In just his first five years of filmmaking, acclaimed Portland independent director Jon Garcia was able to produce four feature films. Eric B. Olsen examines the first four films of Garcias career in order to provide a deeper understanding of works that transcend the limitations of independent filmmaking and to show how they have attained the status of art. Part oral history and part film analysis, the book provides a detailed textual commentary on Tandem Hearts (2010), the directors first...

Rinse, Spit . . . and Die Steve Raymond never wanted to be a cop. He never wanted to be a private eye. He was, in fact, a member of the nice, quiet profession of dentistry. So the one thing Steve Raymond, DDS, never figured on was having to solve a murder. Then one night, in a local Seattle tavern, Steve is the only doctor in the house when a musician collapses onstage, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death gradually pull the reluctant dentist into conducting his own inves...

Terrifying Tales of Classic Horror Beginning with a last-man-on-Earth tale that ends with a surprising twist and finishing with a seductive ghost story, If I Should Wake Before I Die collects the complete horror short fiction of author Eric B. Olsen into one volume. Written between 1986 and 1992, these stories reflect the inspiration of major horror writers of the time, like Stephen King and Peter Straub, as well as the EC horror comics of the 1950s. Each of the primary stories is prefaced...

A Dental Probe . . . Crime-solving dentist Steve Raymond is back in an all-new mystery. When a colleague brings disturbing news of a patient who has died in her chair, she calls on the Seattle dentist for help. Little does Dr. Raymond realize that his offer to treat the surviving family members will draw him into another murder investigation. At the same time, Steve is playing saxophone with the best band he’s ever been in. But the choice between music and dentistry is just one of the deci...

Nazi doctor Konrad Zindell flees to South America at the end of World War Two to continue the experiments he began at Auschwitz working under the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Forty-five years later, brilliant neurosurgeon Paul Raymond is abducted from his Seattle home. The only person who can connect the two is medical student Steve Raymond. Looking for answers to the disappearance of his father, he and his girlfriend Janet Newell suddenly find themselves in a desperate race to save their o...

An Emerald City Elegy For Ray Neslowe, being a private detective in Seattle isn’t quite the life of excitement people see on TV. He serves legal papers on witnesses and does background checks for clients, but most of his work comes in the form of spying on cheating spouses for his divorce-attorney employer. He shoots with a camera, not a gun. Then one night on a stakeout, all that changes when Neslowe suddenly finds himself on the run—the only problem is, he doesn’t know who’s after him. D...

When the Ink Dries, Someone Dies Something strange is happening to Giles Barrett. A horror writer of modest renown, he gets his inspiration from seeing ordinary people in everyday life. But when his dark imagination takes over his characters dont just die, they must first confront their most terrifying fears. Then one day Giles stumbles upon an obituary in the newspaper with the same name as one of the characters in his stories. What he dismisses as coincidence becomes all too real when it...

For nearly a hundred years, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome has been considered one of the great works of American literature, a book that nearly everyone has heard of, if not required to read in school. Ethan Frome: Analysis in Context is a contextual close reading of Wharton’s classic novel, a unique approach that brings together a wealth of research and literary criticism to look at the story in an entirely new light. There isn’t another book like it—about any novel. The book analyzes not o...

In his first collection of essays, author and educator Eric B. Olsen offers the reader a wide range of analytical thought and cultural criticism. The book opens by examining the history of film in the twentieth century and then analyzing literature from ancient Greek drama to modern American poetry, as well as commenting on jazz and popular music. The final group of essays concerns topics as diverse as climate change, popular culture, religion, anti-intellectualism and politics. Drawing on...

We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the younger versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T. C. Boyle, Michelle ...

Combining spine-tingling stories, documented evidence, and interviews with some of the top names in paranormal investigation—including the stars of TV’s “Ghost Hunters,” “Ghost Adventures,” and more—America’s Most Haunted gives you a terrifying chance to tour our nation’s most famous haunted places...Throughout the United States, there are places haunted by souls both malevolent and benign. Places where paranormal activity runs rampant. Places where we can...

Your Church Security Handbook Crimes against churches and ministers are rising at an alarming rate. Almost on a weekly basis, we read or hear about a shooting or act of violence in or on a church property. From burglary, to domestic violence to shootings, churches are getting a wake up call that they are no longer the safe and sacred places they once were. As our culture becomes more secular, churches will be targeted even more. Jesus warned that in the last days treacherous times would co...