Love And Terror

With rich detail and humor, a suspenseful historical romance involving Joseph Fouche+a7 (Robespierre's redoubtable police commissioner during the French Revolution), Marie Antoinette, and a girl aristocrat conveys the sweep of Parisian life at the time.

Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.

The story of the lives and disillusionment of three revolutionaries is told through a terrorist's notebook and interviews with a nameless journalist.

Written by a cult survivor and renowned expert on cults and totalitarianism, Terror, Love and Brainwashing draws on the author’s 25 years of study and research to explain how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts. Illustrated with compelling stories from a range of cults and totalitarian systems, from religious to political to commercial, the book defines and analyses the common and identifiable traits that underlie almost all these groups. It focuses on how charismatic, authoritarian leaders control their followers’ attachment relationships via manipulative social structures and ideologies so that, emotionally and cognitively isolated, they become unable to act in their own survival interests. Using the evolutionary theory of attachment to demonstrate the psychological impact of these environments, and incorporating the latest neuroscientific findings, Stein illustrates how the combined dynamic of terror and ‘love’ works to break down people’s ability to think and behave rationally. From small local cults to global players like ISIS and North Korea, the impact of these movements is widespread and growing. This important book offers clarity and a unique perspective on the dynamics of these systems of control, and concludes with guidance to foster greater awareness and prevention. It will be essential reading for mental health professionals in the field, as well as policy makers, legal professionals, cult survivors, and their families, as well as anyone with an interest in these disturbing groups. Students of social and developmental psychology will also find it fascinating.

A deaf woman navigates a maze of danger and intrigue in the first High Stakes thriller from the USA Today–bestselling author of A Silent Fury. When Marianna Santino’s roommate is killed, Detective Ethan O’Hara can’t fathom the motive. Then he realizes the deaf teacher was the intended target. Marianna must have something the murderer desperately wants. But what? Digging for the truth, the guarded cop tries to learn everything he can about Marianna. Her world. Her family. Her beauty, faith and fierce independence. In spite of himself, Ethan finds that he can’t keep his feelings at bay. Soon, he’s willing to risk everything—including his heart—to lay the silent terror stalking Marianna to rest.

The true stroy of the longest-distance hijacking in American history. In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of '60s idealism, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine. Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when shattered Army veteran Roger Holder and mischievous party girl Cathy Kerkow managred to comandeer Western Airlines Flight 701 and flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom—a heist that remains the longest-distance hijacking in American history. More than just an enthralling story about a spectacular crime and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath, The Skies Belong to Us is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.

Demonstrates techniques for preparing a booktalk, speaking informally, and choosing the right excerpt to read aloud.

CLAIRE DE WISSANT, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood in the morningsunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of poise and gesture, on a wind-blownpath close to the edge of the cliff.At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of the Pavillon deWissant, the charming country house to which her husband had brought her, a seventeenyear old bride, ten long years ago.She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded eyes with herright hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to which was attached a small key.A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It blotted out the lowgrey line on the horizon which, on the majority of each year's days, reminds the citizens ofFalaise how near England is to France.Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the entente cordiale, if only because it brought such astream of tourists to the old seaport town of which he was now Mayor. But his beautifulwife thought of the English as gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not greatgranddaughter to that admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered bychain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might go on commanding, inthe hour of defeat, to the end?And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet invisible craft, herheart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse of a noble English poem which thegoverness of her twin daughters had made them recite to her that very morning. How did itrun? Aloud she murmured: "Yet this inconstancy is such, As you too shall adore-"and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two concluding lines.To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled by familiarity, orhackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.With an abrupt, restless movement she turned and walked on till her way along the pathwas barred by a curious obstacle. This was a small red-brick tower, built within a few feetof the edge of the cliff. It was an ugly blot on the beautiful stretch of down, all the uglier thatthe bricks and tiles had not yet had time to lose their hardness of line and colour in the saltwi