Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

John Haggerty

John Haggerty

Shock Totem Publication presents issue #3, their biggest yet, nearly 50% bigger than the first two! It features previously unpublished stories from the likes of John Skipp, Tim Leider, S. Clayton Rhodes, Steven Pirie, and eight others, plus one poem. Also conversations with D. Harlan Wilson and Count Lyle of the band Ghoultown, nonfiction from Mercedes M. Yardley, and much more
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Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields

Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields

Charles Bowden

Charles Bowden

From BooklistJust across the Rio Grande from El Paso sits Juárez, Mexico, a city so overtaken with the violence of drug trafficking that its leading citizens—police, politicians, even the drug lords—find it safer to live in El Paso. Bowden, critically acclaimed author of Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing (2009), details the forces that have led to Mexico’s place in the multinational drug business. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow into Juárez each week, and the violence and corruption that follow yield 200 to 300 murders each year. Bowden laments the silence on both sides of the border that permits the slaughter that goes mostly unnoted and unreported. Behind the numbers, he details the lives lost or destroyed: a reporter fleeing for his life with his young son, a beautiful woman gang-raped, a killer for the cartels who is now being hunted. He chronicles a town that has been the site of numerous mass graves of victims and of monuments to fallen police that bear hit lists from the cartels. A stark, haunting look at the impact of drug trafficking on a town and its people. --Vanessa Bush Product DescriptionCiudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 people were killed—a number that is on pace to increase in 2009.In Murder City, Charles Bowden—one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juárez—has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants—a raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life—with a broader meditation on the town’s descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juárez’s culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north.Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, Murder City establishes Bowden as one of our leading writers working at the height of his powers.
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The Introduction: Undying Love #1

The Introduction: Undying Love #1

Isabelle Connors

Isabelle Connors

Love is a gift, and not everyone is lucky enough to receive it. Or maybe the lucky ones are those who never find it. This is not your average love story, this is a life story. Your teenage years aren't supposed to be complicated. But, sometimes they are. What happens when you're attracted to the new stranger in town. Do you just fall in love and live happily-ever-after? Do you follow through on your feelings, even though you know you shouldn't? From the very first night, Arianna meets Skylar she experiences this indescribable deep connection that she's never felt before. She's terrified and excited all at the same time. She wants to act on these feelings, but she can't, no matter how much she wants to. Things are just too complicated! Moving from a big city to a small town is never easy, especially for a teenager who had it all. So when Skylar's family has to leave New York for Gulfport Florida, he's not very happy. But maybe things aren't going to be so bad?! Skylar has never been in love before, but he thinks he just may have fallen in love with the girl who caught his eye on his very first night in his new hometown. Even though he's sure she feels the same connection, she keeps resisting because of her misplaced loyalty. Will love conquer all? Or is that just another fabricated lie that people tell you as a child?**
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Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine

Ray Douglas Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury

World-renowned fantasist Ray Bradbury has on several occasions stepped outside the arenas of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. An unabashed romantic, his first novel in 1957 was basically a love letter to his childhood. (For those who want to undertake an even more evocative look at the dark side of youth, five years later the author would write the chilling classic Something Wicked This Way Come s.) Dandelion Wine takes us into the summer of 1928, and to all the wondrous and magical events in the life of a 12-year-old Midwestern boy named Douglas Spaulding. This tender, openly affectionate story of a young man’s voyage of discovery is certainly more mainstream than exotic. No walking dead or spaceships to Mars here. Yet those who wish to experience the unique magic of early Bradbury as a prose stylist should find Dandelion Wine most refreshing.
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