This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals subtly and powerfully with the impact of science on innocence and the collective despair that marked the transition into the modern age. In its realism, "The Damnation of Theron Ware" foreshadows Howells; in its conscious imagery it prefigures Norris, Crane, Henry James, and the "symbolic realism" of the twentieth century. Its author, Harold Frederic, internationally famous as London correspondent for the "New York Times," wrote the novel two years before his death.

Jerry Arterburn's story parallels that of thousands of men who are troubled by homosexual desires, but want to change. Rejected, alienated, and seduced into the world of homosexuality, Jerry suffered the devastating effects of AIDS before finding hope, acceptance, and an escape. Jerry's story, told with his brother, Steve Arterburn, gives readers hope. They give a way out of homosexuality for those who want to escape. It's a frank story that tells the truth about homosexuality and about how to find freedom and a new life. Why do men become homosexuals? Is there a Way out? What should parents do when early signs of homosexuality develop? How should family and friends respond to gay loved ones? What about gays who have AIDS? Stephen Arterburn founded New Life Clinics, created the Women of Faith conferences attended by more than 1,000,000 women, and hosts the daily radio program, New Life Live. He is the author of more than 40 books, and has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today. Stephen lives with his family in Laguna Beach, California. He wrote this book with his brother, Jerry, who passed away from the effects of AIDS in 1988.

Chicago is built on a foundation of meat and railroads and steel, on opportunity and exploitation – but its identity long ago stretched past manufacturing. Today, the city continues to lure new residents from around the world, and from across a region rocked by recession and deindustrialization. But the problems that plague the region don't disappear once you pass the Indiana border. In fact, they're often amplified. A city defined by movement that's the anchor of the Midwest, bound to its neighbors by a shared ecosystem and economy, Chicago's complicated – both of the Rust Belt and beyond it. Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, journalism, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak both directly and elliptically to the concerns the city shares with the region at large, and the elements that set it apart. With affection and curiosity, frustration, anger, and joy, the writers sing to each other like the bird on the cover. At times the song sings in harmony and at others sounds in notes of strategic dissonance. But taken as a whole, this book sings one song, responding to one cacophonous city.

This study of late 19th-century American literature uses the period's rural fiction to reveal the increasingly intricate and sometimes problematic connections between urban and rural life.

From the author of Daughters of the Revolution and The Bostons (winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for fiction) come eleven stories about sex and death, violence and desire, love and madness, set in a vast American landscape that ranges from the largest private residence in Manhattan to the lush rain forests and marijuana farms of Northern California. In “Francis Bacon,” an aspiring writer learns essential lessons from an aging pornographer. In “The Snake,” a restless Jungian analyst sheds one existence after another. In “The Boundary,” a muralist falls in love with a troubled boy from the rez. In the surreal “She Bites,” a man builds an architecturally distinguished doghouse as his wife slowly transforms. And in the transcendent, three-part title story, two best friends face their strange fates, linked by a determination to wrest meaning and coherence from lives spiraling out of control. At once philosophical and compulsively readable, Amor and Psycho dives into our darkest spaces, confronting the absurdity, poetry and brutality of human existence. This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.