A vicious, virulent bout of combined greed and hysteria known in the African-American urban parlance as grab booty, grips several money-mad, dogged, recognition-seeking citizens after the authorities post a huge reward for the capture of some escaped convicts from the tough Deloffre State Prison. Among the escapees is the mangy Roadblock. He is the armed and extremely dangerous leader of both the escaped prisoners and the notorious, sinister Satan's Guerilla terrorist gang. The hell-bent, reckless reward-seekers risk life, limb, human rights, triumph, and tragedy in their furious and fanatical efforts to nab the fugitives amid the all-out chaos in 1981 South Central Los Angeles.

If a night I’ll always remember helps me forget the day I’ll always regret, isn’t that a win/win? After bombing her interview to become the next principal of Jasper Mill Middle-High School, Phoebe Kestrel decides that a Halloween party designed to encourage anonymous sex is just what she needs. After all, she'll never return to Jasper Mill. But when she finds out the next week that she did get the job, she has to worry about that Halloween Hookup coming home to roost. Wes Herrington is a high school art teacher and favorite son of Jasper Mill. The first time he meets the new principal, he figures out that it's her -- the Medusa that his Pirate hooked up with. Wes can't wait to hook up with her again. But can they? Can Phoebe establish herself as the new principal in a small town and have a relationship with one of her teachers at the same time? Even if she can, does she want to? Can Wes learn how to let Phoebe fight her own battles? Or will his benevolent chauvinism keep them apart? Welcome to Jasper Mill. A small town that’s big on romance. *** Author's Note: This story was originally published in the anthology "A Series of Unfortunate Meet Cutes." ***

Mike Mitchell�s translation of Simplicissimus was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. �It is a violent and often all-too-realistic picaresque, set in war-torn Europe during the 17th-century Thirty Years War. Simplicissimus is the eternal innocent, the simple-minded survivor, and we follow him from a childhood in which he loses his parents to the casual atrocities of occupying troops, through his own soldiering adventures, and up to his final vocation as a hermit alone on an island. It is Rabelasian in some respects, but more down to earth and melancholy.” Phil Baker in The Sunday Times �It is the rarest kind of monument to life and literature, for it has survived almost three centuries and will survive many more. It is a story of the most basic kind of grandeur - gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil - but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust, but immortal in the miserable splendour of its sins.” Thomas Mann

This book analyzes violence involving Catholics in the nineteenth-century world – revealing the motives for violence, showing the link between religious and secular grievances, and illuminating Catholic pluralism. Catholics and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Global World is the first study to systematically analyze the link between faith and violent action in modern history. Focusing on incidents involving members of the Roman Catholic Church across the globe, the book offers a kaleidoscopic overview of situations in which physical or symbolic violence attended inner-Catholic, Catholic-secular, and interreligious conflicts. Focusing especially on the role of agency, the authors explore the motives behind, perceptions of, and legitimation strategies for religion-related violence, as well as evaluating debates about conflict and discussing the role of religious leadership in violent incidents. Additionally, they illuminate the complex ways in which religious grievances interacted with secular differences and highlight the plurality of Catholic standpoints. In doing so, the book brings to light the variety of ways in which religion and violence have interacted historically. Showing that the link between faith and violence was more nuanced than theoreticians of ‘religious violence’ suggest, the book will appeal to historians, social scientists, and religious scholars.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice American Heritage, Best of 2009 In this vivid new biography of Abigail Adams, the most illustrious woman of the founding era, Bancroft Award–winning historian Woody Holton offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Adams’s life story and of women’s roles in the creation of the republic. Using previously overlooked documents from numerous archives, Abigail Adams shows that the wife of the second president of the United States was far more charismatic and influential than historians have realized. One of the finest writers of her age, Adams passionately campaigned for women’s education, denounced sex discrimination, and matched wits not only with her brilliant husband, John, but with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. When male Patriots ignored her famous appeal to "Remember the Ladies," she accomplished her own personal declaration of independence: Defying centuries of legislation that assigned married women’s property to their husbands, she amassed a fortune in her own name. Adams’s life story encapsulates the history of the founding era, for she defined herself in relation to the people she loved or hated (she was never neutral), a cast of characters that included her mother and sisters; Benjamin Franklin and James Lovell, her husband’s bawdy congressional colleagues; Phoebe Abdee, her father’s former slave; her financially naïve husband; and her son John Quincy. At once epic and intimate, Abigail Adams, sheds light on a complicated, fascinating woman, one of the most beloved figures of American history.

Marvin “Step To” Baker is crushed by two untimely personal tragedies. A drunk driver kills his beloved cousin Tim. The chance and glory of Tim and Step To winning an Olympic gold medal, a long-held dream of theirs, is destroyed forever. Step To (an inner-city term which meant to boldly assert one’s self, be courageous, go forth and face challenges with direct action and disregard the risks and results) is left an angry, broken-hearted, ornery and rebellious black man without hope and purpose in his life. He later becomes encouraged and enlightened to help the black community by Elaine, a militant community activist who falls in love with him. In a fit of dispair, however, Step To ends up joining a drug trafficking gang. But when the gang abducts Elaine and holds her and some of her allies hostage, Step To becomes a crusader, hellbent on saving the woman he loves and the black/brown community amidst both violent crime and racial turmoil in 1980 Compton, California.

The use and abuse of religious belief in the age-old history of conflict. Gods at War examines the role played by religions.