Jim’s the sort of guy who’d likely die young then be devoured by his domestic short-hair cats. With nothing going for him, a dead-end IT job and a family who mysteriously disappeared, he is barely holding it together. His hopes of a life worth living fizzled around the time he last saw his toes over his huge belly. Now the imminent demise of the world ushers in a feeling of liberation and relief for Jim. Humanity loses all hope for the future and for once, Jim fits right in! Despite all od...

What would you do as an elementary principal if an eight year old girl ran into your office with panic on her face and shouted, Mr. Patrick, Ruby said come quick. Some men are aiming guns at the kids on the playground. Would you run to face the presumed killers or would you run the other way? And would you cry when you arrived at work one morning as the high school principal to be told a boy you cared for, but had to expel for drug use, had committed suicide the night before? Would you wra...

Nominee for the 2015 Silver Falchion AwardWhen it comes to murder at a convention of killers, everyone is a suspect.Husband and wife private investigators Jack and Annie Gardner are very good at their jobs. He's a one-handed demolitions expert and bomb disposal specialist. She's a former circus performer and a crack shot. Together they run Gardner Investigations.Joseph Mozzano is the former head of the Baltimore mob. When his grand...

The world’s first and probably last anti-running, anti-prepping fat man has survived the zombie apocalypse against all odds. He’s eaten his way through all the chocolate he could find and still been more than a match for the army of un-dead taking over the world. Along with his demented beagle Doug and ‘not sure if real’ friend Bob, Jim escaped Australia by the skin of his teeth and set up shop on ‘Jim Island’. But island life was not all it was cracked up to be and a quest to find other s...

Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us wit...

John Seibert Farnsworth’s delightful notes are not only about nature, but from nature as well.In Nature Beyond Solitude, he lets us peer over his shoulder as he takes his notes. We follow him to a series of field stations where he teams up with scientists, citizen scientists, rangers, stewards, and grad students engaged in long-term ecological study, all the while scribbling down what he sees, hears, and feels in the moment. With humor and insight, Farnsworth explores how ...

In Listen to This, the award-winning music critic and author of The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross looks forward and backward in musical culture: capturing essential figures in classical music history, as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music.From his own first encounter with classical music to vibrant sketches of Schubert, Verdi and Brahms; from in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead to the lives of a high school’s music students, Ross s...

The fortieth anniversary edition of the "shocking" #1 New York Times bestseller with a bonus story by the author, "Never Got to Say Goodbye" ( Los Angeles Times).When Christina Crawford's harrowing chronicle of child abuse was first published in 1978, it brought global attention to the previously closeted subject. It also shed light on the guarded world of Hollywood and stripped away the façade of Christina's relentless, alcoholic abuser: her adop...

This book was designed for use in a one-semester dance appreciation survey class. As such, I have attempted to limit the information provided to that which can be covered comfortably. This means that many noteworthy choreographers and dancers do not appear in this text. Teachers may wish to add other important contributors to the art of dance, particularly in Chapters five, six, and seven.Tami M. White is an adjunct faculty member with the Dance Department at Old Dominion Universit...

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-shari...

Stories I'd Tell My Children (but maybe not until they're adults) is mostly hysterically funny, sometimes poignant and profound, often bawdy and always delightful.The book includes more than 100 stories that span 55 years: pre-school, in school, and after the author had enough school. There's lots of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Even the sex and drug stories are funny.Some stories were written as revenge against bad teachers, evil bosses and crazy clients. There are stories ...

"With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein's letters blow all biographies out of the water."— The Economist (2013 Book of the Year)Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician—a brilliant conductor who attained international superstar status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals ( West Side Story), symphonies ( Age of Anxiety), choral wor...