Excommunication, like revenge, is best served cold. Mine was—cold and quick on a clear autumn day. Excommunication! The word resonates like the bell of a gothic cathedral and seems as anachronistic as a rank of grinning gargoyles, as rebel monks, warrior popes, or heretics burning in a town square. It is a rite one might suppose had been relegated long ago to a footnote beyond the margins of modern life, a practice outdated as the related ritual of exorcism that serves the same end—the exp...

Oracles at Painted Mesa is Salt Lake attorney Paul Toscano’s account of murder, intrigue, corruption, and paranormal events that involve ley lines, UFOs, quantum mechanics, and the search for the foundations of cosmic reality. The story, set in high deserts of northern Arizona, is presented as a documentary based on exhibits prepared by protagonist Buck Winston delivered to Toscano in a sealed box with instructions to publish Buck's strange story told through newspaper articles, letters, t...

Cliff Harward, a lawyer in a solo practice, chokes on a fish bone and has a near death experience in which he is visited by Jesus Christ, who asks Cliff to serve as defense counsel in an criminal trial brought by the devil, who has accused Jesus of blasphemy (for putting himself higher than the law) and of committing atrocities (for refusing to prevent evil, pain, and suffering). Despite the initial doubts of Cliff's wife, Ann, the couple work together to prepare for trial, which is limite...

Nineteen-year-old Rad is kidnapped from a deserted California beach by a strange, dark creature. With no memory of this abduction, Rad awakens in a lavish, baroque villa on a Mediterranean island. There Rita Smithson and Dr. Francis Anatoli, colleagues of his recently deceased father, explain that Rad was raised without a knowledge of his origins to protect him from forces bent on destroying his family because of its genetic predisposition to psychic powers such as telekinesis and remote v...

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times).A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 YearsStories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the ...

The untold story of how John Ramsey survived unspeakable tragedy and learned to hope again.Like the biblical Job, John Ramsey had it all-wealthy, social position, a loving family. And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him.First came the death of his eldest daughter in a car accident in 1992. Then, four years later, his beloved six-year-old, JonBenét, was murdered; Ramsey...

Fighting to survive in a ravaged world, a Dweller and a Savage form an unlikely alliance in New York Times bestselling author Veronica Rossi's "unforgettable dystopian masterpiece" (Examiner.com).Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland—known as The Death Shop—are slim. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He's wild—a savage—and her only hope of staying alive. A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, ...

"The single most important and valuable Heinlein book ever published."—Spider RobinsonRobert A. Heinlein has been hailed as one of the most forward-thinking science fiction writers of all time, and Expanded Universe (presented in two volumes) offers the perfect collection of his works to provide readers with true insights into his uniquely creative mind.Heinlein personally selected each story or essay for inclusion in this collection, which is ordered chronologically, start...

I FINALLY KNOW WHAT FEAR IS.FEAR IS THE DESIRE TO CHANGEYOUR LIFE FOREVER...THE MOMENT BEFORE THAT DESIRE COMES TRUE.

A world-defying love is put to the ultimate test in the New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to Veronica Rossi's "masterpiece," Under the Never Sky (Examiner.com ). In this second book in her spellbinding Under the Never Sky trilogy, bestselling author Veronica Rossi combines fantasy and dystopian elements to create a love story as perilous as it is unforgettable.It's been months since Aria last saw Perry. Months since Perry was named Blood Lord of the Tides, and Aria wa...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world.Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find "the Truth" about the universe and...

A duke's new charge is full of surprises in this steamy historical romance novella.The last thing Alexander St. Claire, Duke of Stourbridge, expected was Angelina Hawkins arriving on his doorstep ready to become his mistress! He thought his ward was a little girl, not a beautiful and bold young woman with uncanny knowledge of the arts of seduction. Alexander knows he should resist, for it would be only too easy to lose himself in her forever . . .