Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays—meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems—and not a single image. Hervé Guibert’s brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert’s parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom images that have been missed. Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert’s particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues—answers, or even questions—about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives. Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, “I don’t even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl.” In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how—in writing—he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer. With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert’s Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful—a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography.

The possibility of life after death is a significant theme in cinema, in which ghosts return to the world of the living to wrap up unfinished business, console their survivors, visit lovers or just enjoy a well-wreaked scaring. This work focuses on film depictions of survival after death, from meetings with the ghost of Elvis to AIDS-related ghosts: apparitions, hauntings, mediumship, representations of heaven, angels, near-death experiences, possession, poltergeists and all the other ways in which the living interact with the dead on screen. The work opens with a historical perspective, which outlines the development of pre-cinematic technology for "projecting" phantoms, and discusses the use of these skills in early ghost cinema. English-language sound films are then examined thematically with topics ranging from the expiation of sins to "hungry" ghosts. Six of the most significant films, Dead of Night, A Matter of Life and Death, The Innocents, The Haunting, The Shining, and Jacob's Ladder, are given a detailed analysis. A conclusion, filmography, and bibliography follow.

Political intrigue, greed, betrayal and a high-stakes race against a killer: Photojournalist Sophie Medina is back with a bang Freelance photojournalist Sophie Medina has photographed world leaders, popes and international peace talks. Tonight, the focus of her lens are the 120 guests at a glittering society engagement party in Washington: billionaires, politicians, exiled European royalty . . . and Sophie's old friend Brother Kevin Boyle, controversial environmentalist and Franciscan friar. Rumors are flying about a project that Kevin is working on. A project that could be worth millions, if it falls into the wrong hands. So when Kevin's body is discovered the next day in his monastery's magnificent gardens, Sophie's convinced his death is no accident - even though no else seems to agree. What secrets was Kevin keeping, that were enough to kill for? Sophie embarks on an international treasure hunt that takes her from the US Capitol to London. But with time running out, and a suspect list made up of the rich and powerful, can she find the truth before Kevin's killer finds her? The second Sophie Medina mystery, following Multiple Exposure, is a great choice for readers who like fearless female sleuths and international intrigue.

The last thing plastic surgery resident Jackson Maebry wants at the end of a long day in the operating room is a call to the ER. Once he gets there, what he finds is worse than his most hellish imaginings: a young woman, beaten and burned almost beyond recognition, a trauma case as terrible as any he has ever seen. What Jackson's colleagues don't know is that the victim, Allie, is actually his lover. With Allie in a coma, Jackson keeps their relationship quiet and takes part in her reconstruction, a complicated and grueling set of procedures that only the most skilled specialists can perform. But as he and the other doctors struggle to put her back together, the fractures in Jackson's own life begin to break apart dramatically. When the San Francisco Police Department's investigation of the attack leads to his door, Jackson knows the truth can no longer be suppressed. Ghost Image is an expertly plotted, chillingly vivid, and wholly absorbing mystery, signaling the debut of an unforgettable new voice in the genre. Taking readers inside the operating room and literally under the skin of its patients, it's a story that will appeal to those fascinated by medicine and forensics. It is also a story -- like all classic crime novels -- about guilt and innocence, good and evil. But, above all, it is a story of love -- the kind of love that might prove deadly, or that might just save your soul.

Our century has seen the proliferation of reality shows devoted to ghost hunts, documentaries on hauntings, and horror films presented as found footage. The horror genre is no longer exclusive to fiction and its narratives actively engage us in web forums, experiential viewing, videogames, and creepypasta. These participative modes of relating to the occult, alongside the impulse to seek proof of either its existence or fabrication, have transformed the production and consumption of horror stories. The Ghost in the Image offers a new take on the place that supernatural phenomena occupy in everyday life, arguing that the relationship between the horror genre and reality is more intimate than we like to think. Through a revisionist and transmedial approach to horror this book investigates our expectations about the ability of photography and film to work as evidence. A historical examination of technology's role in at once showing and forging truths invites questions about our investment in its powers. Behind our obsession with documenting everyday life lies the hope that our cameras will reveal something extraordinary. The obsessive search for ghosts in the image, however, shows that the desire to find them is matched by the pleasure of calling a hoax.

From the author of Multiple Exposure, the second “intriguing…compelling” (Publishers Weekly) novel in the thrilling Sophie Medina mystery series that features a photojournalist as she races to find an international treasure before a murderer finds her. When freelance photojournalist Sophie Medina finds Brother Kevin Boyle, a Franciscan friar and controversial environmentalist, dead in the magnificent gardens of a Washington, DC monastery, she is sure her friend was murdered. Shortly before he died, Kevin told Sophie he was being stalked, possibly because he uncovered a botanic discovery potentially worth millions of dollars. Left with few clues to his secret, Sophie is determined to figure out who killed Kevin. Beginning with a key that leads to a priceless original seventeenth-century encyclopedia of plants, Sophie leaps into an international treasure hunt following a trail that begins in the US Capitol and eventually leads to London and the English countryside. Before long Sophie suspects Kevin’s murderer may have been someone who knew him well. With time running out and a suspect list that includes the world’s leading botanical experts and political royalty from both sides of the Atlantic, can Sophie solve the two-hundred-year-old mystery before Kevin’s killer finds her? A tale of greed and betrayal involving politicians, diplomats, European royalty, and a century-old monastery, Ghost Image is filled with political intrigue, history, and an international high-stakes race against a killer that will keep you guessing until the very last page.