In these six stories, Chris Howard reasserts his talent for evoking the gritty and the apocalyptic with poetic grace.Intelligent People Speaking Reasonably follows two Iraq vets adrift in the civilian life of the Pacific Northwest.Space is Kindness witnesses the unexpected death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan from the perspective of a local reporter and a photographer rushing to the crash-site in 2000.Darkstar takes place in Dublin and ...

The Welfare State Nobody Knows challenges a number of myths and half-truths about U.S. social policy. The American welfare state is supposed to be a pale imitation of "true" welfare states in Europe and Canada. Christopher Howard argues that the American welfare state is in fact larger, more popular, and more dynamic than commonly believed. Nevertheless, poverty and inequality remain high, and this book helps explain why so much effort accomplishes so little. One important reason ...

"A compelling case for transforming how research methods are taught to undergraduate students of political science." — London School of Economics Review of BooksEach year, tens of thousands of students who are interested in politics go through a rite of passage: they take a course in research methods. Many find the subject to be boring or confusing, and with good reason. Most of the standard books on research methods fail to highlight the most important con...

Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-pr...

Master Creator Destroyer Slave represents the four steps to freedom. If you feel stuck, unable to make the most out of life, this book will show you how to destroy the old and create the new, guiding you through the four steps to freedom: Slavery-Destruction-Creation-Mastery one step at a time.SLAVEWhile slavery is no longer permitted, most of us are still enslaved. We are slaves to our emotions, relationships, attachments, work, ad...

The first comprehensive map of the social safety net, public and private, in the United States. Societies are often judged by how they treat their most vulnerable members: the poor and near poor. In the United States, this responsibility belongs not only to governments, but also to charities, businesses, individuals, and family members. Their combined efforts generate a social safety net. In Who Cares, Christopher Howard offers the first comprehensive map of the U...

Marooned on a remote, desolate world, the surviving crew of the Serpent's Kiss must struggle to find a way back to the known, planetary systems to impart a warning of dire importance, a warning that could save billions of lives. With the fate of entire empires hanging in the balance, the solution may lie in a terrifying new discovery.

The bar was a tumult of sound—a blend of boisterous voices and pulsing music; the clink of beer bottles, shot glasses, and ice-filled tumblers—sounds telling her that this was the right place. Yes, this was where she needed to be. How was she to know the night would end in unimaginable terror?

A man gifted with mathematical genius uses his miraculous formulae for purely selfish and materialistic ends, and the path he's chosen lands him in a life or death situation from which there may be no return. Now, with the odds stacked against him, he's got nothing but survival on his mind and vengeance in his heart as fate makes an unexpected turn in the bleak landscape of the Nevada desert.

A lonely widower, accused of a horrendous crime for which he claims innocence, is given the chance to tell his side of the story--a bizarre tale of the choice he had to make to save not just his soul but, perhaps, even his own humanity--to the one man who just might believe him.

An elderly woman dies under seemingly inexplicable circumstances, and Detective Josef “Grim” Belasco, assigned to the case, gets more than he bargained for when he begins to unravel the bizarre truth behind the woman's ultimate fate. Juggling both the tasks of his job and the arrival of the dead woman's headstrong daughter, Angela, the stalwart Belasco has his hands full as he methodically pursues the trail of evidence to the case's horrific, earth-shaking conclusion.

A short, winter's day tale of things better left unseen, by the author of such horrors as The Birthing and A Feast Before Dawn.