Former private investigator and New York Times notable author David Corbett offers a unique and indispensable toolkit for creating characters that come vividly to life on the page and linger in memory. Corbett provides an inventive, inspiring, and vastly entertaining blueprint to all the elements of characterization-from initial inspiration to realization-with special insights into the power of secrets and contradictions, the embodiment of roles, managing the "tyranny of motive," and maste...

Just as a compass provides direction for an explorer, so does motivation provide direction for characters in fiction. The "compass" of character motivation is composed of four points: Lack, Yearning, Resistance, and Desire. In The Compass of Character you'll learn to deeply consider the key question "What does my character want?" and learn techniques to answer that question by writing realistic and empathetic characters without falling into formulaic, unsatisfying results that onl...

A country descending into civil war...A young artist forced to cross a nation in chaosto retrieve her stolen masterpiece...Her guide and guardian-whose past remains strangely obscure...Georgie O'Halloran created an artistic and literary wonder-only to have it stolen from her and published under the thief's name. Worse, it's the inspiration for a wildly pop...

The most notorious love letters in American history-supposedly destroyed a century ago-mysteriously reappear, and become the coveted prize in a fierce battle for possession that brings back to life the lawless world evoked in the letters themselves.Lisa Balamaro is an ambitious arts lawyer with a secret crush on her most intriguing client: former rodeo rider and reformed art forger, Tuck Mercer. In his newfound role as expert in Old West artifacts, Tuck gains possession of the supp...

This anthology of " genuinely haunting noir fiction " set in the Golden City features new stories by Jim Nisbet, Alejandro Murguía, Michelle Tea and others ( Publishers Weekly).Oscar Wilde once quipped that anyone who disappears is said to be seen in in San Francisco. With its famous fog, winding streets, and hazardously steep hills, it is certainly an ideal place for getting lost. It's also an ideal sett...

Embedding climate resilient development principles in planning, urban design, and architecture means ensuring that transformation of the built environment helps achieve carbon neutrality, effective adaptation, and well-being for people and nature. Planners, urban designers, and architects are called to bridge the domains of research and practice and evolve their agency and capacity, developing methods and tools consistent across spatial scales to ensure the convergence of outcomes towards ...

Dunmore's New World tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, whose long-neglected life boasts a measure of scandal and intrigue rare in the annals of the colonial world. Dunmore not only issued the first formal proclamation of emancipation in American history; he also undertook an unauthorized Indian war in the Ohio Valley, now known as Dunmore’s War, that was instrumental in opening the Kentucky country to white settlement. In th...

First Published in 1965 Politics and the Airlines looks into the making of airline policy in five countries, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, and the United States. It shows the part played by political parties, ministers, government departments, regulatory bodies, and the boards of management of airlines themselves. In four of the countries the major airlines are publicly owned and have been involved in the cut and thrust of political controversy between enthusiasts for public ...

Seven stories of desperation and death from a master of crime fictionSterling Associates recruited Satcher in the killing fields of Iraq. A marine who learned the brutalities and frustrations of war in Fallujah, Satcher was ideal for Sterling, a shadowy corporation whose business is to kill for America when the CIA can't. He comes to Guatemala, the deadliest nation in the Americas, to kidnap a Sinaloan cartel member and turn him against his family. There he meets O...

Thirteen beautifully wrought tales of crime, passion, and people on the brink of disasterMarybeth met Jamie at the Horn & Whistle, a neighborhood pub warm enough to keep out the chill on a bleak January day. Over a pint of stout, he won her heart with bad jokes and cynical Irish charm. Two years later, she loves him more than ever, but she can see that he's bracing for a fall. When everything collapses, when Jamie's job disappears and the house is foreclosed on and ...

In SCOUNDRELS, an all-original anthology featuring bestselling and Edgar and Shamus award-winning writers, you’ll read stories of desperate grifters, brokers hedging big bets for the big take, schemers working the long con for the sure money, used car salesman with golden dreams and rusted hopes, crooked lawyers and bent clients, one percenters hustling for that last half-percent, kind-hearted killers and the lonely hearted who tell themselves any lie as the double down for the long count....

An ex-con risks his freedom and his life to rekindle an old love affairThey call him Bad Dan, the Man Who Can. A talented photographer who makes his living smuggling premium Thai marijuana into the States, he meets Shel at a Las Vegas blackjack table, and falls instantly in love. After two years of whirlwind passion, they are living in California and plotting a final score. But in his haste to escape the con life, Dan makes a fatal mistake. The score goes sour, and...