Stacey Davenport fights back against a regime that is quickly reducing women to concubinage in dystopian Kansas. Even as a motorcycle gang, deputized as religious police, rounds up the designated women, Stacey starts a political campaign to overthrow the regime. But Stacey's initial victory does not really change the status quo on the ground in certain parts of Kansas. Now, while Stacey fights in the legislature for the legal right to keep her unborn baby girl, her sister must risk her lif...

In the early days of video games, spatial awareness was limited to exactly what was on the screen. If an enemy was off-screen, it didn't exist until it killed you. Then, arcade classics like 'Defender' introduced a revolutionary concept: a crude, glowing radar at the top of the screen. This tiny UI element, which evolved into the modern mini-map, fundamentally changed how human beings process virtual space and navigate digital worlds. This deep dive into game design architecture explores t...

These linked essays of personal and cultural critique include meditations on home and childhood, love and sex, art and literature, parenting and self-destruction, on the city and on death. Walton constantly slips through and between memory's tenuous folds: "that never happened, exactly, but it's certainly not a lie." Witty, candid, defying category, dogma, and expectation, Unsavory Thoughts is a bold self-portrait in an inscrutable landscape: lyric, profound, tragic, hilarious, ab...

Kevin Mallory is a Customer Assistance Representative for a cable company. He keeps his customers on hold, his supervisor on the run and his female nemesis on ice, but a new friend just might change his perspective.Lilly has supported herself since high school with just a little help from her only living relative, her alcoholic older brother. She runs a small non-profit housing agency while McFadden, her supervisor and director of the agency, travels around the cou...

The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist from the provinces who has come to conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws in his own genius. While his boyhood friend Pierre Sandoz becomes a successful novelist, Claude's originality is mocked at the Salon and turns gradually into a doomed obsession with one great canvas. Life - in the form of his model and wife Christine and their deformed child Jacques - is sacrificed on the altar...

Still mourning the baby she gave away a year before – and feeling rejected by the same church people who had so cheerfully arranged that adoption – sixteen-year-old Diane seems to find a supportive friend in her gynecologist, Dr. Zeus. Diane is intelligent and bold but often leaps before she looks, and now she questions why he has to examine her so often, and why he prescribes her so many drugs.The state medical board also has suspicions about Dr. Zeus, but the official inquiry inc...

In part one a cat-loving married couple are asked for advice on how to rid a feral colony of cats from under a storage trailer at a resort hotel. They decide to take on the task themselves. They spend the next three months on a quest which results in them capturing 23 cats and finding homes for 20 of them. To help understand their desire to undertake the quest, part two retraces the experiences they had with their own “fur persons” during a 40-year marriage. Stories range from the tale of ...

Sookie Stackhouse has one last adventure in store.Life has taken her from a waitress in Merlotte's Bar, Bon Temps, to part owner; from social outcast to the heart of her community; from a vampire's girlfriend to the wife of one of the most powerful vampires in the state.She has survived explosions, revolutions and attempts on her life. Sookie has endured betrayal, heartbreak and grief ... and she has emerged a little stronger, and little wiser, every time.

Sunday Times bestseller Lisa Gardner's first novella, THE 7TH MONTH, takes readers into an eventful day in the life of Boston Detective D.D. Warren. Featuring an extract from CATCH ME.D.D. should be taking it easy in the seventh month of her pregnancy. Instead, she accepts a small consulting role on the set of a serial killer film, thinking that serving as a police expert and making a little extra money may make her feel more useful than she's felt for a while. A s...

Tayla Mancuso is a demon-slayer who hungers for sensual pleasure - but fears it will always be denied her. Until she lands in a hospital run by demons in disguise, and the head doctor, Eidolon, makes her body burn with unshakable desire. But to prove her ultimate loyalty to her peers, she must betray the surgeon who saved her life.Eidolon cannot resist this fiery, dangerous woman who fills him with both rage and passion. Not only is she his enemy, but she could very well be the hun...

Featuring stories by SHANNON K. BUTCHER * RACHEL CAINE * LUCIENNE DIVER * CHRIS MARIE GREEN * CHRISTINA HENRY * FAITH HUNTER * CHLOE NEILL * KALAYNA PRICE * ROB THURMANNew York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine has modern-day potions witches Holly and Andrew facing off against a firebrand politician who wears literally killer boots in a Texas-sized rodeo of trouble.Boot-loving Cadogan vampire Lindsey must team up with off-again, on-again vampire partne...

An Air Force Loadmaster is menaced by strange sounds within his cargo; a man is asked to track down a childhood friend... who died years earlier; doomed pioneers forge a path westward as a young mother discovers her true nature; an alcoholic strikes a dangerous bargain with a gregarious stranger; urban explorers delve into a ruined book depository, finding more than they anticipated; residents of a rural Wisconsin town defend against a legendary monster; a woman wracked by survivor's guilt...