This critical study of American detective fiction examines the history and development of the detective genre through the lens of psychoanalysis. Applying the ideas of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the author identifies and categorizes popular works according to the fictional protagonist's hysteria, obsessive neurosis, perversion or psychosis. The first chapter identifies several instances of hysteria within the fiction of two of the genre's pioneers, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter Two traces the development of the hard-boiled detective's code of honor through the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane, identifying the often-paradoxical nature of this code and its origins in obsessive neurosis. Chapter Three analyzes the anti-detective fiction of Philip K. Dick in terms of paranoid psychosis, and the final chapter returns to the question of hysteria, taking up the female hard-boiled detectives of author Marcia Muller.

If you don't do it yourself, you certainly know someone who is forever putting a foot into his or her mouth. This person has raised the tasteless, thoughtless, tactless, or otherwise terrifically awful remark into an art form. If there is a wrong place, a wrong time, or a wrong person to whom to say anything, they're on the spot and on the ready. And though we can joke about it (at the right time, of course), careless speech is no laughing matter. Words really can hurt-not only the person at whom they're aimed but the speaker, too, whose relationship, career, and social prospects can all suffer as a result of unmindful speech. Fortunately, this book can help even the most scandalous mis-speaker. It outlines six simple questions, called Q-Points (Questions of Positive Thinking and Speaking) for readers to keep in mind before they speak. Who am I speaking to? What am I not seeing? Where will my words get me? How will the other person react to my words? When do I say it? And why must I say it at all? By coming up with an answer in the moment before speaking, anyone can start to avoid terrible slips in speaking judgment that can hurt themselves and others. But I Didn't Mean That! analyzes the most problematic speaking situations to show how the Q-points can be used to start conversing with empathy, confidence, and unimpeachable tact.

Problems are like washing machines. They twist, they spin and knock us around. But in the end, we come out cleaner, brighter, and better than before. Author Unknown Cypress, it seems, has been carrying the weight of the world around on his shoulders. With his mother locked up for a murder that he committed, he continues to try to fulfill her wishes of him moving on with his life. But no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t let her spend the rest of her life locked up just so he can walk free. Cypress’s father, Mingo, has just reinserted himself into the equation and wants to do whatever he needs to do to keep both Cypress and Cynthia out of jail. The one thing he hadn’t counted on was crazy Harper Madison and her obsession with Cypress. Harper’s goal is to derail Cypress and his desire for both Kameron and Nicole. She wants Cypress, and she is prepared to do whatever she needs to do to make that happen. Didn’t Mean to Love Him Part 2 brings you the culmination of what happens when you mix a whole lot of deception with a little bit of crazy.

My name is Daniel B. Moran. I am forty-eight years old. I am a self-taught composer and musician and have written many classical and non-classical works, songs and a full scale music drama called, “So I AM Born”. My life has always lived by the expressions of my heart, to seek the truth of me. Wherever life has led me, I have always believed that “The Journey is the Destination”. This is a story of love that can’t let go and the reason why. A heart searching for purpose and identity. The torment and torture of the reality of one’s perception, in search of Love. Fear of new beginnings and cheated destiny, locked in the grey mist of the mind. Betrayal through fear and hope. Painful truthful realities faced, and the courage it sometimes takes to realize, ‘ To thy self be true... Always.’ D.B. Moran.

Little Critter doesn't mean to keep having accidents and breaking things.

Perfect for fans of Maria Semple and Jennifer Weiner, this “laugh-out-loud gem” (Beck Dorey-Stein, New York Times bestselling) of a debut novel follows Ramona through the forty-eight hours after her life has been upended by the discovery of her husband’s affair and an approaching hurricane. Ramona has a bratty boss, a potty-training toddler, a critical and over-sharing mom, and oops—a cheating husband. That’s how a Category Four hurricane bearing down on her life in Savannah becomes just another item on her to-do list. In the next forty-eight hours she’ll add a neighborhood child and the class guinea pig named Clarence Thomas to her entourage as she struggles to evacuate town. Ignoring the persistent glow of her minivan’s check engine light, Ramona navigates police check points, bathroom emergencies, demands from her boss, and torrential downpours while fielding calls and apology texts from her cheating husband and longing for the days when her life was like a Prince song, full of sexy creativity and joy. Thoroughly entertaining and completely relatable, None of This Would Have Happened if Prince Were Alive is the “keenly observant, fast-paced” (Amy Poeppel, author of Musical Chairs) story of modern womanhood.

Bernice Archer has raised her blind twin daughters, Eva and Ava, in the relative isolation of their low-income downtown neighborhood. Every night Bernice tells her daughters the same bedtime stories; stories that are sometimes magical, and often cautionary, about the dangers of the world outside the walls of their small apartment. Eva and Ava, now middle-aged, still wait for their motherÕs stories with a combination of excitement and suspicion, knowing that there is much they havenÕt been told. They are particularly mistrustful of BerniceÕs warnings of the dangers of the opposite sex, and want to know more about the story of their own origins. As loving as she is loud and as full of secrets as she is of stories, Bernice is the centre of the universe for Eva and Ava, even as they yearn for freedom and experiences of their own. When Bernice notices two new neighbours in their building, she is inspired to tell a new story. And so begins the saga of Violet and Rose. Bernice believes that these two women were born at the exact same moment, hemispheres apart, and that they share the same soul. Like Eva and Ava, the reader is swept along in the wake of Bernice's stories, not knowing what is real and what is fantasy, but believing none the less.