Simon Spicer is a lonely, melancholy professor in Maine. A widower, he was once a talented poet, but writes no more. At the age of thirty-five, he simply exists, aged beyond his years by disappointment. Spice is unaware of the physical and mental properties that set him apart from his fellows and fit him for a bizarre mission-but he will soon find out.

In the world of the Keepers, one of their own has gone rogue. Calling himself ShadowCaster, he has taken over the planet Talar and bred an environment of evil and death. The Keepers need a hero, but they are incapable of destroying ShadowCaster on their own. They require an outsider with the proper skills, and Spice is their man-although before he can take on the task, he must first die.

Once he does, his true powers awaken: powers of mind control and non-oral communication. With nothing to lose, Spice accepts his fated mission: to find ShadowCaster and stop him. Once a lonely, hopeless man, Spice is now the hope of the universe, ordered to redeem a fallen world and perhaps also himself.

Fifty-four-year-old Gabriel Fallon is a writer who no longer writes and who regularly contemplates ending his wasted existence on earth. As he stands at a crucial crossroads in his life, Gabriel knows he needs to accept that he has failed to realize his ambitions. But when he receives news that his estranged brother, Michael, is dying, Gabriel embarks on a spiritual quest into his past that causes him to question everything he has ever known.

Gabriel last saw his brother six years earlier. After he finally breaks the silence that hangs over their relationship like a dark shadow, Gabriel begins to reminisce with Michael about their younger days. But the blast of reality opens a floodgate of memories, taking Gabriel on an unexpected journey to confront his childhood demons and try to understand why his uncaring parents abandoned him. As he slowly discovers that all his falseness has grown from the wounds of a young boy, Gabriel finally finds his answers in the beckoning whispers of a glacial waterfall.

"Eternity Falls" is the poignant story of a tortured man who yearns to make peace with the past and acknowledge the truth as he bravely confronts his ultimate destiny.

I he most authoritative history of piracy, Frank Sherry's rich and colorful account reveals the rise and fall of the real "raiders and rebels" who terrorized the seas. From 1692 to 1725 pirates sailed the oceans of the world, plundering ships laden with the riches of India, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Often portrayed as larger-than-life characters, these outlaw figures and their bloodthirsty exploits have long been immortalized in fiction and film. But beneath the legends is the true story of these brigands--often common men and women escaping the social and economic restrictions of 18th-century Europe and America. Their activities threatened the beginnings of world trade and jeopardized the security of empires. And together, the author argues, they fashioned a surprisingly democratic society powerful enough to defy the world.

Simon Spicer is a lonely, melancholy professor in Maine. A widower, he was once a talented poet, but writes no more. At the age of thirty-five, he simply exists, aged beyond his years by disappointment. Spice is unaware of the physical and mental properties that set him apart from his fellows and fit him for a bizarre mission-but he will soon find out.

In the world of the Keepers, one of their own has gone rogue. Calling himself ShadowCaster, he has taken over the planet Talar and bred an environment of evil and death. The Keepers need a hero, but they are incapable of destroying ShadowCaster on their own. They require an outsider with the proper skills, and Spice is their man-although before he can take on the task, he must first die.

Once he does, his true powers awaken: powers of mind control and non-oral communication. With nothing to lose, Spice accepts his fated mission: to find ShadowCaster and stop him. Once a lonely, hopeless man, Spice is now the hope of the universe, ordered to redeem a fallen world and perhaps also himself.

Fifty-four-year-old Gabriel Fallon is a writer who no longer writes and who regularly contemplates ending his wasted existence on earth. As he stands at a crucial crossroads in his life, Gabriel knows he needs to accept that he has failed to realize his ambitions. But when he receives news that his estranged brother, Michael, is dying, Gabriel embarks on a spiritual quest into his past that causes him to question everything he has ever known.

Gabriel last saw his brother six years earlier. After he finally breaks the silence that hangs over their relationship like a dark shadow, Gabriel begins to reminisce with Michael about their younger days. But the blast of reality opens a floodgate of memories, taking Gabriel on an unexpected journey to confront his childhood demons and try to understand why his uncaring parents abandoned him. As he slowly discovers that all his falseness has grown from the wounds of a young boy, Gabriel finally finds his answers in the beckoning whispers of a glacial waterfall.

"Eternity Falls" is the poignant story of a tortured man who yearns to make peace with the past and acknowledge the truth as he bravely confronts his ultimate destiny.

The past half-century has been marked by major changes in the treatment of mental illness: important advances in understanding mental illnesses, increases in spending on mental health care and support of people with mental illnesses, and the availability of new medications that are easier for the patient to tolerate. Although these changes have made things better for those who have mental illness, they are not quite enough.

In Better But Not Well, Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied examine the well-being of people with mental illness in the United States over the past fifty years, addressing issues such as economics, treatment, standards of living, rights, and stigma. Marshaling a range of new empirical evidence, they first argue that people with mental illness -- severe and persistent disorders as well as less serious mental health conditions -- are faring better today than in the past. Improvements have come about for unheralded and unexpected reasons. Rather than being a result of more effective mental health treatments, progress has come from the growth of private health insurance and of mainstream social programs -- such as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, housing vouchers, and food stamps -- and the development of new treatments that are easier for patients to tolerate and for physicians to manage.

The authors remind us that, despite the progress that has been made, this disadvantaged group remains worse off than most others in society. The "mainstreaming" of persons with mental illness has left a policy void, where governmental institutions responsible for meeting the needs of mental health patients lack resources and programmatic authority. To fill this void, Frank and Glied suggest that institutional resources be applied systematically and routinely to examine and address how federal and state programs affect the well-being of people with mental illness.