If I could kill Baxter Bennett, I would. But he's already dead. Ever since we were kids and my mama washed his family's dirty clothes, cooked their every meal, and consoled his finicky mother, I have hated how much power his white family held over mine. As a newly commissioned Army officer, he stood by and watched his brother and friends tie a noose around my brother's neck, string him up, and hang him until his legs stopped swaying. He pledged to protect, honor, and cherish me; instead, when he returned from the War, he ended up stalking, terrorizing, and killing me when I did not return his affections. The decorated hero then turned the gun on himself and ended his life while he cradled my dead body. Through his selfishness, he resigned us to a never-ending purgatory, stuck between the Living and the Dead. As the troubles of the living seep into our unearthly world, I am obliged to find justice for my brother, myself, and those around me. And that means making my murderer my one and only ally.

When the Devil is Beating His Wife is for any woman suffering from an abusive relationship or knows someone in this predicament. Domestic violence is painful, humiliating, and a life-changing experience. When the relationship is severed, what do you do? There are countless questions, but few answers. How do you escape? Where are the instructions to create a new life? How do you endure each day with a broken heart and injured spirit? When do the storms end, and when does the sun shine again? Where is God when you need Him?When the Devil is Beating His Wife is an inspirational guide to create a new and improved life for victims of domestic violence under God's care and direction, in about ninety days. From the lives of three fictional women survivors, you will identify the causes, symptoms, and actions of abuse; learn to reject the devil's snares; and renew your life with confidence and purpose.

Washington Civic Theatre presents "The Devil and Daniel Webster," a play in one act by Stephen Vincent Benet. [Directed by Day Tuttle, settings by William M. Girvan].

This inventive, page-turning crime thriller, shortlisted for the Sidewise Award, with "palpable emotional depth" (New York Times Book Review) envisions a world in which the Red Scare never ended. USA, 1958. President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and barely‑concealed anti‑Semitism. The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy's Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hollywood's sparkling vision of the American dream has been suppressed; its remaining talents forced to turn out endless anti‑communist propaganda. LAPD detective Morris Baker—a Holocaust survivor who drowns his fractured memories of the unspeakable in schnapps and work—is called to the scene of a horrific double‑homicide. The victims are John Huston, a once‑promising but now forgotten film director, and an up‑and‑coming young journalist named Walter Cronkite. Clutched in the hand of one of the dead men is a cryptic note containing the phrase “beat the devils” followed by a single name: Baker. Did the two men die in an attack fueled by better-dead-than-red sentiment, as the Hueys are quick to conclude, or were they murdered in a cover-up designed to protect—or even set in motion—a secret plot connected to Baker's past? In a country where terror grows stronger by the day, and paranoia rises unchecked, Baker is determined to find justice for two men who raised their voices in a time when free speech comes at the ultimate cost. In the course of his investigation, Baker stumbles into a conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of power and uncovers a secret that could destroy the City of Angels—and the American ideal itself.

Long-time word-detective and bestselling author of Port Out, Starboard Home, Michael Quinion brings us the answers to nearly two hundred of the most intriguing questions he's been asked about language over the years. Sent to him by enquiring readers from all around the globe, Michael's answers about the meanings and histories behind the quirky phrases, slang and language that we all use are set to delight, amuse and enlighten even the most hardened word-obsessive. Did you know that 'Blighty' comes from an ancient Arabic word? Or that Liberace cried his way to the bank so many times people think he came up with the phrase? That 'cloud nine' started out as 'cloud seven' in the speakeasies of '30s America? And that the first person to have their thunder stolen was a dismal playwright from Drury Lane? Michael Quinion's Why is Q Always Followed By U? is full of surprising discoveries, entertaining quotations and memorable information. There are plenty of colourful stories out there, but Michael Quinion will help you discover the truth that lies behind the cock-and-bull stories and make sure you're always linguistically on the ball.

Now a Netflix film starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson A dark and riveting vision of 1960s America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic over­tones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

Nathaniel's great-grandfather, who is 100 years old, loves to tell stories from his past but seeks someone to join him with a new batch of stories.

From 1885–1924, China underwent a period of acute political struggle and cultural change, brought on by a radical change in thought: after over 2,000 years of monarchical rule, the Chinese people stopped believing in the emperor. These forty years saw the collapse of Confucian political orthodoxy and the struggle among competing definitions of modern citizenship and the state. What made it possible to suddenly imagine a world without the emperor? After Empire traces the formation of the modern Chinese idea of the state through the radical reform programs of the late Qing (1885–1911), the Revolution of 1911, and the first years of the Republic through the final expulsion of the last emperor of the Qing from the Forbidden City in 1924. It contributes to longstanding debates on modern Chinese nationalism by highlighting the evolving ideas of major political thinkers and the views reflected in the general political culture. Zarrow uses a wide range of sources to show how "statism" became a hegemonic discourse that continues to shape China today. Essential to this process were the notions of citizenship and sovereignty, which were consciously adopted and modified from Western discourses on legal theory and international state practices on the basis of Chinese needs and understandings. This text provides fresh interpretations and keen insights into China's pivotal transition from dynasty to republic.

From the time she could barely see over the space bar of her old manual typewriter, to writing her popular southern culture blog, Folkways Nowadays, author Audrey McDonald Atkins has been sharing her downhome stories and essays about life in the South. In They Call Me Orange Juice, Atkins provides a nostalgic, poignant, and often-hilarious look at growing up in a small South Alabama town and how that upbringing still influences her today. What does it feel like to be the only Episcopalian at a Baptist church? How do you entertain yourself on a two-hour car trip with a dead man? What do you do when your foundation garment goes rogue in the middle of a busy intersection? And what price did they pay for calling her orange juice? Atkins answers all these questions and more in her own unmistakable Southern style. She recounts stories about the men who congregated in the police station and the eccentric characters who worked on Main Street, shares words of wisdom from her Granny, and tells how one superstitious old man could literally make it rain even during the dry, dog days of summer. Each person still lives in Atkins memory frozen in time just as they were in the 70s, and its these ghosts of bygone days who shine through in They Call Me Orange Juice.