Zelmont Raines was once a Super Bowl-winning wide receiver. But recurring injuries, a self-destructive lifestyleand too many run-ins with the law have submarined his career. Back in L.A. after bombing out of the European League, his one last chance is the expansion team in town, the Barons. Unfortunately for Zelmont, the roar of the crowds and the adulation of the fans-not to mention the money and the honeys that go with it-are no longer his for the taking. Bumped, the bitter athlete falls in with Wilma Wells, the smart (and fine) lawyer for the Barons. She's got ideas Zelmont likes…and not just in the bedroom. Soon he and his friend, the switch-hitting ex-pro defensive tackle Napoleon Graham, throw in with Wells to rip off the mobbed-up owner of the Barons. It's only then that Zelmont discovers that no matter how fast he can jook, no matter how tough he can fake, trouble is closing in on him way too fast. Mix elements of Jim Thompson with the street-smart verve of Donald Goines, add a couple of dashes of the compact delivery of Richard Stark, and you get The Jook: a crime novel where football and venal ambitions collide in the end zone.

***

"Gary Phillips wries tough and gritty parables about life and death on the mean streets." – Michael Connelly

Malone lives in a world where psionic powers such as telepathy and teleportation exist. He must cope with them as well as an FBI Director who leaves Malone continually confused about what situation he is being asked to handle and what he is expected to do about it. Malone is charged with investigating leaks in a secret government program. For assistance, he recruits a powerful psi from a mental institution who believes she is Queen Elizabeth I of England. The problem is, she may be right.

A shorter version of this work appeared in in 1959 under the title . First published in the present form in August 1962 (Pyramid Books).

Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

SUMMARY:
Par trois fois, Randolph Carter rêva de la cité merveilleuse. Jadis, elle avait eu pour lui une importance capitale ; il le savait, sans pouvoir dire en quel cycle du temps ni en quelle incarnation il l'avait connue, voire si c'était en rêve ou à l'état de veille. Maléfice ! La prodigieuse cité du couchant ne cesse de se dérober, comme si quelque dieu jaloux en interdisait l'accès. Comment retrouver cette fuyante merveille - seuls les grands anciens, qui hantent la forteresse d'onyx de Kadath l'inconnue, peuvent aider l'insatiable arpenteur des songes dans sa quête. Dans le gouffre des rêves, commence alors l'aventure : 7 créatures maudites, déserts glacés, cryptes diaboliques, mers déchaînées, montagnes aux mille pièges...

SUMMARY:
Outre-monts, outre-tombes ! De mémoire d'homme, jamais on ne vit paysages plus hallucinants ! Labyrinthes grouillants de murs, de tours, de minarets fabuleux qui surgissent de vapeurs glacées. Une expédition au pied du volcan Erebus dans l'Antarctique met au jour ce site maléfique. Mais Lake, qui l'a organisé disparaît avec toute son équipe... Images d'un autre monde ! Elles obsèdent aussi Nathaniel Peaslee jusque dans ses rêves. Lui, situe les ruines près du tropique du Capricorne. Une monstrueuse cité de pierre noire dont les fondements descendent au centre de la Terre... Les deux hommes ne se connaissent pas, ils vivent à des époques différentes. Tous deux pourtant sont hantés par ces êtres qui ont vécu à l'époque des dinosaures et se déchaînent de temps à autre. Maître des vents furieux et des musiques démoniaques. Prédateurs ? Esprits migrants ? Créatures effroyables ? Des Anciens qu'il ne fait pas bon rencontrer...

Beschrijving Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, een Engelse lerares en huismoeder, wilde altijd het beste voor haar kinderen. Ze kon zich niet voorstellen dat haar vrolijke tweelingzoons Simon en Nick drugs zouden gaan gebruiken. Ze is dan ook geschokt als beide jongens op dertienjarige leeftijd worden geschorst van school omdat ze hasj roken. En dat is nog maar het begin. De tweeling raakt verslaafd aan heroïne. Ze liegen, stelen, dealen, en doen alles om hun volgende 'hit' te kunnen betalen. Dan, midden in de nacht, gebeurt waar Elizabeth altijd bang voor is geweest: de politie komt aan de deur met de mededeling dat Nick dood is. Hij heeft zelfmoord gepleegd uit wanhoop om zijn verslaving. Sindsdien heeft Elizabeth onvermoeibaar campagne gevoerd om ouders bewust te maken van de pijn en de gevaren van drugs. Simon, haar overlevende tweelingzoon, nu drugsvrij, heeft zijn eigen bijdrage geleverd aan dit boek. Het resultaat is een inspirerend en bijzonder ontroerend verhaal, dat elke lezer tot in het diepst van de ziel zal raken. Recensie(s) NBD|Biblion recensie De auteur van dit persoonlijke relaas was docente en werd op een dag geconfronteerd met wat zij al geruime tijd vreesde: een van haar tweelingzoons werd dodelijk slachtoffer van zijn drugsgebruik. Het perspectiefloze leven van een hopeloze verslaafde dreef hem tot een definitieve keuze: hij pleegde suicide. Voor de ogen van de lezer ontvouwt zich een dramatisch verhaal van de sluipende en desastreuze invloed van drugs op het gezinsleven van de schrijfster. Het is vooral de heroine die het leven van de tweeling steeds negatiever beinvloedt: opleidingen worden afgebroken, liegen, stelen, dealen en uitbuiting door 'vrienden' bepalen hun leven. Inmiddels voert de schrijfster, ondersteund door de inmiddels cleane andere zoon (die een belangrijke bijdrage aan het verhaal levert) intensief campagne om andere ouders bewust te maken van de gevaren van drugs. De lezer van dit meeslepende, authentieke verhaal kan zich niet aan de indruk onttrekken dat de keuzes die binnen het gezin werden genomen, zeker een invloed hebben gehad op het gedrag van de kinderen. Bevat een katern kleurenfoto's. Geschikt voor een breed, in de drugsproblematiek in gezinnen geinteresseerd publiek. (NBD|Biblion recensie, G. Brandorff)

"I share the country's admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips

and his selfless concern for his crew.

His courage is a model for all Americans."

—President Barack Obama

It was just another day on the job for fifty-three-year-old Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, the United States-flagged cargo ship which was carrying, among other things, food and agricultural materials for the World Food Program. That all changed when armed Somali pirates boarded the ship. The pirates didn't expect the crew to fight back, nor did they expect Captain Phillips to offer himself as hostage in exchange for the safety of his crew. Thus began the tense five-day stand-off, which ended in a daring high-seas rescue when U.S. Navy SEALs opened fire and picked off three of the captors.

"It never ends like this," Captain Phillips said.

And he's right.

A Captain's Duty tells the life-and-death drama of the Vermont native...

A voice speaking out of a distant past, describes the consequences of his desperation: his daughter and two sons are condemned to the hold of an English slave ship bound for America in 1753. Here are the stories of these children: Nash, Martha, and Travis. Yet as the narrative unfolds, we come to understand that although they are his children, they are also all of slavery's children. Nash, returning to Africa in the 1830's a Christian-educated adult, a missionary to the new territory of Liberia, slowly becoming a part of the world his 'masters' intended him to convert...Martha, her own daughter and husband sold away from her, settling in the American wild west of the late nineteenth century, freeing herself from slavery but never from the weight of "such misery in one life"...Travis, an American GI stationed in a small Yorkshire village during the Second World War, finding an acceptance in England that he doesn't know at home and that he may not be able to promise his half-English son...These brilliantly resonant stories-along with the slave ship captain's journal and the lamentations of the children's father-become a "many-tongued chorus of common memory" so vivid and powerful that it bridges the gaps between continents and centuries, inextricably linking the many generations of the African diaspora, one to the other.

Book 2 of Shenandoah Sisters. Mayme and Katie, from entirely different worlds, have been thrown together in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War. Just teenagers, they are left to survive only by their own wits and shared experiences. Gradually, they are learning to appreciate each other's strengths and to shore up each other's weaknesses. Out of their efforts to simply stay alive comes a growing awareness of the Lord's love and care for them, as well as the dim outlines of a plan to keep Rosewood Plantation operating. The book continues the story begun in Angels Watching Over Me, of two very appealing but contrasting characters and their secret mission to provide a sanctuary for others who have been left alone and adrift by a tragic war.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his poetry and literary fiction (The Artist's Wife, etc.), Phillips contributes to a new crime imprint a hard-boiled whodunit sure to thrill fans of such Golden Age masters as James M. Cain. Ex-boxer/failed screenwriter Ray Corson is as tough talking—and as vulnerable to a pretty face—as any 1940s gumshoe. And terrified blonde bombshell Rebecca LaFontaine looks like a classic damsel in distress when she hires Corson to protect her from murderous rejected suitor Lance Halliday, a Hollywood porn producer. The author deftly balances his lovestruck hero's terse yet tender introspection with hard-hitting physical action, as Corson's investigation of Tinsel Town's tarnished underside uncovers drug dealing, gangland vengeance and evidence that the heroine's history may hold even deadlier secrets. Especially graceful is the way Phillips lightens the plot's noir darkness with delightfully breezy dialogue. The convincingly understated, witty repartee between guy and gal—and their gangster pals—prevents the book from descending, for even a paragraph, into period pulp parody. They do write 'em like they used to.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Max Phillips’s novels, which have included Snakebite Sonnet and The Artist’s Wife, have won rave reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, and other major publications. In 2005 he received the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for Fade to Blonde.

From Publishers Weekly

University of London historian and History Channel contributor Phillips (The Second Crusade) superbly condenses the four centuries of the Crusades into a single, easily accessible volume. Islamic as well as Western sources are utilized to demonstrate the similarities between jihad and crusading. The narrative weaves a tragic tapestry, beginning with the bloodily successful First Crusade, through the establishment of the Crusader states, to the failure of subsequent Crusades, the victories of the Muslim counter-Crusade, and the continuing legacy of religious and cultural hatred that permeates the Holy Land. Individuals such as the charismatic Queen Melisende of Jerusalem; the Leper King, Baldwin IV; the Muslim warriors Nur ad-Din and Saladin; England's Richard the Lionheart; and many others play major and minor roles in the creation of a past that still lives today. Episodes including the breathtaking naivete of the Children's Crusade and the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula are effectively described. Concluding chapters examine the impact of the Crusades since the 15th century. Regrettably, little attention is given to the crusading spirit resurrected by the 1571 Battle of Lepanto. But this is an outstanding summary of centuries of religious strife, the effects of which are with us still. 8 pages of b&w photos, 5 maps. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Historians and laypersons continue to dispute the causes and even the moral justification for the 200-year effort by Europeans to recapture the so-called Holy Land. The immense impact of the Crusades, however, is undeniable. The horizons of Europeans were expanded, feudal societies were transformed, and the peoples of the Levant have inherited a legacy of bitterness toward the invading Christian Franks. Phillips, professor of crusading history at the University of London, provides a compact survey of the crusading movement that, unlike most such accounts, includes the initiative to reconquer Muslim Spain and suppress Christian heresy in southern France. Since he aims his work at general readers, Phillips employs a fast-moving narrative, but he also pauses to focus special attention upon topics and personalities of special interest, including instances of Muslim-Christian cooperation, divisions within Muslim and Christian forces, and characters both colorful and controversial. A well-written work succeeding in explaining a complex and vitally important era. --Jay Freeman

Amazon.com Review

For all that it involves organized crime, naked women, grumpy bouncers, a serious snowstorm, and a hero with a profound drinking pattern, The Ice Harvest is a quiet little book--noir-ish, certainly, but never to excess. As the novel traces Charlie Arglist's trail around his small Kansas hometown on Christmas Eve, 1979, the lawyer's literal footprints are clear enough, given the whopper of a blizzard that's descended, but his metaphorical path is far less obvious. He's killing time before leaving town, but where is he going? And why?

Scott Phillips' sketch of a crooked lawyer on the lam is amusingly ironic: though there's violence aplenty in the novel--including a morbidly comic finger-breaking scene starring Spencer, a philosophical bouncer at the Sweet Cage, one of the strip clubs Charlie oversees for Bill Gerard--this is Waiting for Godot rather than Goodfellas. Phillips masterfully sets up the reader's expectations for action and adventure, dropping cryptic hints about Charlie's past, present, and future, then gleefully keeps Charlie in a holding pattern, circling from one strip club to another, from bars to massage parlors to his former in-laws' house.

But when the world isn't scripted by Beckett, all waiting games must come to an end. Charlie's gamble--it would be cheating to tell you more than that it involves a little cocaine, a beautiful woman of indeterminate origin, a Christmas package full of cash, and an embarrassing photograph--pays off, and he heads out of town. How far does he get? Well, that's another story--and another opportunity for Phillips to show off the mordant humor that may brand him as the Cohen brothers' literary heir apparent. In his hands, Kansas doesn't seem far at all from Fargo. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

Everywhere you look, trashy people are doing trashy things in this darkly delicious debut comic thriller. Set in the middle of a Christmas Eve blizzard in 1979 Wichita, the novel opens with lawyer-turned-petty-mobster Charlie Arglist marking time before an important meeting with his shady partner, Vic Cavanaugh. After this meeting he plans to leave Wichita hurriedly with a load of cash and, presumably, the enmity of its rightful owner, Bill Gerard, the local head of a larger regional crime syndicate. Charlie and Vic run a string of strip bars around Wichita for Gerard, from which they have been skimming cash on the sly. But Charlie, who sets out to visit all the outposts in his "empire" one last time, lets a drunken spirit of Yuletide sentimentality (or maybe spite) trigger an unprecedented (and therefore highly visible) string of improvisations. He comps some of his dancers' shakedown money, causing a riot at a club; he unwisely lets his would-be girlfriend in on one of Gerard's blackmail scams. Then he and his ex-brother-in-law crash the Christmas gathering of their cumulative ex-family, setting off a whole new string of disasters. For Charlie there is only the imminent future of his escape with Gerard's money, and it isn't until he discovers a fresh corpse buried behind Vic's empty house that he realizes that his future isn't what it used to be. Newcomer Phillips's seedy characters are skillfully developed, particularly the semiremorseful Charlie. The frigid Midwestern setting is the perfect frame for Charlie's wretched situation; the time period emphasizes the low-level viciousness of Charlie's contemporaries, and Phillips wastes no time in piling up the bodies. Charlie's final confrontation with Gerard will likely leave readers nauseated with laughterAaltogether not a bad way to debut in crime fiction. Agent, Nicole Aragi at Watkins-Loomis. Rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. There's a dark side to most places, even California's sunny Orange County, Edgar-winner T. Jefferson Parker observes in his foreword to this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series, one of the stronger of the all-original anthologies. The crisp, often seductive prose of the 14 contributors, most of them relatively unknown, is a tribute to the critical judgment of the editor, whose own assured story, The Performer, involves a heist at a dog food factory that ends with more than one surprise. Robert Ward, a writer-producer for such TV shows as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, offers some wicked twists in Black Star Canyon, in which a fictional alter ego gets bounced from the program he created. Gordon McAlpine uses his narrator's job as a security officer at Disneyland in The Happiest Place as an effective catalyst for a classic noir plot of betrayal. Other notable tales include Susan Straight's Bee Canyon and Dick Lochte's The Movie Game. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Gary Phillips is the author of several crime-fiction novels, including "Bangers" and "The Perpetrators." He writes in several other mediums -- from screenplays to comic books -- and remembers vividly the days of disco and the fever that coke, then crack, unleashed.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, April 2009: A man who's not quite young anymore, his relationship trouble, and his iPod: at first glance Arthur Phillips's The Song Is You sounds like strictly Nick Hornby territory, but it turns out to be a lot closer to The Red Shoes, a story of love and art in which the two are confused and jealously compete. And as in The Red Shoes, but so rarely in other works of art, it's the art-making that carries the most power and mystery. Julian Donahue is a "creative": a skilled director of commercials who has come to know his limits. Cait O'Dwyer is a singer, and a bit of a comet that Julian somehow catches the tail of. Their courtship--as Julian evades a marriage split by an unbearable loss and Cait shoots single-mindedly toward stardom--is an intricately constructed pas de deux that is both surprising and convincing throughout. It's Phillips's first novel set in the present since Prague, and in its artful structure, style, and heart it's a match for that smart and charming debut. --Tom Nissley

From The New Yorker

Phillips’s best writing achieves an elaborate, gratifying precision, combining a naturally flamboyant style with neat, observational wit. This quality is sharpest in some of the character portraits and delectable set pieces that animate this novel, his fourth, but the central plot is sometimes strained. A middle-aged advertising director, whose marriage has broken up following the death of his two-year-old son, plays an invisible and unlikely muse to a young Irish singer on the brink of stardom. As the two engage in an indirect seduction—they never meet—the narrative veers close to the “adolescent fantasy” that its protagonist fears. But this curious bond provides an armature for Phillips’s beautiful evocation of music’s consoling power to blur the borders between art, artist, and consumer.
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