Books
Regina Guitar : Jim Traylor
Regina Guitar and other Short Stories
Regina Guitar and other Short Stories is a compilation of incarnate capsules: Flavored doses, seasoned with the human condition, and served up on the theatrical masks of tragedy and comedy. Here you will find it all from heartrending drama to goofy buffoonery. Entertaining story selections for those who love to read but have little time to do it.
The Serpents of the Caduceus: An exploration of the subconscious mind, that dark and foreboding chamber, inaccessible from the phenomenon we call reality. This story deals the terrifying nightmares, psychotic delusions and horrid hallucinations that plummet through the tormented brain of a mortally wounded soldier.
A Fish Story: This is a tongue in cheek tale of a professional fisherman who wins big at a casino poker table, commits ‘accidental’ murder, and ends up with a Government Patton on a word known product.
Tooter and the Tutor: A brief and funny narrative, revealing just how easy it is for a country boy to fool his summer school teacher.
Humanity’s Three Most Unusual Sneezes: A completely insane bit of slapstick comedy. A “documentary” which chronicles a trio of sneezes and the calamity and chaos rendered by each.
Openers: This story offers insight into the “it’s not my fault” life of a looser. When a beautiful woman sits down beside a socially handicapped bus passenger, he blames the world for his inability to think of a pickup line.
Cowboy Shootout: A Texas Ramrod on a cattle drive to Kansas must ride his horse backward, and mistakenly herds his Moos to Yuma, Arizona. There, a reluctant cowpoke is forced to protect his lovely lady from Awful Alvin Aggravation, the meanest outlaw and fastest gun this side of the Pecos.
Hector the Pup: The cute and cagy puppy shenanigans of a cunning canine whelp, desperate to find food for his injured father.
Frankie Farone: Frankie had a boyfriend named Johnny and he and Nelly Bligh end up in a very bad way. Does this remind you of an old, familiar song? Don’t be fooled. Like the disclaimer says, “any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental”. Well, maybe not entirely coincidental, but pretty darn close. You’ll see.
Regina Guitar: The heartrending story of a young girl, who transitions from a runaway teen to a mature young woman taking the first step of her life’s journey; an emotional, twenty-four hour metamorphosis.
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The Monkey Soldiers : Jim Traylor
The Monkey Soldiers
Bloody war, erotic sex, stoned out drugs, delicious decadence, exotic locations, heart pounding action.
This story brings together a menagerie of humans and primates who find themselves in a world of heroic action, comic absurdity, tearful sorrow and boorish behavior. Wartime love stories and erotic, tropical rhondavous counterbalance the hedonism and decadence served up by the biggest and hottest R&R bar in Bangkok Thailand: The FTA Club.
While Lieutenant Thurgood could not control his voluptuous, blonde wife, he could control primates and his alliance with Hanuman, the Monkey God, made him one hell of a savage warrior. Unaware of his Channeling and Telepathic abilities, he felt an irrefutable compulsion to work secretly with the CIA, to create a combat unit unlike any other in the history of warfare.
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Thailand, his thrill addicted wife played in a world of illicit drugs and deviant behavior, while soldiers on R&R gambled for her sexual favors.
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A Change of Needs : Nate Allen
A Change of Needs
An affair, it was never about “romance,” only lust… But lust became love, love begot jealousy, obsession, betrayal and ultimately self redemption …sorta? And if love is a drug …affairs are its “crack.”
“A Change of Needs” is the story of one man’s crooked path through life that leads him to a married woman’s doorstep and the “straight and narrow” path she has taken that leads her to inviting him inside. What follows is a unique, atypical, often uncomfortable modern-day love story about what happens when one ordinary man accepts the invitation to cross that imaginary boundary each of us draws around our life that defines us.
Jake Arnett was a rogue, solitary man with an aversion to commitments, but the thing he may have found most attractive about Rae Anne Johnston was the fact she wasn’t available …the woman of his dreams …because she belonged to someone else. It’s true what they say, “The heart has its reasons, the mind knows nothing of…” Once emotions get involved and sex is no longer “casual,” the lines between right and wrong become frighteningly indistinguishable.
Told with a unique and endearing style that has a “careful Southern twang” reminiscent of “Scout” narrating “To Kill a Mockingbird,” …only of a much more adult nature. At times humorous yet salacious and sexy, it’s a clever, provocative and disturbingly raw examination of the relational dynamics of an affair and the mutually detrimental consequences of an intimacy and “trust” built upon lies and secrecy. There is no fidelity among the unfaithful. Affairs are messy …they never end well. Not recommended for the “faint of heart” …or the heartless. A bit of a genre foster-child, this one’s not easily categorized …except for ENTERTAINING, it’s a literary candy-store of memorable quotes, insight and unique perspectives …so indulge yourself.
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Warpaint : Stephanie A. Smith
Warpaint
A haunting tale of friendship and rivalry between three women artists, who’ve known each other for years, who must come to terms with imminent mortality and artistic frustration: Liz Moore, born poor in Minnesota, fought her way to New York in the 1920s, but isn’t “discovered” until late in life; C.C. Davis, a well-to-do New Yorker is Moore’s only student, and rival, who, just after WWII achieves some small success, but feels, as she faces cancer in 2002, a failure; and Quiola Kerr, part Ojibwe, once C.C.’s lover, who is caught in the middle, and who, as a painter in the 21st century, has the most doubts about art’s value in an electronic world.
In April 2002, all three meet a week before C.C.’s mastectomy at a MOMA retrospective for Liz Moore, but their reunion is tense. Still, they try to cope, until C.C. makes an unexpected and controversial choice, one which nearly breaks the bonds these three took so many decades to forge, and forces Quiola to try to confront Liz, who she believes deliberately sabotaged C.C.’s career
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Murder Made in Italy : Ellen Nerenberg
Homicide, Media, and Contemporary Italian Culture
Looking at media coverage of three very prominent murder cases, Murder Made in Italy explores the cultural issues raised by the murders and how they reflect developments in Italian civil society over the past 20 years. Providing detailed descriptions of each murder, investigation, and court case, Ellen Nerenberg addresses the perception of lawlessness in Italy, the country’s geography of crime, and the generalized fear for public safety among the Italian population.
Nerenberg examines the fictional and nonfictional representations of these crimes through the lenses of moral panic, media spectacle, true crime writing, and the abject body. The worldwide publicity given the recent case of Amanda Knox, the American student tried for murder in a Perugia court, once more drew attention to crime and punishment in Italy and is the subject of the epilogue.
“Original, engaging, and thought-provoking… quite unlike any other existing book in Italian cultural and media studies.” —Ruth Glynn, University of Bristol
(Ruth Glynn, University of Bristol )
“A fantastic array of literary, cinematic, and oral narratives.” —Stefania Lucamante, Catholic University of America
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Lefty and Her Gangsters : Anthony Valerio
Lefty and Her Gangsters – A Novel of Power and Sex
The incomparable Lefty – a redheaded, left-handed, cross-eyed, married and very sexy woman – reduces her Italian-American lover, Nicholas, to a sex slave, her own private Button Man, propelling him back to the neighborhood don, Johnny, for counsel and wisdom. Lefty is also their muse and their salvation, humanizing both the Italian poet and the Italian gangster, and even transforms them to the godfather of the future, the unforgettable Don Pippo–reformed, wise, gentle.
“Subsequent artistic attempts at humanizing the don include Analyze This and The Sopranos. Both of these productions feature don characters in therapy. Valero’s use of the therapy device, though, is unique and visionary. It not only predates these films, but also shows the don in control, as therapist, not patient. This configuration emphasizes the power of Italian culture to nurture individual identity. Johnny, the don, serves as cultural nursemaid to the reborn Italian-American, Nicholas. “ Melus
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Daimones : Massimo Marino
Daimones: The Daimones Trilogy, Vol. One
Dan and his family awake one day in a world where everyone is dead but nothing points to a cause. Initial searches for survivors yield nothing and, in panic, the family turns their house into a stronghold.
Eventually, they find Laura, a survivor who wins their hearts…and leads Dan to temptation. Laura describes her panic encounter with strange entities which Dan recognizes in his childhood hallucinations. He forces himself to find and confront them: An older power controls the fate of men.
A few selected will face the ultimate quest: a painful genetic transformation and work toward the rebirth of a new human race, or oblivion and death in isolation.
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It’s a King’s Life : Emily Randolph
It’s a King’s Life in Carmel-by-the-Sea
“Follow your nose! Life is an adventure!” So says Sadie, the Cypress Inn’s doggie concierge to Happy and Lady (two Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Cavaliers) when they arrive in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Carmel is a magical place where dogs of every kind are given the warmest of welcomes by everyone they meet. The enchanting Cypress Inn becomes Happy and Lady’s treasured resting place for a weekend of sand, surf, food, fun, friendship, frolic and mischief in their very first great adventure in ‘It’s a King’s Life’ series.
Follow your nose and come along!
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A Mole in the Hand : Walter Frederick
Could there ever be a coup d’état in Britain??
It is 2014 and Britain is being torn apart by civil unrest as Trades Unions and protest groups join forces to fight aus- terity measures causing so much hardship. The Coalition Government is coming towards the end of its first term in office, and city centre riots have forced the Government to impose special powers with nightly curfews.
Richard Mastin, a public relations expert, receives an unexpected visit from a long-time American friend Spencer Boyd, now a senior CIA officer. Boyd issues Mastin with a challenge to fly to the US to meet with former KGB agent Mikhail Limonov. At first Mastin cannot make the journey, but his commitments change and he makes the journey to meet with Limonov.
Within days he realises there is a plot for a British coup, and his adventures begin. Very quickly Mastin finds him- self pitted against ex-KGB officers, who are preparing to unleash hundreds of moles, working undercover for decades. Mastin soon discovers MPs, senior civil servants, and police officers, who are part of the plot, all of whom were re- cruited during the Soviet Era.
It is not long before Mastin’s life and family are threatened, and he quickly finds it necessary to enlist help from old British friends as well as new American friends. A key recruit is beautiful TV Producer Juliana Weston, whom he meets on his first flight across the Atlantic.
He travels backwards and forwards across the Atlantic as his efforts to fight the planned coup escalate. In a dra- matic ending he flees to rural Tuscany with all of the computer files without which the coup cannot be launched.
Gamblers Fight Back : Greg Elder
Gamblers Fight Back
“Something had to change. I could no longer live like this. I needed to find an occupation that brought passion and excitement back into my life. I was determined to find something fulfilling.”
After reading a book about a guy who gave up everything, moved to Las Vegas to become a professional gambler with only $6,000 to his name, and went on to become a millionaire, Greg Elder’s mission was set. For the next year, he decided to support his wife and daughter as a professional gambler. He wasn’t exactly sure HOW he was going to do this, but he couldn’t wait to get started.
The odds moved slowly in Greg’s favor as he discovered the method to making professional gambling a career. Over the course of 12 months, he became an expert on the world of casinos. He investigated everything from the most beneficial tactics to the psychological warfare that is used to deter unsuspecting gamblers. In the midst of this, he discovered a new purpose for himself, one that allowed him to do what he loved without losing himself along the way.
Be prepared to have your eyes opened and your perspectives broadened as you follow Greg’s journey through the busts, folds, and jackpots of being a professional gambler.
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