It is 1992 and the sky over Makesicko City is black with oily, carboniferous rain. Here there are 28 million people and 128 million rats. Gangs of homeless youths speaking Spanglish - or Anglatl - roam the chaotic, violent streets... Observing all this, commenting and reflecting, is Christopher, still unborn in his mother's womb. His parents have conceived him so that he can be entered for the great Christopher Columbus prize, being the first child born on 12 October 1992, 500 years after the discovery of the New World...

Epub (my conversion)An anthology of twelve Western short stories including "Casey Jones," O. Henry's "The Passing of Black Eagle," Wayne D. Overholser's "Steel to the West," Giles A. Lutz's "Westward Rails," John Jakes' "Hell on the High Iron," and others

Bright and beautiful Jenny Cain, director of the Port Frederick Civic Foundation, was dying of curiosity. A hapless visitor had slipped in the mud at the town's historic cemetery—and fallen right into an empty grave! When Jenny discovered that all the graves were vacant, it was the beginning of murder. Someone had killed an employee of the Harbor Lights Funeral Home, and played a macabre practical joke with the body. Suddenly, everyone in town is a suspect, from the victim's grieving widower to the spike-haired gravedigger to the unctuous director of the Harbor Lights. Now Jenny has to dig up some answers, and fast—before the killer leaves her silent as a tomb!

LITTLE DID IRINA TWEEDIE know that her trip to India in 1959, at the age of fifty-two, would mysteriously lead her to a Sufi master, and set her upon a journey to the "heart of earts," the Sufi path of realization. Bhai Sahib's first request of her was to keep a complete diary of her spiritual training, everything, all the difficult parts, even all the doubts. He predicted that one day it would become a book and would benefit people around the world. This diary spans five years, making up an amazing record of spiritual transformation, the agonies, the resistance, the long and frightening bouts with the purifying fires of Kundalini, the perseverance, the movements towards surrender, the longing, and finally the all-consuming love. From a psychological viewpoint, the diary maps the process of ego dissolution, gradually unveiling the openness and love that reside beneath the surface of personality. Mrs. Tweedie is the first Western woman to be trained in this ancient yogic lineage. Her story and experience testify that this teaching system can still be powerfully transformative today in our modern world. IRINA TWEEDIE was born in Russia in 1907 and educated in Vienna and Paris. Following World War II she married an English naval officer, whose eath in 1954 led her on a spiritual quest. With a background in Theosophy, she traveled to India where she met a Sufi Master. She returned to England after his death in 1966.

The Rebel dream is to rebuild this nation. To build something for future generations. Outlaws and roaming gangs of thugs and punks will not be tolerated. They have no place in the society we dream of." --Ben RainesA Savage New WorldAnarchy and chaos have erupted out of the devastation of World War III. Now, it is one survivor's duty to lead his nation out of the ashes: legendary soldier and freedom fighter, Ben Raines. Whatever it takes, he is going to rebuild America. . .and he is going to do it his way.From his secret outpost in the far west, Raines orders his Rebels to back him in one last desperate assault against the Russian invaders and the mercenary turncoat, Sam Hartline, who joined their brutal brigade. But until reinforcement arrives, Raines is forced to wage a one-man guerilla war against the enemy. It could be the first step toward a free America--or the kamikaze warrior's final showdown.Either way, they'll be hell to...

When Charles Willeford joined the Army in 1935, he was sixteen years old—and he had to add two years to his age on the application to get in. From postings in the Philippine jungles to the California coast, from fueling details on modern warplanes to shoeing cavalry horses, the young recruit lusted, brawled, and came of age by applying himself to the timeless rules of all military life: live right, work hard, and all the good things will eventually come to you. His story is exactly like millions of others—yet totally special, told with a novelist’s eye and a poet’s heart.“Mr. Willeford never puts a wrong foot forward. Truly an entertainment to relish. [His] recollections of America in the nineteen-thirties are as exotic as his recollections of the Philippines... .The alert, ignorant, literary recruit becomes , a marvelous guide to the masculine ghetto that was our old peacetime army.”—The New Yorker“His journal of memories will delight...and perhaps surprise post-war soldiers with its account of the hard ways of The Old Army.”—The San Diego Tribune“[An] engaging recollection of an era long since vanished.... Mr. Willeford ... introduces us to an Army different from the Army James Jones wrote about in From Here to Eternity. It may well be a more authentic account.” —The Baltimore Sun“Those of us who revel in good writing should read this book even if we have never hefted a gun nor laced a boot. It is a simple but brilliant gimmick: A good, adult writer pretending to be a kid again and writing like one. And it works. Oh, how it works.”—The News and Observer Raleigh, N.C.“Most soldier’s stories derive their sting from war-time thrills and tragedies. Willeford has turned this around and demonstrated that in peace, as in war, the military life brings out the best, the worst, the most humorous, and the most pathetic in men.”—Kirkus Reviews"Hard-boiled and certainly authentic ... so brutally frank about drinking and whoring in the pre-Pearl Harbor Army that it becomes hilarious when the author remarks, "If a man wasn't careful the Army could coarsen him, and I had to protect my sensitivity if I was ever going to write anything first-rate."—Publisher's Weekly“Absolutely brilliant in every regard.”—Stanley Elkin“Willeford, writing with quiet authority, has the ability to make his situations, scenes, dialogue, sound absolutely real.”—Elmore Leonard

At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and sanitised image are penetrated. There can be little...

In June of 1142, a young monk is murdered next to a white rose bush at a property bequeathed to the Abbey by a young widow. Brother Cadfael finds evidence that points to the widow's own household.

The private story of the world's most famous jockey. Lester Piggott, by the world's most famous writer of racing thrillers. The inside story of the figure that racegoers have cheered for thirty-seven years, yet hardly know. The unpublished facts behind the punishments for rough riding in his youth, and the truth about the accusations of stealing other jockey's mounts. Lester has never defended himself against untrue press reports, and because of his reticence, been much misunderstood. This book sets the record straight.