Get ready for a risk-taking rollercoaster ride through the favelas of Rio Di Janeiro and the wayside towns and jungles of South America in search of the secrets of shamans and ayahuasca – the vine of the soul. Aaron Smith's often hilarious chronicle of love, danger and enlightenment, set in the one of most vibrant places on earth, is a true delight. Whether Aaron is being held at gunpoint in Rio, stranded on the Amazon River; interviewing musician Peter Gabriel for The Iquitos Times

Dwyn couldn’t wait for Drakemere’s Tournament of Champions. He had come of age this year, so it would be his first time competing in the city’s biggest event. First though, he needed to help his old mentor with a small task. All he had to do was find a stolen crate, steal it back from the thieves who had taken it, and return it to the retired head of the knights. He even knew where it was and had formed a great team. On the surface it seemed simple. He couldn’t have been more wrong. An evi...

A fictional tale grounded in pure reality. Blank Check, an intriguing, inspirational Young Adult novel, that takes place on a fictional U.S. island.After serving his country as an Army Ranger, high school principal Josiah Rollins quits in disgust over the broken educational system he can no longer serve. Little does he know this impulsive act would lead him to an unbelievable opportunity to change everything and serve his country and students in the way he had always dreamed....

In his third poetry collection, Primer, Aaron Smith grapples with the ugly realities of the private self, in which desire feels more like a trap than fulfillment. What is the face we prepare in our public lives to distract others from our private grief?Smith's poetry explores that inexplicable tension between what we say and how we actually feel, exposing the complications of intimacy and the limitations of language to bridge those distances between friends, family members...

Appetite is a book that explores our American Mythologies, particularly masculinity and film. Smith investigates our fascinations with the body, gender, and entertainment in poems that are critically observant, darkly funny, darkly angry, and, sometimes, heartbreaking.Whether he is cataloging shirtless men in films and bad television, lyricizing the anxieties of childhood, or redrawing the lines of cultural membership, Appetite attacks its subjects with wit, cando...

A tour de force, Aaron Smith’s fourth collection of poetry, The Book of Daniel, resists the easy satisfactions of Beauty while managing the contemporary entanglements of art, sex, and grief. Part pop-thriller, part queer rage, and part mourning, these poems depict not only the complications of representation in the age of social media but a critique of identity. Taking on subjects as diverse as the literary canon, his mother’s incurable cancer diagnosis, gay bashing, celebrity gos...

Linguistics: A Functionalist Introduction is a concise, accessible guide to the fundamentals of language and expression for students that are new to the subject.Unlike other introductions, this book uses a functionalist framework that reflects the way language users form, derive and change meaning in a holistic way: not just through the technical construction of sentences but from how language is experienced, used, stored and processed in the mind. Beginning by introducing...

The Universe is dying. Ten years after the Shatter Wars hope is fleeting, but there is a chance for a rebirth. Nell Sorrow, the most unlikely hero, is called upon to help a girl named Genesis search the far reaches of space for keys that will bring new life into the Universe. Their quest will not be a simple one though, evil phantoms hunt them, dangerous realms lay ahead, and an ultimate evil awaits them on a lost world. Their only hope for survival is each other, the only hope for the Uni...

The Universe is dying. Ten years after the Shatter Wars hope is fleeting, but there is a chance for a rebirth. Nell Sorrow, the most unlikely hero, is called upon to help a girl named Genesis search the far reaches of space for keys that will bring new life into the Universe. Their quest will not be a simple one though, evil phantoms hunt them, dangerous realms lay ahead, and an ultimate evil awaits them on a lost world. Their only hope for survival is each other, the only hope for the Uni...

Aaron Smith is a stand-up comedian, writer, and an unofficial sociologist. Born and raised in the Harlem section of Manhattan, in New York City, he is the eldest of two children. Aaron brings his point of view to light and shows you how it can be used in your everyday life. His blunt and sometimes harsh honesty tells it how it is and shows that many people like to hide from the ugly truth. He provides a way of being someone out of the ordinary and a lifestyle that some have but never go th...

An aggressive debt collector banished from the kingdom. Now his life depends on his ability to help the less fortunate…Vireo Reinhold relishes collecting his monarch’s proper dues. Working hard to prolong and fund the king’s never-ending war, the self-centered official revels in the perks of luxury that come with his unorthodox role. But his world upends when he unearths an ancient spellbook that promises to unlock a shadowy, forgotten magic.Embroiled in a ...

Freed from captivity, Axton leads the group back to Dumas, looking to have a confrontation with Apollo and his followers.Dead America - The Second Month series follows survivors from coast to coast as they deal with the threats posed by both the living and the undead.