Forging A Nightmare

FBI agent Michael Childs is tasked with tracking down a serial killer with an obsession for victims born with twelve fingers and toes. But he discovers something much more startling about himself… The only link between a series of grisly murders in New York City is that the victims were all born with twelve fingers and twelve toes. These people are known in occult circles as the Nephilim, a forsaken people, descendants of fallen angels. After a break in the case leads to supposedly killed-in-action Marine sniper Anaba Raines, Michael finds the soldier alive and well, but shockingly no longer human. Michael then discovers that he is also a Nephilim, and next on the killer’s list. Everything Michael once thought of as myth and magic starts to blur the lines of his reality, forcing him to accept a new fate to save the innocent, or die trying. File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Four Horsemen | Heaven and Hell | Ride the Storm | Inferno ]

Collects Siege: Loki (2010) #1; Journey into Mystery (2011) #622-636, 626.1. Loki changes his story! In the wake of the siege of Asgard, Loki is reborn - as a child! With this new life comes a fresh purpose, but can the other Asgardian gods possibly trust him? Let's hope so - because when the Serpent threatens Earth, Thor's battle plan is doomed to fail without Loki's help! The former Lord of Lies must use all the skills of deceit that made him so hated in his past life, but will the rejuvenated godling find redemption or damn himself further? Plus: Nightmare is gathering enough energy to rule the world, and the motherlode is inside Loki's mind. Aided by an undead handmaiden and a demon puppy, Loki risks everything on a scheme so crazy it could only have been hatched by a God of Mischief!

Journey into Mystery (2023) : Loki changes his story! In the wake of the siege of Asgard, Loki is reborn – as a child! With this new life comes a fresh purpose, but can the other Asgardian gods possibly trust him? Let’s hope so – because when the Serpent threatens Earth, Thor’s battle plan is doomed to fail without Loki’s help! The former Lord of Lies must use all the skills of deceit that made him so hated in his past life, but will the rejuvenated godling find redemption or damn himself further? Plus: Nightmare is gathering enough energy to rule the world, and the motherlode is inside Loki’s mind. Aided by an undead handmaiden and a demon puppy, Loki risks everything on a scheme so crazy it could only have been hatched by a God of Mischief! Collects Siege:

Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

This astonishing autobiographical trilogy—hailed by George Orwell and Gabriel García Márquez—is “the most definitive and personal account of Spain’s history during . . . the 20th century” (Guardian). The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War. Arturo Barea’s masterpiece charts the author's coming-of-age in a bruised and starkly unequal Spain. These three volumes recount in lively detail Barea's daily experience of his country as it pitched toward disaster: we are taken from his youthful play and rebellion on the streets of Madrid, to his apprenticeship in the business world and to the horrors he witnessed as part of the Spanish army in Morocco during the Rif War. The trilogy culminates in an indelible portrait of the Republican fight against Fascist forces in which the Madrid of Barea's childhood becomes a shell and bullet-strewn warzone. Combining historical sweep and authority with poignant characterization and novelistic detail, The Forging of a Rebel is a towering literary and historical achievement.