Girls Who Bite Back

Bombshell spies, slayers, witches and assassins: kick-ass female stars have taken over blockbuster movies like Charlie's Angels and Kill Bill as well as prime time TV hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. These characters kill as quickly as they break down in tears, and beat guys up as easily as they toss them into bed. With very few exceptions, they're young, white, beautiful, straight and skinny. How are young women to respond to these images of women who fight (or bite) back? As the product of corporate media, are these icons of 'female power' merely cons? This one-of-a-kind anthology of new fiction, essays, and comics recognises the seductiveness as well as the limitations of such contemporary pop culture heroines. Contributors -- including Nalo Hopkinson, Larissa Lai, Shary Boyle, Nikki Stafford, Mariko Tamaki, Sonja Ahlers and Sherwin Tjia -- critique constructs of female power and invent alternative role models.

The ubiquitous presence of food and hunger in Caribbean writing—from folktales, fiction, and poetry to political and historical treatises—signals the traumas that have marked the Caribbean from the Middle Passage to the present day. The Tropics Bite Back traces the evolution of the Caribbean response to the colonial gaze (or rather the colonial mouth) from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Unlike previous scholars, Valérie Loichot does not read food simply as a cultural trope. Instead, she is interested in literary cannibalism, which she interprets in parallel with theories of relation and creolization. For Loichot, “the culinary” is an abstract mode of resistance and cultural production. The Francophone and Anglophone authors whose works she interrogates—including Patrick Chamoiseau, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Édouard Glissant, Lafcadio Hearn, and Dany Laferrière—“bite back” at the controlling images of the cannibal, the starved and starving, the cunning cook, and the sexualized octoroon with the ultimate goal of constructing humanity through structural, literal, or allegorical acts of ingesting, cooking, and eating. The Tropics Bite Back employs cross-disciplinary methods to rethink notions of race and literary influence by providing a fresh perspective on forms of consumption both metaphorical and material.

The first Chicagoland Vampires novel from New York Times bestselling author Chloe Neill. Sure, the life of a graduate student wasn't exactly glamorous, but it was Merit's. She was doing fine until a rogue vampire attacked her. But he only got a sip before he was scared away by another bloodsucker and this one decided the best way to save her life was to make her the walking undead. Turns out her savior was the master vampire of Cadogan House. Now she’s traded sweating over her thesis for learning to fit in at a Hyde Park mansion full of vamps loyal to Ethan Lord o the Manor Sullivan. Of course, as a tall, green-eyed, four-hundred-year-old vampire, he has centuries’ worth of charm, but unfortunately he expects her gratitude—and servitude. But an inconvenient sunlight allergy and Ethan’s attitude are the least of Merit's concerns. Someone's still out to get her. Her initiation into Chicago's nightlife may be the first skirmish in a war...and there will be blood.

This bibliographic guide covers the “Buffyverse”—the fictional worlds of the acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and its spinoff Angel (1999–2004), as well as the original Buffy feature film of 1992. It is the largest and most inclusive work of its kind. The author organizes and describes both the original texts of the Buffyverse (episodes, DVDs, novels, comic books, games, and more) and the secondary materials created about the shows, including books, essays, articles, documentaries, dissertations, fan production and websites. This vast and diverse collection of information about these two seminal shows and their feature-film forebear provides an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive survey of the subject.

A vampire, a werewolf, and a demon all walk into a bar... Sounds like the start of a bad joke. Want another? Alright, how's this? They bring with them a greater demon and the most powerful vampire in all of NYC. One wants my help, the other wants me dead. Hysterical. Too bad it's not a joke-just a typical Saturday night for me. I guess the upside is having sex with me hasn't sent any of these smexy troublemakers to the hospital... yet... Frackin' fudge fluffers... Contains mm interactions, bi & pansexual characters, lots of humor and sexy scenes.

Marco Romano is a former Navy SEAL with a habit of saving people from the mob and then helping them to disappear. Until the mob catches up to him. Now he’s desperate to avenge his parents’ death, but more importantly, he needs to protect his baby sister. Because his estranged aunt wants to take his sister away from him—the only family she’s ever known. Marco will be damned if he’ll let that happen. He needs to win this custody battle, and the only way he can is if he looks respectable on paper. How can he do that? By finding a good girl and convincing her to marry him. Or at least pretending until the custody papers are signed. Now his problem isn’t taking care of his sister or even taking down the scum who killed his parents. No, now his biggest problem is convincing himself he’s not in love with the woman who agreed to be his fiancée. Despite her best intentions, Hillary Karney’s had one too many brushes with the mob. So what the hell is she doing back in Detroit, where it all started? And she’s hanging out with Marco Romano, no less, a man whose picture is probably in the dictionary under “caveman.” He wouldn’t know good manners if they slapped him in the face. And now he wants her to help him win custody of his sister? Of course she’s going to say yes; saving women from the mob is what she does. She’s built an entire career around it. But she’s not going to make it easy on him. She agrees—with a stipulation. She’s going to teach him how to be a gentleman. He’s going to have to develop manners, common courtesies… and when she’s done with him, some lucky girl is going to snag herself a hell of a catch. Too bad it won’t be her. Detroit Mafia series, in reading order: Trapped by the Mob Freed from the Mob Born into the Mob Controlled by the Mob Return to the Mob