The opening episode of the adventures of USS Excalibur, in which Captain Calhoun must venture into the domain of the vicious Thallonians. The Thallonian empire has recently collapsed with the result that world after world is descending into disorder and self-destruction.

How would you feel if you weren’t allowed to make decisions about your life? What if someone had the power to tell you where to live, who to spend time with, and what to do? What if that person had control of your money and health care? Isn't that hard to imagine? Yet, hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities face this situation, every day, when they in a guardianship. When a court decides that a person needs a guardian, it appoints someone to make decisions for that person, usually in all areas of life. While guardianship may be helpful to some people, when people who can make their own decisions are put in guardianship, they can lose their rights and have a worse quality of life. That's what happened to Jenny Hatch, a young woman with Down syndrome. Before she was put in guardianship, Jenny lived in her own apartment, worked, spent time with friends, and went to a church she chose. After the court ordered her into guardianship, Jenny was put in a group home, against her will, with her cell phone and laptop taken away, cut off from her friends and not allowed to go to her job and church.In this book, Jonathan Martinis and Peter Blanck tell Jenny’s story, including how she lost her rights under guardianship and won them back when she showed the court that she uses Supported Decision-Making (SDM) to make her own decisions with help from people she trusts. They’ll also show you how you can use SDM in your life, with family members, or people you support. They’ll give you practical tips and model language to help you request, receive, and use SDM in the programs and life areas people with disabilities use every day, including Special Education, Vocational Rehabilitation, Person Centered Planning, Health Care, Money Management, and others. As you read this book, you’ll learn that SDM is for almost everyone and almost everyone can use SDM. The authors hope that people with disabilities and their families, friends, and professionals will use this book to help them develop customized SDM plans that protect their rights and empower them to make their own decisions.

Sick of vampire books? Movies? TV shows? Yeah. So are we. Sick of the entire unlife of vampires? Yeah. So is Vince Hammond. Unfortunately, Vince is in it up to his (wait for it) neck. Because Vince is a young vampire hunter who lives with his vampire hunter mother in an entire community of vampire hunters, who in turn are part of a cult of vampire hunters going back all the way to the French Revolution, which many believe to be an uprising of the poor against the rich but was actually a massive purging of vampires from the French nobility (hence the guillotine; way more efficient than shoving stakes into their hearts.) And here’s Vince’s major problem: he’s a vampire. But he dare not “come out of the coffin,” as it were, and reveal his true nature, because his mother will literally kill him. And if she doesn’t manage it, she has lots of friends and neighbors to help make sure that happens. So instead Vince has to keep his head down and hunt his own kind while making sure not to actually kill them since, for the most part, vampires are law-abiding citizens who drink from eagerly volunteering “Wanna V’s” hoping for their own shot at the night life. But when some out-of-town hunters show up with a very personal connection to Vince, his two worlds are going to collide in a way that may wind up forcing Vince to run for the hills…assuming he can get far enough away before Mom hunts him down.

Deep in the uncharted regions of our galaxy, the Kreel, a primitive, warlike race have stumbled upon weapons powerful beyond their wildest imagination. The Kreel have used those weapons to attack their most bitter enemies, the Klingons. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the "U.S.S. EnterpriseTM are called in to mediate the dispute by ferrying diplomatic teams from the two warring races to the source of their conflict, the mysterious planet where the weapons were discovered in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, and discover the origins of the super-powerful weapons.

Paul Dear is a good and clever boy, but he’s special in ways that even his adoring parents could never have imagined. For by day, in London’s Kensington Gardens, he walks and talks with the pixies and sprites and other magical creatures that dwell among the living–but are unseen by most. Then everything changes when tragedy strikes–and a quest begins that will lead Paul to a curio shop where a magical ally awaits him and launches him into the starry skies, bound for a realm where anything is possible. Far from home, Paul will run with fierce Indian warriors, cross swords with fearsome pirates, befriend a magnificent white tiger, and soar beside an extraordinary, ageless boy who reigns in a boundless world of imagination.

America's first truly twenty-first-century metropolis, Los Angeles is often depicted as diverse, fragmented, polarized, and ungovernable, a city without a unifying geographic center or civic culture. The sprawling evolution of the city and its infamous problems-traffic, pollution, growing inequality-are usually attributed to a Wild West version of capitalism-the triumph of an unregulated free market over comprehensive urban planning. But market choices and lack of planning did not set the terrain of Southern California: Los Angeles has been profoundly shaped by a wide range of local, state, and federal public policies and programs. Up against the Sprawl details how governmental policies and public agencies have dictated many aspects of the region's growth: infrastructure, transportation, housing, immigration, finances, civic and regional administration, the environment. The authors also argue that since public policy set the landscape, it can help forge the future. They explore countermovements by progressive activists to use innovative policies-from smart growth initiatives to the actions of living wage advocates-for greater social, economic, and environmental justice. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of past and present urban processes and policy, and highlights practical lessons for urban and regional policy makers and activists in Los Angeles and beyond. Contributors: Carolyn B. Aldana, California State U, San Bernadino; Carol S. Armstrong; Michael Dear, U of Southern California; Gary Dymski, U of California Riverside; Steven P. Erie, USC; Gregory Freeman; William Fulton; Elizabeth Gearin, USC; Genevieve Giuliano, USC; Pascale Joassart-Marcelli, U ofMassachusetts, Boston; Enrico A. Marcelli; Myra A. Marks, Loyola Marymount U; Juliet Musso, USC; Stephanie Pincetl, USC; Laura Pulido; Christine M. Ryan; John P. Wilson. Jennifer Wolch is professor of geography and director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at the University of Southern California. Manuel Pastor Jr. is professor of Latino and Latin American studies and director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Peter Dreier is Clapp Distinguished Professor and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.

A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age," an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be "of the times"—lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment. Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis.

WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALIST LOCUS AWARD FINALIST The essential first volume of bestselling author Peter S. Beagle's (The Last Unicorn) short stories demonstrates why he is one of America's most influential fantasists. With his celebrated versatility, humor, and grace, Beagle is at home in a dazzling variety of subgenres. Evoking comparison to such iconic authors as Twain, Tolkien, Carroll, L'Engle, and Vonnegut, this career retrospective celebrates Beagle's mastery of the short-story form. [STARRED REVIEW] "Brimming with magic, lyrical prose, and deeply felt emotion, this is, indeed, essential reading." --Kirkus An unlikely friendship based on philosophy develops between an aging academic and a mythological beast. A mysterious, beautiful attendee who attends a ball thrown in her honor chooses whether or not to become mortal. A dysfunctional relationship is not improved by the consequences of lycanthropy. One very brave young mouse questions his identity and redefines feline wiles. From heartbreaking to humorous, these carefully curated stories by Peter S. Beagle show the depth and power of his incomparable prose and storytelling. Featuring an original introduction from Jane Yolen ( Owl Moon ) and gorgeous illustrations from Stephanie Pui-Mun Law ( Shadowscapes ), this elegant collection is a must-have for any fan of classic fantasy.

"It is a dark and stormy Puget Sound winter--until the arrival of Lioness Lazos. Even the weather takes notice when Lioness appears, as if out of nowhere, waiting tables in a diner. As though compelled, a complicated family brings the young woman into their lives. Energetic Joanna, academic Abe, and lovelorn Lily each fall under Lioness's spell, and she in turn awakens their long-hidden dreams and desires. As an impossibly beautiful spring leads into a perfect summer, Lioness's influence only grows. But lingering in her past is a dark secret--and summer days must pass"--Page 4 of cover.

2004 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire winner Peter S. Beagle’s The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances celebrates the beginning of Beagle’s extraordinary career as a fantasist. Widely available for the first time and with a new preface by the author, this delightful book contains seven short stories and three essays by one of the most popular authors in the history of the fantasy field. The Last Unicorn, Beagle’s most beloved novel, was an underground best-seller in the late 1960s and 1970s and is still in print and enchanting new readers today. It reached an audience far beyond the market for fantasy books, tying in with an emerging counter-culture and selling hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies. The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche contains two of Beagle’s popular unicorn stories, ?“Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros” and ?“Julie’s Unicorn,” as well as “?Lila the Werewolf” (anthologized in the Oxford Book of Fantasy) and a tribute to J. R. R. Tolkien, ?“The Naga.”

Chronicles the experiences of a Model T Ford with a series of owners from 1909 to the present day.

Discusses the events surrounding the erection of the Berlin Wall, the Wall's devastating effect on those living near it, and its major impact on East-West relations

"Essays, speeches, and journal entries from one of our most admired and best-loved poets that illuminate how he came to understand himself as a poet, the events and people that he wrote about, and the older poets who influenced him. In prose both as superbly rendered as his poetry and as down-to-earth and easy as speaking, Levine reveals the things that made him the poet he became. In the title essay, originally the final speech of his poet laureate year, he recounts how as a boy he composed little speeches walking in the night woods near his house and how he later realized these were his first poems. He wittily takes on the poets he studied with in the Iowa Writing Program: John Berryman, who was his great teacher and lifelong friend, and Robert Lowell, who was neither. His deepest influences--jazz, Spain, the working people of Detroit--are reflected in many of the pieces. There are essays on Spanish poets he admires, William Carlos Williams, Wordsworth, Keats, and others. A wonderful, moving collection of writings that add to our knowledge and appreciation of Philip Levine--both the man and the poet"--

"The final collection of new poems from one of our finest and most beloved poets. The poems in this wonderful collection touch all of the events and places that meant the most to Philip Levine. There are lyrical poems about his family and childhood, the magic of nighttime and the power of dreaming; tough poems about the heavy shift work at Detroit's auto plants, the Nazis, and bosses of all kinds; telling poems about his heroes--jazz players, artists, and working people of every description, even children. Other poems celebrate places and things he loved: the gifts of winter, dawn, a wall in Naples, an English hilltop, Andalusia. And he makes peace with Detroit: "Slow learner that I am, it took me one night/to discover that rain in New York City/is just like rain in Detroit. It gets you wet." It is a peace that comes to full fruition in a moving goodbye to his home town in the final poem in the collection, "The Last Shift.""--

A fiction-within-a-fiction, My Life as a Man centres on the fraught marriage of Peter, a gifted young writer and Maureen Tarnopol, the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead becomes his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and powered by moral blackmail. And yet, the the couple's relationship is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying - and failing - to write his way free of it. Out of desperate inventions and scorching truths, acts of weakness and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a fierce tragedy about a fatal impasse between a man and a woman.

A novel narrated by octogenarian ex-sportswriter Word Smith, who plans to write the "Great American Novel" and also to tell the tragic and hilarious story of the Ruppert Mundys - the only homeless baseball team ever to play in the big league, who have disappeared from all official histories.

Now in his mid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be recluse despite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent sixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky (" Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?" ), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers, advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettled Zuckerman to wonder if " target" may be more than a figure of speech. In Zuckerman Unbound-- the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue "Zuckerman Bound"-- the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother...and all because of his great good fortune!