Rope Burns

The true crime story of a killer couple from California, their gruesome torture chamber on wheels, and the terror they left in their wake. The true story of one of the most notorious crime couples in recent American history is told. Michelle Michaud and James Daveggio forged a perverse alliance in late 1997. After customizing Michaud's minivan into a mobile torture chamber, the pair hit the road and began a nightmare spree of incest, kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder. Sixteen Pages of Shocking Photos! Michaud and Daveggio’s case was featured on Oxygen’s Snapped: Killer Couples.

This is the true story of what can happen when an obsession takes over your life, sucks you in and spits you back out again. Set during the world of boxing in the 1980s, it is a tale littered with wasted ambition and shattered hopes; a journey through boxing that begins with the summary execution of Muhammad Ali by Larry Holmes in 1980 and ends with the spectacle of yet another young life battling for survival on the surgeon's table; as injuries sustained by boxer Michael Watson during his world title fight with Chris Eubank left him fighting for his life. It seeks to answer why a man should risk his life in the ring and why so many are compelled to watch.

Richard gets frustrated by most of Mr. Best's assignments, but this latest one is the worst. He has to write a composition about a proverb that illustrates something that has happened in his life. And as if that isn't bad enough, Mr. Best has told him he needs to find his "writing voice." While working on the assignment, Richard finds his voice in more ways than one. He discovers that being himself makes a big difference in his writing and in his life.

The boxing stories that inspired the Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film: a New York Times Notable Book from “a heavyweight fiction contender” (Publishers Weekly). F. X. Toole knew boxing. Between bouts, he wrote, and two years before his death he published this collection of stories, giving readers an unprecedented look at the gritty life around the ring. He tells of a cutman with a sweet tooth, young fighters with dreams of celebrity, and a talented boxer who goes to Atlantic City for his biggest bout, only to be humiliated by the prejudices of a callous promoter. In “Million $$$ Baby,” the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film, an aged trainer takes on a female fighter, guiding her through disappointment, pain, and tragedy. And in “Rope Burns,” Toole realizes his epic vision, showing that even the purest fighter can succumb to the pressures of the world outside the sport. Throughout these stories, boxing’s violence is redeemed by the respect these men and women share, as they strap on gloves and prepare their bodies for the ultimate test. This ebook features an illustrated biography of F. X. Toole including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

She was born to save what he is sworn to destroy A lapsed Wiccan, Indira Simon doesn't believe in magic anymore. But when strange dreams of being sacrificed to an ancient Babylonian god have her waking up with real rope burns on her wrists, she's forced to acknowledge that she may have been too hasty in her rejection of the unknown. Then she meets mysterious and handsome Father Thomas. Emerging from the secrecy of an obscure Gnostic sect, he arrives with stories of a demon, a trio of warrior witches—and Indira's sacred calling. Yet there's something even Tomas doesn't know, an inescapable truth that will force him to choose between saving the life of the woman he's come to love—and saving the world.

In this hard-hitting collection of powerful and moving tales, F.X. Toole breathes life into vivid, compelling characters who radiate the fierce intensity of the worlds they inhabit: An aging cut man with an incorrigible sweet tooth Fearless Maggie Fitzgerald and her quest to become a champion boxer Señora Cabrera who makes low-fat refried beans to keep a local fighter in top form

This Pulitzer Prize-winning, fable-like short novel—by the author of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth—has been beloved around the world for nearly a century. This splendid and profoundly moving novel begins with a simple and seemingly senseless tragedy. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." A traveling monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the catastrophe and becomes obsessed with investigating the lives of the five victims in order to prove that their deaths had meaning. His mission is doomed to fail, but over the course of the story, the five unlucky individuals—a noblewoman, a maid, an orphan, an old man, and a child—come to life for the reader in all of their glorious complexity. Their intertwined lives—snuffed out in one shattering moment—illuminate the biggest questions that we can ask ourselves about the nature of love and meaning of the human condition.