Diamond Eyes

Mark Van Buren, nicknamed Diamond Eyes by his loving aunt, is a fourteen-year-old misfit from Michigan who can’t seem to do anything right. When he discovers his father and stepmom plan to ship him to Florida to live with his uncle DJ and aunt Rita, the founders of a cover band, the Ambient Images, he worries he won’t be accepted. But when he fills in to sing one night, he finds himself at the start of a personal journey that will change his life forever, as well as the lives of everyone around him. Various adventures take him on an Alaskan cruise, the Las Vegas desert, an Amish farm, and a crocodile-infested swamp. Through it all he discovers who he is while experiencing the ups and downs of life. Diamond Eyes Makes His Mark is a testament to the trials and tribulations adolescents face in today’s world, such as bullying, suicidal thoughts, loss of a loved one, and sexual identity. Ultimately, it is a tale of faith, endurance, and the power of unconditional love.

PI Alo Nudger, at the St Louis airport to pick up a pal, offers his business card to a distraught woman just before an incoming plane blows apart. The next morning she arrives at his office with a wild story about a bomb in an attache case and a fortune in stolen diamonds, and Nudger gets involved because he needs the fee to fend off his greedy, vindictive ex-wife and her sleazy lawyer. Then his new client is tortured and murdered, and when the hard-nosed killers threaten Nudger's lover and let Nudger know that they are watching his every move, Nudger's friend and former partner, police detective Jack Hammersmith, offers information and protection. The series has garnered its share of awards. Both What You Don't Know Can Hurt You won a Shamus for Best Private Eye Short Story and Ride the Lightning nabbed an Edgar for Best Short Story in 1985.

Who were the 35 actors that performed with stars Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in radio’s The Abbott and Costello Show? Do scripts survive for the old Burns and Allen shows or the children’s crime fighter series The Green Hornet? Serious researchers and curious browsers interested in Golden Age radio will find a wealth of information in this reference collection. Most are from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, though subsequent decades are included for long-running shows. Crime series, whodunits, romances, situation comedies, variety shows, soap operas, quiz show series and others are included. Casual browsers will find tidbits on the radio careers of notables from other media (Humphrey Bogart, Ginger Rogers), mention of adaptations by famous authors (Jack London, Ray Bradbury), curious episode titles (“The Gorilla That Always Said Yeh-ah”) and series titles (Whispering Streets), and interesting sponsors (Insect-O-Blitz). The first section is an alphabetical list of T.O. Library’s significant radio script collections, with notes on their content and format. The second section is the guide to series scripts by program title. Entries include title and basic information, including collection(s) in which they are found; producers, directors, writers, musicians and regular cast; sponsors; and holdings by date, episode number and title. Increasing the book's usefulness for researchers are indexes by name, program and sponsor.

Coming from the deepest of places of the soul this collection of poems takes you from the exhilarating feelings of love to the darkness and desperation created by pain. The journey of a man and his heart through the landscape of emotions that embraced him during the period in which the book was written. Travel through the changes of moods and aptitude adjustments triggered by time and circumstances. A roller-coaster of feelings that at moment is sublime and at moments heart slashing.

Creatively employing song lyrics of that genre as segues, the reader is hopefully guided to and experiences reading on multiple levels. Life’s events unfold from Louisiana, to California, and ultimately culminate in Okinawa, Japan. Wild Tales from the East is a suspenseful emotional thriller that chronicles the travels and encounters of a black twenty-one-year-old recent college graduate (1968). About to be drafted, he enlists for four years in the US Navy as a medic. Hurling headlong into a turbulent transitional period in our nation’s history, the narrator’s inner journey, in many ways, reflects the upheavals of that day. He soon finds himself in Southern California and discovers there that the simplistic world of rural Louisiana has ill prepared him for the waves of change heading his way. With the war in Vietnam dividing loyalties, conflicts also abound within the narrator as he searches for self-identity, his place in the sun, and that elusive thing called love. Experiencing a metamorphosis of kind, his gradual inculcation into the counterculture movement often places him in conflict with himself and the military’s ideals. He struggles to bridge two worlds: one of the status quo and the other of a world that reflects his emerging sense of independence and freedom. Although he still harbors emotional attachment to a doomed illicit affair, he opts to marry a hometown girl and thus maintain normalcy. Shattered, all wedding plans are off when he unexpectedly receives orders to Okinawa. With all familial supports abandoned and an inner renunciation of the so-called American values, arriving in the Oriental world of the East, he presents himself essentially as a man without a country. The narrator finds the world of the East to be mysterious, seductive, and populated by warm and open people. A yearlong sojourn ensues. It is a world that he becomes intimately one with. The warm, balmy, tropical island of Okinawa is tailor made for him. Likened to a fantasy island, it is also one ideally suited for the raucous and outrageous times of that era. He finds Okinawa to be a place that caters to the desires and appetites of those who would dare pursue them. It’s a place where eroticism and mysticism meet. Into this Wild West–like cauldron, much like the biblical prodigal son, the author submerses himself. With his “old self” disintegrating, barriers that hinder total interaction in the moment, for him, no longer exist. Along with a “band” of associates often fueled by psychedelics and other contraband, he and they plow fearlessly into the nights and heights of exhilarating extremes, and thus comes Wild Tales from the East. The narrator’s nights and days are relentlessly driven by a deeper inner longing created by his ill-fated but defining love affair. His personal search for unification and fulfillment is haunted by that ever-present undertow. Often tortuously painful, his search for redemption is played out against the backdrop of an ancient culture that is also confronting the arrival of a “new age.” A walking wayfarer in a strange land, he uncovers hidden mysteries and secrets of the universe from unanticipated sources. Along his path, varied individuals present themselves and their individual struggles for survival. En route, he also stumbles across travelers of the night; and casting his lot among these sojourners and seekers of truth, he severs ties with his land of birth. Aside from his bosom buddy RL, a Southern white kid, he lives deeply inside his own head. He discovers that in many ways, the Okinawan people are also oppressed. Aided by cross-cultural relationships that he establishes, he identifies deeply with them and their circumstance. Unaware, in the process, he is gradually immersed in the Okinawan way of life. In the hazy aftermath of self-medicating, the narrator descends into a harrowing self-destructive vortex. As the accumulated “road” fatigue takes

A quick-reference guide to roses, herbs, and edible flowers for gardeners with little experience and time. Roses represent love and beauty. Their colors and fragrance create the standard by which many other flowers are measured. Cultivated around the world for perfume, roses have a sweet and unforgettable scent. However, many would-be rose gardeners believe that roses require constant care and lavish doses of sprays and chemicals. Roses do require attention, but their glorious flowers make all your efforts worthwhile, and the roses in this book were chosen because they are tried-and-true, proven performers. Of the many types of plants that grow in our gardens, herbs and edible flowers hold a very special place. People use herbs and edible flowers to heal their bodies, calm their minds, add fragrance to their homes, and flavor and preserve their foods--herbs improve the quality of our lives. This colorful, photo-filled book takes the guesswork out of gardening with the easiest-to-grow and best-performing roses, herbs, and edible flowers. No trial and error--get it right the first time!

Winner of the 2013 Richard J. Finneran Award, Society for Textual ScholarshipOutstanding Academic Title, Choice "His name is Percy Bysshe Shelley, and he is the author of a poetical work entitled Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.” With these words, the radical journalist and poet Leigh Hunt announced his discovery in 1816 of an extraordinary talent within “a new school of poetry rising of late.” The third volume of the acclaimed edition of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley includes Alastor, one of Shelley’s first major works, and all the poems that Shelley completed, for either private circulation or publication, during the turbulent years from 1814 to March 1818: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Mont Blanc, Laon and Cythna, as well as shorter pieces, such as his most famous sonnet, Ozymandias. It was during these years that Shelley, already an accomplished and practiced poet with three volumes of published verse, authored two major volumes, earned international recognition, and became part of the circle that was later called the Younger Romantics. As with previous volumes, extensive discussions of the poems’ composition, influences, publication, circulation, reception, and critical history accompany detailed records of textual variants for each work. Among the appendixes are Mary W. Shelley’s 1839 notes on the poems for these years, a table of the forty-two revisions made to Laon and Cythna for its reissue as The Revolt of Islam, and Shelley’s errata list for the same. It is in the works included in this volume that the recognizable and characteristic voice of Shelley emerges—unmistakable, consistent, and vital.