When you're almost killed, not once, but twice, finding out your father is a mafia boss doesn't seem so bad. What is bad, though, is the feelings I'm trying to hide toward John, my father's personal assassin. With his brooding, bad boy aura and intense blue eyes, I know he could command anything from me and I would obey. His eyes, though sinister, say they want to touch me, to kiss me, to cross that line we know is forbidden. I feel drawn to him. His presence calls to me like a beacon.Even though my father took him in and molded him into what he is today-a merciless killer- my father will be even more merciless when it comes to his only heir. Nothing but a brutal and violent death will be waiting for John if my father ever finds out. But I don't know if either of us are strong enough to stay away.

Japanese animation, video games, and manga have attracted fans around the world. The characters, the stories, and the sensibilities that come out of these cultural products are together called Japan Cool. This is not a sudden fad, but is rooted in manga—Japanese comics—which since the mid-1940s have developed in an exponential way. In spite of a gradual decline in readership, manga still commands over a third of the publishing output. The volume of manga works that is being produced and has been through history is enormous. There are manga publications that attract readers of all ages and genders. The diversity in content attracts readers well into adulthood. Surveys on reading practices have found that almost all Japanese people read manga or have done so at some point in their lives. The skills of reading manga are learned by readers themselves, but learned in the context of other readers and in tandem with school learning. Manga reading practices are sustained by the practices of other readers, and manga content therefore serves as a topic of conversation for both families and friends. Moreover, manga is one of the largest sources of content for media production in film, television, and video games. Manga literacy, the practices of the readers, the diversity of titles, and the sheer number of works provide the basis for the movement recognized as Japan Cool. Reading Japan Cool is directed at an audience of students of Japanese studies, discourse analysts, educators, parents, and manga readers.

One of the most eclectic and distinctive writers currently working in comics, Grant Morrison (b. 1960) brings the auteurist sensibility of alternative comics and graphic novels to the popular genres-superhero, science fiction, and fantasy-that dominate the American and British comics industries. His comics range from bestsellers featuring the most universally recognized superhero franchises (All-Star Superman, New X-Men, Batman) to more independent, creator-owned work (The Invisibles, The Filth, We3) that defies any generic classification. In Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, author Marc Singer examines how Morrison uses this fusion of styles to intervene in the major political, aesthetic, and intellectual challenges of our time. His comics blur the boundaries between fantasy and realism, mixing autobiographical representation and cultural critique with heroic adventure. They offer self-reflexive appraisals of their own genres while they experiment with the formal elements of comics. Perhaps most ambitiously, they challenge contemporary theories of language and meaning, seeking to develop new modes of expression grounded in comics' capacity for visual narrative and the fantasy genres' ability to make figurative meanings literal.

James Mottram traces the history of the gangster film genre, providing background information on key actors, directors and crew whilst discussing and examining a range of films from the 1930s through to films like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas.

Young Michael Valentine narrates a first-hand account of his journey with words expressed in a manner that enables the reader to see everything down to the last detail as if you were watching it on the big screen. Following the death of his father, hes forced to become the man of the house. His vivid description of his life story helps you visualize his transition from a young naive Christian boy to a youthful contract killer hired by two of the largest crime families in the Metropolitan area and on the East Coast. You will feel his pain from the loss of his father to the betrayal of close friends and confidants as well as his pleasure he receives through his accomplishments. He not only grows into a man through his sexual and physical changes, but he learns the definition of loyalty, family, and greed as well. Travel with Michael as he takes you for a night on the town all around DC, Maryland, and Virginia and to various cities, countries, and bedrooms. Some of his sexual encounters are casual, few are emotional, but the majority is a part of business. Ride with him in exotic cars and walk with him as he stalks his target and takes them out. Nothings sugar coated; its as real as it gets. He realizes that he becomes addicted to sex, murder and money. You wont just read the diary of a hit man; youll see it as he lives it.

Narcoepics Unbound foregrounds the controversial yet mostly untheorized phenomenon of contemporary Latin American 'narcoepics.' Dealing with literary works and films whose characteristics are linked to illicit global exchange, informal labor, violence, 'bare life,' drug consumption, and ritualistic patterns of identity, it argues for a new theoretical approach to better understand these 'narratives of intoxication.' Foregrounding the art that has arisen from or seeks to describe drug culture, Herlinghaus' comparative study looks at writers such as Gutiérrez, J. J. Rodríguez, Reverte, films such as City of God, and the narratives surrounding cultural villains/heroes such as Pablo Escobar. Narcoepics shows that that in order to grasp the aesthetic and ethical core of these narratives it is pivotal, first, to develop an 'aesthetics of sobriety.' The aim is to establish a criteria for a new kind of literary studies, in which cultural hermeneutics plays as much a part as political philosophy, analysis of religion, and neurophysiological inquiry.