LIFE-LIFE IS THE ADVENTURE The physical world-the magnificent illusion-that's the game. The Shell is where the dice are rolled. Where the wheel is spun. Where the cards are shuffled and dealt. Life is where the hand is played. You can see why it's so important that we forget it's all an illusion. If we remembered, every time we held a hand that didn't suit our fancy, we'd fold and request a new deal. What would that do to the game, to the other players? Every hand can't be a winner, right? Sometimes we draw garbage, sometimes we get a pair. Maybe some-one else has a higher pair. Somebody gets three-of-a-kind. A straight. A full house. Once in a while someone draws a royal flush. Get it? Once in a while. Not every player. Not every hand. That's how the game works. Life is about playing the hand you're dealt, to the best of your ability. If you're a really good player, maybe you can win the pot without holding so much as a pair. Sometimes starting out with that royal flush can be a disadvantage. Think of the royals throughout history who inherited their kingdoms. Never had to work for them. Never had to learn, develop muscles, grow strong. One day they discover they're not up to the new challenges, and they wind up leaving their heads on the block. And the guy sharpening the guillotine is the one who began life with low numbers and no face cards.

HAVING RECEIVED disturbing news from his physician, seventy-year-old Frank Hessel agonizes over how best to tell Sarah, his long-term girlfriend. Not wanting to be a burden, he finally decides to break up with her, to set her free, just when they are finally able to be a true couple after years of limited time together. Before he can act, Frank runs into his childhood friend and rival, Carl, who has moved back to Happy Valley following the death of his wife. Frank is a devout Catholic while Carl was raised Lutheran, and they always enjoyed a friendly rivalry. Carl tells Frank that someone else from their childhood has also returned, Jonathan Green-part of the last Jewish family in the valley. Old friendships, ancient rivalries, and human greed and prejudice threaten to tear apart the idyllic peace of Happy Valley.

The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial is a quarterly publication of the international Carl Barks Fan Club, featuring pictorial articles regarding the amazing worldwide influence of Carl's stories and artwork on literature, the arts, education and literacy. For seven decades the work of Carl Barks has been translated into every major language, published by the millions, and enjoyed by billions of adults and children of all cultures. The characters he created have become household names, his stories treasured works of literature. Yet it was not until his retirement in the 1960s that Carl's name was made known to the public, for during the twenty-three years of his comic book cartooning career, his work was presented to the public as that of Walt Disney-specifically, that of The Walt Disney Company. An American of humble beginnings from rural Oregon, Carl Barks became the single most prolific, most published, most read author and most viewed artist in history. This series of pictorial books explores every aspect of his work and its ongoing global impact. Today Carl's oil paintings of scenes featuring the characters he created and wrote about are eminently collectible, selling at auction for very high prices."

A SOLID WALL OF FIRE hundreds of feet high rages toward your home, turning each dry leaf, twig and blade of grass into a roaring blaze so hot that everything in its path literally explodes into flame Within moments your property is engulfed and destroyed by a horrific inferno in which the very air seems to be burning. This scenario is not something out of a summer blockbuster movie. It is a situation that is all too real, all too terrifying, and is repeated worldwide many hundreds of times every year as raging wildfires in urban wildland areas destroy property and shatter lives. Yet always, with every such firestorm, one or two homes survive unscathed while all around become blackened cinders. A quirk of fate? A shift in the wind? No. Simply planning ahead. As a professional firefighter, author Ron Harmon has seen over and over that by taking a few simple precautions-BY PLANNING NOW for that absolutely certain to arrive day when the searing brush fire WILL come racing across the fields, up the hills and through the canyons-you can stop that wall of flame cold in its tracks, turning away certain destruction, saving the lives of your family and pets as well as your home property. FIRESTORM tells you step-by-step the what, where, when, why and how of fire prevention that you must use to stop the coming conflagration. Read this vital information and follow the easy guidelines, so you will be able to beat the odds and escape disaster. Initially published for the City of Los Angeles, California, which has a long history of catastrophic brush fires that have claimed many lives and resulted in extensive property loss, FIRESTORM will assist residents in any community where there is an "urban-wildland interface" to understand the importance of brush fire safety and prevention.

IN MORE THAN seventeen years of investigative reporting for magazines and newspapers, Anthony Pignataro has written numerous essays about life in the underbellies of seemingly upscale communities: Orange County and Sacramento in California, and on the tropical island paradise of Maui, Hawaii, where he has made his home since 2003 and is editor of the alternative weekly newspaper MauiTime. Pignataro's steamy Charley Ridgway novels of hardboiled action and noir intrigue, Small Island and The Dead Season (published in 2011 and 2012 by Event Horizon Press), have made their mark with lovers of dark adventures. Stealing Cars With The Pros collects thirty-three true stories that helped inspire his suspenseful fiction writing.

Deep in trance during a hypnotherapy session, Edward Peterson spontaneously regresses to an alternate life experience memory and begins speaking an unknown language. This leads Dr. Alan Arthur Winston to help his patient uncover a hidden realm where past, present and future exist as one, and each new life potentiality is chosen from one incarnation to another. In the most stunning revelation of all, Peterson enters and describes in detail a life experience which takes place several centuries in our future, when tens of thousands of families live in huge geosynchronous satellites, estranged from the Worlders below, and Earth's decimated population suffers from a war-ravaged environment polluted with radioactive toxins. Be prepared to have your convictions shaken to their core by the iconoclastic revelations to be glimpsed in L5.

Has evolution made humans into big babies? Can a grown man be toppled with a straw and a newt? Is salamander spit the newest weapon of mass destruction? The answers lie Somewhere Upriver. Douglas Mortimer, just beginning graduate school, is on his way to fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a great scientist. But when Douglas hires an eccentric old herpetologist as a research assistant, his plans for a successful future are derailed. He enters a world of toxic salamanders, quirky characters and government conspiracies, where the outlandish becomes amazingly believable. "A memorable mind-altering venture of wildlife biologists exploring Washington's rainforests, forging hilarious new trails beyond the beaten track, revealing secrets hidden beneath the skin of salamanders." -Diana Somerville author of Inside Out Down Under: Stories from a Spiritual Sabbatical ..". wonderful characters, action, humor, a little sex, and a vivid picture of one of the last American rainforests. It's great testimony that I really cared how the characters fared. And oh, yeah; I almost forgot the toads. We learn a lot about toads, too "-Terence Kuch author of The Seventh Effect and See/Saw ..". packed with laughs and intrigue in which the hero meets his tests of courage with renegade herpetologist Peter Vernon and a cast of characters living on the fringe of society who help, hinder and educate Douglas. It's a story of homemade beer, homemade tofu, gourd banjos, living underground, alien encounters, salamanders, rainforests, and field biologists who tramp through streams in search of new species ... with a court trial and renegade FBI agents to round out this delightful story." - Barbora Holan Cowles author of Why wasn't my teacher in school today?

The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial is a quarterly publication of the international Carl Barks Fan Club, featuring pictorial articles regarding the amazing worldwide influence of Carl's stories and artwork on literature, the arts, education and literacy. For seven decades the work of Carl Barks has been translated into every major language, published by the millions, and enjoyed by billions of adults and children of all cultures. The characters he created have become household names, his stories treasured works of literature. Yet it was not until his retirement in the 1960s that Carl's name was made known to the public, for during the twenty-three years of his career, his work was presented to the public as that of Walt Disney-specifically, that of The Walt Disney Company. An American of humble beginnings from rural Oregon, Carl Barks became the single most prolific, most published, most read author in history. This series of pictorial books explores every aspect of his work and its ongoing global impact.

A Cahuilla woman firmly rooted in her Native American heritage, Snowbird Jones is a UCLA graduate with majors in forensics and criminology. On the staff of the Santa Barbara Police Department, Sgt. Jones investigates the disappearance of a young college girl and learns there are 130 unsolved missing persons cases in California which have occurred within two miles of the Pacific Coast Highway between Mexico and the Oregon border. Jones becomes lead officer in a statewide police task force to learn the details of these mysterious disappearances. Yet there are no details-no sightings, no phone calls, no credit card or bank transaction records, or any other trails to show where this otherwise unconnected group may have gone . . . or been taken. As cleanly as if they had never existed, each individual has simply and mysteriousl-VANISHED.