Author: J. M. Darhower
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781942206026
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
You never know when somebody will hold you to your word ... Naz has enough darkness inside of him to rid the world of every stitch of light. But there's one he could never harm: Karissa. He taunts her with his touch, gets a thrill out of torturing her soul. But he's not the most dangerous one out there ...
Torture to Her Soul
Author: J. M. Darhower
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781942206026
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
You never know when somebody will hold you to your word ... Naz has enough darkness inside of him to rid the world of every stitch of light. But there's one he could never harm: Karissa. He taunts her with his touch, gets a thrill out of torturing her soul. But he's not the most dangerous one out there ...
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781942206026
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
You never know when somebody will hold you to your word ... Naz has enough darkness inside of him to rid the world of every stitch of light. But there's one he could never harm: Karissa. He taunts her with his touch, gets a thrill out of torturing her soul. But he's not the most dangerous one out there ...
Her Soul to Take
Author: Harley Laroux
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578978178
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Leon I earned my reputation among magicians for a reason: one wrong move and you're dead. Killer, they called me, and killing is what I'm best at. Except her. The one I was supposed to take, the one I should have killed - I didn't. The cult that once controlled me wants her, and I'm not about to lose my new toy to them. Rae I've always believed in the supernatural. Hunting for ghosts is my passion, but summoning a demon was never part of the plan. Monsters are roaming the woods, and something ancient - something evil - is waking up and calling my name. I don't know who I can trust, or how deep this darkness goes. All I know is my one shot at survival is the demon stalking me, and he doesn't just want my body - he wants my soul. Her Soul to Take is book 1 in the Souls Trilogy. Although all the books are interconnected, they are stand-alone and can be read in any order. Content Note This book contains sexual scenes, kink/fetish content, horror elements, drug use, and depictions of hard kink/edgeplay. Reader discretion is advised.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578978178
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Leon I earned my reputation among magicians for a reason: one wrong move and you're dead. Killer, they called me, and killing is what I'm best at. Except her. The one I was supposed to take, the one I should have killed - I didn't. The cult that once controlled me wants her, and I'm not about to lose my new toy to them. Rae I've always believed in the supernatural. Hunting for ghosts is my passion, but summoning a demon was never part of the plan. Monsters are roaming the woods, and something ancient - something evil - is waking up and calling my name. I don't know who I can trust, or how deep this darkness goes. All I know is my one shot at survival is the demon stalking me, and he doesn't just want my body - he wants my soul. Her Soul to Take is book 1 in the Souls Trilogy. Although all the books are interconnected, they are stand-alone and can be read in any order. Content Note This book contains sexual scenes, kink/fetish content, horror elements, drug use, and depictions of hard kink/edgeplay. Reader discretion is advised.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
Author: Bob Shacochis
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802193099
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 773
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize finalist: “A soaring literary epic about the forces that have driven us to the 9/11 age . . . relentlessly captivating” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post). When humanitarian lawyer Tom Harrington travels to Haiti to investigate the murder of a beautiful photojournalist, he is confronted with a dangerous landscape riddled with poverty, corruption, and voodoo. It’s the late 1990s, a time of brutal guerrilla warfare and civilian kidnappings. The journalist, whom he knew years before as Jackie Scott, had a bigger investment in Haiti than it seemed. To make sense of her death, Tom must plunge back into his complicated ties to Jackie—and her mysterious past. Shacochis traces Jackie’s shadowy family history from the outlaw terrain of World War II Dubrovnik to 1980s Istanbul. Caught between her first love and her domineering father—an elite Cold War spy pressuring her to follow in his footsteps—seventeen-year-old Jackie hatches a desperate escape plan. But getting out also puts her on the path that turns her into the soulless woman Tom fears as much as desires. Set over fifty years and in four war-torn countries, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis’s masterpiece and a magnum opus. It brings to life an intricate portrait of catastrophic events that led up to the war on terror and the America we are today.
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802193099
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 773
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize finalist: “A soaring literary epic about the forces that have driven us to the 9/11 age . . . relentlessly captivating” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post). When humanitarian lawyer Tom Harrington travels to Haiti to investigate the murder of a beautiful photojournalist, he is confronted with a dangerous landscape riddled with poverty, corruption, and voodoo. It’s the late 1990s, a time of brutal guerrilla warfare and civilian kidnappings. The journalist, whom he knew years before as Jackie Scott, had a bigger investment in Haiti than it seemed. To make sense of her death, Tom must plunge back into his complicated ties to Jackie—and her mysterious past. Shacochis traces Jackie’s shadowy family history from the outlaw terrain of World War II Dubrovnik to 1980s Istanbul. Caught between her first love and her domineering father—an elite Cold War spy pressuring her to follow in his footsteps—seventeen-year-old Jackie hatches a desperate escape plan. But getting out also puts her on the path that turns her into the soulless woman Tom fears as much as desires. Set over fifty years and in four war-torn countries, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis’s masterpiece and a magnum opus. It brings to life an intricate portrait of catastrophic events that led up to the war on terror and the America we are today.
Target on Our Backs
Author: J. M. Darhower
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942206163
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942206163
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Torture Letters
Author: Laurence Ralph
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022672980X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022672980X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
My Soul to Save
Author: Rachel Vincent
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1426846029
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
When Kaylee Cavanaugh screams, someone dies. So when teen pop star Eden croaks onstage and Kaylee doesn't wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can't cry for someone who has no soul. The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad's ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend's loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls: a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can't possibly understand. Kaylee can't let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk….
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1426846029
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
When Kaylee Cavanaugh screams, someone dies. So when teen pop star Eden croaks onstage and Kaylee doesn't wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can't cry for someone who has no soul. The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad's ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend's loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls: a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can't possibly understand. Kaylee can't let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk….
Where I Left My Soul
Author: Jérôme Ferrari
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 1623655080
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
A tale of two torturersâ??Where I Left My Soul is a powerful exploration of guilt and identity in the savagery of the Algerian War. Captain Andre Degorce is reunited with Lieutenant Horace Andreani, with whom he experienced the horrors of combat and imprisonment in Vietnam. Captives now pass from the Captainâ??s hands into Andreani's: one-time victims have become torturers. Andreani has fully embraced his new status, but Degorce has lost all sense of himself, only finding peace when he is with Tahar, a commander in the National Liberation Army. Taharâ??s cell now acts as a confessional for Andreani, with the jailor opening up to his prisoner.
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 1623655080
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
A tale of two torturersâ??Where I Left My Soul is a powerful exploration of guilt and identity in the savagery of the Algerian War. Captain Andre Degorce is reunited with Lieutenant Horace Andreani, with whom he experienced the horrors of combat and imprisonment in Vietnam. Captives now pass from the Captainâ??s hands into Andreani's: one-time victims have become torturers. Andreani has fully embraced his new status, but Degorce has lost all sense of himself, only finding peace when he is with Tahar, a commander in the National Liberation Army. Taharâ??s cell now acts as a confessional for Andreani, with the jailor opening up to his prisoner.
I Know This Much Is True
Author: Wally Lamb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780060391621
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 884
Book Description
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780060391621
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 884
Book Description
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Healing the Hardware of the Soul
Author: Daniel Amen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143910039X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
The author's approach to depression, anxiety, and obessesive-compulsive disorder demonstrates how to strengthen sections of the brain connected to spiritual well-being through exercise, meditation, and breathing techniques.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143910039X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
The author's approach to depression, anxiety, and obessesive-compulsive disorder demonstrates how to strengthen sections of the brain connected to spiritual well-being through exercise, meditation, and breathing techniques.
Torture Garden
Author: Octave Mirbeau
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465606947
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
One evening some friends were gathered at the home of one of our most celebrated writers. Having dined sumptuously, they were discussing murder—apropos of what, I no longer remember probably apropos of nothing. Only men were present: moralists, poets, philosophers and doctors—thus everyone could speak freely, according to his whim, his hobby or his idiosyncrasies, without fear of suddenly seeing that expression of horror and fear which the least startling idea traces upon the horrified face of a notary. I—say notary, much as I might have said lawyer or porter, not disdainfully, of course, but in order to define the average French mind. With a calmness of spirit as perfect as though he were expressing an opinion upon the merits of the cigar he was smoking, a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences said: “Really—I honestly believe that murder is the greatest human preoccupation, and that all our acts stem from it... “ We awaited the pronouncement of an involved theory, but he remained silent. “Absolutely!” said a Darwinian scientist, “and, my friend, you are voicing one of those eternal truths such as the legendary Monsieur de La Palisse discovered every day: since murder is the very bedrock of our social institutions, and consequently the most imperious necessity of civilized life. If it no longer existed, there would be no governments of any kind, by virtue of the admirable fact that crime in general and murder in particular are not only their excuse, but their only reason for being. We should then live in complete anarchy, which is inconceivable. So, instead of seeking to eliminate murder, it is imperative that it be cultivated with intelligence and perseverance. I know no better culture medium than law.” Someone protested. “Here, here!” asked the savant, “aren't we alone, and speaking frankly?” “Please!” said the host, “let us profit thoroughly by the only occasion when we are free to express our personal ideas, for both I, in my books, and you in your turn, may present only lies to the public.” The scientist settled himself once more among the cushions of his armchair, stretched his legs, which were numb from being crossed too long and, his head thrown back, his arms hanging and his stomach soothed by good digestion, puffed smoke−rings at the ceiling: “Besides,” he continued, “murder is largely self−propagating. Actually, it is not the result of this or that passion, nor is it a pathological form of degeneracy. It is a vital instinct which is in us all—which is in all organized beings and dominates them, just as the genetic instinct. And most of the time it is especially true that these two instincts fuse so well, and are so totally interchangeable, that in some way or other they form a single and identical instinct, so that we no longer may tell which of the two urges us to give life, and which to take it—which is murder, and which love. I have been the confidant of an honorable assassin who killed women, not to rob them, but to ravish them. His trick was to manage things so that his sexual climax coincided exactly with the death−spasm of the woman: 'At those moments,' he told me, 'I imagined I was a God, creating a world!”
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465606947
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
One evening some friends were gathered at the home of one of our most celebrated writers. Having dined sumptuously, they were discussing murder—apropos of what, I no longer remember probably apropos of nothing. Only men were present: moralists, poets, philosophers and doctors—thus everyone could speak freely, according to his whim, his hobby or his idiosyncrasies, without fear of suddenly seeing that expression of horror and fear which the least startling idea traces upon the horrified face of a notary. I—say notary, much as I might have said lawyer or porter, not disdainfully, of course, but in order to define the average French mind. With a calmness of spirit as perfect as though he were expressing an opinion upon the merits of the cigar he was smoking, a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences said: “Really—I honestly believe that murder is the greatest human preoccupation, and that all our acts stem from it... “ We awaited the pronouncement of an involved theory, but he remained silent. “Absolutely!” said a Darwinian scientist, “and, my friend, you are voicing one of those eternal truths such as the legendary Monsieur de La Palisse discovered every day: since murder is the very bedrock of our social institutions, and consequently the most imperious necessity of civilized life. If it no longer existed, there would be no governments of any kind, by virtue of the admirable fact that crime in general and murder in particular are not only their excuse, but their only reason for being. We should then live in complete anarchy, which is inconceivable. So, instead of seeking to eliminate murder, it is imperative that it be cultivated with intelligence and perseverance. I know no better culture medium than law.” Someone protested. “Here, here!” asked the savant, “aren't we alone, and speaking frankly?” “Please!” said the host, “let us profit thoroughly by the only occasion when we are free to express our personal ideas, for both I, in my books, and you in your turn, may present only lies to the public.” The scientist settled himself once more among the cushions of his armchair, stretched his legs, which were numb from being crossed too long and, his head thrown back, his arms hanging and his stomach soothed by good digestion, puffed smoke−rings at the ceiling: “Besides,” he continued, “murder is largely self−propagating. Actually, it is not the result of this or that passion, nor is it a pathological form of degeneracy. It is a vital instinct which is in us all—which is in all organized beings and dominates them, just as the genetic instinct. And most of the time it is especially true that these two instincts fuse so well, and are so totally interchangeable, that in some way or other they form a single and identical instinct, so that we no longer may tell which of the two urges us to give life, and which to take it—which is murder, and which love. I have been the confidant of an honorable assassin who killed women, not to rob them, but to ravish them. His trick was to manage things so that his sexual climax coincided exactly with the death−spasm of the woman: 'At those moments,' he told me, 'I imagined I was a God, creating a world!”