Free Rein to Kill chronicles the heart-wrenching true story of an elderly patient who was admitted to the hospital with an impacted bowel and involuntarily euthanized after being incorrectly diagnosed with end-stage cancer. Coauthors Maddie Kisha and Paula Andrasko allege that the Florida doctors caring for their father, Paul Joseph Vertucci, Sr., neglected his impacted bowel and inaccurately diagnosed end-stage cancer, claiming that the disease had metastasized and was therefore incurable. Released with in-home hospice care, his daughters' determination and love were not enough to save him-Vertucci eventually died from morphine-related complications. Kisha and Andrasko contend that their father was involuntarily euthanized due to the ramifications of the Florida Wrongful Death Act-alleging that the state legislation gives doctors, hospitals and insurance companies free rein to kill. The authors bring the controversial subject of euthanasia to the forefront as they recount the rich and loving relationship they shared with their beloved father.

Get ready to be swept off your feet and taken away. Just image you go to your job like you do everyday and on your lunch break a demanding presence that only you can see offers to take you away to another world so you can fight the forces of evil. Would you go? Would you take on the challenge of learning magic and wielding it's power? Join Vegenrage as he accepts the challenge and is taken away to find that not only is he going to learn magic but he is one of it's most powerful beings. The magic is a part of him and he is quickly in need of it. See the visually stunning worlds of the Maglical System as Vegenrage travels them using all the imagination he can to stay one step ahead of those waiting to steal the secrets he himself is unaware of. Vegenrage brings a touch of brutality a glimpse of gore and a hint of the creepy as he battles through the adventure he has been thrown into. The magical monsters, demons and down right bad people that want to steal his life force will test his every wit. See how the worlds of the Maglical System have evolved and the species of man, dwarve, elf, and others fight for the survival of their race as do the dragons, demons and unbelievably lethal monsters. The adventure of Vegenrage's life has begun and the range of creatures he must face is beyond measure. So many races so many in seek of power and Vegenrage gets caught up in all the drama using fantastic magic and guided by his friends and instincts he too seeks the mystery of the Maglical System. See how the most beautiful woman in the Maglical System is drawn to Vegenrage and how they tackle the prophecy that is about to unfold. This is stunning action and adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat and the ending will leave you speechless. Get to know all the races of the Maglical System and get ready as the phenomenon Vegenrage begins.

Following a nasty bar brawl, John, a twenty-eight-year-old man, follows a close friends advice and begins keeping a journal. Hes recently divorced from his wife, Debbie, and he hopes the journal will provide a tool with which to make some sense of his brief, failed marriage and to determine why he is so emotionally challenged. As a therapist specializing in behavioral issues, he knows he has to pull his own life together. If he tells people to clean up their own lives, modify their thoughts, and learn new, more appropriate behaviours, he knows that hes got to step up and follow his own advice. Early on, he realizes that his mother, the curator of a gallery that specializes in steel art and other nontraditional works, has largely shaped his thoughts and actions. But just how much can he blame her for his current state of affairs? Soon the words in the journal are flowing easily and quickly. When painful thoughts are no longer avoided and dreams provide fuel for his writing, the journal takes on a life of its own. Will John discover the reasons for his dysfunctional situation? Can keeping the journal help him improve his life?

When a nineteen-year-old member of a Black Muslim cult assassinated Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey in 2007—the most shocking killing of a journalist in the United States in thirty years—the question was, Why? “I just wanted to be a good soldier, a strong soldier,” the killer told police. A strong soldier for whom? Killing the Messenger is a searing work of narrative nonfiction that explores one of the most blatant attacks on the First Amendment and free speech in American history and the small Black Muslim cult that carried it out. Award-winning investigative reporter Thomas Peele examines the Black Muslim movement from its founding in the early twentieth century by a con man who claimed to be God, to the height of power of the movement’s leading figure, Elijah Muhammad, to how the great-grandson of Texas slaves reinvented himself as a Muslim leader in Oakland and built the violent cult that the young gunman eventually joined. Peele delves into how charlatans exploited poor African Americans with tales from a religion they falsely claimed was Islam and the years of bloodshed that followed, from a human sacrifice in Detroit to police shootings of unarmed Muslims to the horrible backlash of racism known as the “zebra murders,” and finally to the brazen killing of Chauncey Bailey to stop him from publishing a newspaper story. Peele establishes direct lines between the violent Black Muslim organization run by Yusuf Bey in Oakland and the evangelicalism of the early prophets and messengers of the Nation of Islam. Exposing the roots of the faith, Peele examines its forerunner, the Moorish Science Temple of America, which in the 1920s and ’30s preached to migrants from the South living in Chicago and Detroit ghettos that blacks were the world’s master race, tricked into slavery by white devils. In spite of the fantastical claims and hatred at its core, the Nation of Islam was able to build a following by appealing to the lack of identity common in slave descendants. In Oakland, Yusuf Bey built a cult through a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery, beating and raping dozens of women he claimed were his wives and fathering more than forty children. Yet, Bey remained a prominent fixture in the community, and police looked the other way as his violent soldiers ruled the streets. An enthralling narrative that combines a rich historical account with gritty urban reporting, Killing the Messenger is a mesmerizing story of how swindlers and con men abused the tragedy of racism and created a radical religion of bloodshed and fear that culminated in a journalist’s murder. THOMAS PEELE is a digital investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group and the Chauncey Bailey Project. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. His many honors include the Investigative Reporters and Editors Tom Renner Award for his reporting on organized crime, and the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. He lives in Northern California.

Texas royalty doesn’t stand a chance against the blood brothers in a lawless Western adventure from the bestselling author of San Angelo Showdown. Young Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves became blood brothers on the day the rancher’s son saved the warrior’s life, forging a bond no one could ever break. As years passed, a legend grew of the Cheyenne and the white man who rode together—and who could jerk killing iron with the best of them . . . Death in Snake Creek Snake Creek is a shabby little Texas town ruled by a mean-tempered outlaw who fancies himself a king—King Petty. He and his gang do what they want, when they want, and right now what Petty wants is the pretty wife of a farmer he just shot in cold blood. But Sam Two Wolves just can’t stand by and watch as this King Petty drags the widow down the street, and before long he and Matt find themselves in the fight of their lives. It’s a fight they never meant to start—but they sure as hell are going to finish it. Praise for the novels of William W. Johnstone “[A] rousing, two-fisted saga of the growing American frontier.”—Publishers Weekly on Eyes of Eagles “There’s plenty of gunplay and fast-paced action as this old-time hero proves again that a steady eye and quick reflexes are the keys to survival on the Western frontier.”—Curled Up with a Good Book on Dead Before Sundown

Gideon Levy is one of the most respected critics of Israel's apartheid policies against the Palestinian people. He is the outspoken award-winning journalist who has been writing on the conflict for decades. In The Killing of Gaza, he brings together his on-the-ground perspectives of the events leading up to the 7th October and the ensuing devastation of Gaza. His clear-eyed analysis is a vital aperture into current events but he also brings essential historical and political context to the moment. He is unafraid to speak truth to power, and his work is an urgent rebuttal to the propaganda that is distributed through the mainstream liberal press, throughout the world. Levy's words should be read by anyone who wants to get the heart of this most brutal conflict and see for themselves that silence is no longer possible in the face of such atrocity.

With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.