After serving time for nearly killing his student—a crime he maintains he didn't commit—Sean McLaine, a puny drama teacher finds himself broke and friendless on the streets of South Boston at the peak of the Great Recession. His joints have been destroyed by compulsive weightlifting and his mind poisoned by the subtly sadistic prison psychologist. Salvation comes in the form of an Irish mobster who welcomes Sean into his clan and offers him a chance at a new life. A few plastic surgeries, fake documents, and a sham marriage help the underdog reinvent himself as a philanthropist. His radiant face now fronts one of the largest organ trade enterprises. To add a finishing touch to his saintly image, he adopts a mentally ill orphan named Casey. Diagnosed with juvenile schizophrenia and believed to be a menace to society, the girl spends most of her days in isolation with no access to electronics. When the flimsy child morphs into a moderately attractive teenager and catches the eye of a film student, Sean's lukewarm paternal affection takes a sinister turn. His inner demons that had been dormant for years become more active, and the weight of his secrets becomes a bit too heavy for his shoulders. Amidst the political upheavals and school violence of post-election America, the battle for Sean's soul begins. Very soon he discovers that hell has no bottom—you can always sink lower.

West Germany, 1915. Marie Stahl, a stoic combat nurse in her late twenties, unhindered by her own ailments, converts her family countryside estate into a convalescent home for soldiers slapped with the controversial diagnosis "shell shock". Her only helpers are two taciturn factory girls of Slavic descent. Marie's altruistic endeavor brings on the wrath of her embittered brother Fritz, a Sergeant-Major in the Germany army. Having lost a foot in the trenches, he considers these men traitors, deserving of execution, not sympathy. The one he detests most is Christoph Ahrens, an engineering student nicknamed "Nutcracker" for his unusually strong jaw. Despite her morose disposition, Marie finds herself intrigued by the haunted youngster, who turns out to be a pupil of her godfather, Dr. Drosselmeyer, a physics lecturer at the University of Cologne and a military technology pioneer. As Marie and Christoph grow closer, he confides in her about his nightmares. The most horrifying images are not of his experiences in the trenches but of Germany's future—the old country they have been proud to serve will not exist twenty years later. As a woman of science, Marie rejects the notion of clairvoyance, although a part of her cannot help but wonder if there is some truth to his predictions. In the meantime, the atmosphere at the convalescent home grows more hostile as the patients turn on each other and Marie begins to question her altruism. Set against the violence and paranoia of the Great War, Unshelled is a gritty, sinister retelling of the Christmas classic.

“Analyzing and refuting the common assumptions of anti-Americanism is a critical contribution to the global political debate. Thank goodness for this effort." —UN Ambassador John Bolton, author of Surrender is Not an Option David versus Goliath, the American Revolutionaries, "The Little Engine That Could," Team USA's "Miracle on Ice," the Star Wars Rebel Alliance, Rocky Balboa, the Jamaican bobsled team and the meek inheriting the Earth. Everyone, it seems, loves an underdog. Why is that? We begin life tiny and helpless, at the mercy of those who are bigger and more powerful than us: parents and guardians who tell us what to eat, what to wear, how to behave (even when to sleep and wake up). From childhood into adulthood, we're told what to do by those who wield more power—our parents, teachers, bosses government. So naturally, we have a predisposition to resent the overdogs and root for the little guy. But this tendency, which international political consultant and human rights activist Michael Prell calls “underdogma," can be very dangerous – both to America and to the world at large. In Underdogma, Prell, who has worked world leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Australian and Canadian prime ministers and the Dalai Lama, explores our love/hate relationship with power within our culture and our politics. Underdogma explains seeming mysteries such as why: •Almost half of Americans blamed President Bush for the attacks of 9/11, even while the American media described the architect of these attacks as “thoughtful about his cause and craft" and “folksy." •Gays and lesbians protest those who protect gay rights (America, Israel), while championing those who outlaw and execute homosexuals (Palestine). •Environmentalists focus their rage on America, even though China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. •The United Nations elevates countries such as Sudan to full membership on the UN's Commission on Human Rights, even as the ethnic cleansing of Darfur proceeds. Tracing the evolution of this belief system through human history—ancient Greece to Marxism to the dawn of political correctness—Prell shows what continuing with this collective mindset means for our future. While America and its president increasingly exalt the meek and apologize for their power, America's competitors and enemies are moving in a different direction. China is projected to overtake the U.S. economically by 2027 and is ready to move into the position of hegemon, and radical Islamists are looking to extend their global territory, taking any sign of weakness as a chance to attack. America must return to its founding spirit, and underdogma must stop now—our nation depends on it.

Modern Paris. The fire at Notre-Dame has unleashed an eerie force and awakened the ghosts of Victor Hugo's novel. Dr. Molendino, a jaded psychologist with a penchant for the occult, finds himself ejected from the clinical community for publishing controversial articles on the subject of past lives. To his colleagues he is a heretic, who compromises the prestige of the clinic. After losing his job he immerses himself in private practice and research. Among his patients is Thomas Dimanche, a young journalist who suffers from dysmorphophobia and despite being handsome, considers himself hideous, avoiding human contact. Thomas makes a living by hosting a radio show called Parisian Toll, a criminal review, where he often features one of the city's most gruesome crimes -- the murder of an indie performer Annaïs Guybertot. The teenage girl was found strangled in the basement of an underground nightclub aptly called Montfaucon. With help from an experimental drug, the doctor and his patient dive into a hallucinatory world where a deformed bell ringer and his arrogant master rival for the heart of a gypsy dancer. Will they stop in time, or will they repeat the fate of Hugo's characters?

Ulster, Co. Antrim, 1903 Born with a limp, unsuitable for military service, Peter Greenwood knows that he is an embarrassment to his father, an officer in the British army. At seventeen the youth travels to Belfast to study journalism. New friends help Peter find a job at a conservative newspaper The Empire. His first assignment is to publish the memoirs of a retired captain Evan Pryce, a veteran of the Transvaal campaign. At the very first meeting Peter recognizes a broken, bitter man, who is not proud of his past. Molly, the captain's feral and uncouth daughter, takes a liking to Peter and shares a few family secrets that do not quite tie with the patriotic spirit of the newspaper. The Pryce family has a sworn enemy, an Irish nationalist hungry for vengeance, to which Peter becomes a witness. Even though his own life is spared, it now belongs to the rebels. He must use his literary skills to cover up their crimes. Ulster Lament, a bewitching folk melody sung by the ringleader, infects Peter's thoughts and makes him question his loyalty to the crown. He starts sympathizing with the rebels and believing that their rage is justified. Will he turn against everything he was taught to hold sacred?

It's four months on from the events of Dust and Desire... Joel Sorrell has recovered from the injuries he sustained in his fight with The Four-Year-Old. A body has been found, sealed into the dead space behind a false wall in a flat in Muswell Hill. Beheaded and surrounded by bloodstained pages of typewritten text, it is the third such murder committed by a killer known as The Hack. And it may be linked to his daughter's disappearance.

Arab Film and Video Manifestos presents, in their entirety, five key documents that have fundamentally shaken up and helped change the face of image culture in the Middle East and beyond. The book collects together, for the first time, these influential, collectively written calls and directives that span a fifty-year period and hail from a range of different countries. Each urges a radical rethinking of film and video’s role in culture, its relation to politics, and its potential to instigate profound change. Kay Dickinson carefully positions the manifestos within their broader socio-historical contexts and provides supplementary reading and viewing suggestions for readers who cannot access Arabic-language sources.