Detective Dirk Gently investigates after a passenger at Heathrow airport erupts into a mysterious ball of flames. Mystery, hilarity, and the fantastical are combined in this title from the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. -- HPL Readers Advisor.

On a long dark road in deep East Texas, James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck one summer night in 1998. The brutal modern-day lynching stunned people across America and left everyone at a loss to explain how such a heinous crime could possibly happen in our more racially enlightened times. Many eventually found an answer in the fact that two of the three men convicted of the murder had ties to the white supremacist Confederate Knights of America. In the ex-convict ringleader, Bill King, whose body was covered in racist and satanic tattoos, people saw the ultimate monster, someone so inhuman that his crime could be easily explained as the act of a racist psychopath. Few, if any, asked or cared what long dark road of life experiences had turned Bill King into someone capable of committing such a crime. In this gripping account of the murder and its aftermath, Ricardo Ainslie builds an unprecedented psychological profile of Bill King that provides the fullest possible explanation of how a man who was not raised in a racist family, who had African American friends in childhood, could end up on death row for viciously killing a black man. Ainslie draws on exclusive in-prison interviews with King, as well as with Shawn Berry (another of the perpetrators), King's father, Jasper residents, and law enforcement and judicial officials, to lay bare the psychological and social forces—as well as mere chance—that converged in a murder on that June night. Ainslie delves into the whole of King's life to discover how his unstable family relationships and emotional vulnerability made him especially susceptible to the white supremacist ideology he adopted while in jail for lesser crimes. With its depth of insight, Long Dark Road not only answers the question of why such a racially motivated murder happened in our time, but it also offers a frightening, cautionary tale of the urgent need to intervene in troubled young lives and to reform our violent, racist-breeding prisons. As Ainslie chillingly concludes, far from being an inhuman monster whom we can simply dismiss, "Bill King may be more like the rest of us than we care to believe."

An essential reference for everyone interested in guns, this complete reference shows how to repair, improve, customize, and alter firearms. Complete troubleshooting information about problems such as misfiring and feeding and extraction failures is provided, along with tips for mounting a scope, fitting grips, and more.

Challenging widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors—often referred to as "pedophiles"—are necessarily also predators and sex offenders, this book takes readers into the lives of non-offending minor-attracted persons (MAPs). There is little research into non-offending MAPs, a group whose experiences offer valuable insights into the prevention of child abuse. Navigating guilt, shame, and fear, this universally maligned group demonstrates remarkable resilience and commitment to living without offending and to supporting and educating others. Using data from interview-based research, A Long, Dark Shadow offers a crucial account of the lived experiences of this hidden population.

The War Between the States has escalated into a full-scale conflict threatening to tear the nation apart. Having been invited by President Lincoln to come to Washington, D.C., to assist in his reelection campaign, Corrie finds herself a long way from home in a most unusual situation--a young woman from the Wild West, with little education and experience, in the seat of power at the nation's capital. While writing and reporting from the battlefields, Corrie unwittingly uncovers a plot that could change the country's course forever, but taking action will put her very life at risk.

Imagine a place where people know each other by the color of their parkas, where dogs are citizens, and where a handshake is as good as currency. Imagine a time when the wild went on forever, and the only link to the outside was a brave pilot with a shy smile. Imagine a world blanketed in snow and warmed by people.... Delightfully, that time is now, and that place is Alaska--but not just anywhere in Alaska. Here, the little towns are the last great secret of the Last Frontier; true Alaska living is found in small villages full of scruffy cabins and original characters. Author Slim Randles knew and loved one such town, presented here as the fictional Kahiltna. In this classic of Alaska fiction, the array of mushers and pilots, cheechakos and sourdoughs who call Kahiltna home are exuberantly true to life, as are their adventures, from the hilarious to the horrible. In the season of the long dark, it is the small town that lets Alaskans fend off the isolation and chill of winter near the top of the world.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. As seen on All There Is with Anderson Cooper Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.

Gunslinger Roland Deschain is pursued, along with Cuthbert and Alain, by the Big Coffin Hunters, and they are forced into the desert while Roland is in a coma with his consciousness held captive by Maerlyn's mystical sphere.

A weary coach struggles across a merciless landscape, fighting the relentless bitterness of the wind. It is a land of endless grey bogs, of mud-sucked hills, of twisted and impenetrable forest. A land of sin. A land of death. This is where Odalric and Clithanus and the Graue Blutengel, the Grey Leech, hold sway. Battered and wind-whipped and coated in dust, the men of God inside the laboring coach are every bit as grim as the country that seeks to engulf them. They endure. They must. Shadowed at all times by the Other Wolves, haunted by the Way Home, defended by purity and American Winchester rifles, their resolve is their greatest strength in the nightmare that surrounds them. For their mission is paramount, and it must not be permitted to falter. Joe Pulver's latest masterpiece is as uncomfortable as it is oneiric, a hypnagogic trek through a blasted piece of world, surrounded at all times by hatred and bitterness and evil. As claustrophobic as it is relentless, A Long, Dark, Grim Road will cling to you, and you will never escape its clutches.