The Victim

It's sweltering summer in New York City, and Asa Leventhal is alone. His co-workers ignore or condescend to him, his wife is away with her mother, and his estranged brother has run off, abandoning his wife and two sons. One night, Leventhal is confronted by a stranger--'one of those guys who want you to think they can see to the bottom of your soul'--who reveals himself to be a marginal figure from his distant past. Leventhal, accused of ruining the man's life, becomes shocked and dismissive, vehemently denying any part in the man's unhappy lot. But as time passes, he is increasingly unable to separate his own good fortune from the bad luck of this down-and-out stranger, who will not leave him be. A brief, haunting rumination on the vagaries of fate and responsibility, The Victim is, in the words of Norman Rush, Saul Bellow's "purest creation."

From the author of Don't Look Now comes a propulsive psychological thriller in which a single choice can be the difference between surviving a serial killer or becoming his next victim. Gem Golding only has two choices. A stranger holds a knife to her skin, his demands terrifying in the deserted parking garage. Should she surrender? Or should she fight back? This attacker is no ordinary criminal. This night, like so many of them, is all a game to him. He makes the rules, the rules that determine whether his victims live or die. Rules that will set Gem's fate in motion. He's waiting for her to decide. But how can you win the game when the rules are a mystery? What if surrendering is the worst thing you can do? What if fighting back will kill you? Two choices. Two outcomes. And only one way for Gem to survive. Following both possibilities to their hair-raising conclusions, The Victim is the perfect book for any fan of psychological thrillers.

The Victim Cult tackles the worldwide grievance culture and from ancient Rome to the White House today and on to campuses where some think themselves victims of "micro-aggressions." The book also looks at how corrosive victim thinking fuels movements as diverse as violent Antifa anarchists, Black Lives Matter protesters, and Donald Trump's "Capitol Hill" demonstrators.

The classic work that refutes the lies we tell ourselves about race, poverty and the poor. Here are three myths about poverty in America: – Minority children perform poorly in school because they are “culturally deprived.” – African-Americans are handicapped by a family structure that is typically unstable and matriarchal. – Poor people suffer from bad health because of ignorance and lack of interest in proper health care. Blaming the Victim was the first book to identify these truisms as part of the system of denial that even the best-intentioned Americans have constructed around the unpalatable realities of race and class. Originally published in 1970, William Ryan's groundbreaking and exhaustively researched work challenges both liberal and conservative assumptions, serving up a devastating critique of the mindset that causes us to blame the poor for their poverty and the powerless for their powerlessness. More than twenty years later, it is even more meaningful for its diagnosis of the psychic underpinnings of racial and social injustice.

Victims of the Book uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen’s masculinity, as evidenced by titles like Crise de jeunesse (Youth in Crisis, 1897), La Crise virile (Crisis of Virility, 1898), La Vie stérile (A Sterile Life, 1892), and La Mortelle Impuissance (Deadly Impotence, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen’s reading habits. Fin-de-siècle writers responded to this pathologization of reading with a profusion of novels addressed to young male readers, paradoxically proposing their own novels as potential cures. In the early twentieth century, this corpus was critically revisited by a new generation of writers. Victims of the Book shows how André Gide and Marcel Proust in particular reworked the fin-de-siècle paradox to subvert cultural norms about literature and masculinity, proposing instead a queer pact between writer and reader.

Includes material on education, illegitimacy, health care, housing, criminal justice, repression, and reform.

A beloved husband scientist is shot in Maui’s peaceful ‘Iao Valley. Olympic athletes are killed on luxury cruises around the world. Can two of Maui’s finest stop the violence? Detective Sergeant Keone Boyd travels to the Mediterranean with his new bride, while in Maui, his boss Tony Alcala investigates a horrific shooting in the normally peaceful ‘Iao Valley. Since the victim is a former neighbor of his protégé, Sgt. Angela Beyers, Alcala gives her the case. During her investigation, Angela discovers a file on the victim’s computer with clues to the shooting. But the file was saved while the victim was in a coma and no one else had access. So who left the clues? And how? As Angela investigates, Keone honeymoons on a luxury cruise but is soon recruited by Europol to investigate a serial killer methodically eliminating Olympic athletes. The killer, who claims to be the Greek god of death, has targeted a group of Canadian Olympic medalists on the ship. Does the computer file contain actual memories or a vivid fantasy? Is a mythical god sending athletes to Elysium, or is a deranged maniac murdering them? Are the investigations related or are the lines between reality and fantasy dissolving both on Maui and twelve time zones away? Join Maui’s finest as they investigate the most controversial—and dangerous—cases of their careers. "Rick Ludwig has done it again! With Voice of the Victim, Ludwig expands his universe of clever detectives and intriguing mysteries with a hard-hitting examination of the past and how it shapes us into who we become. A beautiful, fast-paced novel you should pick up today!” RJ Johnson, author of The Twelve Stones “An auto accident destroys Detective Sergeant Keone Boyd’s roadster, plunging him into and unexpected realm as he grapples with a suspect’s alternate reality and unexpected plot twists. this is not your typical investigation. Eyes of the Beholder is a gripping read that leaves you wondering what comes next.” Kenneth Andrus, author of Arctic Menace

If you live for your family, would you die for your family? The third novel in the compulsive Mitchells and O’Haras trilogy.