The Origin of Species


Charles Darwin - 1859
    Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and—by implication—within the human world. Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.

The Red Hand


Michael Stephen Daigle - 2019
    Could a serial killer be stalking his hometown of Ironton, N.J.?One by one the bodies pile up. Nine victims are killed over several months, all from different walks of life and different parts of Ironton. Each killed in a different way, forming no clear pattern, as might be expected from a single killer.The Red Hand is the prequel to The Swamps of Jersey, the book that launched the Frank Nagler Mysteries. This investigation takes place before economic hard times, political corruption and a government money scandal hit the former industrial center of Ironton, N.J.This story is atmospheric, moody, dark and thrilling.

Alexander Crowley - A New King in Town


Don Barr - 2018
     Starring Alexander Crowley a smart arsed shoot from the hip trickster (Supposedly the bastard Great Grandson of Aleister Crowley the 20th Century Occultist) who is on the run from his recent escapades. He decides to lay low in a holiday home borrowed from a dubious benefactor and his swashbuckling adventures throughout the summer draw on supernatural foundations and circumstances that are well researched and contain a modicum of reality. From the minute he enters the town our hero is pitched at odds with the local mobsters, demons and deities. There is an intriguing and exciting cast of supporting characters who are a delight; Booby De-Faux - a needy “Sidekick” The Spirit Saint who acts as “Minder” supported by her mysterious cat “The Black Manilishi” A Vampire assassin and a Killer King are also along for the ride and even romance is on the cards as our character, a renowned and successful womaniser seems this time to be looking for a meaningful relationship amongst all the chaos. Strap in!

SSN Seadragon: The Crucible of Leviathan


J.P. Ronald - 2017
    When unleashed, it leaves total destruction in its wake, and cannot be subdued by normal human methods, but only by the power of God. The Cold War saw “Leviathan” snarling at his gate, salivating to be let loose, when humanity was treading ever closer to nuclear holocaust. During this period, American servicemen went into the breech to stand against whatever form “Leviathan” took, and like the American warriors of past years they held strong to their faith in God to see them through. Such a warrior is Daniel O’Kean, a World War II UDT/OSS veteran and commissioned naval officer, turned covert deep-penetration maritime CIA specialist, who has only his faith to see him through his own encounters with “Leviathan.” His first test is a pre-invasion, reconnaissance mission behind the lines of Inchon Korea, where the threat of capture by North Korean invaders is around every corner. Later he leads an assignment into Latvia with near disastrous consequences. Then called upon again, into the steaming jungles near Haiphong Vietnam, while attempting to retrieve evidence of active Soviet intervention in the war, he uncovers an unusual and vital turn of events that leads to a twisted plot in the streets of London England. With each step he takes he sees God’s hand guiding him closer to a fate he does not fully understand, but follows faithfully. While O’Kean is battling an evil he cannot see, the captain of the nuclear submarine USS Seadragon, LCDR Renzo MacKenna has his own faith challenged in another form of “Leviathan” as he and CDR David Heidleman of the USS Permit coordinate to foil a Soviet plot to end America’s involvement in Vietnam. One wrong move by them and “Leviathan’s” bite could go nuclear.

The Elephant Tree


R.D. Ronald - 2010
    Scott is a dejected 24 year old struggling to make ends meet working for his brother and supplementing his income with a small-scale drug dealing operation. Angela is an attractive 23 year old, raised by her father, a career criminal and small time drug dealer who supplies Scott with cannabis. This is a chilling tale spanning a few months in the lives of Scott and Angela, where realizations about the present combine with shocking revelations from the past leading to an apocalyptic climax where they no longer know whom they can trust.

Arrangement in Black and White


Fred Misurella - 2014
    But their conflicts are more than racial. Margy's from Iowa, an artist, the product of an abusive mother and neglectful father. Everet's from Connecticut, a civil rights lawyer on the rise toward greater recognition, and their lives take a tense turn when he decides to run for political office just as Margy moves forward in her own career. Arrangement in Black and White captures the conflicts that give edge and interest to all meaningful love stories, yet it does so with an eye toward modern women, interracial politics, and the human inability to balance passion with social, public life. It is a powerful story for contemporary readers.

Atlas of Remote Islands


Judith Schalansky - 2009
    There are still places on earth that are unknown. Visually stunning and uniquely designed, this wondrous book captures fifty islands that are far away in every sense-from the mainland, from people, from airports, and from holiday brochures. Author Judith Schalansky used historic events and scientific reports as a springboard for each island, providing information on its distance from the mainland, whether its inhabited, its features, and the stories that have shaped its lore. With stunning full-color maps and an air of mysterious adventure, Atlas of Remote Island is perfect for the traveler or romantic in all of us.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage


Bill Bryson - 2007
    The author of 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' isn't, after all, a Shakespeare scholar, a playwright, or even a biographer. Reading 'Shakespeare The World As Stage', however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard himself would have selected for the task. The man who gave us 'The Mother Tongue' and 'A Walk in the Woods' approaches Shakespeare with the same freedom of spirit and curiosity that made those books such reader favorites. A refreshing take on an elusive literary master.

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary


Ambrose Bierce - 1911
    There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

This Is Shakespeare


Emma Smith - 2019
    A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else.Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of.But it doesn't tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. Now, Emma Smith - an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer - takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex, and the Shakespeare she reveals in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean.

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders


Joshua Foer - 2016
    Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door of Hell, coffins hanging off a side of a cliff in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere.

Lost in the Crowd


M.J. Santley - 2018
    These events bring the book to life and give it a whole new meaning - a meaning that could never have been envisaged when the writing started in October 2015.It has been described as a brilliantly compelling quirky book of inspiration, coincidence, love, luck, loss, life, chance, opportunism, emotion, comedy, stupidity, amazement, danger, worry, survival, happiness, laughter, and WTF!See www.litcbook.com to learn more.Contains original artwork by chrisriversart.com.

Dancing with The Field: Bringing Joy, Passion and Play into Everyday Life


Kris Kelkar - 2019
    It can happen anywhere and to anyone, if you are caught in a cycle where you simply exist, react to life and never really ‘feel’ life’s amazing vibrancy.In this book, Dancing with The Field: Bringing Joy, Passion and Play into Everyday Life, a new concept is explored around the conscious field that responds to us as we interact with it, with chapters that examine: - The relational field - Creating with this field - Seeing our bodies as doorways to the field - The field in relationships - And much more…Through practical spirituality and firm underpinnings in science and personal experience, Dancing with The Field introduces a framework for life to help people recognize when they are in a state of connection and play with this field and when they are not.If you are on a spiritual path and feel like you need some additional guidance to bring more joy into your life, then this is the book you simply must read now!

Mission: Subhero


Linda Armstrong - 2017
    The worldwide attention pushes him to launch a bold plan allowing free access of this life-changing app to anyone for a limited time. Fervor to upload the new app is at fever pitch as the world waits for the unveiling. However, secret government agencies are worried. Fearing what the effects of this app will do, they plan to stop the app from ever getting out before the world has a chance to enter the category of hero, even the category labelled Subhero. The race is on for the world's chance at change, where the new cool is being average and doing random accidents of kindness. Suddenly, the world can become a Subhero overnight and there's no stopping what Nelson has started!

The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue


Trevor Alan Foris - 2020
    Equally, there are no secret access points to these hidden worlds that don’t exist, and there is no, 'unfinished business from the past' that is set to destroy, well, anything. There is no disaster looming.Anyway, regardless of any potential threat that may or may not be present, this publication, The Octunnumi and any reference to any other beings is a work of fiction.And for the record, Scariodintts, should they exist, are perfectly lovely beings whose purpose in life is grossly misunderstood.