while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles. Finally, putting all the pieces together, there in the dark on the same uphill curve on the Coquihalla highway, Hunter risks it all to confront the murderer.
Continue with the Venturi Mafia family in Enzo's story! *Can be read as a STANDALONE* Enzo Running a billion-dollar company, acting as consigliere to the Venturi crime family, and running for office means I don't have time for relationships. I pride myself on self-discipline and control, but I'm still a man with needs. So I allow myself a weekly indulgence at the top escort agency in Northern Italy. They all know what I expect, except this new girl who seems to go against all the rules. She's chatty, a little awkward, and obviously not a pro but when I need a fake girlfriend to impress my political backer, I make her an offer too good to turn down. Aurora No money, no job, and eviction is right around the corner. I added the escort job to my list of prospects as a joke, but when every other job falls through, I don't have another choice. My very first client is supposed to be easy. His rigid routine means no surprises until he offers me the chance at more. The job is simple, pretend to be his long-term girlfriend for a week and make a ton of money in the process. But things are never that simple. One week turns into two months. Long-term girlfriend becomes fiancée. And a dangerous enemy decides to use me as leverage to get Enzo to back out of the political race. But that enemy is banking on Enzo's affection for me. He doesn't know that our feelings are fake but then again, after the way things have been going, neither do I. WARNING: May contain criminal activities, harsh language, and adult situations intended only for readers 18+
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The national bestseller that tells the truth about the Vietnam War from the black soldiers’ perspective. An oral history unlike any other, Bloods features twenty black men who tell the story of how members of their race were sent off to Vietnam in disproportionate numbers, and of the special test of patriotism they faced. Told in voices no reader will soon forget, Bloods is a must-read for anyone who wants to put the Vietnam experience in historical, cultural, and political perspective. Praise for Bloods “Superb . . . a portrait not just of warfare and warriors but of beleaguered patriotism and pride. The violence recalled in Bloods is chilling. . . . On most of its pages hope prevails. Some of these men have witnessed the very worst that people can inflict on one another. . . . Their experience finally transcends race; their dramatic monologues bear witness to humanity.”—Time “[Wallace] Terry’s oral history captures the very essence of war, at both its best and worst. . . . [He] has done a great service for all Americans with Bloods. Future historians will find his case studies extremely useful, and they will be hard pressed to ignore the role of blacks, as too often has been the case in past wars.”—The Washington Post Book World “Terry set out to write an oral history of American blacks who fought for their country in Vietnam, but he did better than that. He wrote a compelling portrait of Americans in combat, and used his words so that the reader—black or white—knows the soldiers as men and Americans, their race overshadowed by the larger humanity Terry conveys. . . . This is not light reading, but it is literature with the ring of truth that shows the reader worlds through the eyes of others. You can’t ask much more from a book than that.”—Associated Press “Bloods is a major contribution to the literature of this war. For the first time a book has detailed the inequities blacks faced at home and on the battlefield. Their war stories involve not only Vietnam, but Harlem, Watts, Washington D.C. and small-town America.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution “I wish Bloods were longer, and I hope it makes the start of a comprehensive oral and analytic history of blacks in Vietnam. . . . They see their experiences as Americans, and as blacks who live in, but are sometimes at odds with, America. The results are sometimes stirring, sometimes appalling, but this three-tiered perspective heightens and shadows every tale.”—The Village Voice “Terry was in Vietnam from 1967 through 1969. . . . In this book he has backtracked, Studs Terkel–like, and found twenty black veterans of the Vietnam War and let them spill their guts. And they do; oh, how they do. The language is raw, naked, a brick through a window on a still night. At the height of tension a sweet story, a soft story, drops into view. The veterans talk about fighting two wars: Vietnam and racism. They talk about fighting alongside the Ku Klux Klan.”—The Boston Globe
She’s disposable… and she knows it. A survivor of too many foster homes, B.J. Larson is content living in a youth center where your status is determined by how long your arrest record is. And hers is lengthy. Then she’s placed in her 13th foster home in the small town of Stewart Falls, Washington - with foster parents who will “love” her, not just the money the state pays for her care. B.J. knows kids like her never get “real homes,” much less “real families.” She's not stone stupid. She knows a scam when she sees one but if these new foster parents want to pay her for grades and trying new things, she'll get the A's... Ah heck, she'll even be a cheerleader!
Shirley Valentine, 42-year-old put-upon mother and housewife, leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband, packs her bags and heads for the sun. The note on the kitchen table reads "Gone to Greece back in two weeks." "It is a simple and brilliant idea...the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone - in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving." (Michael Coveney, Financial Times) One for the Road "starts...with the mid-life hero torn between the security of married life in a dormer bungalow on a northern housing estate and dreams of being a rucksacked super-tramp. Mr Russell writes with knowledgeable venom about a world where Beethoven Underpass leads to Wagner Walkway and where anyone who doesn't join Weight Watchers or the Ramblers Club is regarded as a social deviant." (Francis King, Sunday Telegraph)
