When her father is murdered, an innocent victim in a drive by shooting, her sheltered life spirals downward into gloom. Her once stay-at-home mother is forced to go to work cleaning offices at night. Instead of enjoying her carefree teenage years hanging with her friends, Eileen is relegated to babysitting her two younger sisters. One night she sneaks out on them. Trying to cook something, they die in a fire.Tormented and wanting to kill herself, Eileen runs away from home. Befriended by a drug dealer, she moves in with him. At twenty-one she is a single mother of two, falsely convicted of killing a state senator’s son. At thirty-two she is executed. Or is she?

    I've written 1,000 of them and it's really just another one.' Jimmy Webb 'When I heard it I cried. It made me cry because I was homesick. It's just a masterfully written song.' Glen CampbellThe sound of 'Wichita Lineman' was the sound of ecstatic solitude, but then its hero was the quintessential loner. What a great metaphor he was: a man who needed a woman more than he actually wanted her.Written in 1968 by Jimmy Webb, 'Wichita Lineman' is the first philosophical country song: a heartbreaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years later. It was recorded by Glen Campbell in LA with a legendary group of musicians known as 'the Wrecking Crew', and something about the song's enigmatic mood seemed to capture the tensions in America at a moment of crisis. Fusing a dribble of bass, searing strings, tremolo guitar and Campbell's plaintive vocals, Webb's paean to the American West describes a telephone lineman's longing for an absent lover, who he hears 'singing in the wire' - and like all good love songs, it's an SOS from the heart.Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century. What is it about this song that continues to seduce listeners, and how did the parallel stories of Campbell and Webb - songwriters and recording artists from different ends of the spectrum - unfold in the decades following? Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, The Wichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.'Americana in the truest sense: evocative and real.' Bob Stanley

     Big mistake. It seemed ideal to Eliza: go to a city she loves, and hide from the heartbreaks of the past year. But her grandmother is determined to teach her that the holidays hold the magic they once held, and that life is about love. Eliza knows better though, and nothing can make her believe in stardust again. Not Paris's lights, not her grandmother's fruitcake, and certainly not Xavier, the boy next door who's, now, very much a man.

    An experimental medicine. A clinic full of feral patients.As a college freshman, I can’t wait for my first day of class. But when my routine health exam turns into a medical emergency, my dreams become a nightmare.And as my past tumbles back into the present, I’m horrified when patients devolve into animals and attack the medical staff. Desperate to find my way back to consciousness and safety, my anxiety holds tight and doesn’t go away.Will my life go back to normal, or are these terrors here forever?Strange Start is the short story prequel that portends the catastrophic zombie apocalypse to come in the Jane Zombie Chronicles. Reading this hair-raising, first-hand account of a brave survivor reveals the soul-stirring plight of those caught in the epicenter of the madness.Sink your teeth into Strange Start now!

    His trouble with females usually begins upon opening his mouth.Here, Carlos shares his ups and mostly downs of bachelorhood, including romantic conquests with a slew of childhood crushes, insane yogis, a Playboy vixen, a STD host, the flaky, the deaf, and the just plain dumb. His unique mating style is not to be duplicated, but it will definitely make readers laugh-and want to get tested ASAP.

    Yet, each moment of joy is only that: momentary, showing up the rest of our lives to be unsatisfying, somehow lacking and incomplete. On the other hand, Vedanta, the body of knowledge found at the end of the Veda, asserts with breathtaking boldness that one's true nature is completeness and limitlessness. Vedanta also promises that moksa, liberation from all forms of limitations that seem to bind a human being, is possible here and now. In this lucid, lively introduction to Vedanta, Swami Dayananda shows how man's constant struggle to overcome these limitations through the ceaseless pursuit of security and pleasure are predestined to failure for the simple reason that they are misdirected: they stem from a failure in understanding the real nature of the fundamental problem itself. All effort howsoever great or unremitting being limited, the result of such effort is also bound to be equally limited, inadequate. The road to freedom from limitation, then, can scarcely lie that way. Indeed, asserts Vedanta, it is only to be found in the correct knowledge of one's true nature as absolute. This vital first step, a clear understanding of man's fundamental problem of ignorance and error about his real nature. Is what this book is all about.

    Ananthapadmanabhan, son of the master writer, made the selection.Stories are Lola, Choondal, Amruthethu, Swayam, Mazha, Mruthi, Oru Sthree Oru Purushan, Kunju, Soorpanakha, Kaikeyi, Nisasalabham, Kaivariyude Thekkeyattam, Banyan Avenue, Orma, Jeevithacharya, Oru Sameepakaladurantham, Ningalude Thavalangal Ningalkku, Ranimarude Kudumbam and Ore Chandranmar.

    But everything he writes has something to do with smoking; X20 (the title refers to the number of cigarettes in a pack) is the result -- a crisp, funny, and devastatingly stylish debut from an extraordinary new talent.In the first throes of withdrawal, Simpson writes in tense fits and starts, obsessing over lost loves and how cigarettes both blessed and doomed these relationships. As his ability to concentrate without cigarettes improves day-by-day, he reexamines his friendship with Dr. Barclay, a scientist forever on the verge of developing a safe cigarette, and with Julian Carr, an old friend and now a flack for a cigarette company.In Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley gave us the tobacco company flacks. In Cigarettes Are Sublime, Robert Klein took on the actual cigarettes. In X20, Richard Beard presents the smoker himself, facing the same dilemma millions of smoking and ex-smoking Americans face every day: Gregory's life has been shaped by, even built from, his relationship with cigarettes. What, without them, now?

    This book draws an unforgettable blue print of success for all. One lesson that shimmers from every page of this book is hope. Whether in failure or in success, there is always a clear vision of future. In human life as well as in the corporate world, the value of vision, leading to planning, followed by action should not be underestimated. The success smiles on those who dream and act. A message of spirituality, honesty, being unselfish and the value of giving emerges from these pages as from his life. The world has changed and there is a need for awakening together the head and the heart. While poems touch the heart and leave a deep impression, his prose leads you to think how to go beyond the rock walls of conditioning, perceptions and prejudices to achieve success and fulfilment. Clearly presented thoughts, in You Are Unique, become our inspiration and constant companion, flashing 'upon the inward eye' at our decision making, vision creating as well as ordinary moments of life.