Search results for ""author christopher""

Christopher Merkner is a Shirley Jackson for the contemporary Midwest, where the ties of family and community intersect darkly with suburban American life. In these stories, an enraged village gaslights unsuspecting vacationers and a young man delays a impending confession, fondling the nostrils of his mother's pet pig. Sharp and uneasy, for these inheritors of tradition, that which binds them most closely-offering stability and identity and comfort-are precisely the qualities that set them back, pull them down, burden, limit, and ruin them. "Merkner's first short story collection provides a voyeuristic vantage point on fractured lives. He has the striking ability to turn the familiar into the uncanny and morph the comfortable into the weird, and, clearly, he's at home in that strange realm. In most of the stories, we witness lives at the moment an individual's identity begins to fray, sometimes slowly and sometimes swiftly. These changes are both painful and thought provoking to witness through the book's unrelenting first-person perspective. At times Merkner's prose evokes unease, but more often it encourages a chuckle, and his plot twists will leave even the most seasoned reader surprised. In each story, even those that only run for three pages, the tension mounts deliciously, many times with no foreseeable relief. The true beauty of these tales lies in their delicate endings, which manage to both tie up loose ends and leave everything hanging, so that they are simultaneously satisfying and mysterious. Such complexity makes great reading for lovers of short fiction, and for all who wish to witness a new master at work."-Booklist Christopher Merkner teaches creative writing at West Chester University. His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review, Gettysburg Review, New Orleans Review, and Best American Mystery Stories. He and his wife and kids live in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

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An Amazon Charts bestseller. There’s more than one way to stoke the flames of revenge… Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her. Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.

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An in-depth look at revolutionary new ways to handle sexual assaults.

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From acacia to wild grape, Foraging California guides the reader to the edible wild foods and healthful herbs of the Golden State. Helpfully organized by plant families, with detailed information on locations, the book is an authoritative guide for nature lovers, outdoorsmen, and gastronomes.

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The Little Book of Country Music Wisdom offers the wise, unvarnished words of country stars past and present on a variety of topics like love, family, fun, work, health, heartache and even death to offer the full, big-picture view of country wisdom. Country music wisdom can be uplifting, funny, or hopeful, and sometimes it’s deadly serious, but above all it’s honest. This collection includes Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, Luke Bryan, and more.

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This is the story of the friendships that defined one of America's most beloved Presidents. Chris Matthews, who has been following and studying the Kennedys most of his life, has interviewed President Kennedy's closest confidants - family, friends, and those who served with him--to create a moving portrait of a man many loved but few really understood. These friends were with Jack Kennedy as he took surprising risks, struggled with chronic illness, and repeatedly confronted "the thin membrane between life and death." As Matthews describes it, Jack Kennedy was a rebel, an adventurer, and a great enjoyer of life precisely because he understood its fragility. Being with Jack Kennedy was great fun for his friends. Now readers will share in that experience.

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A crucial senatorial debate on the question of the states’ relationship to the federal government.Two generations after the founding, Americans still disagreed on the nature of the Union. Was it a confederation of sovereign states or a nation headed by a central government? To South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne and others of his mindset, only the vigilant protection of states’ rights could hold off an attack on the southern way of life, which was undergirded by slavery. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, on the other hand, believed that the political and economic ascendancy of New England—and the nation—required a strong, activist national government. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, Christopher Childers focuses on the sharp dispute that engaged Webster and Hayne in January 1830. During Senate discussion of western land policy, Childers explains, the senators’ exchanges grew first earnest and then heated, finally landing on the question of union—its nature and its value in a federal republic. Childers argues that both Webster and Hayne, and the factions they represented, saw the West as key to the success of their political plans and sought to cultivate western support for their ideas.A short, accessible account of the conflict and the related issues it addressed, The Webster-Hayne Debate captures an important moment in the early republic. Ideal for use in college classrooms or for readers interested in American history, this book examines a pivotal moment and a critical problem in the history of US politics. It also shows how Americans grappled with the issues of nationalism, sectionalism, and the meaning of union itself—issues that still resonate today.

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Encyclopaedia of Brewing provides a comprehensive description and explanation of all terms which relate to the science and technology of beer, allied beverages and the brewing and malting processes. The Encyclopaedia’s unrivalled coverage is extensive enough to provide an appropriately detailed description of each term under consideration, supplemented in many cases with diagrams and photographs. Offering an international perspective, the book includes descriptions of the terms used in: the brewing process, from raw materials through to packaging the biochemistry, microbiology and genetics which underpin brewing laboratory methods used for the analysis of beer and raw materials quality assurance/control systems and standards hygiene and cleaning processes small- and large-pack packaging engineering of malting, brewing, packaging and dispense beer flavour chemistry historical context legislation relevant to brewing Encyclopaedia of Brewing is the only book of its kind, and is destined to become the essential and authoritative first point of reference for brewing science.

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What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn’t have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn’t they wouldn’t be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the ‘crossroads’ scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

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He was the writer that would put Black Panther back on the map of popularity in the late ’90s, but in the ’80s, Christopher Priest was editing—and writing—tales of Conan the Barbarian! The seventh volume in this popular Omnibus series collects the first half of Priest’s run, as the writer assembles a cast of engaging supporting characters around Conan, including the haunted Tetra and the courageous Captain Delmuro, sending them in pursuit of treasure held by the wicked thief, Keiv. Priest also introduces to the color series one of the great super-villains in Marvel’s Conan mythos—the Devourer of Souls. The dark reaver is one of Conan’s most formidable foes, and their legendary battles begin here! Collecting CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1970) #172-194 & ANNUAL (1973) #10-11.

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If Aiden Manchester had to have a superpower, why couldn't it be something useful? Like predicting the future? Or Jedi mind tricks? Instead, Aiden is afflicted with 'manifestations', mysterious balls of goo which materialise mid-air while he sleeps. But then, Aiden learns he was a 'Quiver Kid', one of seven orphaned children drafted for an illicit experiment at Tau Nine-One. Setting out to find the perpetrators and his fellow victims, Aiden's quest quickly turns lethal when he's kidnapped by a maniacal Quiver Kid with a dark agenda. As he uncovers the dangerous truth about his past, Aiden's very essence is called into question. Will a hellish confrontation at Tau Nine-One reveal the ultimate purpose of the Quiver Kids? File Under: Fantasy [ Strangest Things | Manifest Destiny | X-Kids | Chunkie ]

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Reveals how certain strategic metaphors embedded in the early Western literary canon have promoted—and continue to promote—systems of inequality and social control. Collins examines texts ranging from the Homeric epics and the Platonic dialogues to Virgil's Aeneid and the Book of Revelation. Drawing on the linguistic and documentary evidence of usages in early societies, chiefly Greek and Hebrew, Collins has produced a penetrating examination of social and personal structures in those worlds.

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Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love is designed to make as easy as possible a first reading of key passages from the Summa theologiae. This book contains selections from the Summa that are most influential, most important, or likely to be most interesting to the contemporary reader. The text of the Summa itself is edited and arranged for beginners. Each article begins with Thomas’s answers to the question at hand and then goes to the first objection, followed by the reply to the first objection, the second objection and its reply, and so on. This arrangement provides a greater accessibility and ease in following the argument. Below the text, copious footnotes illuminate the text as a professor in the classroom might. Some notes provide historical background to figures that Thomas presupposes his reader will know such as Gratian, Dionysius, and Lombard. Other notes offer doctrinal summaries of other parts of the Summa that illuminate what Thomas says about faith, hope, or love. Thomas had an enormous influence on theologians, Church councils, and popes after his time, so some footnotes examine this influence. Thomas drew heavily on sources of wisdom before him, so other footnotes summarize the teachings of earlier authors, such as Aristotle and Augustine. This book also contains introductory essays on the Summa, on faith, on hope, and on love, which provide an overview to situate the reader and place treatment of the theological virtues in its larger context of the Summa. For those who have never read Thomas Aquinas on faith, hope, and love (and for those who teach them), this book provides ready access to the wisdom of the Angelic doctor.

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The beginning of the twentieth century marked the rise of advanced medical technologies, allowing doctors to diagnose and treat diseases in new ways. Although American physicians accepted the validity of the new science of medicine, they were sometimes reluctant to trust technology over their professional judgment or intuition. Likewise, patients raised their own suspicions about the new scientific tools, sometimes resisting or contradicting the advice of their physicians. Here Christopher Crenner examines a critical period in medical history, focusing on the office practice of Boston physician Richard Cabot. Intimate epistolary exchanges between Cabot and his patients shed light on the challenges presented by the new technologies-especially their impact on the personal relationships between doctor and patient-providing insight into a time of expanding science and radical change.

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