Have you ever felt like you were teetering on the very brink of insanity? Have you ever had a dream that felt so intense that you thought it was actually real? Here are four short stories that take you to the fringes of reality! A man is lost in a time limbo. An evil billionaire is reincarnated. A teenager is haunted by the ghost of a classmate who isn't even dead yet! Enter the warped world of "Lost Minds, Wandering Souls, Volume 2
Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award.
On March 19, 1969, First Lieutenant Homer R. Steedly, Jr., shot and killed a North Vietnamese soldier, Dam, when they met on a jungle trail. Steedly took a diary -- filled with beautiful line drawings -- from the body of the dead soldier, which he subsequently sent to his mother for safekeeping. Thirty-five years later, Steedly rediscovers the forgotten dairy and begins to confront his suppressed memories of the war that defined his life, deciding to return to Viet Nam and meet the family of the man he killed to seek their forgiveness. Fellow veteran and award-winning author Wayne Karlin accompanied Steedly on his remarkable journey. In Wandering Souls he recounts Homer's movement towards a recovery that could only come about through a confrontation with the ghosts of his past -- and the need of Dam's family to bring their child's "wandering soul" to his own peace. Wandering Souls limns the terrible price of war on soldiers and their loved ones, and reveals that we heal not by forgetting war's hard lessons, but by remembering its costs.
Vampires . . . they ache, they love, they thirst for the forbidden. They are your friends and lovers, and your worst fears. “A major new voice in horror fiction . . . an electric style and no shortage of nerve.”—Booklist At a club in Missing Mile, N.C., the children of the night gather, dressed in black, look for acceptance. Among them are Ghost, who sees what others do not; Ann, longing for love; and Jason, whose real name is Nothing, newly awakened to an ancient, deathless truth about his father, and himself. Others are coming to Missing Mile tonight. Three beautiful, hip vagabonds—Molochai, Twig, and the seductive Zillah, whose eyes are as green as limes—are on their own lost journey, slaking their ancient thirst for blood, looking for supple young flesh. They find it in Nothing and Ann, leading them on a mad, illicit road trip south to New Orleans. Over miles of dark highway, Ghost pursues, his powers guiding him on a journey to reach his destiny, to save Ann from her new companions, to save Nothing from himself. . . . “An important and original work . . . a gritty, highly literate blend of brutality and sentiment, hope and despair.”—Science Fiction Chronicle
Corballis argues that mind-wandering has many constructive and adaptive features. These range from mental time travel?the wandering back and forth through time, not only to plan our futures based on past experience, but also to generate a continuous sense of who we are--to the ability to inhabit the minds of others, increasing empathy and social understanding. Through mind-wandering, we invent, tell stories, and expand our mental horizons. Mind wandering , hardly the sign of a faulty network or aimless distraction, actually underwrites creativity, whether as a Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud, or an Einstein imagining himself travelling on a beam of light. Corballis takes readers on a mental journey in chapters that can be savored piecemeal, as the minds of readers wander in different ways, and sometimes have limited attentional capacity.
The howl of the bedside clock-radio carves through your dreams like a buzz-saw through butter, and you are awake. In another place. Never mind the bright yellow sunlight that flecks your pillow and warms your face; you are rudely awake, and resent it. Gah! You roll onto your side, cantilever your legs over the side of the bed and plant your feet squarely on the carpet. You rub your face. Massage your neck. Oh, what it is to be alive!--and conscious--oh oh oh, indeed. But what is it to be alive, and conscious? Alive, we have some inkling of; you eat, you sleep, you exercise. You stay healthy and keep your body going as best you can. But conscious? What even is that? A good question is what that is, and a question for which this book has an answer. So in this text, first I set the scene: - Did our consciousness evolve? - Does consciousness give us free will? - Which animals do we think are conscious? - Where does consciousness go when we sleep? - How does consciousness deliver meaning? - What might a theory of consciousness look like? Then I propose: - A model for consciousness at the macro scale - A mechanism for consciousness at the micro scale Finally, I suggest some real world tests that science will one day be able to perform which will either corroborate or invalidate the theory I present here. This is a workable, testable theory. Science and philosophy demand nothing less. Table of Contents Introduction 1. A Poodle Ate My Homework 2. Life Is a Comic Strip 3. How Do You Explain Anything? 4. As Time Goes By (A Kiss Is Just a Kiss) 5. This See, Is the Conscious Bit 6. Qualia, the Possible and a Particular 7. Evolution and Free Will 8. The Good, the Bad and the Choosy 9. Finally, Making It All Work A must-read for the curious-minded, which you are, are you not? So read on...
In her groundbreaking book, Soul Whisperer: Releasing Lost Souls, author Annette Rugolo presents a new perspective into the world of spirits, past lives, and soul retrieval. Through the sharing of her real-life experiences, she offers a glimpse into a world that exists around us, which few are open and willing to see. She presents an introduction to spirits of the deceased that remain in this world, how we encounter them, and how to help free them from being stuck here. Through her stories, Rugolo gives a clear sense of what these encounters are like, what we can learn from them, and how to recognize and deal with them if they happen. She also demonstrates the value of soul retrievals, freeing spirits, understanding karmic history, and other related subjects. Rugolos purpose and passion in life has been to take others from a place of fear to one of understanding and compassion for the souls trapped among us. In Soul Whisperer, she guides you to embrace both yourself and others as a soul who exists beyond the physical construct of our reality.
If I were you, I would stop trying to separate reality from fantasy. Be it through faith or science, we are no longer limited to the rules that Mother Nature laid out for us during our conception . . . For what good is it to be alive if you have no cause to enjoy it? (chapter 6). 2005. Four men lay dead, assassinated by a famous albino mercenary at the turn of every season. Unrelated, scattered across the states, the best that the FBI can figure is that one of their former agents has gone rogue and is on the verge of something greater when its discovered that his next target is a senator from Tennessee. Why him? Why now? What is his plan? Only Sylvester Jayden, the FBIs elite detective, can figure it out. Crippled and laden with prosthetics after 9/11 and years of service, she had hoped to retire in peace and far away from the government that had used her until her body had worn out completely. Yet when its verified that its Adrian, her brother, thats committing the killings, shell have to put on her holster one last time to stop him as a conspiracy unfurls, one that threatens the entire world with nuclear war. Join the familiar cast or start fresh in the fourth entry of The Mercenarys Salvation, the satirical saga written by Anthony M Johnson. Awkward romances, gratuitous violence, and comedic commentary of religion, war, American history, and meta humor wait in this latest hit by the veteran thriller author. So grab a smoke, don your trench coat, and take a seat at the bar. The latest modern noir tale starts here!
The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.
The New York Times #1 best-selling series. Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience. A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom. The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children. They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all.
