Blending the personal with the political, these poems explore the deleterious effects of adversity and trauma on a global scale, focusing on such subjects as immigration laws, environmental degradation, multinational corporate greed, and the effects of war on women and children. The poet makes unexpected connections between disparate things, drawing from wild nature for imagery while also passionately engaging the reader to become aware of injustice and suffering at home and abroad. The poems are crafted using lyrical language that is at once precise, figurative, and celebratory, creating a collection that is humanitarian and emotionally resonate.

The story begins in Cuba when Julian Hamilton, aged eighty and after a life as a famous writer, is confronted with Victoria, his daughter, whose existence he was unaware of. Julian has been spending his retirement and final days of a life that began with the conflicting dilemma he experienced as a young student after leaving Princeton University, USAa conflict that people have between their belief in themselves and their emotional lives. For the writer and painter, it is a greater burden and more onerous than the many people who have to decide whether to sacrifice ambition for a sense of responsibility toward love and family life. After Princeton, Julian gets married but soon finds that following lifes normal format impairs the necessary dedication to evolve as a writer. Fearful of the emotional restrictions that come with full commitment, he leaves his wife to follow the romantic dream of coup de foudre or love at first sight. He meets Rebecca serendipitously, who gives him the necessary inspiration, and they go traveling on an ancient Triumph Speed Twin motorbike, heading towards Morocco with no sense of responsibility. Things go wrong, which fractures their passionate relationship, leaving them in a state of despair. Rebecca is raped and becomes pregnant, and Julian goes into a monastery to make a clean break in order to establish a balanced perspective of the situation. They separate, and Rebecca is left facing a lifetime of unhappiness. The book contains romance, suspense, tragedy, travel, and some thriller action of rape, murder, and sex. The doomed lovers final curtain falls in Barcelona when Julian chooses his art over lovesomething he lives to regret. The novel will present some readers with the unsolvable question as to which path should be taken!

An awe-inspiring exploration of the sounds of the living Earth, and the joys and threats of human music, language and noise. 'A symphony, filled with the music of life . . . fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully written.'ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction'Sounds Wild and Broken affirms Haskell as a laureate for the earth, his finely tuned scientific observations made more potent by his deep love for the wild he hopes to save.'NEW YORK TIMES'Wonderful . . . a reminder that the narrow aural spectrum on which most of us operate, and the ways in which human life is led, blocks out the planet's great, orchestral richness.'GUARDIANWe live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David George Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rainforests shimmering with insect sounds and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution's creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animals and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution.Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth's history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets to show that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, less beautiful.Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, act.'Absolutely fascinating.'MARIELLA FROSTRUP, TIMES RADIO'Enlightening and sobering.'JINI REDDY, METRO

A man with three different names ties together the stars of professional wrestling, country music, and the New York Mets. John Arezzi was a lifelong Mets fan who dreamed of a job in baseball. In 1981, he took a job with the Mets Class A team in North Carolina. But Arezzi had another love: professional wrestling. He ran a fan club for the villainous “Classy” Freddie Blassie as a teenager, then progressed to wrestling photographer, and finally even stepped into the ring himself as John Anthony. Eventually he escaped to pursue a new life in altogether different world: country music. After adopting a new name, John Alexander, his many accomplishments include discovering both Patty Loveless and (decades later) Kelsea Ballerini. But wrestling is tough to shake … In the 1990s, Arezzi hosted the pioneering radio talk show Pro Wrestling Spotlight. He also ran the first major conventions, assembling a wrestling who’s who to meet with fans. He promoted shows, both at home and abroad, and was a key figure behind importing lucha libre into America. Mat Memories is Arezzi’s chance to hold the mic, and he holds nothing back — he names names and tells the untold behind-the-scenes stories: from the ring, the stage, and the diamond.

Sweet Willie Gold Has the BluesAfter a car accident, William Goldman, a nice middle aged married man wakes from a coma to find that he is a musical savant, able to play note for note every blues harmonica song he has ever heard. Is his newfound ability a blessing or a burden? Music or marriage, family or fame, he struggles to answer what he really wants out of his life.Just You WaitJust You Wait, a contemporary, literary novella, tells the story of Jasmine Whittow, an intelligent young woman and an only child growing up in privileged familial circumstances. Eventually she meets and lives with Pietro, an Italian moving to London to join her there, she learning how easily life, even one of her own choosing, may lead many astray, before falling in love with someone else she meets in Cornwall.The Day the Sun StoppedChristine wakes to find herself on a street lined with houses— all identical. Even more disconcerting, she discovers that there' s a family that claims to be Christine' s— a family with their own secrets.Bit by bit, Christine remembers her past life— and wonders if she made a terrible mistake. The question is: is it even possible to return? And what would returning home mean?Filial SojournSummoned by a phone call from a man telling him his long-estranged father is in his last days, Rutherford McAndrew drives deep into the upstate boondocks to see him before the end. Instead of impending death, he finds his father the subject of an unsettling clinical experiment and himself drawn in as an unwilling participant. As he insidiously becomes entangled in the dark intentions of the strange psychiatric program, his opportunities to leave diminish.

This collection of world's greatest western novels and stories include rip roarin' cowboy adventures, tales of the famous outcasts, the heroes of the Wild West, conniving villains and intriguing sagas: Introduction Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Trail Horde Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Hidden Water…

Wild Boy is the explosive first inside account of the rise and fall of Duran Duran. The band rose to conquer the globe with a string of unforgettable hits such as "Rio," "Hungry Like the Wolf," and "The Reflex." With Simon Le Bon as their frontman, they were the defining pop act of the 1980s, but Andy Taylor, the enigmatic lead guitarist, is widely acknowledged to have been their musical driving force. Then, at the very height of their achievement in 1985, Duran Duran imploded. Now Andy shares the story of what went wrong. With searing honesty, he charts every moment of Duran Duran's roller-coaster rise from their early days as club musicians through to international superstardom. He captures the glamour and excitement of the band's epic video shoots and the opulence of their world tours. He reveals the truth about the allegations of drug abuse and wild hedonism that dogged Duran Duran. Packed with more than twenty-five years worth of rock 'n' roll anecdotes, Andy tells of his time in the band The Power Station, and explains why Duran Duran reformed with its original line-up in 2003. But Wild Boy is also a moving story on a human level, as Andy describes how the pressures of fame took a terrible personal toll on him and his family. Moving from hilarious to harrowing at the turn of a page, Wild Boy is a must-read for anyone who lived through the 1980s, or who cares about music.

RIDE ON THE WILD SIDE They came of age in a lawless land—former cowboys and wage earners who'd found another way of life. Now they were the most famous outlaws in the West: the Wild Bunch, led by' Gentleman Bill Doolin and sparked by the nerve of Sam Dalton, known as the Choctaw Kid. The Wild Bunch held up banks and trains across the Territories and Kansas. But the boys lived by their own code, proud that they'd never killed during a robbery— no bank clerk, train crew member, lawman, nor bystander. The Oklahoma Territory town of Ingalls turned a blind eye to the outlaws, who spent their money in the saloons and whorehouses. But while Sam Dalton wavered between giving up the outlaw life to marry a pretty teenaged prostitute and busting his brother Emmett out of federal prison in Kansas, the U.S. Department of Justice was massing an army of lawmen to raid the outlaw town...and shut the Wild Bunch down for good. "Max McCoy is one of the finest of today's new crop of western writers."—Don Coldsmith. author of Runestone THE SEQUEL TO THE AWARD-WINNING NOVEL THE SIXTH RIDER THE WILD RIDER HE WAS ONE OF THE LAST SURVIVORS OF THE INFAMOUS DALTON GANG… NOW HE’S RIDING TO DESTINY WITH THE WILD BUNCH

More exciting adventures from the longest running shared-world superhero series created and edited by George R.R. Martin, bestselling author of GAME OF THRONES Decades after an alien virus changed the course of history, the surviving population of Manhattan still struggles to understand the new world left in its wake. Natural humans share the rough city with those given extraordinary - and sometimes terrifying - traits. While most manage to coexist in an uneasy peace, not everyone is willing to adapt. Down in the seedy underbelly of Jokertown, residents are going missing. The authorities are unwilling to investigate, except for a fresh lieutenant looking to prove himself and a collection of unlikely jokers forced to take matters into their own hands - or tentacles. The deeper into the kidnapping case these misfits and miscreants get, the higher the stakes are raised. Edited by No.1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author George R.R. Martin and acclaimed author Melinda M. Snodgrass, LOWBALL is the latest mosaic novel in the acclaimed Wild Cards universe, featuring original fiction by Carrie Vaughn, Ian Tregillis, David Anthony Durham, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary Anne Mohanraj, David D. Levine, Michael Cassutt and Walter Jon Williams. Perfect for old fans and new readers alike, LOWBALL delves deeper into the world of aces, jokers, and the hard-boiled men and women of the Fort Freak police precinct in a pulpy, page-turning novel of superheroics and mystery.

Collected together for the first time. Four classic first hand narratives of the Old West.