Everyone S Favorite Goth Welcome To The Distraction

This book was 80% done during the pandemic. While most were struggling to survive and adjust to the chaotic times that befell on all of Humanity, i used that time to hone my skills as an artist. I am an artist residing in Kansas City, MO, instead of secluding myself in my studio after working 40-60 hours a week, i found myself going out in frigid temperatures as well as scorching ones doing what i loved. Painting. i found myself stocking/ color coding my living room floor (sans furniture) with at least 400 cans of spray paint, as well as multiple gallons of house paint. Instead of participating in the pandemic, i was featuring in my own Paintdemic so to speak. i wanted to put a physical sample of what i had done as a documentation of what one could accomplish with their time.

When David stumbles upon a tragic young woman in a sordid Limehouse pub, he has no idea she'd recognize him as the last vampyre alive, nor that she'd be the one to pull out his story. Yet as he recalls his life from the sweltering vineyards of Ancient Rome to the cold horrors of Medieval Romania - as well as his tumultuous past with the mad and mysterious Lucius - he realizes she is much more than what she seems. Gothic horror and mythological fantasy blend seamlessly together in this thrilling adventure, breathing new life into vampire lore as it reveals its true origins. The Ancient Ones is a tale of myth, mayhem, and magic ... with a dash of romance that bites.

What's your worst nightmare? For Ivy Jensen, it's the eyes of a killer that haunt her nights. For Parker Bradley, it's bloodthirsty sea serpents that slither in his dreams. And for seven essay contestants, it's their worst nightmares that win them an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at director Justin Blake's latest, confidential project . Ivy doesn't even like scary movies, but she's ready to face her real-world fears. Parker's sympathetic words and perfect smile help keep her spirits up. . . at least for now. Not everyone is so charming, though. Horror-film fanatic Garth Vader wants to stir up trouble. It's bad enough he has to stay in the middle of nowhere with this group???the girl who locks herself in her room; the know-it-all roommate; "Mister Sensitive"; and the one who's too cheery for her own good. Someone has to make things interesting. Except, things are already a little weird. The hostess is a serial-killer look-alike, the dream-stealing Nightmare Elf is lurking about, and the seventh member of the group is missing. By the time Ivy and Parker realize what's really at stake, it's too late to wake up and run.

BONUS: This edition contains a new Afterword and a reading group guide. Utopia, Texas: It’s either the best place on earth, or it’s no place at all. In the twenty-first century, it’s difficult to imagine any element of American life that remains untouched by popular culture, let alone an entire community existing outside the empire of pop. But Karen Valby discovered the tiny town of Utopia tucked away in the Texas Hill Country. There are no movie theaters for sixty miles in any direction, no book or music stores. But cable television and the Internet have recently thrown wide the doors of Utopia. Valby follows the lives of four Utopians—Ralph, the retired owner of the general store; Kathy, the waitress who waits in terror for three of her boys to return from war; Colter, the son of a cowboy with the soul of a hipster; and Kelli, an aspiring rock star and one of the only black people in town—as they reckon, on an intensely human scale, with war and race, class and culture, and the way time’s passage can change the ground beneath our feet. Utopia is the kind of place we still think of as the “real America,” a place of cowboys and farmers and high-school sweethearts who stay together till they die. But its dramatic stories show us what happens when the old tensions of small-town life confront a new reality: that no town, no matter how small and isolated, can escape the liberating and disruptive forces of the larger world. Welcome to Utopia is a moving elegy for a proud American way of life and a celebration of our relentless impulse toward rebirth.

From the time she was a small girl, 28-year-old Maggie Gaffney disregarded the gift that her Granny Gaffney proudly insisted she had inherited from her father. She always regarded the premonitions and overwhelming feelings of danger as nothing special, just common everyday feelings. The fiery haired Irish lass who grew up in the brownstones in Chicago, was summoned by her maternal grandfather to visit him in his huge mansion, Glenmoor Manor, in Southern Indiana. Maggie had no wish to know Donovan O'Connor, a wealthy businessman, who had disowned her mother when she married Maggie's father and she would have refused to go if her Granny Gaffney had not insisted. The headstrong Maggie agrees to go. When a feeling of impending doom overcomes her on the train, she dismisses it. But after her arrival, she becomes embroiled in a mystery that involves her grandfather, a secret society, and murder. Trying to unravel the mystery, Maggie finds herself in peril as well as falling in love. She begins to believe that there just may be some truth to her gift, her Irish Legacy .

From the author of the classic A LITTLE LIFE, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances. These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness. TO PARADISE is a fin de siecle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot.