From the theme of the lost father-figure in stories, 'Fathers and Sons' and 'Nameless,' to the openness of sexual relationships in the 'Orgy' and 'Two men and a plan', O Thiam Chin daringly explores the contrasting and contemplative facets of daily living and experience in Singapore. With boldness and ingenuity, he juxtaposes real-life events with a touch of fictional narrative in 'Crash and Burn,' 'Suicide Bomber' and 'Another Day in the Life of a Domestic Helper,' and illuminates the secret lives hidden behind these events.

There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years. Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people. First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his es-tranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history. Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking.

It's everybody's favorite wall-crawler in a collection of high-flying action and adventure stories! The Ultimate Spider-Man teams up with some mighty friends, from Black Panther to Captain Marvel and even Rocket & Groot, to fight threats both large and small. Spidey ventures into space to help stop Ronin the Conqueror, tangles with the Lizard and Vermin in the sewers, fights the Hulk and more!

With just one night and one stupid party, the trajectory of my future altered forever… Until my senior year, I had everything going for me: excellent grades, a supportive and loving family, not to mention the hottest boyfriend in school. Everything was perfect—until the arrival of Zach Anderson, a parkour loving, school skipping, bad boy delinquent that seemed to bring with him a lot of bad karma. It can’t be a coincidence that his arrival marks a significant change in my life, can it? Now, everything has changed. I no longer know who I can trust. And the threatening notes I’m receiving, well it appears those are just the start of my problems… Note: Free Falling is book two in the Best Friend series; however, it is a standalone novel with different characters so there is no requirement to read Always You first.

"BALLAD OF A FALLING MAN" The feel-bad series of the year continues! Here: a story that lasts a hundred stories.

9/11 Fiction, Empathy, and Otherness analyzes recent works of fiction whose principal subject is the attacks of September 11, 2001. The readings of the novels question and assess the validity and potential effectiveness of both the subsequent calls for a cosmopolitan outlook and the related, but no less significant, emphasis placed on empathy, and exhibited in such recent studies as Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization, Karsten Stueber's Rediscovering Empathy, and Julinna Oxley's The Moral Dimensions of Empathy. As such, this study examines the extent to which "us" and "them" narratives proliferated after 9/11, and the degree to which calls for greater empathy and a renewed emphasis on cosmopolitan values served to counterbalance an apparent movement towards increased polarization, encapsulated in the oft-mentioned "clash of civilizations." A principal objective of the book is thus to examine the ethical and political implications revealed in the exercising or withholding of empathy. For though empathy, in and of itself, may not be sufficient, it is nevertheless a vital component in the generation of actions one might identify as cosmopolitan. In other words, this book examines the responses to 9/11 (in both Western and non-Western novels) in order to uncover what their dramatic renderings might tell us about the possibility of a truly globalized community. The attainability of any cosmopolitan engagement is contingent upon our abilities to understand the other, knowing always that otherness eludes our grasp, and the best we can do is imagine some version of it. It is primarily in this capacity that the novel has a role to play. Whether it is the challenge of connecting with the survivors of trauma and the inhabitants of a traumatized city, or with a hyperpower that has experienced its own vulnerability for the first time, or even with the terrorist who seeks to commit violent acts, these novels afford us the means of examining the complex dynamics involved in any exhibition of fellow-feeling for the other, and the ever-present potential failure of that engagement.

The problem of human knowing has been foundational for the enterprise of philosophy since the time of Descartes. The great philosophers have offered different accounts of the power and limits of human knowing but no generally acceptable system has emerged. Contemporary writers have almost given up on this most intractable issue. In this book, Brian Cronin suggests using the method of introspective description to identify the characteristics of the act of human understanding and knowing. Introspection--far from being private and unverifiable--can be public, communal, and verifiable. If we can describe our dreams and our feelings, then, we can describe our acts of understanding. Using concrete examples, one can identify the activities involved--namely, questioning, researching, getting an idea, expressing a concept, reflecting on the evidence and inferring a conclusion. Each of these activities can be described clearly and in great detail. If we perform these activities well, we can understand and know both truth and value. The text invites readers to verify each and every statement in their own experience of understanding. This is a detailed and verifiable account of human knowing: an extremely valuable contribution to philosophy and a solution to the foundational problem of knowing.