When world-class con artist John Law discovers a congressional committee has frozen the $97 million he scammed from Uncle Sam, he heads straight for the belly of the beast: Washington DC. Law soon draws hard-drinking, skirt-chasing US Senator Frank Mahoney and his straight-arrow chief of staff Tom Beckman into an elaborate scheme designed to trick Mahoney into getting Law's stolen millions out of stir.Before long the cast of characters of this convoluted comic caper includes an Afr...

Everybody's going nuts over the Biggest Slot Machine in the World. Octogenarian skinflint Elmore Joad thinks it will attract enough "suckers" to put his aging Mother Lode Hotel and Casino back in the black, especially since he's had the giant slot rigged never to hit the $1 million dollar jackpot. Part time guitarist and full time slot cheat Darryl "the Wire" Miller wants to beat the big machine in the worst way, and if he plays his cards right he may get Kitty Carson, Reno's best card mec...

It's not the real world . . . it's Beltway.Before he knows what hit him, regular guy Clement Green has fallen down the rabbit hole and finds himself in Beltway, the nation's capitol as you've never seen or imagined it before. Sworn in as freshman Copulant from the great state of Bucolia, Clem is soon up to his hips in handlers, red ink, bureau-rats, invisible committees pushing mysterious trillion dollar legislation, indigestible publicity stunts, and high-flying political intrigue...

A planet on strike, an alien love triangle, and a giant politician-eating artichoke: Galactic Senator Plunkitt is, literally and figuratively, up a tree.The trouble began when Plunkitt’s old school chum Flotsam Drang—a startlingly malodorous Denebian with an insatiable appetite for the pleasures of the flesh—set his eye-stalks upon the worst possible paramour: the secret tweet-heart of the planet Tree's most powerful bird.Their unlikely rivalry soon draws Plunkitt into a th...

The North American Jules Verne Society is pleased to present its first-ever anthology of short stories, written by a select group of modern authors, inspired by classics like Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, and other novels and stories by the 19th-century master of “Extraordinary Voyages,” Jules Verne.The collection includes the following stories:Joseph S. Walker: “The Do...

Everything you ever wanted to know about the substance that binds all mammals together.After drawing its first breath, every newborn mammal turns his or her complete attention to obtaining milk. This primal act was once thought to stem from a basic fact: milk provides the initial source of calories and nutrients for all mammalian young. But it turns out that milk is a much more complicated biochemical cocktail and provides benefits beyond nutrition. In this fascina...

Power and Schulkin reveal the amazing evolution of the human placenta—and in so doing show how each of our lives began.As the active interface of the most biologically intimate connection between two living organisms, a mother and her fetus, the placenta is crucial to human evolution and survival. Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin explore the more than 100 million years of evolution that led to the human placenta and, in so doing, they help unravel the mysteries of...

In this sweeping exploration of the relatively recent obesity epidemic, Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin probe evolutionary biology, history, physiology, and medical science to uncover the causes of our growing girth. The unexpected answer? Our own evolutionary success.For most of the past few million years, our evolutionary ancestors' survival depended on being able to consume as much as possible when food was available and to store the excess energy for periods when it was scarc...