Smoke And Broken Mirrors

Life continues for Maribele, as she struggles to control her gift. A madman is starting fires and killing the homeless. An escaped demon swears revenge. A tragedy strikes too close to home.

"Just call it the memoir love story of a drug addict white rapper with unresolved mommy and daddy issues." Ha. Yeah, that's a laugher. The love story part of course being my wife Alice. Except she forgets that my rap career in Southern California essentially ended with the shootout in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble, sending us pinballing across the country like a couple of wanna-be Bonnie and Clydes. Only Bonnie and Clyde weren't high on drugs, and they stuck to banks. Alice was a waitress when we met, so restaurants just made sense. And I'm pretty sure Bonnie and Clyde never had children. Our son Caleb was born in a crack motel while the cops were out in full force looking for us. But all that comes later - like way later - after Alice first goes into labor with our daughter Hannah on Halloween night - the night Corey and I got robbed at gunpoint by the Three Stooges. Of course, that wouldn't have happened had I not let Alice convince me that selling crystal meth would make me more money than just pot and ecstasy. But then Corey always said events like that tend to serve a higher purpose. What can I say - Halloween has always had a weird significance to me. There's something symbolic about running around at night with a mask on trying to be Master of your own Universe surrounded by ghosts and ghouls and goblins with your toy weapon in one hand and your goodie bag in the other trying to score as much candy as you can before the real darkness takes over - (Where did that child go? That kid with the He-Man mask? / Sometimes our biggest fears are the answers to questions we ask) Any other questions? Just read the damn book.

Karim Chammas returns to Lebanon, his family, and his past after ten years of establishing a new life in France. Back in Beirut, Karim reacquaints himself with his brother Nassim, now married to his former love Hind, and old friends from the leftist political circles within which he once roamed under the nom de guerre Sinalcol. By the end of his six-month stay, he has been reintroduced to the chaos of cultural, religious and political battles that continue to rage in Lebanon. Overwhelmed by the experiences of his return, Karim is forced to contemplate his identity and his place in Lebanon's history. The story of Karim and his family is born of other stories that intertwine to form an imposing fresco of Lebanese society over the past fifty years. Broken Mirrors examines the roots of an endemic civil war and a country's unsettled past.

Smoke and Mirrors takes you on a journey of self-reflection through the mind of a teenage DJ as she navigates her way through a smoky haze of music, drugs and partying. To the outside world, she appears to be a 19-year-old having the time of her life. But on the inside, she’s battling hurdles that most people wouldn’t experience in a lifetime. She’s eventually forced to look in the mirror, past the thick smog of the illusion, and ask, “Who am I when the smoke clears?”

An investigation into the materialist madness of Darwinian views of evolution. Further investigation of modern quantum and evolutionary-developmental discoveries shows the Darwinian evolutionary worldview is incorrect, and a non-theistic Intelligent Design operating from the quantum level is correct. This leads to the exploration of the view that the universe is a self-perceiving organism employing sentient beings as its perceiving agents.

This collection covers a diverse and multi-disciplinary range of topics on how masculinities might be re-imagined outside of patriarchal power structures. Crucially, the book highlights the lived complexity of both patriarchies and masculinities as plural and situated, exploring questions of how they are constructed, negotiated and re-negotiated in daily practice; of how performative regimes interact, contradict and overlap with each other across a range of contexts. Contributors engage with theoretical frameworks engaging with feminist theory, contemporary politics of gender, bodies and marginalised experiences of masculinites. Global case studies are wide-ranging and include analysis of masculinity among communities such as drag artists, InCels and e-sports enthusiasts, as well as in the context of the body, for instance in relation to alcoholism and physical disability. In an era of resurgence of typically hegemonic patriarchal figures in the form of 'strong men' leadership, this book seeks to uncover what an alternative vision of masculinity could look like - one that is firmly rooted in a gender equality and feminist discourse.

A new collection from Detroit poet M. L. Liebler, a unique voice in contemporary poetry.

H is for Hell is another thought-provoking collection of dark poetry by Lance Barnwell, author of Dereliction. Sometimes unnerving, often creepy, but always horrific. Psst? Death; it creeps, yeah? And it creeps For what is owed is overdue A floorboard creaks, it never sleeps And now it?s here? it?s come for you?ÿ