Elmore Leonard meets Denis Johnson in this explosive first novel set on the seedy side of Southern California. Ex-marine Jimmy Boone-former bodyguard to Los Angeles's rich and famous-is fresh out of Corcoran, on parole, and trying to keep his nose clean until he figures out his next move. He has a job tending bar on Hollywood Boulevard, serving drinks to tourists, and is determined to put the past behind him. But trying to do the right thing has always been Boone's downfall. When he backs up a buddy on a hero-for-hire gig -- looking into the mysterious death of a kid on a downtown bus -- he once again finds himself in a world of trouble. As Boone learns more about the boy, an innocent who got involved with the wrong people, his investigation becomes a mission. Along the dangerous margins of Los Angeles, he encounters down-on-their-luck drug dealers, a vengeful stripper, a dog-fighting ring, a beautiful ex-cop, a vicious crime boss and his crew, and a fortune in counterfeit bills. Before long, Boone realizes that his quest to get at the truth about a ruthless murder may also turn out to be his last chance at redemption. This Wicked World is a knock-out blend of superb writing and breakneck storytelling that grabs you by the collar and makes it impossible to stop reading.

Welcome to the wild and wicked words of Benjamin Zephaniah. You'll find loads of cool people who make up our world in this rapping, happening hip-hop collection. From the South Pole to Mongolia and the Himalayas, this is a real world tour of poems about people and places, cultures and nationalities across our planet. Includes poems about Inuits, Celts, the history of Britain, Maories, the Dalai Lama, the North and South Poles, and much more - a rhyming round-the-world trip. Poems that bounce up from the page and demand to be read, rapped, sung and hip-hopped aloud - Independent on Sunday

Wicked World advocates the need to acknowledge the complex contexts in which managers, professionals and policymakers operate. Conventional tools do not serve us well in these new contexts and regularly aggravate the situation. This book offers a systemic perspective in exploring complex challenges and a sensemaking framework to deal with interconnected, persistent problems. Looking beyond the problem; seeking deeper patterns and linkages to other problems; realizing that cause and effect may not be obvious or close by; and that small changes can have major impacts...these are essential steps in operating in a wicked world. It is time for new perceptions and concepts that can support us. Systems and complexity theories are a starting point for this book. A comprehensive sensemaking framework can guide us in dealing with challenges such as digitalization and robotization impacting businesses, institutions, homes and society as a whole; social inequity and polarizing discourses; obesity, burn-out and cybersecurity. The first step is to become 'systems savvy' - Wicked World takes you on this journey.

As any, even vaguely addicted book collector will have swiftly learned, most booksellers' catalogues are written in a parallel language that can fool anyone but the 'cognoscenti' and which makes the mysteries of the Rosetta stone, or Linear B, look like something out of Enid Blython. Without a smattering of inside information, the baffled but hopelessly-bitten book buyer is drifting unarmed and unprepared into a minefield whose perilous complexities will usually only be made plain when an eagerly awaited parcel of dream volumes arrives and mangled contents are revealed in all their deceptive glory.... But all is not lost. Help is at hand! After a lifetime of avidly scanning the frequently poisonously-tinted pages of innumerable book catalogues, Ronald Searle has become expert in the art of decoding those esoteric, poetic and usually approximate, descriptions of literary come-ons. Now, licking his wounds, he publishes his hard-earned findings in this fully illustrated pioneer guide, designed to foil the devious machinations of scheming and wicked booksellers for ever more. No longer will the innocent book collector need to puzzle over the finer meaning of 'old half road', 'good working copy', blind tooled', or 'tail-edged shaved'. The unvarnished truth is here exposed at last, both in the shocking explicit drawings and in the devastatingly frank glossary whose revelations will startle even the most battle-scarred of bibliophiles. The result is one of the funniest, most entertaining books to have emerged from the brilliantly perceptive pen of the master. No book collector, and certainly no bookseller, can afford to be without it - even the wicked ones.

Descendants 2 is due to release in Summer 2017. All the coolest characters from the newest Disney Channel Original Movie (the sequel to 2015's Descendants) are featured in this fabulous annual for tweens. Filled with fact files, stories, friendship tips, plus tons of quizzes and puzzles, it's cover-to-cover entertainment!

The story of freedom pivots on the choices black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent. And it pivots on the self-conscious choices black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. Slavery's rise in the Americas was institutional, carnal, and reproductive. The intimacy of bondage whet the appetites of slaveowners, traders, and colonial officials with fantasies of domination that trickled into every social relationship—husband and wife, sovereign and subject, master and laborer. Intimacy—corporeal, carnal, quotidian—tied slaves to slaveowners, women of African descent and their children to European and African men. In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of these complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast. Centering New Orleans as the quintessential site for investigating black women's practices of freedom in the Atlantic world, Wicked Flesh argues that African women and women of African descent endowed free status with meaning through active, aggressive, and sometimes unsuccessful intimate and kinship practices. Their stories, in both their successes and their failures, outline a practice of freedom that laid the groundwork for the emancipation struggles of the nineteenth century and reshaped the New World.

"Hope of the Wicked is about the greatest deception in modern history. The book is packed with hundreds and hundreds of quotes from world leaders themselves showing where they want to bring the world. Nothing is left to guesswork; when you are finished reading, you will understand that what seems to be inconsistent and illogical to you, is not to the global elite who wish to bring the United States under the auspices of the United Nations. The quotes are from established world leaders, past and present, and most are household names. It is laid out for all to see what they have organizedout in the open for all to observe, if one wants to learn what the Masters of the Universe are planning for the New World Order. The book is neither left- nor right-wing politically, but is the view of a scribe observing these trends and issues over a twenty-five year period. It is primarily a resource guide and mini-anthology, with an index and 38 pages of footnotes that will be most difficult for someone to take issue with, principally because the quotes are from the perpetrators themselveswhat they have accomplished, and where they hope to go in the future. When you are done reading the material presented in this book, you'll never look at the news the same way again. It all amounts to control, control of your money, your work, your family, your education, your attitudes, your beliefs, your thoughts. Do you think its impossible? Read Hope of the Wicked and you will know for sure it is not only possible, it is already being done."--Amazon.com, 6/30/14

The book on sex in the twenty-first century “Alfred Kinsey only scratched the surface. Interviewing a mere 18,000 horny humans? Please . . . Drs. Ogas and Gaddam [offer] hot new scientific findings.”—The Washington Post Want to know what really turns your partner on? A Billion Wicked Thoughts offers the clearest picture ever of the differences between male and female sexuality and the teeming diversity of human desire. What makes men attracted to images and so predictable in their appetites? What makes the set up to a romantic evening so important for a woman? Why are women’s desires so hard to predict? Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam reveal the mechanics of sexual relationships based on their extensive research into the mountains of new data on human behavior available in online entertainment and traffic around the world. Not since Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s has there been such a revolution in our knowledge of what is really going on in the bedroom. What Ogas and Gaddam learned, and now share, will deepen and enrich the way you, and your partner, think and talk about sex.

Each title in The Applause Libretto Library Series presents a Broadway musical with fresh packaging in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.