“The Tall Tale of Billy Ball” In this humorously poignant coming-of-age story, a star high school cross-country runner finds himself the subject of a humiliating life. Billy, entangled in a web of bureaucratic idiocy and in trouble with the law, enters into a quirky and tumultuous relationship with his attorney, and later with a saucy pink-haired co-worker, only to discover his empty pursuits mask his real struggles and the angst of growing up. Percolating...

Book One in The Space Empire Trilogy -- What does a Prince of the Space Empire do when his father takes his toy away? Spend the summer in a Camp Meeting on Earth. Just what is a camp meeting? Open air and open water baffle men raised in tunnels and domes but the message of God's claim on their lives is even more disturbing. Alexander promised his family he'd come home alive, but Imperial SSTs targeting the Discovery might change his plans.

Alternately chilling, funny, devastating, and hopeful, these twenty stories introduce us to a theater critic who winds up in a hot tub with the actress he routinely savages in reviews; a biographer who struggles to discover why a novelist stopped writing; a woman who searches through her past lives to recall a romantic encounter with the poet W. B. Yeats; a student who contends with her predatory professor; and the poignant scenario of the last satyr...

"On the wildly popular podcast "Girl on Guy," comedian and actress Aisha Tyler asks her guests to recount moments from their lives when they've done something boneheaded, ill conceived, dangerous, or just plain stupid...to themselves. In Self-Inflicted Wounds, Aisha turns the lens on herself-recounting her most egregious mistakes--to hilarious result. Laugh out loud funny, and totally relatable, Self-Inflicted Wounds highlights a new comedic voice...

When Fiona has an accident at school, she worries that everyone will make fun of her.

Something Sketchy is the story of Elyse Cates who is a law intern. Since she is somewhat freshly removed from campus life, she is asked to return to university and "keep an ear to the ground" in regards to a specific fraternity. The firm's private investigator, Trip Connor, is Cates' adviser and liaison with the law firm. In her daily endeavors, she befriends Elliot, a campus bus driver who does not particularly enjoy her company but is helpful with...

The Consequences of Humiliation explores the nature of national humiliation and its impact on foreign policy. Joslyn Barnhart demonstrates that Germany's catastrophic reaction to humiliation at the end of World War I is part of a broader pattern: states that experience humiliating events are more likely to engage in international aggression aimed at restoring the state's image in its own eyes and in the eyes of others. Barnhart shows that these states...

How could the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not only survive but even thrive, regaining the support of many Chinese citizens after the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989? Why has popular sentiment turned toward anti-Western nationalism despite the anti-dictatorship democratic movements of the 1980s? And why has China been more assertive toward the United States and Japan in foreign policy but relatively conciliatory toward smaller countries in conflict?...

The story of Jonah is sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths and remains a recognizable legend even in the most secularized corners of the West. And yet the maritime prophet's story has been trivialized as a quaint children's tale, his character has been blasted by unsympathetic commentators, and even his alleged tomb has now been destroyed by Islamic State militants who, in 2014, took the city of Mosul on the Nineveh Plains. Now that Nineveh is once...

From English cricket's embarrassing failure at the 2015 World Cup to their heart-stopping victory four years later, Nick Hoult and Steve James vividly describe the team's dramatic journey from abject disappointment to finally lifting the trophy. Morgan's Men reveals how the team became the most aggressive limited-overs side in the world, led by their inspirational captain Eoin Morgan, whose vision and determination to succeed captured the imagination...