Roxanne, or Roxxi for short, is trapped within a bizarre chamber after dreaming a surreal dream sequence. She finds out that the rest of her dreams are being uploaded by the Savants, a secret union who are godlike beings. Soon, she undergoes a dream test after one of her dreams shows vulnerability; she rejects the test mentally and is forced to submit. Afterward, Roxxi wakes up to find her vulnerable dream inside a shattered glass mirror; a strange creature attacks Roxxi and soon causes a fight. Roxxi gains her weapon during the fight, defeats the creature, and tries to escape but is soon stopped by her nightmares. Soon, her weapon overreacts after a certain nightmare triggers the weapon. Later, she's trapped again in a strange chamber, and awakens face-to-face with a certain being, her weapon nowhere to be seen.

Skulls and Siamese. Corpse paint and Persians. Baphomet, pentagrams, blood, and tabbies! Metal Cats combines two amazing subjects: the extreme personalities of the hardcore metal music scene and their adorable kitties. These incredibly cute and fluffy felines have been photographed with their loving owners in and around the dark abodes of musicians, fans, and promoters of metal including members of the bands Black Goat, Thrones, Isis, Lightning Swords of Death, Book of Black Earth, Skarp, Harassor, Akimbo, Aldebaran, Atriarch, Oak, Ghoul, Ludicra, Holy Grail, Xasthur, Cattle Decapitation, Murder Construct, Exhumed, Morbid Angel, Municipal Waste, Skeletonwitch, Gypsyhawk, Nausea, Phobia, and Napalm Death. Metal isn't all dark and disturbing, violent and misanthropic. Metal Cats is proof that while the music may be brutal, the people in the scene are softies for their pets just like you and me... A portion of the proceeds from this book and a series of benefit shows held along the West Coast will go towards one no-kill shelter in each of the four main cities visited.

In the early 1990s, members of an extremist black metal cult in Norway burned down churches and desecrated graveyards: what had initially began as a teenage frenzy had now become a dangerous and violent subculture. In this book photographer Peter Beste captures the unusual and disturbing imagery associated with Norwegian black metal.

Within the city of Vancouver, and amongst the deep wilderness of B.C. dwells the Barrier Kult. They're an assembly of incognito professional skateboarders that ritualize their skill on concrete barriers. The team was created ten years ago by Deer Man of Dark Woods and Depth Leviathan Dweller, who decided to adorn a mask of anonymity after growing tired of the repetition of the professional skate world. One would argue that the Barrier Kult's entire way of skating is repetitive, but the team takes this as a challenge to land big tricks... on stone cold concrete. BA. KU.resembles a religious cult and is likewise intricate and timeless. The skaters' ages range from early twenties, to mid-forties, with members spread around the world and meet up in Vancouver, (or wherever there is a proper barrier) when it comes time to collect footage for a video/film. Though alchemy and other ritual practices interest the Barrier Kult, their true roots lie in music and nature. The team is promoted by and has worked with countless bands in the black metal/noise community and feels that the genre has been able to loan the group its face and image. By connecting with these heavy musical influences,BA. KU.has been able to grow a loyal fan base that is not concerned with who may be behind the balaclava mask. While watching the team perform, the vast nature of B.C. creates the atmosphere, and war metal amplifies the experience. Most of skateboarding culture has been linked to punk, rap, metal and other similar genres, so the rookie members ofBA. KU.are all proud to sport the musical inspirations of the organization.

A Soul of a New Machine for our time, a gripping account of invention, commerce, and duplicity in the age of technology A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists— almost all foreign born—are not alone. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pursuit. The drama intensifies when a Silicon Valley start-up licenses the federal laboratory’s signature invention with the aim of a blockbuster sale to the world’s biggest carmakers. The Powerhouse is a real-time, two-year thrilling account of big invention, big commercialization, and big deception. It exposes the layers of competition and ambition, aspiration and disappointment behind this great turning point in the history of technology.

Painter, fisherman, pseudo-hermaphrodite—Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity at an isolated bait camp off the east coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City, alongside superstar artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Rediscovered after his death in 1977, Bess's small visionary paintings are now prized by museums and collectors for their primal beauty, and can fetch over $200,000 apiece. Bess's treasured canvases were only part of a grander theory—based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals—that proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. As an artist, Bess could never equivocate, and in 1960 he underwent an operation to become a pseudo-hermaphrodite. For the first time ever in print, Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle combines the beauty of Bess's art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Using Bess's own hauntingly sincere words (in letters to Betty Parsons, Meyer Schapiro, and others) the book traces the life and logic of this forgotten artist and explains how a love of beauty and a desire for wholeness lead Bess to self-surgery and, ultimately, a mental hospital. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle is a fascinating look at one of America's most notorious cult visionaries—a man who truly believed that art could save his life.