Merryll Manning A Brush With Death

"A Brush with Death" takes former police detective, Merryll Manning, from his usual haunts in Miami, Florida, to "Allmiston," a leading city in Colorado, where Manning obtains a job with Security at the city's Art Gallery for the duration of a Rembrandt Exhibition. A leading art thief, self-styled Rob Roy, threatens to steal at least one of the Rembrandts. Presumably, he is already employed at the Gallery. But who is he? Or she? Other factions are also at work. Manning and other members of the staff are threatened. A security guard is killed, a religious bigot goes on the rampage, and the skirt-chasing Manning ends up in court! This is the first USA and Canadian printing of a book originally published in Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa in 1999. "Reid's plots are cleverly constructed and he provides a colorful parade of characters." (Sunday Mail). "Totally fascinating!" (Sunday Telegraph). "Reid successfully foils any attempts to guess the outcome of the plot." (The Times).

This novel tells a story instigated by a fictitious movie star named Bess Dress Blighty. Bess made the startling discovery that all a woman had to do to attract attention from the nation's press, radio and budding TV, was to take her clothes off. But alas, that action was the sum total of the attention she received. If Bess spoke about the obstacles placed in the paths of career women, or the denial of equal rights and opportunities with men, or drew attention to the plight of women who were deserted by their husbands or lovers and left to raise children on an income of less than zero, nobody gave a damn. But on the other hand, the mere action of taking her clothes off excited frenzied attention from everybody - including the nation's top church leaders, newspaper editors, radio commentators, gossip columnists, TV programmers, and even Washington politicians. Indeed, although the line-up of would-be censors was prodigious, it seems that some bigot was especially envious of Bess's successful efforts.

A mixed bag of prose pieces by "the charismatic John Howard Reid", this collection includes short stories, essays, a novelette, and even a First Prize-winning humorous piece and a one-act stage play. The novelette, "My Friend, My Enemy", is a gripping mystery thriller centered around Erwin Rommel when the Field Marshal was stationed at Benghazi in North Africa in 1941.

A groundbreaking look at marriage, one of the most basic and universal of all human institutions, which reveals the emotional, physical, economic, and sexual benefits that marriage brings to individuals and society as a whole. The Case for Marriage is a critically important intervention in the national debate about the future of family. Based on the authoritative research of family sociologist Linda J. Waite, journalist Maggie Gallagher, and a number of other scholars, this book’s findings dramatically contradict the anti-marriage myths that have become the common sense of most Americans. Today a broad consensus holds that marriage is a bad deal for women, that divorce is better for children when parents are unhappy, and that marriage is essentially a private choice, not a public institution. Waite and Gallagher flatly contradict these assumptions, arguing instead that by a broad range of indices, marriage is actually better for you than being single or divorced– physically, materially, and spiritually. They contend that married people live longer, have better health, earn more money, accumulate more wealth, feel more fulfillment in their lives, enjoy more satisfying sexual relationships, and have happier and more successful children than those who remain single, cohabit, or get divorced. The Case for Marriage combines clearheaded analysis, penetrating cultural criticism, and practical advice for strengthening the institution of marriage, and provides clear, essential guidelines for reestablishing marriage as the foundation for a healthy and happy society. “A compelling defense of a sacred union. The Case for Marriage is well written and well argued, empirically rigorous and learned, practical and commonsensical.” -- William J. Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues “Makes the absolutely critical point that marriage has been misrepresented and misunderstood.” -- The Wall Street Journal www.broadwaybooks.com

The author recounts his experiences on the lucrative Wall Street bond market of the 1980s, where young traders made millions in a very short time, in a humorous account of greed and epic folly.

A hilarious, poignant memoir from comedian Todd Glass about his decision at age forty-eight to finally live openly as a gay man—and the reactions and support from his comedy pals, from Louis CK to Sarah Silverman. Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1970s was an easy life. Well, easy as long as you didn’t have dyslexia or ADD, or were a Jew. And once you added gay into the mix, life became more difficult. So Todd Glass decided to hide the gay part, no matter how comic, tragic, or comically tragic the results. It might have been a lot easier had he chosen a profession other than stand-up comedy. By age eighteen, Todd was opening for big musical acts like George Jones and Patti LaBelle. His career carried him through the Los Angeles comedy heyday in the 1980s, its decline in the 1990s, and its rebirth via the alternative comedy scene and the explosion in podcasting. But the harder he worked at his craft, the more difficult it became to manage his “situation.” There were the years of abstinence and half-hearted attempts to “cure” himself. The fake girlfriends so that he could tell relationship jokes onstage. The staged sexual encounters to burnish his reputation offstage. It took a brush with death to cause him to rethink the way he was living his life; a rash of suicides among gay teens to convince him that it was finally time to come out to the world. Now, Todd has written an open, honest, and hilarious memoir in an effort to help everyone—young and old, gay and straight—breathe a little more freely. Peppered with anecdotes from his life among comedy’s greatest headliners and tales of the occasionally insane lengths Todd went through to keep a secret that—let’s face it—he probably didn’t have to keep for as long as he did, The Todd Glass Situation is a front-row seat to the last thirty plus years of comedy history and a deeply personal story about one man’s search for acceptance.

Abby Abernathy is re-inventing herself as the good girl as she begins her freshman year at college, which is why she must resist lean, cut, and tattooed Travis Maddox, a classic bad boy.