Author: Raoul Whitfield
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480444499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
A killer stalks the guests of an eccentric millionaire at a Hudson River boating event in this classic thriller from one of the unsung masters of early noir mystery In the years between the world wars, in the heyday of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Leslie Charteris, Raoul Whitfield was a mystery author to be reckoned with. Considered by many to be more realistic than his famous contemporaries, Whitfield wrote gripping tales of murder and mayhem, full of unanticipated twists and turns. His work was often featured in Black Mask, the legendary mystery magazine of the 1930s. The time is ripe to rediscover one of the godfathers of noir fiction. The guests of millionaire gambler Eric Vennel are gathered on their eccentric host’s yacht, Virgin, speeding north up the Hudson River toward the Poughkeepsie Regatta, a renowned collegiate competition of boating skill. The crew on board is a motley one, including a famous Hollywood starlet, an acclaimed author, a sports writer, some society swells, a well-known aviator, a gossip columnist, and a hard-boiled newspaper reporter. Vennel is said to have a lot of money riding on this race. There is also speculation that someone wants him dead, which is why an underworld thug has been brought along to serve as the rich man’s bodyguard. Neither the rumors nor the thug is doing much to alleviate the already considerable tension. And the questionable demise of a favored regatta competitor only heightens the sense of unease. It seems there may indeed be a killer among them—a suspicion that is emphatically confirmed when, one by one, the passengers of the Virgin begin to die. This ebook includes an introduction by Boris Dralyuk.
The Virgin Kills
Author: Raoul Whitfield
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480444499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
A killer stalks the guests of an eccentric millionaire at a Hudson River boating event in this classic thriller from one of the unsung masters of early noir mystery In the years between the world wars, in the heyday of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Leslie Charteris, Raoul Whitfield was a mystery author to be reckoned with. Considered by many to be more realistic than his famous contemporaries, Whitfield wrote gripping tales of murder and mayhem, full of unanticipated twists and turns. His work was often featured in Black Mask, the legendary mystery magazine of the 1930s. The time is ripe to rediscover one of the godfathers of noir fiction. The guests of millionaire gambler Eric Vennel are gathered on their eccentric host’s yacht, Virgin, speeding north up the Hudson River toward the Poughkeepsie Regatta, a renowned collegiate competition of boating skill. The crew on board is a motley one, including a famous Hollywood starlet, an acclaimed author, a sports writer, some society swells, a well-known aviator, a gossip columnist, and a hard-boiled newspaper reporter. Vennel is said to have a lot of money riding on this race. There is also speculation that someone wants him dead, which is why an underworld thug has been brought along to serve as the rich man’s bodyguard. Neither the rumors nor the thug is doing much to alleviate the already considerable tension. And the questionable demise of a favored regatta competitor only heightens the sense of unease. It seems there may indeed be a killer among them—a suspicion that is emphatically confirmed when, one by one, the passengers of the Virgin begin to die. This ebook includes an introduction by Boris Dralyuk.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480444499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
A killer stalks the guests of an eccentric millionaire at a Hudson River boating event in this classic thriller from one of the unsung masters of early noir mystery In the years between the world wars, in the heyday of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Leslie Charteris, Raoul Whitfield was a mystery author to be reckoned with. Considered by many to be more realistic than his famous contemporaries, Whitfield wrote gripping tales of murder and mayhem, full of unanticipated twists and turns. His work was often featured in Black Mask, the legendary mystery magazine of the 1930s. The time is ripe to rediscover one of the godfathers of noir fiction. The guests of millionaire gambler Eric Vennel are gathered on their eccentric host’s yacht, Virgin, speeding north up the Hudson River toward the Poughkeepsie Regatta, a renowned collegiate competition of boating skill. The crew on board is a motley one, including a famous Hollywood starlet, an acclaimed author, a sports writer, some society swells, a well-known aviator, a gossip columnist, and a hard-boiled newspaper reporter. Vennel is said to have a lot of money riding on this race. There is also speculation that someone wants him dead, which is why an underworld thug has been brought along to serve as the rich man’s bodyguard. Neither the rumors nor the thug is doing much to alleviate the already considerable tension. And the questionable demise of a favored regatta competitor only heightens the sense of unease. It seems there may indeed be a killer among them—a suspicion that is emphatically confirmed when, one by one, the passengers of the Virgin begin to die. This ebook includes an introduction by Boris Dralyuk.
The Virgin Suicides
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307401936
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307401936
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
Killing Hercules
Author: Richard Rowland
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317109090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
This book offers an entirely new reception history of the myth of Hercules and his wife/killer Deianira. The book poses, and attempts to answer, two important and related questions. First, why have artists across two millennia felt compelled to revisit this particular myth to express anxieties about violence at both a global and domestic level? Secondly, from the moment that Sophocles disrupted a myth about the definitive exemplar of masculinity and martial prowess and turned it into a story about domestic abuse, through to a 2014 production of Handel’s Hercules that was set in the context of the ‘war on terror’, the reception history of this myth has been one of discontinuity and conflict; how and why does each culture reinvent this narrative to address its own concerns and discontents, and how does each generation speak to, qualify or annihilate the certainties of its predecessors in order to understand, contain or exonerate the aggression with which their governors – of state and of the household – so often enforce their authority, and the violence to which their nations, and their homes, are perennially vulnerable?
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317109090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
This book offers an entirely new reception history of the myth of Hercules and his wife/killer Deianira. The book poses, and attempts to answer, two important and related questions. First, why have artists across two millennia felt compelled to revisit this particular myth to express anxieties about violence at both a global and domestic level? Secondly, from the moment that Sophocles disrupted a myth about the definitive exemplar of masculinity and martial prowess and turned it into a story about domestic abuse, through to a 2014 production of Handel’s Hercules that was set in the context of the ‘war on terror’, the reception history of this myth has been one of discontinuity and conflict; how and why does each culture reinvent this narrative to address its own concerns and discontents, and how does each generation speak to, qualify or annihilate the certainties of its predecessors in order to understand, contain or exonerate the aggression with which their governors – of state and of the household – so often enforce their authority, and the violence to which their nations, and their homes, are perennially vulnerable?
The Virgin's Children
Author: William Madsen
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292741340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
An absorbing account of the descendants of the ancient Aztecs and of the survival of their culture into the twentieth century in the Valley of Mexico is presented in this fascinating volume. Focusing on San Francisco Tecospa—a village of some eight hundred Indians who still spoke Nahuatl, whose lives were dominated by supernaturalism, and who observed with only slight modification much of their Aztec heritage—this story bears out the anthropological principle that innovations are most likely to be accepted when they are useful, communicable, and compatible with established tradition. Nowhere is the Indian genius for combining the old and the new better exemplified than in the story of how the Virgin of Guadalupe came to fulfill the role formerly played by the pagan goddess Tonantzin and of how Christian saints replaced the Aztec gods. At the time of this study, the Tecospans still called the Catholic Virgin Tonantzin, but their concept of the mother goddess had changed profoundly since Aztec times. Tonantzin the Pagan, a hideous goddess with claws on her hands and feet and with snakes entwining her face, wore a necklace of hearts, hands, and skulls to represent her insatiable appetite for corpses. Tonantzin the Catholic—also called Guadalupe—is a beautiful and benevolent mother deity who repeatedly stays God’s anger against her Mexican children and answers the prayers of the poorest Indian, with no thought of return. In Tecospa the road to social recognition lay in the performance of religious works, and the neglect of ritual obligation subjected both the individual and the community to the anger of supernaturals who punished with illness or other misfortune. Religion was inextricably a part of every phase of life, and it is the whole life of the Aztecan that is recorded here: fiesta, clothing, food, agricultural practices, courtship, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, death, witchcraft and its cures, medical practices and attitudes, houses and home life, ethics, and the hot-cold complex that classifies everything in the Tecospan universe from God to Bromo-Seltzer. With a marked simplicity of style and language William Madsen has produced a profoundly significant anthropological study that is delightful reading from the first sentence to the last. The drawings, the work of a ten-year-old Tecospan lad, are remarkable for their penetrating insight into the culture.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292741340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
An absorbing account of the descendants of the ancient Aztecs and of the survival of their culture into the twentieth century in the Valley of Mexico is presented in this fascinating volume. Focusing on San Francisco Tecospa—a village of some eight hundred Indians who still spoke Nahuatl, whose lives were dominated by supernaturalism, and who observed with only slight modification much of their Aztec heritage—this story bears out the anthropological principle that innovations are most likely to be accepted when they are useful, communicable, and compatible with established tradition. Nowhere is the Indian genius for combining the old and the new better exemplified than in the story of how the Virgin of Guadalupe came to fulfill the role formerly played by the pagan goddess Tonantzin and of how Christian saints replaced the Aztec gods. At the time of this study, the Tecospans still called the Catholic Virgin Tonantzin, but their concept of the mother goddess had changed profoundly since Aztec times. Tonantzin the Pagan, a hideous goddess with claws on her hands and feet and with snakes entwining her face, wore a necklace of hearts, hands, and skulls to represent her insatiable appetite for corpses. Tonantzin the Catholic—also called Guadalupe—is a beautiful and benevolent mother deity who repeatedly stays God’s anger against her Mexican children and answers the prayers of the poorest Indian, with no thought of return. In Tecospa the road to social recognition lay in the performance of religious works, and the neglect of ritual obligation subjected both the individual and the community to the anger of supernaturals who punished with illness or other misfortune. Religion was inextricably a part of every phase of life, and it is the whole life of the Aztecan that is recorded here: fiesta, clothing, food, agricultural practices, courtship, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, death, witchcraft and its cures, medical practices and attitudes, houses and home life, ethics, and the hot-cold complex that classifies everything in the Tecospan universe from God to Bromo-Seltzer. With a marked simplicity of style and language William Madsen has produced a profoundly significant anthropological study that is delightful reading from the first sentence to the last. The drawings, the work of a ten-year-old Tecospan lad, are remarkable for their penetrating insight into the culture.
The Virgin Girl
Author: Sabah Naji
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1984589717
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 556
Book Description
This is a message from the Virgin Girl: From here, I will start my life. From here, I will build a bridge, walk on it, go up to the top of the ranks that many people dream of, break all the barriers that stand in my way, and walk on it and then rise to the top and raise my head. I dream of a prosperous future a lot—one that can fill my life with joy and happiness and raise the reputation of my family. Yes, I was born to a low-income but respectable family, and I was subjected to the worst methods of persecution. I have received tempting offers from senior people in businesses about selling my beautiful body to them so they could relish it on quiet music strings and piano tones. I didn’t care about the palaces filled with bliss I couldn’t get, and I turned down all these offers and walked with a clean, pure, and flawless face to confront a bitter and difficult life. But I promised myself to strike hard at the one who hurt my family and me, who distorted my good reputation. I have a hellish internal power. I’m not going to show it right now, but I will unleash it in front of the one who thinks he can buy me with money. I lost my family, and I stayed alone and had no one in my life, but I will take revenge on the one who destroyed my life. I will raise the flag of triumph in the end. (Email: [email protected]) (Instagram: sabah_naji_) (Twitter: @NajiSabah)
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1984589717
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 556
Book Description
This is a message from the Virgin Girl: From here, I will start my life. From here, I will build a bridge, walk on it, go up to the top of the ranks that many people dream of, break all the barriers that stand in my way, and walk on it and then rise to the top and raise my head. I dream of a prosperous future a lot—one that can fill my life with joy and happiness and raise the reputation of my family. Yes, I was born to a low-income but respectable family, and I was subjected to the worst methods of persecution. I have received tempting offers from senior people in businesses about selling my beautiful body to them so they could relish it on quiet music strings and piano tones. I didn’t care about the palaces filled with bliss I couldn’t get, and I turned down all these offers and walked with a clean, pure, and flawless face to confront a bitter and difficult life. But I promised myself to strike hard at the one who hurt my family and me, who distorted my good reputation. I have a hellish internal power. I’m not going to show it right now, but I will unleash it in front of the one who thinks he can buy me with money. I lost my family, and I stayed alone and had no one in my life, but I will take revenge on the one who destroyed my life. I will raise the flag of triumph in the end. (Email: [email protected]) (Instagram: sabah_naji_) (Twitter: @NajiSabah)
From Virgin Land to Disney World
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
With the publication in English in 1930 of Civilization and its Discontents and its thesis that instinct – and, ultimately: nature – had been and must be forever subordinated in order that civilization might thrive and endure, Freud contributed what some contemporaries saw to the central debate of his era – a debate which had long preoccupied both official American pundits and the American populace at large. At the beginning of the new Millennium, evidence abounds that an American debate still rages over the meaning of “nature,” the rightful weight of instinct, and the status of civilization. The Millennium itself has appeared in popular and official discourses as an appropriate marker of an age in which nature is close to the edge of radical extinction and has also become more and more unreliable as a paradigm for representation and debate. At the same time, the contemporary tailoring of nature to postmodern needs and expectations inevitably reveals the conceptual difficulty of any possible, simple opposition between nature and culture as if they were clearly distinguishable domains. If nature, then, can clearly be seen as a discursive concept, it may also be a timeless concept insofar that it has been shaped, created, and used at all times. Every epoch, age and era had “its own nature,” with myth, history and ideology as its dominant shaping forces. From the Frontier to Cyberia, nature has been suffering the “agony of the real,” resurfacing in discursive strategies and demonstrating a powerful impact on American society, culture and self-definition. The essays in this collection “speak critically of the natural” and examine the American debate in the many guises it has assumed over the last century within the context of major critical approaches, psychoanalytical concepts, and postmodern theorizing.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
With the publication in English in 1930 of Civilization and its Discontents and its thesis that instinct – and, ultimately: nature – had been and must be forever subordinated in order that civilization might thrive and endure, Freud contributed what some contemporaries saw to the central debate of his era – a debate which had long preoccupied both official American pundits and the American populace at large. At the beginning of the new Millennium, evidence abounds that an American debate still rages over the meaning of “nature,” the rightful weight of instinct, and the status of civilization. The Millennium itself has appeared in popular and official discourses as an appropriate marker of an age in which nature is close to the edge of radical extinction and has also become more and more unreliable as a paradigm for representation and debate. At the same time, the contemporary tailoring of nature to postmodern needs and expectations inevitably reveals the conceptual difficulty of any possible, simple opposition between nature and culture as if they were clearly distinguishable domains. If nature, then, can clearly be seen as a discursive concept, it may also be a timeless concept insofar that it has been shaped, created, and used at all times. Every epoch, age and era had “its own nature,” with myth, history and ideology as its dominant shaping forces. From the Frontier to Cyberia, nature has been suffering the “agony of the real,” resurfacing in discursive strategies and demonstrating a powerful impact on American society, culture and self-definition. The essays in this collection “speak critically of the natural” and examine the American debate in the many guises it has assumed over the last century within the context of major critical approaches, psychoanalytical concepts, and postmodern theorizing.
Dressed to Kill
Author: Elizabeth Rhodes
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442643501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
The noble wives in María de Zayas's Desengaños suffer terrible fates: one is beheaded, another poisoned, one is cemented into a chimney, while yet another is locked into a tiny wall closet where she dies. The hallmark of Zayas's aesthetics, these characters are the central reason why her fiction has increased in popularity through the ages. Yet their stories pose an apparent contradiction between the author's pro-female rhetoric and her gusto for killing model women, then beautifying their mutilated cadavers. Dressed to Kill reconciles Zayas's Desengaños with the age in which it was written, contextualizing the book in baroque poetics, the Spanish honour code, and fifteenth-century martyr saints' lives. Elizabeth Rhodes elegantly uncovers Zayas's intention to reform the Spanish nobility by displaying noble misbehaviour and its deadly consequences. Her book concludes by detailing the Desengaños' intriguing influence on the aesthetic base of Gothic literature by revealing that its authors were avid readers of Zayas.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442643501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
The noble wives in María de Zayas's Desengaños suffer terrible fates: one is beheaded, another poisoned, one is cemented into a chimney, while yet another is locked into a tiny wall closet where she dies. The hallmark of Zayas's aesthetics, these characters are the central reason why her fiction has increased in popularity through the ages. Yet their stories pose an apparent contradiction between the author's pro-female rhetoric and her gusto for killing model women, then beautifying their mutilated cadavers. Dressed to Kill reconciles Zayas's Desengaños with the age in which it was written, contextualizing the book in baroque poetics, the Spanish honour code, and fifteenth-century martyr saints' lives. Elizabeth Rhodes elegantly uncovers Zayas's intention to reform the Spanish nobility by displaying noble misbehaviour and its deadly consequences. Her book concludes by detailing the Desengaños' intriguing influence on the aesthetic base of Gothic literature by revealing that its authors were avid readers of Zayas.
Killing Atheism
Author: Kenneth L. Fredrickson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725287005
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Are you struggling with your faith or trying to help others but cannot get around the problem of "If there is a God, why is he hidden?" Killing Atheism bypasses traditional apologetics and powerfully shows that God is not hidden. It describes irrefutable secular evidence showing that the story of Christ must be true. This is not an academic endeavor, but a spiritual and evidentiary journey written for the layman, with only a few digressions into the world of traditional apologetics. We have been given free will to ignore, reject, or accept Jesus. If your inclination is to ignore or reject, you must deal with the points made in this book.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725287005
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Are you struggling with your faith or trying to help others but cannot get around the problem of "If there is a God, why is he hidden?" Killing Atheism bypasses traditional apologetics and powerfully shows that God is not hidden. It describes irrefutable secular evidence showing that the story of Christ must be true. This is not an academic endeavor, but a spiritual and evidentiary journey written for the layman, with only a few digressions into the world of traditional apologetics. We have been given free will to ignore, reject, or accept Jesus. If your inclination is to ignore or reject, you must deal with the points made in this book.
The Boy Who Killed Demons
Author: Dave Zeltserman
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468310291
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Book Description
A barbarian-turned-Roman-warrior leads an army against Persian invaders in this bestselling, epic historical adventure series opener. A.D. 255: The Roman Imperium is stretched to the breaking point, its authority and might challenged throughout the territories and along every border. One man is sent to marshal the defenses of a lonely city and to shore up the crumbling walls of a once indomitable symbol of Roman power, a man whose very name means war, a man called Ballista. So unfolds an epic drama—a story of empire, heroes, treachery, courage, and most of all, of brutal, bloody warfare. Praise for Fire in the East “In this blood and guts tale of ancient warfare, Oxford lecturer Sidebottom introduces readers to Marcus Clodius Bastilla, a third-century warrior who has risen through the ranks of the Roman army to achieve citizenship and the honorific of Dux Ripea. . . . How the brave and resourceful former barbarian defends himself from forces both within and without the city walls forms the spine of this action-packed and detail-rich narrative. This novel of sharp swords and blunt wit should find an appreciative audience among bloodthirsty battle boys of all ages.” —Publishers Weekly
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468310291
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Book Description
A barbarian-turned-Roman-warrior leads an army against Persian invaders in this bestselling, epic historical adventure series opener. A.D. 255: The Roman Imperium is stretched to the breaking point, its authority and might challenged throughout the territories and along every border. One man is sent to marshal the defenses of a lonely city and to shore up the crumbling walls of a once indomitable symbol of Roman power, a man whose very name means war, a man called Ballista. So unfolds an epic drama—a story of empire, heroes, treachery, courage, and most of all, of brutal, bloody warfare. Praise for Fire in the East “In this blood and guts tale of ancient warfare, Oxford lecturer Sidebottom introduces readers to Marcus Clodius Bastilla, a third-century warrior who has risen through the ranks of the Roman army to achieve citizenship and the honorific of Dux Ripea. . . . How the brave and resourceful former barbarian defends himself from forces both within and without the city walls forms the spine of this action-packed and detail-rich narrative. This novel of sharp swords and blunt wit should find an appreciative audience among bloodthirsty battle boys of all ages.” —Publishers Weekly
Kill Your Idols
Author: S.C. Hayden
Publisher: Black Bed Sheet Books
ISBN: 0692477608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Congratulations! You are the owner of an authentic Idol from The American Idol Company. This Idol was made for the sole purpose of worship and reverence in exchange for blessings and protection. To use this Idol in any other way could result in damage, injury, and/or the cancellation of warranty. We at The American Idol Company wish you success and satisfaction in your spiritual journey. In an America where militias, doomsday cults and self proclaimed Prophets are as commonplace as gas stations and fast food restaurants, The American Idol Company is born. Operating under the belief that scandal and controversy will increase sales, the company founders manage to insult everyone from the Pope to the Ayatollah, inspire a generation, and come dangerously close to starting World War 3. “A hilarious, fantastic and crazy adventure that had me forgetting Douglas Adams is no longer with us!” ---Robert S. Wilson, Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor and author of the Empire of Blood and Ray Garret/Lifeline series.
Publisher: Black Bed Sheet Books
ISBN: 0692477608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Congratulations! You are the owner of an authentic Idol from The American Idol Company. This Idol was made for the sole purpose of worship and reverence in exchange for blessings and protection. To use this Idol in any other way could result in damage, injury, and/or the cancellation of warranty. We at The American Idol Company wish you success and satisfaction in your spiritual journey. In an America where militias, doomsday cults and self proclaimed Prophets are as commonplace as gas stations and fast food restaurants, The American Idol Company is born. Operating under the belief that scandal and controversy will increase sales, the company founders manage to insult everyone from the Pope to the Ayatollah, inspire a generation, and come dangerously close to starting World War 3. “A hilarious, fantastic and crazy adventure that had me forgetting Douglas Adams is no longer with us!” ---Robert S. Wilson, Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor and author of the Empire of Blood and Ray Garret/Lifeline series.