The following is an excerpt from the book Broken
by William Cope Moyers with Katherine Ketcham
Published by Penguin Books; August 2007;$15.00US/$18.50CAN;
978-0-14-311245-7
Copyright C 2006 William Cope Moyers and Katherine Ketcham

Prologue

October 1994

There was a sharp rap on the door, followed by a muffled but unmistakable command from a voice outside in the hallway.

“We want the white guy, just the white guy. We know he’s in there. He comes out now and there’s no trouble for anyone later.”

I was the “white guy.” I knew in that instant that my family’s desperate search to track me down had ended at this decayed two-story apartment in a violent pocket of Atlanta’s inner city. Terrified, I rushed around the room, trying to warn the other crack heads to sit still and keep quiet.

“Don’t panic,” I whispered. “They’ll go away.” But nobody was listening because everybody was as high and as scared as I was. We bumped into one another as we tried to find a way out, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We were like wild animals trapped by a wind-whipped forest fire.

Who was out there banging on the door? Was it my father? My mother? My wife? My mind flashed back to the morning four days earlier when I left my house
in suburban Atlanta. I remembered kissing four-month-old Thomas and two-year-old Henry good-bye. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I told Allison I needed to run some errands before dinner. I drove to the parking lot on the corner of Boulevard and Ponce de Leon, approached a drug dealer with a thick scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth, and paid him one hundred dollars for six marble-sized rocks of crack cocaine. I held them in my hand and thought, “These will keep me going for a day or two.” They were gone in four hours.

The knocking became a relentless pounding that shook the door frame. I thought about escaping out the back porch door to the vacant lot and just running, running, running. But where could I go? They would find me, just like they had in Harlem and St. Paul. I’d been running for five years. Now I had run out of options.

I sat down at the old wood table in the kitchen, the place where the deals were made, the pipe was fired up, and the crack was consumed. I couldn’t run anymore — my legs felt weak and shaky. I couldn’t hide — there was no place left. I couldn’t think, but I could still react, and with the instincts of the addict I did the only thing that was left to do. I reached into my sock and pulled out the cellophane cigarette wrapper with the rocks carefully stored inside like precious stones. My hands were shaking and I noticed for the first time that the tips of my fingers were scorched and blistered from lighter burns. I loaded the pipe, flicked the lighter, and inhaled deeply.

The sizzle of the crack and the euphoric rush exploding inside my head were suddenly all that mattered to me. The banging on the door was like thunder on the horizon. I heard the warning, but I didn’t feel threatened anymore because I was back in my element, that faraway place where nothing on this earth could touch me. The rush hijacked my brain, and the knocking, scurrying, and fear disappeared. The memories of wife and children were gone. I was gone.

I tried to grab on and hold tight to the high, and for a few moments time stood still. I was a Roman candle on the Fourth of July, bright colors and showers of sparks. This, I thought, is what it’s all about — stopping time, going higher and higher, explosions of light and heat, one after another after another. The rapture filled me for a minute or two, and then it began to fade, the sparks died down, the flame became a dying star far, far away.

I folded my arms over my chest, longing for comfort, for peace. I was so sick. So sick and tired of it all. In that moment I realized the hopelessness of my situation, and in a sudden, brief flash of clarity, I asked myself: Now what? I stared at the filthy wood floor littered with half-empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and used syringes. The answer wasn’t here in this room anymore. It was all over. I was done.

I stood up and made my way past BJ, the Old Man, and the other addicts with whom I was living and slowly dying for the last four days. My steps were deliberate but out of my control as I walked into the hallway and out the front door, flanked by the two armed off-duty policemen who were part of the intervention team hired to get me out of the crack house and back into treatment.

A hard, steady rain was falling as we approached the gray van parked on the curb. The sliding door opened, and I collapsed into the backseat.

My father was sitting in the front passenger seat. Turning around to look at me, he saw a thirty-five-year-old crack addict who hadn’t shaved, showered, or eaten in four days. A man who walked out on his wife and two young children and ditched his promising career at CNN. A broken shell of a man, a pale shadow of the human being he had raised to be honest, loving, responsible. His firstborn son.

Silence.

“You’re angry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“That’s hardly the word for it.” His voice was harsh and cold, like the rain outside.

More silence.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I’m finished.”

All these years later, he tells me that’s where the conversation ended. But
whether I imagined it or not, I heard him say something else.

“I hate you.”

And I remember looking in his eyes and speaking my deepest truth.

“I hate me, too.”

Copyright C 2006 William Cope Moyers and Katherine Ketcham

The following is an excerpt from the book A Nail Through the Heart
by Timothy Hallinan
Published by William Morrow; July 2007;$24.95US/$31.50CAN; 978-0-06-125580-9
Copyright © 2007 Timothy Hallinan

The Story: Poke Rafferty is an American expatriate living in Bangkok and the author of a number of “rough travel” books aimed at young, hip travelers who want to go off — way off — the usual tourist paths. He came to Bangkok to write the third book in the series, Looking for Trouble in Thailand, and falls in love with the city and the Thai people, two of them in particular: a former Patpong go-go dancer named Rose, with whom he now lives off and on, and whom he wants to marry; and a wary eight-year-old former street child named Miaow, whom he is trying formally to adopt.

The adoption process for Miaow is complicated and expensive, and to offset the expenses not too long ago, Poke wrote a piece for a magazine in which he demonstrated that virtually all the “missing” Western men in Thailand had gone missing voluntarily and were living very happily somewhere in the Kingdom. The article brought him a young Australian woman whose uncle has disappeared. This quest in turn leads him to a rundown mansion on the banks of the Chao Phraya River and a mysterious older woman — much feared, if others’ reactions to her are to be trusted — named Madame Wing. Poke is now in the house and about to meet Madame Wing for the first time.

***

The silence is pierced by a thin, insistent squealing from somewhere in the house. Rafferty backs away from the fragment of temple wall and seats himself in the armchair. The sound grows louder, and a woman comes around the corner and into view. She is tiny and angular, her sharp joints folded batlike into a wheelchair that is too big for her. The chair stops in the doorway, without entering the room, and the squealing stops with it.

She regards him without expression. For a moment he actually wonders if she is blind, simply directing her eyes where she knows the armchair will be.

“Madame Wing,” he says, just to break the silence.

Her chin comes up a quarter of an inch, and all the planes of her face shift. Her eyes actually register him for the first time. She is thin to the point of being gaunt, the bones of her face as sharp as a Cubist painting, the skull slowly surfacing beneath the flesh. The hands grasping the rubber wheels are all knuckles. The skin stretched over them has turned a peculiar bruised-looking purple.

“You came,” she says with a hint of satisfaction. The voice, low and rough, scrapes Rafferty’s ears. Despite the grandeur of her home, there is nothing refined about the way she sounds. She rolls herself a foot or so into the room. The wheelchair squeals again.

“You should get Jeeves to oil that thing.”

She stops the chair’s motion and regards him coldly. He has been regarded coldly before — he thinks of himself as an expert at being regarded coldly — but this is something entirely new. She looks at him as he might look at a snake coiled on his pillow. “His name is Pak, and you do not tell me what to do.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“Not ever,” she says. Now that he can see her eyes more clearly, he wishes he could not. They are extraordinarily luminous eyes, but the light in them seems all to be reflected. They have the shine of an animal that can see in the dark. He can see the white all the way around the circles of her irises. “You have questions to ask me before I come to my business. Ask them.”

Her business? Rafferty does want any part of this woman’s business, whatever it is. “You had a maid here,” he says. “She may know something about a man I’m trying to find.”

She draws herself up in the chair. It makes her seem both larger and heavier, despite her apparent frailty. “What man?”

“An Australian named–”

“No,” she says, closing the subject. She sits back. “I know nothing of Australians.”

“Actually,” he says, “it’s the maid you can probably help me with.” He holds up the note from Bangkok Domestics. “You wrote a letter about her.”

She extends a skeletal hand, a knot of knuckles and rings. It is absolutely still. Whatever health problems she may have, none of them causes her hands to tremble.

Rafferty begins to unfold the letter, but she gives the hand a peremptory shake and he finds himself getting up to give it to her. “Sit,” she says, the moment she has it. She does not look up to see if he does as he is told.

As she unfolds the letter, he gets a chance to look at her without having to face those unsettling eyes. Her hair, still mostly black, is pulled back into a bun so tight it looks like it hurts. The emaciated face is dark but not heavily lined, and Rafferty revises his estimate of her age. At first sight he thought seventy. Now he thinks she could be anywhere from fifty to sixty.

“This girl,” she says at last, precisely refolding the letter. “She is of no account.”

“She may have information I need.”

She drops the letter into her lap. “Why should I care?”

“Not a reason in the world. You said you’d see me, so I thought–”

“I do not care what you thought. The girl was dismissed because she could not accept discipline. I have no idea where she went.”

“How long did she work here before you fired her?”

The gaze she gives him says the question is an impertinence. “Seven weeks, eight weeks.”

“If you fired her, why did you write her a letter of reference?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s a natural question. The letter got her hired by someone else, and now that person is missing, and so is she.”

Something very unpleasant happens to her mouth. “Are you suggesting that this might involve me?”

“It involves you to the extent that it brought me here.”

“I brought you here,” she says imperiously. “Not this stupid girl.”

“And if I came, so will others. Who knows who’ll they’ll be?”

The hands drop to the chair’s wheels as though she intends to leave the room. Instead, she moves it forward several inches, squealing her way closer to Rafferty. When she is close enough to make him wish he could move the chair backward, the squealing stops and the silence of the house once again presses against his ears, like water.

“And who do you think they might be?” she asks.

The intensity of the question unnerves him. “Could be anyone. The police, the Australian embassy.”

She nods a tenth of an inch. Her lids drop slightly, hooding the eyes for a merciful moment, and then she turns to the carved stone on the wall. Her gaze travels left to right, like those of someone reading a newspaper. When she has finished, she says, without looking at him, “That’s hardly anyone.” Then she lifts her hands and claps once. The sound is still ringing in Rafferty’s ears when Jeeves steps into the doorway.
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The following is an excerpt from the book The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse
by Jonathan Selwood
Published by Harper Perennial; August 2007;$13.95US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-06-117387-5
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Just as I’m touching up the manic glint in Tom Cruise’s eyes, another aftershock hits. I stumble back from the easel to try and keep from toppling over, but with the hardwood floor shifting violently in all three dimensions at once, it’s like trying to cross a cobblestone street blind drunk in stiletto heels. Fortunately, a waist-high pile of old Celeb magazines breaks my fall.

The tremor ends just seconds after it starts, but a dry fog of lead paint dust continues to sift down from the ceiling. I wait a minute to make sure the ground isn’t going to start moving again, then limp over to turn on the clock radio next to the futon couch. A male DJ’s voice blares out in midstream.

“ . . . is roughly equivalent to dropping a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. Please remember that phones should be used only in the case of an emergency, and not to call up the station and request the ‘Earthquake Song’ by the Little Girls. Let me also remind the two or three of you who haven’t heard this before to refrain from firing up that crack pipe until you’re absolutely positively sure you don’t smell gas, to boil any tap water before drinking, and to slip on those Ugg boots before strolling over the broken glass and shards of jagged metal that most likely carpet your floor. . . . In other disaster news, one of our deservedly unpaid interns managed to spill wheat grass juice in all three CD players, so I’ll be dipping into the vinyl vaults as we wait with bated breath for the always riveting Cal Tech report. . . .”

X’s “Los Angeles” starts crackling through the clock radio speaker. I turn up the volume, and take a minute to look around at the disaster that was once my apartment.

Dirty plates and cereal bowls are stacked everywhere, improvised ashtrays spill out over piles of old tabloid magazines, and layers of spattered paint cake the hardwood floor in a riot of clown colors. For the past two weeks I haven’t seen my boyfriend, Javier, haven’t checked the mail, haven’t left the apartment for more than half an hour at a time. For the past week I’ve been too nauseated to eat anything but Trader Joe’s pot stickers. And for the past three days I haven’t changed out of my paint-spattered black T-shirt and jeans. All of this the result of my attempt to (in the words of my sociopathic art dealer Juan Dahlman) “launch my meteoric rise to fame.”

Of course, in addition to the mess are the five new canvases that Dahlman plans to sell for a whopping fifty thousand dollars apiece come my opening Sunday afternoon (he claims Sunday afternoon is the new Thursday). Paintings I originally conceived as a satiric bayonet into the partially hydrogenated heart of contemporary society, but which my two-hundred-dollar-an-hour media training coach has reprogrammed me to call “transcendently kitschy.”

Propped against my desk is Raphael’s Madonna and Child with the original faces replaced by Britney Spears and her son Sean. Hanging over the futon is David’s The Death of Marat featuring a turbaned and bloody Kurt Cobain in the bathtub. And on the easel itself is American Gothic redone with a smiling Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. As usual, the reproductions are technically flawless (with the exception, obviously, of the celebrity substitutions). I suppose if my new career as a sellout artist/media whore implodes, I can always move to Ibiza and become a professional forger.

The aftershock scattered my paintbrushes all over the floor, so I pick them up and carry them into the bathroom to clean. A new earthquake crack has appeared, running diagonally across the mildewed blue shower tile, but the two finished canvases I did with cobalt drier are still miraculously balanced on the towel rack. Placing the brushes in a coffee can on the soap dish ledge, I turn on the faucet. Rust-colored water spurts down into the basin, stops, then starts again with a shuddering of pipes, only to begin immediately pooling up from the paint-clogged drain. I shut the faucet back off, grab a bottle of “eco-friendly” drain cleaner from the ledge of the toilet, and pour the last of it in.

It takes a full minute of staring at the gaunt woman’s face in the mirror above the sink for me to recognize it. My skin has drained from what I’ve always thought of as an SPF 15 pale to a tubercular pallor, my cheeks have sunken in painfully, and the dark circles under my eyes now match my black hair and T-shirt. Jesus, even my eyes themselves seem to be darkening.

The sink finally drains, and I’m about to begin cleaning the brushes, when there’s a knock at the front door.

Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Author
Jonathan Selwood — evil incarnate or poseur extraordinaire?

I was born in Hollywood, California. In other words, the first time I played doctor as a kid was on a neighbor’s circular fur-covered waterbed with a mirror on the ceiling. The girl’s parents and two younger siblings were busy out by the pool hosting a nude cocaine party.

My own parents, in contrast, were from back east, and did not partake in nude cocaine parties. I was thus instilled from a young age with a strong New England-style Puritan ethic, while at the same time being raised in what is arguably the most depraved and wantonly hedonistic neighborhood in the world. When I finally graduated high school and left to attend college in Vermont, I was completely ill-prepared for the relative lack of debauchery (i.e., the nude parties had no cocaine, and the cocaine parties had no nudity).

After college, I moved down to Chiapas, Mexico, and tried my best to write on the cheap. It lasted about four months. Then I moved to New York City and tried my best to write on the expensive. It lasted about five years. Eventually I moved to Portland, Oregon, in search of a happy medium.

Portland’s been pretty good to me so far, but I must admit that in the dead of a rainy winter, I’m still inclined to wax nostalgic for those carefree sunny southern California days, and the nude cocaine parties of my youth.

Age: 27 (give or take any number of years)

Height: 4 foot 8 inches (seated)

Weight: Enough to throw around

Politics: Lapsed Anarchist

Religion: Evangelical Absurdist

Sport: Shot put

Hobbies: Talking very loudly when intoxicated, composting kitchen scraps, excessively rolling my R’s when ordering burrrrrritos . . . using ellipses . . .

Favorite Movie: Without bourbon, Lost in Translation. With bourbon, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Favorite Album: El Poder de New York by Oro Solido

Worst Job: HMO medical equipment denial guy (i.e., “I realize your son has no legs, sir, but I’m afraid his insurance plan doesn’t cover wheelchairs. Have you considered duct-taping him to some sort of a skateboard?”)

Best Job: Writer

Strangest Job: Bouncer at a bar in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite growing up in Los Angeles, my knowledge of Mexican slang is limited at best. I often resorted to waving a baseball bat in the air and screaming things like, “I throw feces at your slatternly granddaughter’s chicken tamales, you obese pubic hair!”

Best Drink I Ever Invented: The Eyeball. (Two ounces Everclear, two ounces water, ice, and three dashes Angostura bitters. Why yes, it is strong . . .)

Worst Drink I Ever Invented: The Exxon Valdez. (Two ounces Kahlua, two ounces Jagermeister. Garnish with an anchovy.)

Reviews
“Read this book, because laughing yourself to death is the second best way to go.”
–Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up and Chinese Takeout

The following is an excerpt from the book An Ocean of Air
by Gabrielle Walker
Published by Harcourt, Inc.; August 2007;$25.00US; 978-0-15-101124-7
Copyright © 2007 Gabrielle Walker

Chapter 1
The Ocean Above Us

Nearly four hundred years ago, in a patchwork of individual fiefdoms that we now call Italy, a revolution of ideas was struggling to take place. The traditional way to understand the workings of the world — through a combination of divine revelation and abstract reasoning — had begun to come under attack from a new breed. These people called themselves “natural philosophers,” because the word “scientist” had not yet been invented. To find out the way the world worked, they didn’t sit around and talk about it. They went out and looked. This was not an approach that was likely to find favor with the Church, home of received wisdom, or with its instruments — the whispering Inquisitors, with their hotline back to Rome. Now, a certain natural philosopher had fallen very foul of those Inquisitors and been forced to stop his investigations into the structure of the heavens. His name was Galileo Galilei, and our story begins with him.

Convent of Minerva, Rome
June 22, 1633

I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors general against heretical depravity throughout the whole Christian Republic . . . have been pronounced by the Holy Office to be vehemently suspected of heresy, that is to say, of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center and moves:

Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this strong suspicion, reasonably conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies . . . and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me.

As the great Galileo rose from his knees at the end of this infamous, and forced, recantation, he is said to have muttered “Eppur si muove!” (“And yet it moves!”). He knew in his heart that Earth moves around the sun, in spite of what the Inquisitors had made him say. Still, devoutly religious as he was, he had no taste for defying his own church. Nor had he any desire to share the fate of the unfortunate monk Giordano Bruno, who a few decades earlier had been publicly burned for holding similar views. Galileo may have been the most famous philosopher in all Italy, but he knew that in itself wouldn’t save him from the fire.
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The following is an excerpt from the book Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception by Lois Winston

Winter wonderland, my ass.

The stinging wind whipped at Emma’s exposed cheeks and brought tears to her eyes. Lowering her head, she trudged around the enormous mounds of black snow piled along the curb, searching for a semi-safe path onto the sidewalk. Finding none, she grabbed a parking meter and hauled herself over the smallest of the soot-encrusted icebergs. Some people would go to any lengths for their morning cup of java, and she was one of them.

As she yanked open the door to Chapters and Verse, the “Spring Movement” of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons greeted her. Someone had a really warped sense of humor. Or hoped the power of positive thinking could affect weather patterns. Still, the music held a reminder that the harsh realities of early February in Philadelphia would eventually give way to sunshine and flowers come late March. Maybe. Last year they’d suffered through one of their worst blizzards ever the first week in April.

Emma shivered, thoughts of daffodils and crocuses quickly replaced by the chill rippling through her damp body. Shaking the moisture from her hair, she deposited her coat on a chair in the café, then headed for the coffee bar.

“Morning,” said the barista. “The usual?”

“Please.”

With her morning shot of caffeine and sugar in hand, Emma trolled the stacks of books, occasionally pulling a volume from the shelves and sliding it under her arm. She needed the predictability of this daily routine. It helped her get through the rest of the day. Every day.

Why the hell do I stay?

If she had any courage, she’d leave. Sell the house. Move away. Start over. But she couldn’t leave, and her reasons had little to do with a lack of courage. Life in Emmaville was just too damn complex. One part guilt, one part masochism. But how could she leave the only tangible reminder she had of life before everything had turned to shit?

So she stayed, losing herself in work that at least gave her the satisfaction of knowing her efforts helped others. She pushed herself each day until exhaustion overcame her and she fell into nightmare-riddled sleep. Tomorrow morning the cycle would repeat itself. I’m a twenty-first century Sisyphus, eternally damned to live out an unending punishment for my sins. Not that she had a clue as to whatever sin first condemned her years before, but she’d certainly committed a whopper since then. Whether a sin of omission or commission, it hardly mattered. The result was the same.

Still, what would be the harm in a short escape? She deserved that much, didn’t she? Emma closed her eyes and conjured up a distant memory of a sun-kissed Adriatic coastline. Hell, why not? She opened her eyes and headed for the travel section.

* * *

Logan Crawford’s mind kept drifting back to the events of last night, an evening definitely not worth remembering. Even her name escaped him. Although normally not a problem, this time he was saddled with Candi-Randi-Bambi-whatever-the-hell-her-name-was for the length of his stay in Philadelphia. As head of the city’s redevelopment office, she was his official escort-slash-liaison, the person assigned to make certain he chose the City of Brotherly Love as the East coast site for his corporate headquarters. And last night Candi-Randi-Bambi, a woman who wore her ambition emblazoned across her surgically augmented chest, made it abundantly clear just how far she’d go to get him to sign on the dotted line. And it was far from brotherly. Or sisterly.

Logan doubted he was the first billionaire businessman she’d bedded in her quest up the corporate ladder, but he’d wager a good portion of his sizeable fortune that he was the biggest — the wunderkind west coast urban developer who was giving The Donald a run for his money. Only Logan had better hair — as the media was quick to point out.

With a snap of his fingers, he could provide Candi-Randi-Bambi with an express elevator straight through the glass ceiling, and she knew it.

No fucking way in hell.

Last night when he stared down into Candi-Randi-Bambi’s come-hither eyes, he saw the reflection of a disillusioned, unhappy man. And damn, up to that moment he hadn’t even realized he’d been disillusioned or unhappy. He had wealth; he had power. So what was up with the sudden emptiness and dissatisfaction?

Beryl would say it was because he led a shallow life devoid of emotional commitment. As much as he protested to the contrary, he knew she was right. Maybe it was time to leave the bimbos to Trump.

Struck by the epiphany, he’d bolted from Candi-Randi-Bambi’s bed. They’d used each other. She spread her legs hoping to advance her career; he’d taken advantage of the offer. Sex without emotional entanglements, the pattern of his adult life. He got the release he needed, and the woman got a notch on her bedpost. Only this time it hadn’t worked. After thirty-eight years Logan Crawford realized it was time to grow up. Only damn it, he didn’t have a clue how.

Still reeling from the self-revelation, he’d canceled his morning appointments and headed his rental car north, needing some time alone to think. After driving for half an hour he found himself in a quiet, upscale section of Philadelphia. A bookstore on top of a hill beckoned like a siren.

For the rest of his stay in Philadelphia he vowed to spend his nights curled up with a good thriller rather than a cheap thrill. Now all he had to do was find one. At the moment he couldn’t even find the damn fiction section in the boundless maze of shelves that wound around the first level of the two story megastore. Lost in the travel section, he spun on his heels and –

THUD!

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About the Author

Lois Winston is the author of several romance novels. Her book, Talk Gertie to Me, won the 2007 Readers and Bookbuyers Best Laurie Award. Find out more about Lois by visiting her website at http://www.loiswinston.com.

The following is an excerpt from the book Dead Connection
by Alafair Burke
Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC; July 2007;$19.95US/$24.95CAN; 978-0-8050-7785-8
Copyright © 2007 Alafair Burke

1

The man’s first look at the newspaper item was a casual one, followed immediately by a more deliberate perusal. But it was the photograph accompanying the story that had him transfixed.

Caroline Hunter had preoccupied his thoughts in recent weeks, but this was his first opportunity to reflect on her appearance. To his surprise, she reminded him of a girl he had worked hard not to think about for a very long time. So proud. So uppity. Caroline Hunter had the look of a woman convinced of her own intelligence, a woman who assumed she could do whatever she wanted — get whatever she wanted — without any repercussions.

The man wondered if Caroline Hunter had any regrets as those two bullets tore through her body. Maybe for some women it took dying in the street like a dog to reflect upon one’s decisions and the effects they have on others. He felt his muscles tense, crumpling the pages of newsprint in his hands.

Then he placed the paper neatly onto the breakfast table, took another sip of tea, and looked down at the muted traffic in the street below the window. He smiled. Fate was presenting him an even more promising opportunity than he had understood when he first spotted the article. Details remained to be worked out, but he was certain of one thing: Caroline Hunter was only the beginning. There would be more stories, just like this one, about women just like her.

Three hundred and sixty-four days later, Amy Davis finished a second glass of red wine, pondering which excuse she should exploit to call it a night. She should have known better than to agree to a first date that started at eleven o’clock. Even by New York City standards, such a late invitation was an unequivocal sign that the guy wanted to avoid the cost of dinner but leave open the possibility of a spontaneous one-nighter.

But then the guy — he claimed his name was Brad — had suggested meeting at Angel’s Share, not one of the usual meat markets. Amy still thought of the cozy lounge as her secret oasis, tucked so discreetly inside a second-floor dive Japanese restaurant on Stuyvesant Street. She decided to take Brad’s awareness of the place as a sign. Then she looked out her apartment window and saw the snow, the first of the season. To Amy, the first flakes of winter were magical, almost spiritual. Watching them fall to the quiet square of grass beneath the oversized bay windows at Angel’s Share would be fantastic, much more satisfying than observing them from the fire escape of her fifth-floor Avenue C walk-up.

And so Amy had taken a risk. None of the previous risks had panned out, but that didn’t mean that Brad wouldn’t. Besides, all she had to lose was another night at home with Chowhound the persian cat, falling asleep to the muted glow of her television. Three weeks earlier, she had committed herself to this process, and nights like this were the price she would have to pay if she were ever going to find The One.

She knew the date was a mistake precisely one second after she heard the voice behind her at the bar’s entrance. “Are you Amy?” It was a nice voice. Deep, but not brusque. Friendly, but calm. For exactly one second, she was optimistic. For that one second, she believed that Brad with the good voice, who was familiar with Angel’s Share, whose first date with her fell with the first snow, might just make a good companion for the evening, if not more.

Then the second passed, and she turned to meet the man who went with the voice. The truth was, Amy did not care about looks. People said that all the time, but Amy actually meant it. Her ex-boyfriend — perhaps he had never become a boyfriend, but the man she’d most recently dated — had been handsome as hell, but by the time they were through, she found him repulsive. This time, she was putting looks aside to focus on the qualities that counted.

Brad’s face was not unattractive, but neither was it familiar — a surprise to Amy since they had exchanged multiple pictures over the last week. Internet daters posted photographs, so, even though Amy did not particularly care, she looked. It was nice, after all, to have a visual image to go with the instant messages and e-mails. This face in front of her, however, did not match the image she’d carried.

As Brad squeezed through a small group of people to ask the host for a table, she mentally shuffled through the pictures he’d sent and realized that in most, his face had been obscured — sunglasses on both the fishing boat and the ski slopes, a hat on the golf course, a darkened dinner table at some black tie event. One head shot had been pretty clear, but even a toad could eke out one good picture. In retrospect, she realized she had used that one good picture to fill in the blanks on the rest.

Once they were seated, Amy tried to put her finger on precisely what was different. The face was puffier. Older, too. In fact, Brad looked much older than the thirty-eight years he claimed in his profile. Sure, she might have shaved off a couple of years herself, but she was talking much older in his case. She realized there was no point in getting bogged down in the differences. He looked completely different than she had envisioned, and that was that.

By the end of the first glass of wine, she knew it wasn’t just Brad’s face that didn’t match up to his online counterpart. According to Brad’s profile, he was a gourmand and a red wine junkie. She allowed him to order first, afraid she might embarrass herself with a passé selection. After he requested a cheap Merlot mass-produced in California, she proceeded to ask for a Barbera d’Asti. If Brad was going to lie, then she was going to rack up Piedmont prices on his tab.
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Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book History Lesson for Girls
by Aurelie Sheehan
Published by Penguin; June 2007;$14.00US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-14-311190-0
Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan

Chapter One

One Day I saw them, our dream horses, and on that day I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. There they were, Appaloosas and roans and bays, and I thought I saw, squinting into the last bit of sunlight, a gray. All the horses moved together, a makeshift herd — maybe they’d heard my car, or maybe it was a chill, the first winter breeze, almost imperceptible on a summer day. So many years later and now here they were in front of me. The horses trembled, shifted, and then became calm and separated out again, twelve or twenty of them, more than enough for the Alison and Kate Horse Training Company.

She saved me. That’s the first thing you should know about Kate. It was the year we moved to Weston, the year my parents went haywire, the year my back started curving out of control as if it were the life of the party. She was five feet seven and had long brown hair bleached by the sun, and her father was an Egyptian emperor. Was he for real? Real enough for a small suburban dynasty. Real enough to pass on a legacy.

I think of Kate all the time. I think of her like I’ve got this little silver Egyptian cat in my pocket, a little silver talisman that won’t go away. I think of her, and then I think of him, too, Tut Hamilton, sham shaman in suburbia. I can’t forget him, any more than I can forget her.

The thing is, she saved me that year, and then it was my turn. That’s what friendship is. That’s how to make history.

I was thirteen when my parents and I moved to the fancy town of Weston from maligned and honorable Norwalk, two towns over. We were ready for anything, ready for the good things to start happening, and the first thing that went wrong was the blue room.

Mom wanted her studio to be blue, despite the fact that most painters prefer a room absent of color, a blank wall, a clean palette. She’d had a vision, you see, a dream of a blue room.

My father offered to paint the room for her, but she would choose the color, of course. She and I went to the paint store together.

“These men — they’re painting the world, creating color wheels, color contrasts, color inspirations — without any real conception, no awareness at all, of what they’re doing. They could be artists — but no, no — instead of using these glorious choices — all the glory, all the opportunity, Alison — they just sit around drinking coffee out of a thermos and painting houses tan, tan, and tan again. How dreary . . . ”

She continued talking as we got out of our Corolla (it also happened to be tan) and walked the short distance from the parking lot to the shopping center. I did hope she’d stop, or at least lower her voice, before we got to the store. She had a way of causing a commotion, despite her size. She was a tiny, fragile person, swathed in scarves and perfumes and charms.

Men of uncertain age and weight looked our way as we came in: Scheherazade and the too tall, too bony, too elbowy stalk, in a back brace, beside her.

My mother breezed by their troubling, huntery expressions, and we settled in before the paint chips. I’d just turned thirteen, my back was curved, and my parents were curved, too — bohemians in Connecticut, the Land of Plenty. Either all the colors looked good to me or none of them did. Somehow it seemed that this, like everything else, could go either way.

Mom, however, was confident. She hummed with satisfaction, picking out various small, hopeful cards from the rack, cocking her head, pursing her lips — rejecting one, then the other, until she came to her blue.
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The following is an excerpt from the book:
No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!
by Louise Lewis
Published by iUniverse, Inc.
May 2007;$18.95US
978-0-595-42971-4
Copyright © 2007 Louise Lewis

I have always believed that everyone has a book in them. They merely have to take a look at their lives, past or present, to realize that life is indeed stranger than fiction. More likely than not, everyone’s lives would make for quite an entertaining story, to say the least.

Now I’m not saying that I think everyone’s book would be worthy of a Pulitzer or be chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. You’re holding the evidence to back up that statement on both accounts. But I do think there is something special and unique about each of our lives that should be written down and then shared with others. Having said all of that, I was totally unaware of the book that was lurking deep inside of me. I discovered it (or rather it discovered me) when I unexpectedly began a new chapter in my life.

The story I’m sharing with you began when I was set free (laid off) from my job of eleven years selling advertising space for publications in high tech. Being set free simultaneously marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. From day one of this new chapter, many truths were revealed to me. For instance, I immediately interpreted being set free from my job as something positive from which I would later benefit, rather than something negative that I would be challenged to overcome. Even though it would’ve been easy to panic about no longer having a source of income, I chose not to waste any energy thinking about the negative aspect of the situation.

Another truth that revealed itself was the knowledge that I was supposed to take advantage of the rare opportunity of having some time off. Therefore, I didn’t immediately start looking for another job. Granted, with no source of income, this was an odd decision to make. However, I had worked nonstop since the age of sixteen, and I felt that I deserved some time away from the rat race. That was my story, and I faithfully stuck to it.

Adding to the list of truths was the fact that I knew, without a doubt, that whatever I experienced during this new chapter of my life would have a profound and lasting effect on my future. Without knowing how or why, I was very aware from the start that I was being lovingly, divinely guided toward something special.
The last of my truths was knowing that the significance of the choices I would make during my new chapter would be revealed to me one at a time, and only when I was in the moment - not a minute sooner.

Armed with these truths, I not only felt excited but also well prepared to begin my new chapter. But no matter how ready I felt, I was acutely aware of the fact that if this indeed was a new chapter, nothing but blank pages stared me in the face. Where was I to begin?

After a bit of soul-searching, the one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted my new chapter in life to be based on a commitment to living in Spirit, rather than in Ego.

As I see it, the ego houses the more base elements of human nature, for example, fear, self-doubt, criticism, control issues, and selfishness that if left unchecked, will create negative energy in my life. On the flip side, when my life is focused on Spirit, the ultimate Source of truth, I am guided by more positive elements, such as courage, forgiveness, compassion and generosity.

Therefore, the first step of my journey involved making a commitment to allow Spirit to guide my every move and to let nothing stand in the way of that. I was convinced that by following Spirit, the pages of my new chapter would be filled with a very special story, one that would involve adventure, personal growth, and a change in lifestyle.

As my new chapter developed, my path crossed with those of many wonderful people — normal, everyday folks whom I met during my travels, as well as in my own backyard. I listened to their stories along the way. After each encounter, I asked these people (along with family and friends) for a gift. I asked everyone to answer one question: what is the meaning of life?

I also insisted that each person provide a spontaneous answer. In other words, he or she had to write the answer right then and there, while in my presence. Why did I insist on this? To answer that question, I have to adapt the saying “God lives in the details.” My version goes something like this: I believe that God (the ultimate truth) lives in the spontaneous moment. In other words, I believe that what you know to be true can be communicated in the moment, right now, without long deliberation or second-guessing. And you certainly don’t need an expert to tell you what you already know.

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of people I met agreed to join in on the adventure of my book. And I walked away from this journey with my heart filled with memorable gifts that will reward me until the end of my days.

Writing this book has been a personal journey for me as well as for some of the people you are about to meet. Due to the personal nature of some of their stories, I am not divulging every detail out of respect for each person. However, I will share with you the fact that with each person I met, I was reminded that I was not alone.
With each meeting, I was reminded that no matter what their race, religion, or geography, people possess far more similarities than they do differences. When you think about it, we all eventually experience pretty much the same stuff that life dishes out: the same joys, the same pain, the same sorrow. Somehow, believing this allows me to walk through life with a greater sense of belonging in the world.
I will forever be grateful to the people I met along the way. Because of them, I’m more committed than ever to being a more curious participant in life, a more compassionate listener, and a more adamant believer in the saying “We are all alike.”

I know that I cannot change the whole world, but I most certainly can change my world by asking those around me to lay focus to the meaning in their life. Therefore, it is my sincere hope that this book ignites conscious thought so that more people can find their own answers to the meaning of life. With this hope in my heart, I invite you to begin your own journey of discovery, which may very well begin by you asking this question to those people who cross your path. You’ll be amazed by what you hear.

And so, the tale of my journey begins. Thank you for coming along!
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The following is an excerpt from the book I Heart My In-Laws
by Dina Koutas Poch
Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC; June 2007;$15.00US/$18.95CAN; 978-0-8050-8279-1
Copyright © 2007 Dina Koutas Poch

Regional Guide to In-Laws

There are seven territories of in-law personalities in this great country of ours. Each has its own unique flavor.

1. West Coast In-Laws

(California, Oregon, Washington)

Three words: Burning Man Festival. Your in-laws live where Manifest Destiny carried them. They come from a long line of gold hunters — those in search of a truer, richer way of life. Every single Napa Valley wine they uncork, or Starbucks coffee they brew; or macrobiotic muffin they bake, they judge you for not living the way they do. “Oh, West Coast people are more laid back.” Really? They’re ultra-aggressive about lifestyle choices and the 40-hour workweek! How do you deal with your West Coast in-laws?

* Compliment their tan. Their sunglasses. Their shapely mountain-bike sculpted legs. They’ll eat it up (those egotists!). And coo when they mention how they fly seaplanes to their island house, and how the orca whales and “pristine wilderness” are their backyard. Blah, blah, blah. Make sure to note how very fresh the air is, even if it’s making your allergies act up.
* Read up on renewable energy resources: wind power, solar energy, and corn-powered cars. Tell them that you’re already on the waiting list for one (a waiting list made of recycled paper, no less).

How to dress: In flannel and Tevas with thick socks.
What not to do: Smoke cigarettes. Joints, however, are cool.

2. Rocky Mountain In-Laws

(Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Utah)

Your rugged in-laws know a thing or two about machinery. They can plow. They can drive a tractor. They can dig a deep hole with a backhoe (and I’m talking about Aunt Trudy on dialysis here). They can also wrangle sheep on a mountain without the help of a gay lover (no matter what that movie said). How do you impress in-laws that live in winter for nine months a year and are known to wrestle bears for sport?

* If your weenie job as an economics professor hasn’t prepared you for life with these in-laws, buying a picture book about tractors and trucks — something a five-year-old boy would drool over — will help. At least you’ll know your trenchers from your dozers and your grapple log skidders from your pipe layers.
* Pick an alpine sport: ice climbing, fly-fishing, kayaking, mountain climbing, trekking, snowshoeing, skiing, or mountain biking, and excel at it. It doesn’t matter if you live in Florida, you need to train so you can join your in-laws in death-defying “leisure sports” at high altitude (with no bleeping oxygen!).

How to dress: In jeans and a warm jacket, because you’ll be outside shoveling hay.
What not to do: Mention how your gay brother in Boston just got married and a drag queen performed the ceremony.

3. Southwestern In-Laws

(New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada)

There are two kinds of ex-hippie in-laws in the Southwest: those with boatloads of money and those with a jar of pennies. Figure out which one your in-law is. The former has a perfect golf swing, and the latter reliably has peyote.

When your Southwest in-laws hug you, they practically blind — the sun glints off their turquoise jewelry and belt buckles, sending signals miles into the sky. (Duh, that’s how the aliens found Roswell.)

Your in-laws are into spirituality with a capital S. Every inch of wall space is covered with pottery depictions of Kokopelli and watercolor drawings of pueblos and adobe homes in rust and muted orange hues. They subsist on roasted green chilies and yerba mate. They also don’t age. Is it the desert? The dry heat? Each time you see them, they’re younger. In fact, they’re twenty-five years old right now. It’s terrifying.

How do you ingratiate yourself with southwestern in-laws?

* Go hot-air ballooning with your in-laws! Everyone in the Southwest does it. How else do you pass the time in l00-degree heat? Remember, hot-air balloons aren’t just for Dorothy & Co. They’re for you, your in-laws, and nineteenth-century explorers.
* Vegas, baby! Anyone? Slot machines? Showgirls? People-watching? Shark tank at Mandalay Bay? (These are rhetorical questions. You don’t have to answer them.) But you may want to propose them to your in-laws, when they bust out the tarot cards — again. Hey, why don’t you use those tarot cards to predict some winning hands of blackjack? As they say in the movies, it’s just crazy enough to work, boss.

How to dress: A brightly patterned sundress and a necklace made of the largest beads known to man.
What not to do: Say you prefer modern art.

4. Texan In-Laws

Your Texan in-laws are smug about one thing: being Texan. We know you were once a republic! And everything’s bigger! Six flags, the Alamo, that 72-ounce steak, and especially the hats. Fine! Texas is big, “American,” flashy, and the center of the world.

If your Texan in-laws aren’t gorgeously well-manicured people from Houston or Dallas, or cultured Austinites, they’re ranchers and they don’t give a damn about you, “the en-vi-ro-mentalists,” and “the gov’nment.” After all, the rest of the world is just not Texas.

Of course, you’ll meet a second cousin-in-law that uses her panty hose to strain motor oil, but the rest of the family isn’t too proud of her. So how do you deal with the Texan in-laws?

* Accept that a lot of people you’ll meet in the Lone Star State will have nicknames like Joe-Bob, Billy-Bob, Jim-Bob, Little John, Big John, etc. You’ll be expected to know about their souped-up truck and new gun rack in intimate detail.
* Respect the laws of the Barcalounger. Your Texan in-laws don’t have normal chairs; they need something with a footrest. Succumb to the relaxation factor of holding conversations while horizontal.

How to dress: A “Don’t Mess with Texas” T-shirt with a Stetson hat, only because your in-laws gave them to you upon your arrival.
What not to do: Forget to send good wishes to your in-laws on Texan holidays like Texas Independence Day, the start of Deer Hunting Season, the Opening Day of high school football practice, and the day the new model year of Ford F-150s hits the market.

5. Southern In-Laws

(Arkansas, Louisiana to Florida, and up to Kentucky and Virginia)

Your in-laws love NASCAR. If they don’t, their neighbors do. Your southern in-laws are either “refined city folk” or “simple country folk,” and they’ll want you to know the difference.

Your southern in-laws are suspicious of you. It’s not just you — it’s anyone outside their state. Your in-laws have never been “North,” and by that, they mean Delaware. It’s not that they don’t want to go, just why would they? People have been in their town for generations. It’s home, which is why you should move there. When you’re south of the Mason-Dixon Line, do as those who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line . . .

* Learn the key players in “the Confederacy.” How many times have you met a southerner named Jefferson Davis? Billions? Every street, building, and public school is named after these folks: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Alexander Stephens, P. T. Beauregard, or Nathan Bedford Forrest. But please never, ever mention the Destroyer-of-the-South, Yankee General Sherman. He’s still on their “list,” 150 years later.
* Talk the talk. Know southern sport rivalries and which side you’re on with the Tar Heels vs. Blue Devils, LSU vs. Ole Miss, and Tennessee Volunteers vs. Kentucky Wildcats.

How to dress: Something bright and feminine from your mother’s closet.
What not to do: Don’t call it the “Civil War.” It’s the “War of Northern Aggression.”

6. Northeast Corridor In-Laws

(Ohio, Pennsylvania, and up through Maine)

If you or anyone you’re related to went to a fancy school, now’s the time to mention it. New Englanders love to think “they know better” and that “they are smarter” and that they “vote correctly.” They can push up their dark-framed glasses and snub you with their “Plymouth Rock” crap.

The crowded cities and suburbs of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, New York, and Boston mean one thing — your in-laws are the diversity in America. They smother you with affection because a hundred other relatives live down the street.

* Join the rat race. You must keep up with the Joneses — the family that you can see from the bay window in your in-laws’ kitchen. Last week, the competition was about the house gutters. They won. This week it’s about you. Who has the sweetest daughter-in-law?
* Your northern in-laws have summer homes in non-warm places like Nantucket. What’s the point?

How to dress: Like you just fell out of the J. Crew catalog.
What not to do: Mention that you didn’t vote in the last election.

7. Midwest In-Laws

(Indiana to Missouri, up to North Dakota and Michigan)

If a giant, two-headed reptilian monster was heading toward your in-laws’ subdivision, they would smile and wave. Your in-laws are that friendly and nice. Sometimes it’s creepy. Like the time they offered a teenager a ride back to his college campus — it looked an awful lot like kidnapping.

Between the ice fishing, apple-pie baking, and dining at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery (which they nicknamed Pukins), your big-boned in-laws spend a lot of time driving (8 hours is short haul), using terms like “who gives a flying fig,” and asking “how ya doing?” followed by “okey, dokey!” So how do you get ahead with them?

* Dig into dishes that involve massive amounts of melted cheese. Your in-laws will prepare cheesy potatoes, cheesy broccoli, cheesy asparagus, and fried cheese curds — which sounds awful, but c’mon, let’s admit it, a little melted cheese makes everything better.
* “Live simply, so that others can simply live.” If your in-laws aren’t city dwellers, they’re farmers and they know how to birth a cow, mend a horse, or feed a pig. If you know zilch about farms, don’t fret. Praise the good bugs — ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, and honeybees — and chastise the potentially bad bugs — flea hoppers, lygus bugs, aphids, and mealy bugs. Impress your in-laws by differentiating good stinkbugs (they’re green) from bad ones (they’re brown).

How to dress: Something with an elastic waistband.
What not to do: Take shortcuts. Using life’s conveniences (leaf blower vs. rake, microwave vs. Crock-Pot, etc.) only means you’re not working hard enough!

Copyright © 2007 Dina Koutas Poch

Author
Dina Koutas Poch holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is a writer and filmmaker living in New York City with her husband. Her in-laws live in Connecticut.

For more information, please visit http://iheartmyinlaws.com

The following is an excerpt from the book The Last Summer (of You & Me)
by Ann Brashares
Published by Riverhead Books; June 2007;$24.95US/$31.00CAN; 978-1-59448-917-4
Copyright © 2007 Ann Brashares

One

Waiting

Alice waited for Paul on the ferry dock. He’d left a crackly message on the answering machine saying he’d be coming in on the afternoon boat. That was like him. He couldn’t say the 1:20 or the 3:55. She’d spent too long staring at the ferry schedule, trying to divine his meaning.

With some amount of self-hatred, Alice had first walked out onto the dock for the 1:20, knowing he wouldn’t be on it. She’d looked only vaguely at the faces as they emerged from the boat, assuring herself she wasn’t expecting anything. She’d sat with her bare feet on the bench at the periphery, her book resting on her knees so she wouldn’t have to interact with anyone. I know you’re not going to be on it, so don’t think I think you are, she’d told the Paul who lived in her mind. Even there, under her presumed control, he was teasing and unpredictable.

For the 3:55, she put Vaseline on her lips and brushed her hair. The boat after that wasn’t until 6:10, and though Paul could miss the so-called afternoon ferry, he couldn’t call 6:10 the afternoon.

How often she did attempt to process his thoughts in her mind. She took his opinions too seriously, remembered them long after she suspected he’d forgotten them.

It was one thing, trying to think his thoughts when he was close by, his words offering clues, corrections, and confirmations by the hour. But three years of silence made for complex interpolations. It made it harder, and in another way it made it easier. She was freer with his thoughts. She made them her own, thought them to her liking.

He had missed two summers. She couldn’t imagine how he could do that. Without him, they had been shadow seasons. Feelings were felt thinly, there and then gone. Memories were not made. There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.

She couldn’t picture his face when he was gone. Every summer he came back wearing his same face that she could not remember.

Absently, she saw the people on the dock who came, went, and waited. She waved to people she knew, mostly her parents’ friends. She felt the wind blow the pounding sun off her shoulders. She slowly dug her thumbnail along a plank of the seat, provoking a splinter but caking up mold and disintegration instead.

When it came to waiting, Riley always had something else to do. Paul was Riley’s best friend. Alice knew Riley missed him, too, but she said she didn’t like waiting. Alice didn’t like it. Nobody did.

But Alice was a younger sister. She didn’t have the idea of not doing things because you didn’t like them.

She watched for the ferry, the way it started out as a little white triangle across the bay. when it wasn’t there, she could hardly imagine it. It was never coming. And then it appeared. It took shape quickly. It was always coming.

She stood. She couldn’t help it. She left her book on the bench with its paper cover fluttering open in the wind. Would this be him? Was he on there?

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