In this prize-winning collection, a debut poet evokes his childhood as the son of missionaries in Papua New Guinea.Mission Work is an arresting collection of poems based on Aaron Baker's experiences as a child of missionaries living among the Kuman people in the remote Chimbu Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rich with Christian and Kuman myths and stories, the poems explore Western and tribal ways of looking at the world -- an interface of vastly different cultures and notions of spir...

DON'T EVER LET SOMEONE COUNT YOU OUT.Life can change in an instant. For twenty-year-old Aaron Baker, not only did a neck injury leave him paralyzed from the chin down-it also nearly killed him. The doctors told him he'd never feed himself again.Until he did.Instead of giving up, Aaron went all in and rebelliously achieved things he was told would never be possible.The Rebellious Recovery follows Aaron on a mind-expanding, odds-defyi...

Baseball has long been viewed as the Great American Pastime, so it is no surprise that the sport has inspired many Hollywood films and television series. But how do these works depict the game, its players, fans, and place in American society?This study offers an extensive look at nearly one hundred years of baseball-themed movies, documentaries, and TV shows. Film and sports scholar Aaron Baker examines works like A League of their Own (1992) and Sugar (2008), wh...

In 1985, mutual distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union has perpetuated an arms race that the United States is winning, but at the expense of economically destabilizing the Soviet nuclear superpower.Agreeing to a proposal put forth by a CIA operative, investigative journalist Jordan Bauer gains legal entry to the Soviet Union. Jordan's alleged project is to illuminate for the Western world the progress achieved by the great Soviet social experiment. But this is Jord...

There comes a time for most individuals when we weigh our assets and concerns, and decide where to focus our future efforts. Billy Hawkins, however, has two assets that many would consider liabilitiesa degree of moral flexibility and a borderline psychotic drive to protect the vulnerable. As he enters college, Billy finds himself enraged by the increasing reports of sexual abuse by Catholic Priests. He finds most disturbing the Priests betrayal of children and adolescents in their charge.

A Companion to Martin ScorseseA Companion to Martin Scorsese“This valuable book brings the exceptional scale of Martin Scorsese’s film work into clear view. His achievements are monumental, and the essays collected in this work provide wonderfully detailed and vivid analyses of his oeuvre. A comprehensive study of the most exciting filmmaker working today.”Robert Burgoyne, University of St AndrewsA Compan...

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a tragedy, a dark comedy, and vintage Philip K. Dick.Al Miller is a self-proclaimed nobody, a used-car salesman with a lot full of junkers. His elderly landlord, Jim Fergessen, has decided to retire and has just cashed in on his property, which includes the lot that Al rents next to Fergessen's garage.Chris Harman is a record-company owner who has relied on Fergessen's for years to fix his Cadillac. When he hears about Jim Fergessen's sudden retir...

Exiled for 2,000 years God must retake the Earth from the clutches of his nemesis using a man caught between life and death as His vessel.God is in exile. The only man who can help is clinically dead. Herb Asher, an audio engineer by trade, is in suspended animation following a car accident that appears to have taken his life. As he floats in cryonic suspension he awaits his new spleen and dreams back through the last six years of his life which reveal much of his bizarre journey a...

A haunting tale of suspense, rendered with the masterful skill only Barker could muster.After the loss of his parents, young Jack Thatch first met Stella as a child—this cryptic little girl of eight with dark hair and darker eyes, sitting alone on a bench in the cemetery clutching her favorite book. Gone moments later, the brief encounter would spark an obsession. She’d creep into his thoughts, his every waking moment, until he finally finds her again exactly one year later, sittin...

The story of Jack Crabbe, raised by both a white man and a Cheyenne chief. As a Cheyenne, Jack ate dog, had four wives and saw his people butchered by General Custer's soldiers. As a white man, he participated in the slaughter of the buffalo and tangled with Wyatt Earp. From the Trade Paperback edition.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIESWinner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux.Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons ci...

In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken and confident in ways completely out of proportion with he...