--Book Jacket.

Don’t yell at Norman Walters. He doesn’t deal well with conflict. A psychotic breakdown follows during which his mind invents bizarre nightmare worlds with real villains and real victims. Evil abounds and requires vanquishing. Toward that end, Norman becomes Raver, a superhero with a caveat: his powers change from one twisted reality to another, to closely mirror but never exceed those of his enemies. If Raver should fail in these grotesque new worlds, Norman Walters wouldn’t get to return to the old warm and fuzzy one. Includes a new adventure!

A PopSugar Best New Books of 2021 Selection Weed inspires her. Acid shows her another dimension. Ecstasy releases her. Nitrous fills her with bliss. Cocaine makes her fabulous. Mushrooms make everything magical. Special K numbs her. Crystal meth makes her mean. Sixteen-year-old Samantha, raver extraordinaire, puts the “high” in high school. A ’90s time capsule buried inside a coming-of-age memoir set against the neon backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area's rave scene, Raver Girl chronicles Samantha’s double life as she teeters between hedonism and sobriety, chaos and calm, all while sneaking under the radar of her entrepreneur father—a man who happened to drop acid with LSD impresario Owsley Stanley in the ’60s. Samantha keeps a list of every rave she goes to—a total of 104 over four years. During that time, what started as trippy fun morphs into a self-destructive roller coaster ride. Samantha opens the doors of her mind, but she's left with traumas her acid-fried brain won't let her escape; and when meth becomes her drug of choice, things get progressively darker. Through euphoric highs and dangerous lows, Samantha discovers she’s someone who lives life to the fullest and learns best through alternative experience rather than mainstream ideals. She’s a creative whose mind is limitless, whose quirks are charms, whose passion is inspirational. She’s an independent woman whose inner strength is rooted in unwavering family ties. And if she can survive high school, she just might be okay.

The Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital was more than a building; it embodied an entire era of uniquely American history, from the unparalleled humanitarian efforts of Dorothea Dix to the revolutionary architectural concepts of Thomas Story Kirkbride. After well over a century of service, Greystone was left abandoned in 2008. From the time it closed until its demolition in 2015, Greystone became the focal point of a passionate preservation effort that drew national attention and served to spark the public's interest in historical asylum preservation. Many of the images contained in this book were rescued from the basement of Greystone in 2002 and have never been seen by the public. They appear courtesy of the Morris Plains Museum and its staff, who spent many hours digitally archiving the photographs so that future generations may better know Greystone's history.

How Aussies came to belong to the hip-hop nation.

Morris Plains is where Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Stickley, Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill, Lillian Russell, and the Flora Dora girls came to dine. It is home to the first mighty Arabian horses ever to be spirited out of the Arabian desert, and where the wealthy and powerful built luxurious mansions and caught the "Millionaire's Special" to New York. Watnong Plains is the early name for the flat land on either side of West Hanover Avenue, including part of what later became Morris Township. Morris Plains is the story of that place: the early forges and mills on the Watnong Brook, the small settlement at Five Corners, the expansion north and west with the coming of the railroad, and the building of the New Jersey Asylum for the Insane. You will discover where the first settler built a sawmill in 1685 and how to find the 1866 schoolhouse, now thriving as an apartment building. The 250-year-old building that once housed Morris Plains's first general store is still here--you probably pass it dozens of times a year, if not daily. And if you have never discovered the ancient Stone Steps, here is your chance to verify their existence.

Rancher, cowboy, gold and diamond miner, forest fire fighter, horticulturist, friend to Western novelist Zane Grey and famed botanist Luther Burbank, but in his own words, dreamer. In this little book, written while recovering from the ravages of alcohol abuse, Richard David Comstock uses rhymes to give the reader a brief look at his life of many adventures and escapades, with an unexpected poignancy. In Rhymes of A Raver, we discover not A Raver, but rather a brave and sensitive soul who survived numerous challenges and adversities, both in America and abroad, including a potentially deadly forest fire in Oregon, while serving alongside revered US Forest Service Ranger, Douglas C. Ingram. In a rhyme about an experience in his youth, Mr. Comstock relates a story of how his cherished Osage companion, Sleeping Fawn, saved his life during a longhorn cattle stampede on his Montana family ranch, but by 1929, the "useless, squandered years of poison booze" landed him, in his own words, "in the gutter." He was lifted out of that gutter, about a year later, thanks to the professional and compassionate treatment, provided by the staff of the New Jersey State Hospital at Greystone Park.By July 1930, Mr. Comstock once again, took his place in the world and created the horticulture services business, United Landscape Engineers and Foresters, in Flushing, New York. The catalyst to his recovery was a newly discovered passion for writing, when appointed, "Patient Editor" of The Psychogram, in the Print Shop of Greystone's old Industrial Building. He decided to publish his Rhymes because he believed, "The world should know of the indescribable good wrought here at Greystone." Sherri and Stephen Phillips, editors of King Alfred's Middle Earth- Books Most Necessary to Know, present this reprint, after confirming the book is currently in the public domain. The magnificent 19th century Kirkbride buildings of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital may have been demolished in 2015, and the names of those who served in the old hospital long forgotten, but thanks to A Raver, this literary gem still stands to honor, "this refuge mercy-marked that's known to you as Greystone Park," the Castle of Salvaged Souls.