In her fiction debut, Deborah Levison, author of the acclaimed, multi award-winning true crime book, THE CRATE, weaves a tale snatched from the headlines. A NEST OF SNAKES is loosely based on a spate of lawsuits in which adult men accused their elite private schools of abuses that shocked the nation. In A NEST OF SNAKES, Brendan Cortland is a broken man. Middle-aged, pasty, pudgy, and fearful, he suffers from chronic depression, nightmares, and agoraphobia. His contact with the outside world is limited to trolling chatrooms, where he hunts pedophiles, and a weekly session with his psychiatrist, to whom he describes dreams of being devoured by predators. The doctor suspects catastrophic abuse, and maybe something more; but in all his years of therapy Brendan never divulged the deepest source of his trauma. Pushed to his breaking point, Brendan embarks on a quest for justice. It’s the terrifying step he’s avoided for decades: going public with his story. His lawyer warns him that testifying might mean dredging up painful memories, ones he’d rather keep buried. Still, no one is prepared for the horrible secrets and revelations that emerge during the trial … least of all Brendan himself. Reviewers call A NEST OF SNAKES “heart wrenching,” “raw and compelling,” “unforgettable,” and “a roller-coaster ride of surprising twists” leading to a “staggering climax” and an “absolutely perfect” ending. Monster Librarian hails A NEST OF SNAKES as one of the fall’s most talked-about novels.

Ivo, Snakes' Nest. A "tale badly told" in the most artful manner.

The illustrated Blackwater Novels are set in the 1930s along the fictional Blackwater River and Blackwater Swamp, near the town of Turpentine, Georgia, and in the countryside near a very real Birmingham, Alabama. Identical twins Johnny and Will are orphaned and separated as toddlers. Johnny is adopted by an abusive aunt in Tennessee. Will is adopted by a loving, affluent couple who live in the country near Birmingham, Alabama. When he grows into boyhood, Johnny runs away to reunite with his twin. A Nest of Snakes is the third in the Blackwater Novel Series and finds the twins reunited. As they are sleeping in a tree house, they overhear a plot. Later, they return to the Blackwater River to connect with their friend Rad Fox to help Linc and Sheriff Clyde who are in danger from the Klu Klux Klan. Once again, good people join together to confront racial hatred.

Legendary travel writer Theroux drives the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border, then goes deep into the hinterland to uncover the rich, layered world behind today's brutal headlines.

Because future adversaries are likely to look for alternative means to challenging the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in the air to counter U.S. airpower, a recent RAND study for the USAF investigated those means. As part of that study, this historical effort sought to better understand past, present, and future ground threats to air bases. In the course of the research, it became clear that attacks on air bases were much more frequent and successful than is commonly appreciated. For this reason, the history of these attacks is pertinent to future USAF operations. This report presents a comprehensive overview of ground attacks on air bases from the first known attacks in 1940 to the most recent in 1992. The objectives, tactics, and outcomes of those attacks are analyzed to identify lessons learned and their applications to future conflicts. In particular, this report identifies the attack techniques that proved most difficult to counter and offers some suggestions for improving air base defenses against them. The five primary conclusions of this study are as follows: The most common air base attack objective was to destroy aircraft; seventy-five percent of the 645 attacks used standoff weapons; standoff attacks have proved extremely difficult to counter; reliance on non-air force services for air base defense proved problematic for Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) on Crete, the German Luftwaffe in North Africa, and the USAF in Vietnam; small forces using unsophisticated weapons have successfully destroyed or damaged over 2,000 aircraft.

“The Snakes is many things—a parable and an ancient drama where a father’s greed devours his children, a police procedural, an avid take on tabloid venality, and a bitter comedy, superbly observed, where behind a woman’s eyes she is ‘all movement inside herself, like a wasp in a glass.’ I admit that I’m still shaken by parts of this novel. Sadie Jones writes with pitiless aplomb and corrosive intelligence.”—Louise Erdrich A chilling page-turner and impossible to put down, THE SNAKES is Sadie Jones at her best: breathtakingly powerful, brilliantly incisive, and utterly devastating. The new novel by Sadie Jones tells the tense and violent story of the Adamsons, a dysfunctional English family, with exceptional wealth, whose darkest secrets come back to bite them. Set mostly in rural France during contemporary times, THE SNAKES is an all-consuming read and a devastating portrait of how money corrupts, and how chance can deal a deadly hand. THE SNAKES exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her father’s filthy money. But when Bea’s brother Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France) dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion which arise bring other dark family secrets—and violence—to the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.

A snake smells with its tongue, hears with its flesh, and breathes under the sand with one lung; it can copulate for days with one snake or with fifty at once; it has infrared radar; and it can induce spontaneous bleeding if threatened. With all these qualities, it is easy to see how snakes have such varied associations in cultures around the world: while celebrated in tattoos and tales, and for medicinal benefits, snakes are also so universally feared that they constantly endure intense persecution and rarely enjoy protected rights. Drake Stutesman explores here in Snake the fascinating natural history of the maligned serpentine. Stutesman examines a wide range of sources to investigate the complex and widespread symbolism the snake has inspired, including the serpent's temptation of Eve in the Bible, Kaa in The Jungle Book, the Chinese zodiac, Indian snake charmers, and the Hollywood film Anaconda. She looks at the role snakes have played in human culture and science, from snake cuisine and the use of venom in medicine to the intriguing history of snake symbolism in art, architecture, cinema, and even clothing. Richly illustrated and written in an engaging style, Snake is an invaluable resource for snake enthusiasts and scholars, as well as for all who love, admire, or fear this fascinating and enduring animal.

"The music has stopped in the forest! All the animals rush to see what has happened. When they discover why Mrs. Bird stopped singing, they try their best to help. Just when the task seems impossible, along comes Mr. Snake with an unusual secret"--Amazon.com.

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust - in ghettos, on death marches, and in concentration camps - a young couple seeks refuge in North America. They settle into a new life, certain that the terrors of their past are behind them. That is, until a single act of unspeakable violence defiles their sanctuary.

Updated to reflect the most recent species classifications, a second edition of the beautifully illustrated and beloved guide to 600 members of the suborder Serpentes. For millennia, humans have regarded snakes with an exceptional combination of fascination and revulsion. Some people recoil in fear at the very suggestion of these creatures, while others happily keep them as pets. Snakes can convey both beauty and menace in a single tongue flick, and so these creatures have held a special place in our cultures. Yet, for as many meanings as we attribute to snakes—from fertility and birth to sin and death—the real-life species represent an even wider array of wonders. Now in a new edition, reflecting the most recent species classifications, The Book of Snakes presents 600 species of snakes from around the world, covering roughly one in seven of all snake species. It will bring greater understanding of a group of reptiles that have existed for more than 160 million years and that now inhabit every continent except Antarctica, as well as two of the great oceans. This volume pairs spectacular photos with easy-to-digest text. It is the first book on these creatures that combines a broad, worldwide sample with full-color, life-size accounts. Entries include close-ups of the snake’s head and a section of the snake at actual size. The detailed images allow readers to examine the intricate scale patterns and rainbow of colors as well as special features like a cobra’s hood or a rattlesnake’s rattle. The text is written for laypeople and includes a glossary of frequently used terms. Herpetologists and herpetoculturists alike will delight in this collection, and even those with a more cautious stance on snakes will find themselves drawn in by the wild diversity of the suborder Serpentes.