Contemporary trompe l'oeil artist Richard Haas transforms the drab exteriors of neglected buildings into breath-taking facades. The City Is My Canvas documents his most important projects of the last two decades in lavish double-page spreads which illustrate the "before" and "after" phases of each site. From Italian Quadrata paintings to Baroque and Rococo interiors, trompe l'oeil murals have a long tradition as decoration and didactic illustration. Muralist Richard Haas brings this tradition into the 21st-century as he revitalizes forgotten buildings in eroding city centers by creating new "false" facades that seamlessly blend into the existing environment. "The world is constantly changing, and the needs of the city change with it", says Haas. "Even if blank urban walls at key locations of the city are now primarily seen as opportunities for computer-generated advertisements, whole segments of the mid-range urban American landscape and large areas of our edge cities remain in drastic need of refinement, softening, and improvement".

My Canvas is a collection of short stories that come together to create one. These are true stories based on a childs life, presented on coarse material, as seen through her eyes. Witness her struggle to understand lifes mysteries as she tries to fit into society, while basically raising her own self. Her story will make you laugh at some of the witty things she does to survive and fit in, while other instances will make you cry as she encounters things she cannot comprehend. Follow her journey into adulthood where early life experiences affect her self-esteem and decisions. This tale will jolt your memories back to your youth (especially if you ran the neighborhood and didn't get caught in mischievous acts) and above all, it will attest to basic desires as to what we all want and need: love and acceptance. This piece will help teens and young adults speak up, and can also serve as a resource to help parents see the early signs of struggle in the lives of their children. Feel free to go wherever your emotions direct you. Enjoy!

Naisa, whose life straddles between the twentieth and the twenty-first century, is always piqued by curiosity, as life keeps on springing new changes over time. A growing-up saga of a girl which sweeps you through the trail of time from Shillong to Calcutta and then to China, only to have you blown away by the futuristic winds of change. The internal and the external world try to keep pace with each other as life goes on at a blistering speed; just to thrust the greatest realization of her life on her when the world abruptly comes to a grinding halt. Buckle up and take a ride through the canvas of time as you get to experience the best of both worlds!

Vaani, a police inspector begins receiving cryptic messages from a potential murderer in the form of beautiful paintings on a canvas. Soon, seemingly unrelated murders start happening. Vaani realizes that each canvas sent to her by the unknown person is a clue to the next murder. Racing against time to catch the culprit, Vaani puts everything at risk to stop the murders. But what if that exactly is what the murderer wants?

"A heart -wrenching story about a young man who is born into a family who at times, I felt that I disliked so strongly, I wish he'd have run away and never seen them again. But resilience is his best ally, humor, wit, wisdom, and bravery. This story is told so well that I was riveted to each page. I could visualize every scene unfolding through this writer's amazing words. A great book for discussions in family groups, and good for others who may have gone through a dysfunctional childhood and felt as if they were the only one." Karen Malena, Author Mark is a young man born into a bad situation. His parents drink too much, and his family often forgets him. He works hard to hide the harsh reality of his home life from those around him. Mark does this to avoid feeling shame. He escapes the chaos of his family by spending time in nearby woods. Mark keeps a canvas bag hidden close to his house. It contains blankets, a flashlight, cans of food, a transistor radio, things to read, and more. It has everything he needs to escape from his family's dysfunction for a while. Mark truly enjoys the peace and solitude he finds in the woods. He constantly struggles with the judgments of others when it comes to his family. It hurts Mark when people share their negative opinions about, he and his family. He is often avoided by other kids and usually not included in things. The anger and resentment Mark feels increase as he gets older. He makes some bad decisions and gets into trouble. There comes a time when he must choose a path for his life. Mark decides to try and separate himself from the dysfunction of his family and past mistakes. He refuses to give up. Mark realizes he has a talent for writing and then discovers himself. He comes to understand his experiences in life have made him stronger than most people. Mark eventually makes peace with his family and his past. This results in him finally feeling good about himself. When he graduates from high school, Mark is ready to move into adulthood.

From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women’s Aesthetic Production is an innovative collection of essays on female aesthetic production and myth, examining the ways in which women artists and writers utilize myth to negotiate their perceptions of feminine identity and feminine representation in an increasingly complex and culturally hybrid world. The featured essays and artistic contributions address a variety of contemporary female productions, including literature, performance, and visual art, in a markedly global scope. Representing a wide range of cultures, languages, geographic locales, and social contexts—from Jewish-Hindu and Kenyan-German, through Irish, Italian, American, to Vietnamese folktales—this diversified selection underscores the agency of “the feminine gaze” across a historical and geopolitical span, a gaze through which myths from various cultures and different cultural amalgams speak to us with force and with significance. The potency of this gaze is linked to the potential of myth simultaneously to encompass and compress history, and to offer the result as a backdrop against which the move from word to canvas—or from a mythic tale to its aesthetic appropriation—is performed in female aesthetic production.

THE STORY: Winston, a young painter, shares an East Village apartment with Jamie, the son of a prominent art dealer. The death of Jamie's father, who has disinherited him, sets him spinning into the depths of despair. It seems that neither Winston