MONSTER ON THE LOOSE Sam Slade didn’t believe in Gorgo until he saw the monster’s hideous scaly face, its slimy green talons and the massive mouth that could swallow a killer whale. Sam didn’t believe in love, either, until he met virginal Moira McCartin and helped her to discover the deep passions slumbering within her. Moira taught him to love and Gorgo taught him to fear. Spewn from some sub-oceanic cavern, the monster catapulted from the sea, threatening death for all who challenged it. Captured, it presented even more of a problem, for deep in the bowels of the sea was a larger, more vicious monster, even now rising from the depths to rescue its offspring and to destroy everything in its path—battleships, tanks and half of London!

Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Off to the Side is the tale of one of America's most beloved writers. Jim Harrison traces his upbringing in Michigan amid the austerities of the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears. He chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires — including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" — alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world — which he...

Jack Tawlin was a living legend in a land where gunmen die young. Now he wanted to be peaceable, never to see the inside of a jailhouse again. But Taw was marked for violence-by his fellow men, his brother, and the sheriff. So Taw agreed to go along with a daring holdup scheme, even though he'd been warned by his brother's wife: "You're the man they'll put the blame on!"

-an amazon reviewer:Includes a Sector General Short Story and most of the others are set in the same universe. 'Countercharm' concerns Dr. Conway's encounter with one of the hazards of his profession. Doctors at Sector General get their xenomedical knowledge from 'Educator Tapes' the recorded minds of ET physicians. The catch is you don't just get their medical knowledge but *everything* including their sex drive - which can lead to embarrassing and distracting consequences. In 'Kill or Cure' a Navy rescue team discovers their wreck is 'not of this world'. They do their best to help the injured, sluglike beings inside but do they dare let them contact their friends? An alien species is deliberately formenting military tensions on Earth in 'Red Alert'. Is this a preliminary to invasion? Or is something else going on? In 'Tableau' Earth's first contact with another species results in war. Then an Earth soldier and one of the alien Orligians find themselves trapped together in the wreckage of their ships and discover it's all due to a horrible misunderstanding. In 'Conspirators' the laboratory animals aboard the the first intersteller explorer plan their escape with the help of the ship's cat and a pet canary. In 'The Scavengers' a Terran taskforce is assigned to 'clean up' those aliens who survived the initial attack. And finally 'Occupation: Warrior' not only provides the missing half to the first Sector General story in 'Hospital Station' but gives the unexpected background of Fleet Commander Dermod. Contents Countercharm To Kill or Cure Red Alert Tableau The Conspirators The Scavengers Occupation: Warrior

Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon.Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.Amazon.com ReviewNo small themes for historian William McNeill: he is a writer of big, sweeping books, from The Rise of the West to The History of the World. Plagues and Peoples considers the influence of infectious diseases on the course of history, and McNeill pays special attention to the Black Death of the 13th and 14th centuries, which killed millions across Europe and Asia. (At one point, writes McNeill, 10,000 people in Constantinople alone were dying each day from the plague.) With the new crop of plagues and epidemics in our own time, McNeill's quiet assertion that "in any effort to understand what lies ahead the role of infectious disease cannot properly be left out of consideration" takes on new significance. From the PublisherMcNeill's highly acclaimed work is a brilliant and challenging account of the effects of disease on human history. His sophisticated analysis and detailed grasp of the subject make this book fascinating reading. By the author of The Rise Of The West.

“Savages, they’re nothing but savages!”“They must be caught and punished!”“They must be taught their place!”“They must be obliterated like the plague!” So began the reign of terror. Humans, already enslaved, were now to be exterminated. The Dragoons, a band of vicious apes, swore to drive the humans from their land, burn their huts, murder their children, and imprison the last sorry survivors in the Forbidden Zone. Only Galen, Virdon and Burke stood between the doomed humans and their terrible fate. Only they could expose the Dragoons and their dangerous secret. Only they could keep the apes from destroying an entire race and every remnant of their dead civilization. But in this desert of brutality, small flames of reason and kindness still flickered. An ape doctor and a frightened blind female become the unwitting aides of human salvation . . . “The Surgeon,” based on the teleplay by Barry Oringer“The Deception,” based on the teleplay by Anthony Lawrence & Joe Ruby & Ken Spears

“… only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot. ”

Survival has been the Sledge way since Reuben Sledge’s father first moved to Des Moines. Yet the family seems cursed, and one by one the Sledges are slipping away. Reuben’s oldest brother is hanged for the murder of his wife. Then another brother is committed to an asylum for spying on the woman he loves. But it’s the rape and disgrace of his beloved sister Nellie that drives Reuben into a deep despair. Into the depths of this depression wanders Tabor, lovely and vulnerable, who sets Reuben alive with the promise of her love. When Reuben learns that Tabor has descended into the City, he determines, in a moment of panic, to enter and bring her out. Thus begins the novel's second act, a harrowing journey through the horrors of the City and among a ghastly assemblage of dwellers who've crafted new lives for themselves in the underworld.

Promoted as the mystery of the year in 1940 The Chuckling Fingers is set at a summer estate on Lake Superior north of Grand Marais. The heroine is Ann Gay, a stenographer in an insurance office, who rushes to the North Shore after learning that her beloved cousin Jacqueline, newly married to a lumbering heir, may be in danger: "Other people may think they’d like to live their lives over, but not me—not if this last week is going to be in it. Out of what has just happened at the Fingers both Jacqueline and I got something worth keeping, but Heaven defend me from ever again having to stand helplessly by while it becomes more and more apparent to almost everyone but me that the person I love most in the world is murderously insane."

Review"D.M. Fraser’s manipulation of language shows all the deftness of a skilled surgeon. His technical brilliance is charged here and there with a frisson of misanthropic humour that delights and unsettles." —The Globe and Mail"At once cerebral and sensual, D.M. Fraser’s stories are narrated by a variety of voices that are all, without exception, strong, articulate, and highly original, informed by the author’s sharp sense of irony, his political sensibility, and his irreverent sense of humour." —Books in Canada"D.M. Fraser resides in British Columbia's literary heaven alongside Malcolm Lowry, singing in the highest choirs." —Alan Twigg, BC Bookworld"In a way, the scenes in these stories are all comedic, and gravely serious: they occupy the space between irony and absurdity. Fraser had a beautiful style, which can be seen in these graceful, sonorous sentences. One hopes that this new edition of Class Warfare will inspire a new generation of Canadian writers to follow in his footsteps." —GeistProduct DescriptionA remarkable story collection about the radical anti-establishment of the 1970s by the late D.M. Fraser, one of Canada's most underappreciated writers. Comprised of assertive missives and richly hued character studies, Class Warfare is a gloriously written call to arms firmly rooted in the politics and culture of the 1970s; a paean to the disenfranchised about the possibilities of "the sweetness of life." First published in 1976 but never before released in the United States, Class Warfare includes an introduction by Arsenal Pulp Press' co-founder Stephen Osborne.D.M. Fraser was Arsenal Pulp Press' editor until his death in 1985 at age thirty-eight.We would have slept forever, if it had been possible; but it was not possible. The noise of gunfire woke us. The siren in the street, the crack of truncheon on skull, the groaning of muscle and crashing of blood, in all the unrewarded labours of the world, woke us. The shouts of the dying penetrated into that sleep, dragged us half-blind and staggering out of the lovely dreams, the sheltered nests we thought were ours by right, into this wakefulness, this cold and unforgiving daylight. There was no other choice.

Trouble struck the schooner Griselda at 9:40 on an April evening. It was not the fault of the weather or the sea or the soundness of her hull. The trouble was human. A woman. Her name was Julia Parks, though in the beginning she insisted it was Lambert.It was hard to blame Howard Crane for bringing her aboard, because Julia always got what she wanted. What she wanted in this case was money. Keith Lambert's—her ex-husband's—money. That there were others too who wanted it was one of the first things that came to the minds of the Barbados police the next morning when Julia was found suffocated in her cabin. But the only trail they had to follow was one of tangled lives and tangled motives that led to jealousy, blackmail, native secrecy, and sudden death — all against the peaceful tropical background of picturesque Barbados.Here is another of the highly polished, tightly knit, and suspenseful mysteries that have made George Harmon Coxe for almost twenty...