The Barnes & Noble Review Don't feel bad, guys -- not even the super-buff are immune to love handles. A case in point is Bob Paris, a former Mr. Universe turned writer/motivational speaker. Paris was rock-solid throughout his 20s, but when he retired from competitive bodybuilding at age 31, things began to change: "I was fortunate enough to have a great metabolism, so I didn't get visibly overweight, but my muscle mass dwindled under my shirt -- where I once had champion abdominals -- pockets of fat were slowly sneaking up on me." Imagine the horror! And that was only the beginning. As he approached age 40, Paris's metabolism slowed down, his cholesterol started to rise, his joints ached, and his self-image took a nose dive. What's a former hard-body to do? Transform himself in 12 weeks, of course. Prime tells you how he did it and how you can, too. Granted, you may be starting from a slightly different place than a former Mr. Universe, but Paris takes this into account in laying out his plan for men over 40 to get fit, look good, and feel great. The book is broken down into five parts: Stop the Clock, Motivated Mind, Fit Body, Sound Nutrition, and Great Looks. You'll likely find some parts far more useful than others. Paris is at his best writing about and illustrating specific types of exercises (as in the Fit Body section), especially when he reveals why a calm presence and perfect technique are essential for achieving the desired results: He has no time for men with big egos who throw weights around in the gym or bounce the bench-press bar off their chests. The material on Great Looks is wisely presented last, since his talk of skin care products, plastic surgery, and hair loss seems uninspired and out of place by comparison. Still, whether or not facials and fake tanning lotions are for you, Paris clearly knows what keeps him mentally and physically sharp post-40, and in Prime he shares his formula for success in a way that any man on the verge of a midlife crisis can follow. (P. L. Jennings)

Asa and Callie had nothing in common. He was an Ace, raised in the club and loyal to it above all else. She was a high school student with braces on her teeth and a narrow view of the world. They should have never crossed paths. But when Callie decides to defy her parents, and Asa goes on an errand for the club, their lives collide. He saves her, and she mesmerizes him. They part believing they’ll never see each other again. Neither could have predicted the chain of events they’d put in motion. Now the two have to navigate the dark waters of a relationship built on tragedy and need without drowning in guilt for things outside their control. How do you love someone when the worst decision of your life was the reason you met them?

Growing up in Brentford is never easy, especially when you have a needy younger brother and a daddy who is the fount of all knowledge. But the life of one Brentford schoolboy is turned upside down when he is sent on a mission by a Venusian he finds in his Daddy's allotment shed, and with Barry the Time Sprout lodged in his head to act as his guardian angel, the sky really is the limit. For the boy has to pose as the famous detective Lazlo Woodbine, and his travels will take him to an alternative future, where a vast pleasure palace space liner orbits the Earth, and where one Count Ilya Rostof is planning a celebration of Queen Victoria's ninetieth year on the throne. He will travel to the fabled Garden on Venus, and even to Heaven to meet with God - a rather nice man named Terrance. But even as these events are taking place, what of the nefarious schemes of Lord Willoughby Chase, of Professor Mandelbrot and the silly boys and their plans to fly a spacecraft into the Sun, and what of the etherial Poppett and the fabled vegetable lamb of Tartary? Never mind Lady Raygun and a group of fanatical space pirates ... A work of surreal brilliance from the mind of Robert Rankin, combining ecumenical ponderings with breathless space opera, and jaw dropping imagination.

The Fear name brings fortune...and doom. The dark power of the Fear family consumes all those connected with it. The Fears. Those they love — and hate. The entire town of Shadyside. All are tainted forever by the evil of the family's curse.No one can escape.Nora Goode and Daniel Fear hoped to end the curse of the Fear family. But on their wedding day, a horrible fire swept through the Fear mansion, taking the life of every member of the doomed family.Except one. A new Fear. The child of Nora and Daniel. Will he be able to live his life untouched by the evil of his family? Or will the dark forces claim yet another Fear for their own?

From New York Times–bestselling author Philip Kerr, the much-anticipated return of Bernie Gunther, our compromised former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer. With his cover blown, he is waiting for the next move in the cat-and-mouse game that, even a decade after Germany's defeat, continues to shadow his life. The French Riviera, 1956: The invitation to dinner was not unexpected, though neither was it welcome. Ernst Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, has turned up in Nice, and he's not on holiday. An old and dangerous adversary, Mielke is calling in a debt. He intends that Bernie go to London and, with the vial of Thallium he now pushes across the table, poison a female agent they both have had dealings with. But chance intervenes in the form of Friedrich Korsch, an old Kripo comrade now working for Stasi and probably there to make sure Bernie gets the job done. Bernie bolts for the German border. Traveling by night, holed up...

Now eight months into a global blackout, the residents of Oak Hollow are trying to cope with the deep winter nights and a gnawing hunger from a food shortage. The struggle to survive can bring out the worst in anyone.A teenage friend of the Brannings' has been found shot while hunting, and his slain deer is gone. Suspicions immediately fall on Mark Green, the son of a convicted murderer. Before he can prove his innocence, vigilantes force the sheriff to arrest him.Deni Branning is growing closer to Mark, and she sees him as a hero, not a traitor. She and her family set out to find the person who really pulled the trigger. But clearing Mark's reputation is only part of the battle. Protecting him from the neighbors who ostracized him is just as difficult.New York Times bestselling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts—and lights the way to restoration...

'I always wanted to be historical,' Gertrude Stein once quipped. In 1932, Stein began writing the 'autobiography' of her longtime friend and companion, Alice B. Toklas. The book, an immediate bestseller, guaranteed them both a place in history. An account of their life together in Paris before, during, and after World War I, it is full of the atmosphere of the changing life of the city and of idiosyncratic glimpses of such figures as Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Cocteau, Apollinaire, Pound, Eliot, Hemingway, and other luminaries and aspirants who were their close friends. But at the center of the narrative there is always the titanic figure of Gertrude Stein, the self-proclaimed 'first-class genius' who some dismissed as the 'Mother Goose of Montparnasse,' presiding over her celebrated residence-salon-art gallery at 27, rue de Fleurus. William Troy remarked about her: 'It is not flippant to say that if she had not come to exist . . . it would be necessary to invent Miss Gertrude...

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction"[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."—Roxane Gay"In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."—Karen RussellIn Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual...

What really goes on behind those perfect white picket fences?In Frances's mind, beautiful, successful, ecstatically married Emma Dunham is the height of female perfection. Frances, recently dumped with spectacular drama by her boyfriend, aspires to be just like Emma. So do her close friends and fellow teachers, Lisa and Jill. But Lisa's too career-focused to find time for a family. And Jill's recent unexpected pregnancy could have devastating consequences for her less-than-perfect marriage.Yet sometimes the golden dream you fervently wish for turns out to be not at all what it seems—like Emma's enviable suburban postcard life, which is about to be brutally cut short by a perfect husband turned killer. And in the shocking aftermath, three devastated friends are going to have to come to terms with their own secrets . . . and somehow learn to move forward after their dream is exposed as a lie.

The Kenzie Report is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Mark Clifton is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Mark Clifton then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

The Executioner is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Frank Riley is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Frank Riley then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

Walter Prichard Eaton was a critic and author. He was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard, and was a drama critic for various newspapers and magazines. He also wrote numerous books on the theater and was a professor of playwriting at Yale.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Jeanne of the Marshes

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The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Viereck

The village of Glen Cairn was situated in a valley in the broken country lying to the west of the Pentland Hills, some fifteen miles north of the town of Lanark, and the country around it was wild and picturesque. The villagers for the most part knew little of the world beyond their own valley, although a few had occasionally paid visits to Glasgow, which lay as far to the west as Lanark was distant to the south. On a spur jutting out from the side of the hill stood Glen Cairn Castle, whose master the villagers had for generations regarded as their lord. The glory of the little fortalice had now departed. Sir William Forbes had been killed on his own hearthstone, and the castle had been sacked in a raid by the Kerrs, whose hold lay to the southwest, and who had long been at feud with the Forbeses. The royal power was feeble, and the Kerrs had many friends, and were accordingly granted the lands they had seized; only it was specified that Dame Forbes, the widow of Sir William, should be allowed to reside in the fortalice free from all let or hindrance, so long as she meddled not, nor sought to stir up enmity among the late vassals of her lord against their new masters. The castle, although a small one, was strongly situated. The spur of the hill ran some 200 yards into the valley, rising sharply some 30 or 40 feet above it. The little river which meandered down the valley swept completely round the foot of the spur, forming a natural moat to it, and had in some time past been dammed back, so that, whereas in other parts it ran brightly over a pebbly bottom, here it was deep and still. The fortalice itself stood at the extremity of the spur, and a strong wall with a fortified gateway extended across the other end of the neck, touching the water on both sides. From the gateway extended two walls inclosing a road straight to the gateway of the hold itself, and between these walls and the water every level foot of ground was cultivated; this garden was now the sole remains of the lands of the Forbeses.