After a terrifying nightmare, Joseph Paul Robinson wakes in the subway. But stations are named after places on the Monopoly board, all the station exits are blocked, and he's lost his memory. Eventually, he discovers that he is dead. After a bittersweet reunion with his deceased parents, he is left on his own in the Spiritual-Material Afterlife Rapid Transit (SMART) system to find his way to redemption or damnation. While following Joe, we meet others in this complex, fascinating and funny morality tale. There is Luscious "Mack" Brown, the sharecropper, facing a lynch mob in 1931. There is Tony Santini, the Korean War soldier facing his consequences in 1951. There is Effie Parker, the pure-hearted SMART Guide who died rescuing children from a fire in 1870. And there is Mortese the Stalker, a Demon seeking all the souls he can get. In this, his first novel, author Gerald Davis takes us on a ride into an imaginative exploration of the afterlife, inspired by modern accounts of near-death experiences. It is a highly readable parable addressing classic themes of good against evil, of faith, social responsibility, and the decline of American values.

Book your ticket now for a trip to the future, the past, and the timeslips in between. Through the eloquent prose and imaginings of eighteen tellers of tales, we are pleased to present to you a collection of stories-on-a-train that will transport you to tantalizing worlds that you simply cannot imagine. Perhaps no other anthology in-living-memory encapsulates such wholehearted, ill fated, poignant, and even hallucinogenic stories with such grace and balance as those contained in this volume. These stories span the genres of literary fiction, steampunk, space opera, futurism, tragedy, magical realism, slipstream, horror, comedy, urban fantasy and more. In all, a sizzling collection, curated by Neil Enock (who is a train aficionado, podcaster, screenwriter and filmmaker), presenting high-voltage, off-the-rail entertainments that are feature rich with characters who are: schemers, dreamers, adventurers, lovers, detectives, rogues, and more; and whose human weaknesses always seem to get the better of them. Showcased in this single collection are eighteen trail blazers tasked to escort you on your inimitable journey: Jason Lane, David Worsick, Liam Hogan, Christine Hanolsy, Gavin Bradley, Michael Johnstone, Dwain Campbell, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Peter Hargraves, Melodie Leclerc, Rachel Leidenfrost , Nick Svolos, Maurice Forrester, Kendall Eifler, Samuel Marzioli, Neil Enock, Laurie Stewart, Kim Solem. The stories offered will delight you with such surprising humor and stinging tragedy, you will be compelled to read them all in one sitting. DO NOT DELAY. DO NOT BE LEFT BEHIND. THIS TRAIN LEAVES PROMPTLY ON TIME. *Note: These stories are also suitable to read while waiting for a train.

Take a seat for a ride of a lifetime. Joshua is a seventeen-year-old boy from the inner city who wakes up on the ground of a train station. With little knowledge of where he is and a ticket in his pocket, he ventures onto a train ride. Perspective will shift as he gambles not only at his life but also at the substations that he stops at. And once he realizes where he really is, is he going to be able to hold on to his ticket and get off the right stop?

From Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson of the award-winning hip-hop group the Roots, comes this vibrant book commemorating the legacy of Soul Train—the cultural phenomenon that launched the careers of artists such as Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Whitney Houston, Lenny Kravitz, LL Cool J, and Aretha Franklin. Questlove reveals the remarkable story of the captivating program, and his text is paired with more than 350 photographs of the show's most memorable episodes and the larger-than-life characters who defined it: the great host Don Cornelius, the extraordinary musicians, and the people who lived the phenomenon from dance floor. Gladys Knight contributed a foreword to this incredible volume. Nick Cannon contributed the preface.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: a “sublime collection of true stories … and wild imaginings that take us to the very heart of who Patti Smith is” (Vanity Fair), told through the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. Patti Smith calls this bestselling work “a roadmap to my life.” M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith’s life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today. Featuring a postscript with five new photos from Patti Smith

Britain gave railways to the world, yet its own network is the dearest (definitely) and the worst (probably) in Western Europe. Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore - yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humour, capacity for suffering and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has travelled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel ('half-John Betjeman, half-Victor Meldrew') finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railwayman, and - after a quest lasting decades - an Individual Pot of Strawberry Jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

Is it so easily defined between good and evil? The Millieu, forged by a millennium of brutal war between heaven and hell, has now flourished under the command of the Red Emperor- the only Ange left of his kind. With the emperor’s grace, the strong nation of Avalon has stayed dominant against its other two rivaling countries. Another millennium has passed, and the savagery of war has mostly forgotten, replaced by the illusion of tranquil, reinforced by people’s blind ignorance. But the war is far from over, residing at the north is a vast land of Bhadura. Covered by desert, beneath the deadly sandstorms lies a hidden enemy, which has the power to bring threat to the mighty Avalon. Guarding the Holy Nation of Avalon is the group of holy knights of four. The Four Saints- a title granted by the emperor to his greatest warriors, with powers rival to the gods, they won countless battles against this unknown enemy. They are closing in towards the front door of the enemy, solely for the sake of peace. Now, there’s a boy in his youth from the peaceful nation of Rosaria, in a bustling harbour city of Neberium, is hoping to become one of the Saints. With the light of hope, and the flames of hatred, he walks the path where his future is undetermined....

This book seeks to address the relation of political philosophy and Donald Trump as a political phenomenon through the notions of patriotism, cosmopolitanism, and civic virtue. Political philosophers have been prescient in explaining trends that may explain our political misgivings. Madison warned during the debates on the Constitution that democracies are vulnerable to factions based on passion for personalities and beliefs; various continental thinkers have addressed the problem of nihilism—the modern loss of faith in objective standards of truth and morality—that in Max Weber’s analysis pointed to the importance of charisma, in Carl Schmitt’s to the idea that politics is essentially rooted in the definition of friends and enemies, and in early Heidegger resulted in the emphasis on the enduring significance of local, rather than cosmopolitan values. The former concerns—regarding demagoguery, charisma and nihilism—will enable an evaluation of Trump as a political character, while the latter concerns—regarding the status of universal versus local values—will enable us to evaluate the content of “Trumpism.” Taken together, these essays seek to advance the public conversation about the relationship between the rise of Trump and the ideological forces that seek to justify that rise.