Thrashing Nikki (Beyond her Control Erotic Series Book 9)
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When Mac discovers that she is dead, Sidney insists that it was not his fault: Before I was a general. And now I am a fish. Hurray for the magicians. He tells Mac that he is going to the river for a swim and runs off laughing. It leads him to create an alternative reality. He is compelled to share his thoughts with someone, so he forces the woman to listen. He demands from his captive the recognition that he cannot get from his peers. He needs that recognition so that he can stop his fear from getting the best of him. But in the end, it does get the best of him. He kills what, only moments before, he thought could save him.
He is his own worst enemy, in the deepest sense of the phrase. When he kills the woman, he departs hopelessly from. In the end, Sidney is the most tragic figure because he cannot handle his fate alone. But later, Mac redirects his anger toward an enemy general he spots on the other side of the river. He complains to himself that the general is privileged and that this privilege and power force soldiers like himself, on the other side, to follow orders to which they do not consent.
It is an opportunity that is unlikely to present itself again—certainly not after he returns home to his job as a repairman—so he is going to take it. The plan is this: Mac will paddle down the river to create a distraction while the others slip into the enemy camp and kill the general. As we see Mac heading downriver, he appears to be brave, even fearless, as he faces his own death. But Mac may be the most fearful of all the characters. As Mac approaches his chosen death, we hear his thoughts: It hurts too much. To keep hurting everyone else in every direction and to be hurt, with all the separate hates exploding day after day.
A curse buzzes out of your mouth with every word you say. And nobody alive can tell which is which or what you mean. You try door after door when you hear voices you like behind them but the knobs come off in your hand. Does he choose a purpose to die for, so that he can avoid living in a world he cannot control or understand?
He seems to want to escape the responsibility of his past actions, which have consequences beyond his control. Nobody else is me. It was all wrong. Oh, what a trade—him for me! What a thing to come to at the end? Like building a bridge or stealing the crown jewels. Thanks, general [he laughs], thanks! Through this chosen death, he can claim an identity. And as he continues down the river, he is exuberant. He seems utterly fulfilled and happy to meet his fate.
At least Mac will die fighting a battle of his own choosing. But we are led to ask of Mac, why this battle? But Mac does not see killing the general as good for humankind or for some larger cause; he sees it only as fulfilling his own desire to matter. The lieu- tenant is a good leader, but he is not bent on being a hero. He is unafraid in each new situation, even when risking his life. He always acts skillfully, prudently, and cautiously, but he is always detached. His actions are never part of some larger purpose.
As we learn through his monologues, he never lies to himself. When they must kill several enemy soldiers to get their food and weapons, the lieutenant does not try to justify the action or give it a larger meaning. He reflects on the dead bodies and says to himself: So, when Mac presents his plan to assassinate the general, the lieutenant hesitates at first because he does not want to risk his life needlessly, and the cause is not important to him.
In response, Mac challenges him, asking him why. The lieutenant responds only to himself: The only reason is to hunt for the reason. He knows there is no clear meaning to either life or death, and he knows the future is uncertain. He exists right in the tension that Camus describes for us all: Here they reflect on their journey: Do you think he [Mac] will come back? I wish I could want what I wanted before. Meanwhile, drifting down the river toward base camp, a wounded Mac finds and rescues Sidney.
But by the time they reach the lieutenant and Fletcher, Mac has died. These two men cannot return to their old selves either: They have all been changed by facing their fears. But each has faced death as an individual and met his chosen fate. Cooke choose his own death. Is Mac living and dying authentically?
Or is he deluded in thinking that he can find an identity in his death? Is he escaping rather than choosing to live with the absurdity and alienation? The lieutenant does not see such meaning or purpose in death; he does not choose these escapes. So, how should one face freedom and death? With utter and uncontrol- lable fear, like Sidney, who is so empty that his escape is a complete split with reality?
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With escape, like Mac, who thinks that death will make him matter and thereby seems to choose both hope and suicide? Or with indifference, like the lieutenant, who faces both life and death with acceptance? Although he is not devoid of fear and desire in the mystic sense since it is clear that he too desires the captive woman , the lieutenant is not driven by fear and desire, as the others are.
One might just as easily have been born at one point in history as another, born a man or a woman, a general or a private. The most important way Kubrick sets up the theme of the absurd in Fear and Desire is to establish that which side one is on in this war is entirely arbitrary. We may wish to believe that our side is right, that there is an order to things, that there are right and wrong sides, but there are not.
Everything is contingent and therefore meaningless. But not everyone sees the matter as contingent. Half the trouble in the world happens because some people do; but I think half the good things happen that way too. For Fletcher, doing what is truly good is what should be valued. We are told nothing about the war, nothing about the cause of it, the morality of it, or even whether these men are committed to it.
What is made clear is the sheer contingency of their situation, the fact that they happen to be in enemy territory and want to get back to their own side. Their survival is a common concern, but every other cause or concern is purely individual rather than shared.
Kubrick was probably low on funds, making versatile actors a practi- cal resource. But there are other key elements in the film that suggest we are to view the general and the captain as mirror images of the lieutenant and Fletcher. For example, in the beginning of the film, the four soldiers come across a friendly dog, but they end up chasing it off for the sake of keeping their presence a secret. The captain insists that the dog is loyal to the general, but we know that the dog does not care which master it serves.
Toward the end of the film, the general speaks to his captain, reflecting on his position in life and in the war. Like Sidney, he does not talk to himself but speaks aloud to the officer, who does not say much in response. The general expresses his discomfort at being responsible for the planned slaughter of the four soldiers, whose presence is now known.
He expresses his own feeling of being trapped and wonders whether his death is being planned.
The general recognizes and faces the fact that he is a pawn in a game, that he is not in control of his destiny and never was. This might seem tragic, but perhaps he is not much different from the lieutenant. The lieutenant lives and the general dies, but this too is contingent. Each faces his fate with indifference, and each has nothing else to live or die for. Neither man lies to himself, and neither is afraid. It will not be chosen, and it will have no larger meaning,.
Cooke but he will be lucid about that, too. He will not pretend to have lived or died for anything more. Facing the Challenge Alone For Camus, to live and die with honesty is the central challenge of being human.
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I can, however, choose to accept a reason for my own life, or choose to live without meaning altogether. But above all, I must not try to escape from making this decision for myself. And this, ultimately, is why Fear and Desire is not a tragedy. Although not everyone in the film lives with lucidity or with revolt, almost everyone is able to recognize this condition and face it in his own way.
With the exception of Sidney, each character faces these questions alone. The other three men are able to cooperate in order to assassinate the general, yet each retains his individuality because each has different motivations for participating. Strangelove, we see just the opposite.
Here, Kubrick addresses the question of what happens when men try to handle the most important human issues as collectives rather than as individuals—when they pretend to share motivations. Indeed, the madness of Sidney in Fear and Desire becomes the norm in Dr. Strange- love—madness disguised as procedure, protocol, and diplomacy. Facing the Absurd as a Collective: Strangelove takes place at the height of the cold war, which, by definition, is not a real war in the sense of combat and bombs.
It is a war of pure fear, located almost entirely in the mind. The difference is that here, it is a war between collective minds, groups of generals plotting against each other. The story begins just as General Jack D. Ripper an obvious play on the name of mur- derer Jack the Ripper has executed Plan R, which calls for a U. Air Force wing to fly over Russia and initiate full-scale nuclear combat.
Once it is out of range, and Plan R has been initiated, all communications are cut off, even to the president. This makes the plan irreversible, provided the bomber is not shot down by either side. As General Ripper puts it, we are now forced to accept the only rational option remaining: The Doomsday Machine is designed to automatically initiate a coun- terattack if the Americans ever launch a nuclear strike, just in case there are no Russians left to do so. Like Plan R, the Doomsday Machine cannot be stopped for any reason once it is set into motion, so both represent ir- reversible courses to total nuclear war.
The Russian Doomsday Machine, moreover, has a built-in absolute holocaust mechanism: President Merkin Muffley Peter Sellers and the Russian ambassa- dor realize that the matter is out of their hands, so they turn to Dr. Strange- love for help. Strangelove is an ex-Nazi scientist who once served Adolf Hitler but now works for the United States, presumably obtained through Project Paper Clip, which gave immunity and asylum to German scientists in exchange for their intelligence and services. We do not see Strangelove until near the end of the film, but when we do, the symbolism is apparent.
The problem is that Dr. Strangelove is completely mad. Only a select few—beau- tiful women and American military men—will be moved underground to wait out the nuclear holocaust, when they will once again take up the Nazi agenda of building a master race. Cooke Mandrake and General Ripper Dr. The film is a story of their failure. The first effort to open up a dialogue is led by Group Captain Lionel Mandrake Peter Sellers again , a British officer who grasps the gravity of the situation and decides to meet with the mad General Ripper.
Mandrake is horrified, sitting with his face buried in his hands, as Ripper tries to console him. Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water? On no account will a Commie ever drink water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Why, do you realize that 70 percent of you is water? And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. You beginning to understand? Oh, ah, yes [giggles nervously, scared]. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure grain alcohol?
Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes. Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation, fluoridation of water? Yes, I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Well, do you know what it is? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face? He desperately wants to believe that there is some meaning to it all—some reason why Ripper started a nuclear holocaust. But no rational explanation is given.
For too long the Russians and Americans have been lying and scheming, and perhaps no conspiracy is too far-fetched at this point. But his fear has escalated out of control, and now he simply imagines a terrorist plot in every glass of water he drinks. So, Ripper sees a first strike as the only solution, thus escaping into the false hope that there is actually a way for the United States to win this war. Once he has chosen this escape into hope, however, he realizes that he will likely be captured and tortured. But as he tells Mandrake, he is terrified at the prospect of torture and knows that he will never be able to withstand it.
He casually walks into the bathroom, as though he is going to clean up, and shoots himself, leaving Mandrake alone. Mandrake and Colonel Bat Guano Now Mandrake is faced with even more insanity and must work furiously to find the secret code to call off the attack, which only Ripper knew. The one man who could have prevented the end of the world is gone, and the only one left who may still have a shot in the dark is Mandrake.
Mandrake demands a rational explanation from Bat Guano but instead gets nonsense:. Colonel, I must know what you think has been going on here. You want to know what I think? So, he tries to make a collect call, but that will not work either. That Coca Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in it.
Colonel, can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life and everything, when they learn you have obstructed a telephone call to the president of the United States? Shoot with the gun! And the problem at the center of it all is that the individual has been completely lost. Whether the individual has been absorbed by the military, by nationalism, or even by corporations, persons no longer truly exist.
The individual is simply the tool of massive institutions and the fears they instill. Strangelove each represent a different notch in the hierarchy. The president is at the highest level, and Dr. Strangelove is his adviser. Mandrake is a low-ranking group captain. But in fact, the individualities are not real in any significant sense. Indeed, the German mind is exchangeable with the American mind, and perhaps the same is true of the Russian mind. The Russian am- bassador, upon hearing that the probable outcome is the end of the world, barely blinks an eye.
It does not matter. He is, however, entirely impressed with Dr. In fact, anyone in the film could be anyone else, which is why Kubrick so artfully has the great actor Peter Sellers play Dr. Strangelove, Colonel Mandrake, and President Muffley. One man could just as easily be the mad scientist or the inept president or the lowly group captain. And all of them are absorbed into the massive collective mind of the American military.
They represent their institutions, not themselves. They have become their institutions. The Time Image, Gilles Deleuze discusses this round table in the War Room as the centerpiece of the film and notes that it is precisely what connects Dr. Attitudes of body achieve a maximum level of violence, but they depend on the brain. For, in Kubrick, the world itself is a brain, there is identity of brain and world, as in the great circular and.
Cooke luminous table in Doctor Strangelove, the giant computer in And, much like the computer in or the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, this mind goes mad and absorbs all its contained and surrounding individuals into that madness. Strangelove the madness at the round table results from a failure to recognize the individual, who is always welded into the massive mind and its lies. The very idea that people with such different interests and agendas could come to the same table is the worst lie of all, because each player knows that everyone else at the table is, or could be, lying.
And, in a sense, they all know that they are lying; while they are deliberating so politely, they all know that there is nothing any one of them or any group of them can do to stop what has already begun. They are not facing the truth that deliberation has already failed. The lie at the round table is the pretense that they can delib- erate. In actuality, they are completely powerless to stop what one madman has started.
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And for these reasons, all the men in Dr. Strangelove are just as insane as Ripper. Of course, the same problem exists on the other side. The Russian Doomsday Machine also functions to exclude dialogue and exclude the individual entirely. It is built to launch a return nuclear strike without any individual consent.
The Doomsday Machine was built by men to take men out of the equation, because of the fear of individual choices. Part of the problem with these deliberations between nations and among branches of the same government is that the participants, rather than being individuals discussing a problem, are representatives of those larger entities. In all cases, these men are not individuals; they are their respective institu- tions, and they let those institutions determine their actions. Strangelove, the procedures of international diplomacy are set up so that individuals represent their institutions, and those institutions are designed to engineer bad faith.
Individuals are no longer free but are merely representations of their institutions. And the more an individual represents an institution, the less of an individual he is. Here Camus reminds us of the complexity of his view and that there are other ways to commit suicide—namely, forgetfulness of self. King Kong the Cowboy As a consequence of this institutional eclipse of the individual, Dr. More than that, individuals are lost in the machine, their inner lives gone.
Only once in the film do we see an inner soul, in the form of Major T. King Kong Slim Pickens , who prepares his men to carry out Plan R and drop the bomb on Russia, which will mean certain death for the flight crew. The cowboy tells his crew: Well, boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies. But I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is going on back there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinking.
But I want you to remember one thing. Tell you something else. And that goes for every last one of you, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. We got some flying to do. The death of the crew members will have no meaning, and the folks back home are not counting on them to do this—rather, they are hoping desperately that they will not.
In fact, the folks back home are trying to shoot them down. But again, his social role is to take orders without knowing the details and without ever knowing why; his social role is to be in the dark. So, there was never any chance for his speech to have meaning. Cooke been told to initiate Plan R, there must be some reason, there must be some noble cause, and the folks back home must be counting on them. He studies how we face the absurd in war and, in particular, how we face death and meaninglessness.
The ideal, rather, is to live in the face of fear, and only the lieutenant approaches this ideal in Fear and Desire. Every other character is self-destructive, from either insanity or excessive hope—or both. Strangelove, however, it is just the opposite. Camus describes the absurd as a confrontation with the irrational, the longing for clarity, and the possibility of reconciling these two. But this is exactly what is lacking in Dr. There is no clarity; nor is there any recogni- tion of just how irrational this approach to deliberation is. Camus tells us that living honestly and lucidly is to refuse to hope, to be indifferent to the future.
The participants in each dialogue are too hopeful. And in their optimism, their screwups could not be more abundant. Even Mandrake—perhaps especially Mandrake—is tragic because he is still committed to the hope of escaping the madness, lying to himself completely. Still, as different as they are, both Fear and Desire and Dr. Strangelove have the same basic message: Facing the human condition—our freedom, our mortality, and the meaninglessness of our lives—is a one-person job.
No universal truth can spare us this burden. And no shared cause or collective can offer a place to hide. Perhaps this is the. Kubrick gives us nothing to hope for and nothing to escape into, but he helps us to recognize our condition and pushes us to be lucid about it.
Whether we are up to the task is, of course, up to each of us alone. Notes I would like to thank Jerold J. Abrams for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. Vintage Books, , The Absurd and Barry Lyndon. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. University of Minnesota Press, , Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Conard Full Metal Jacket is clearly divided into two very different parts—the first dealing with basic training at Parris Island, and the second concerning the war in Vietnam—and each part ends with a killing.
At Parris Island, the drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman Lee Ermey , berates and debases his new recruits in a most inhuman way, attempting to strip them of their individuality in order to turn them into effective killing machines. After the beating, Leonard goes insane; he shoots and kills the sergeant and then kills himself on the last night of training. Private Joker Matthew Modine provides a robot-like voice-over during the first half of the film, and he becomes the protagonist of the second half, which is composed of a series of vignettes of chaotic events in Vietnam.
Joker is a combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes magazine and is ultimately attached to a fighting unit that includes one of his friends from Parris Island, Cowboy Arliss Howard. The unit comes under fire from a sniper as the men—including Cowboy—are killed one by one. They finally track down the sniper—a young woman—who is seriously wounded in the confrontation. As she lies dying, she begs to be put out of her misery. The other marines are content to let her suffer, but Joker objects and finally shoots her to death.
One of the important themes of the film, which underlies the stark dif- ference between the two halves, is that of chaos and order. For example, in stripping the men of their differences and individuality, by dressing them Conard the same and shaving their heads, the Marine Corps is attempting to impose order and authority on the recruits.
This order is reflected in the perfect files of soldiers and the neat rows of cots and toilets in the barracks. In his inabil- ity to adapt to that order, Leonard reflects the folly of the entire enterprise, and his murder of the sergeant and subsequent suicide are the shocking consequences of that enterprise. The murder-suicide then unleashes the savagery and chaos of the second half of the film. I argue in this essay that Kubrick is showing us the chaotic nature of the world—one that resists the imposition of order—and the ambiguous nature of morality in such a world.
This notion goes back at least to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, of whose work only fragments remain. Well, as the water rushes by, in what sense is it the same river? If its constituent parts are continually changing, then it cannot be the same thing. Further, since your constituent parts are likewise continually changing, in what sense is it even the same you the second time? That is to say, and this is radical enough, Heraclitus seems to believe that in a continually changing world, there is no such thing as identity, meaning some essential properties that remain constant and by which we understand an object as the thing that it is.
They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed—they do not lie at all. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. It might refer to something quite basic, like a thing.
We take a chair to be a thing, an object, that can undergo change. That is to say, you can paint the chair, scratch it, dent it, and so forth; it can go through numerous changes, but we assume that it is still the same thing, the same object. Whatever the chair thing is, it remains the same—retains its iden- tity—throughout these alterations so long as we do not alter it essentially, such as by burning it to ashes or chopping it to bits. In claiming that the world is continually changing, like the waters of a river rushing by, Nietzsche is saying that there really is no such thing as a thing standing outside the change the only reality is the change, the flux.
There is no sameness or identity, only difference. Nietzsche says that our senses show us an ever-changing world, but it is thought, or reason, that falsifies that experience, and this out of necessity. We simply could not survive if we saw and experienced the world as it truly is, if we did not experience the commonality between things that we supposedly find in the world. For example, on the most basic level, if early humans did not see or experience predators as the same, or food sources as the same, they would not have survived. Further, our conscious, rational thought is inseparable from language, and consequently, our understanding of the world is only possible through language.
We use words to designate what we see and experience in the world. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. But thought cannot grasp the difference and uniqueness of each individual thing. Rather, it ignores the myriad differences among things and groups them under abstract concepts. No, of course not; no word does. It covers or describes countless different things.
That is how language functions, and again, our thinking is inseparable from language, such that our understanding of the world is based on this falsification of experience. So, on a very basic level, reality is a fluid, ever-changing flux consisting of unique, individual complexes that are more like what we call events rather than what we call things, since there is nothing stable and unchanging about them some events, such as hurricanes, are short-lived, while other events, such as chairs and people, are relatively long lasting, but they are still continu- ously changing.
And again, in order to make our way in such a world, we must see the dissimilar as similar, the unique as falling into a recognizable class. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The condi- tions of life might include error. In the first part of the film, at Parris Island, Sergeant Hartman attempts to form his recruits into marines, into killing machines. Part of this process involves suppressing or erasing all individuality and all differences among the men. The very first images of the film are of the various recruits having their heads shaved; then, after the title sequence, we find them in uniform, looking exactly alike and standing in neat rows, as Hartman circles the room and prepares them, in the most vulgar and psychologically abusive way, for what they are to expect in boot camp.
That is, instead of referring to them by their given names, which would reflect their individuality—names designate our families, our unique lineage or history—and thus their differences from one another, Hartman assigns to them and refers to them by nicknames that are like broad, abstract categories. But why attempt to erase their differences? Why attempt to make them all the same?
For exactly the same reason that Nietzsche claims we falsify our experience of the world. Hartman is attempting to impose order on chaos, to introduce sameness or identity into the flux here, I mean identity in the philosophical sense, the idea that things have some fixed essence standing outside the flux. Again, if the world is in flux, there is only difference. Same- ness or identity, and the commonality among things we group together, are all fictions, a falsification of experience.
But such fictions are necessary for us to grasp and understand reality. That is to say, in a world in chaotic flux, in which there is no such thing as identity, where there are no stable, enduring things, there can be no real oppositions. Nothing is ever the same as itself, so nothing can have an opposite.
Like our belief in things, bodies, cause and effect, and so forth, Nietzsche says, our belief in oppositions—heaven and hell, good and evil, reason and desire, altruism and egoism—is also in error. In an early work, he writes: Almost all the problems of philosophy once again pose the same form of question as they did two thousand years ago: Conard something originate in its opposite. So, which opposites are resolved or erased in the film? One of the most important oppositions in the actual war in Vietnam—not just in the movie—was the opposition between soldiers and civilians, or, perhaps more accurately, between combatants and noncombatants.
Modern just-war theory is based entirely on this distinction. Noncombatants have inalienable rights of the sort that Thomas Jefferson enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—specifically, the right to life. Combatants have suspended their right to life in favor of war rights, which include the right to wear a uniform, the right to bear arms in the name of the country, and the right to kill enemy combatants. The North Vietnamese who fought the U. It is only the rifle she is holding that distinguishes her from someone going to the market, doing the laundry, or working in an office.
Another opposition that is played with, if not erased, is that between male and female, or between masculinity and femininity. What is more, the gun, a traditional phallic symbol, is here feminized. However, the opposition with which Kubrick seems most concerned is that between the sacred and the profane. In the film, the holy and religious are intertwined with the vulgar, the sexual, the secular. There are many like it, but this one is mine. God apparently so approves of the fact that marines not only kill but kill everything they see that he gets a divine erection.
This points not only to the ambiguity of morality but also, as I said, to this erasure of the opposition of the sacred and the profane. Hartman does not seem bothered by the tension in believing at the same time that the Virgin Mary conceived. In such a world, there is no identity, no sameness; consequently, there can be no real oppositions.
Private Pyle As I discussed above, at Parris Island, Hartman attempts to stamp order on chaos, to erase all differences among the recruits, to give them identity or sameness. But, given a Nietzschean flux metaphysics, this is an impossibility. There is only chaos; there is only difference. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Not Enabled Word Wise: Not Enabled Screen Reader: Enabled Amazon Best Sellers Rank: Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally.
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Following the hit-and-run accident that steals his voice and future, the "Texas Tenor" struggles with depression and despair-until the night his daughter, Aria, is b What are you willing to risk to break free? Smothered by her husband's expectations and the rigid gender roles of the s, Lydia Colton sees a chance to rediscover and unfetter herself—if only she can find out the truth about a wealthy man's suspicious death. According to history in the small town of Tanner, North Carolina, Howard Galloway died from accidentally drinking poison moonshine, le The stillness of the warm, Kentucky afternoon on Copperhead Cove is shattered by the echo of a high-powered rifle, sending birds flying and two famous basketball coaches to a watery grave.
Bo Paxton, their fishing guide, becomes collateral damage, thrashing through the murky waters of Quail Hollow Lake for his life while a Chicago hit man hunts him down, beginning a life-and-death manhunt for The Civil War changed many lives and sometimes created monsters from men. Alf Bolin had simple desires: But he faced two obstacles—he was a poor fellow without any real prospects, and Emmy Ann's father promised to kill him if he so much as laid eyes on him. In , the seeds of conflict had already taken hold in the Ozark Mountains. In what became k Evil disguises itself behind a mask of beauty in Eye for an Eye.
Finley Bliss must survive a shocking betrayal by his stunning, murderous wife Eva. Stranded in a coma and warehoused in a squalid nursing home, Finley must cross back over the mystical river of life to consciousness, so he can reveal the truth, exact justice and seek revenge. Ruthless Eva has legal and medical proto Everyone is gifted, but some never open their package.
Spirits are everywhere for those privileged to see. Angela Maria Brannon, the adopted baby from Sacred Choices, has a sacred gift. Her connection with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin and Our Lady of Guadalupe empowers her to see ghosts. When mere survival blossoms into love. For the past decade, Matty Bell has lived safe in a self-made monochromatic life of work-eat-sleep-survive.
Living vicariously through her best friend Claire's perfect life wasn't the plan, nor her ideal. The vast blue sky. The endless flow of pristine waters. The days of summer that seem to have no end. All this belongs to Scotlin Bright as he gallops from one adventure to the next with no thought of tomorrow. Tomorrow is for grown-ups.
Today belongs to Scotlin. Every summer since his eighth birthday, he's run the trot-lines on the Stream River, eaten fried fish, and tried to play his Uncle Ro Fire-breathing dragon headed her way! Princess Bianca had never set foot outside the castle walls.