New Releases by Charles Wilson

This title is part of UC Press''s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

A fictionalized account of a past life experience that has no bearing on people or places in the 20th century. The book is to entertain with ideas and concepts. These ideas and concepts are made up.

The Hugo Award–winning author of Spin, praised as "a hell of a storyteller" by Stephen King, gives time travel his own mind-bending twist . . . Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson''s Last Year, the technology exists to open doorways into the past—but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it''s the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can''t be reopened. A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It''s been in operation for most of a decade, but it''s no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination. Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He''s fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back—no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it. "Wilson''s prose is beautifully constructed in this intelligent and gripping novel." — Chicago Review of Books

A team of scientists explore an uncharted region of the Amazon, seeking exotic plants that may yield cures for the diseases afflicting humanity. But their mission goes horribly wrong when the party is attacked by the area''s mysterious natives, and when they learn too late that they''ve landed in the cauldron of a deadly, unknown virus.

The Classical Music Encylopedia, now fully updated, traces the development of Western music from medieval times through to the twenty-first century. Each chapter begins with an Introduction to the era, followed by an A to Z of the key composers and musicians of the era, with an expert''s recommended recording for each entry. Within these, the musical greats – from Mozart to Stravinksy – have more extensive entries. The Styles and Forms sections discuss the many different styles of music, from the earliest notation to the minimalism of the twentieth century, while the development of each era''s Instruments is also extensively investigated. Written by many of the world''s leading experts in the field, this invaluable encyclopedia is comprehensive, easy-to-use and highly informative – an essential guide for readers of all levels.

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past--and soon to be haunted by the future. In early-twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory--sixteen years in the future. Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok--obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels is a spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and perhaps educational memoir that spans fifty-plus years, eleven states, three countries, military and seminary, birth and death, marriage and divorce, three Christian denominations, and a monastery. This memoir is a journey through faith and knowledge, hope and reality, love and experience. The author attempts to reconcile what he has been taught, what he believes, what he experiences, what he knows, what he wants, and what he perceives. His unacknowledged question: What do we do when we evolve beyond the faith of our fathers (and/or mothers)? After a life of seeking to understand through the lens of Christianity (and other religions), the author comes to understand that religious beliefs and dogma may become a barrier to faith and understanding. The author learns that liberty entails responsibility, faith requires self-reliance, and enlightenment is found within. Liberty and freedom entail responsibility, responsibly that no other person or institution can assume for use. We remain responsible for our actions and inactions. No person, government, or religious institution can assume or remove our responsibility for our actions, for our lives. The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels is an attempt to weave a tapestry of stories, ideas and ideals, ethics, experiences, and expressions with the goal (and hope) to entertain, inform, educate, persuade, stimulate, and even challenge. Perhaps The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels will remind you of your own experiences, thoughts, and feelings that provide some measure of contentment, but also some measure of challenge, even conflict. The silence beyond those reminders is where we find the first peace and where we are at liberty to be real and where the better angels of our nature touch us.

"Vortex" tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in "Axis," who is transported 10,000 years into the future by the mysterious entities called "the Hypotheticals."

Describes the author''s early experiences as a sharecropper''s son and a KFC executive before building a preeminent urban farm to feed, educate, and employ thousands of at-risk youths.

MYSTERY ROMANCE AND THE OCCULT Virginia Pearson and the beautiful Aine O’Riordan are among a group of young women entering the convent of the Sisters of the Suffering Saviour. Strange happenings torment the sensitive and withdrawn Aine O’Riordan. Virginia tries to comfort her, but dark mysterious events force Aine out of the convent. Deeply saddened, she leaves behind her dear friend to deal with the unexplained happenings and an atmosphere of foreboding that seems to infect the life of the convent. Virginia (later Sister Agnes), suspicious of fellow postulant Margaret McGuigan’s (later Sister Catherine) role in convent’s atmosphere, enters into a barely suppressed conflict with her through their religious training to their university course in 1962. The intrusion of Virginia Pearson’s resentful former fiancé – and senior lecturer Dr Philip Stevenson – into her life as Sister Agnes adds an unexpected problem. Meanwhile, Aine has been lured into the world of fashion modelling and appears unaware of where personable photographer Harry is leading her. She unwittingly plays a connecting role in the deepening conflict and the continuing mysteries that see Virginia and Aine each rushing towards a crisis. The SIXTIES SERIES will consist of eight connected but stand-alone stories. The cultural revolution of the 1960s (1960-1975) and the Second Vatican Council are the social, cultural, and political background. The author who lived through the turmoil of those times recreates its atmosphere. The themes of neo-paganism and Gnosticism are threads through the stories. Book 1 TIMES OF DISTRESS Book 2 IN THIS VALE OF TEARS Book 3 COUNTERCULTURE DREAMS Book 4 THE DREAM BECOMES A NIGHTMARE due Sept 2024 Book 5 THE CASTLE OF HEAVENLY BLISS Book 6 A SENSE OF LOSS due 2025 Book 7 WHERE TO NOW? due 2026 Book 8 A LONG WAY BACK due 2027

A collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Erosion,” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In “As Women Fight,” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In “A Story, with Beans,” by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal-eating bugs is considered. In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In “On the Human Plan,” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. Set in the Jackaroo sequence, “Crimes and Glory,” by Paul McAuley, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover. Set in the Lovecraftian “Boojum” universe, “Mongoose” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths. In “Before My Last Breath,” by Robert Reed, a geologist discovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard. In the Hugo Award winning novelette “The Island,” by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it. Finally, “This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” by Robert Charles Wilson, is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was never published.

"Astute, romantic, philosophical, compassionate, and often uproariously funny, Julian Comstock may be Wilson''s best book yet." —Cory Doctorow In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation''s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again. Then out of Labrador come tales of the war hero "Captain Commongold." The masses follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is . . . troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the President''s late brother Bryce—a popular general who challenged the President''s power, and paid the ultimate price. As Julian ascends to the pinnacle of power, his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients sets him at fatal odds with the Dominion. Treachery and intrigue will dog him as he closes in on the accomplishment of his lifelong ambition: to make a film about the life of Charles Darwin. "It''s like Margaret Atwood meets The Wild Wild West ." — SciFiDimensions "A sprawling, gorgeous meditation on the inexplicable ways that history mutates culture . . . It may be the best science fiction novel of the year so far." — io9

The sequel to the Hugo Award-winning SF epic Spin

The doors of the house inhabited by the Jack Wilson family on Telegraph Hill lead to a terrible secret. Within those walls, Charles S. Wilson and his sisters suffered heartbreaking physical and mental abuse at the hands of their own parents. Mother Mame was a well-known caretaker in the community, but she also brought strangers into the house and force-fed them until they were sick. Their father Jack, better known as the town drunk, threw Wilson around like a rag doll for the amusement of his drunken friends. And then there were Annabelle and Abigail, Wilson''s beloved sisters, whose neglected and tortured lives ended all too soon. A story of survival, The House on Telegraph Hill, details the abuse Wilson suffered and sheds light, not only on his own demoralizing experience, but also on the epidemic of child abuse. His brutally honest stories reveal all of the disguises, sugar-coatings, and lies that abusers heap on their victims. By recounting his dreadful upbringing along with his lifelong struggles, Wilson is finally pushing his story to the forefront to help educate others about the horrors and complexities of child abuse.

Bursting with ideas, replete with human insight, Bios is science fiction in the grand tradition: a novel of bravery, exploration, and discovery in a universe charged with awe. In the 22nd century, humankind has colonized the solar system. Starflight is possible but hugely expensive, so humakind''s efforts are focussed on Isis, the one nearby Earthlike world. Isis is verdant, Edenic, rich with complex DNA-based plant and animal life. And every molecule of Isian life is spectacularly toxic to human beings. The entire planet is a permanent Level Four Hot Zone. Despite that, Isis is the most interesting discovery of the millennium: a parallel biology with lessons to teach us about our own nature. It''s also the hardest of hardship posts, the loneliest place in the universe. Zoe Fisher was born to explore Isis. Literally. Cloned and genetically engineered by a faction within the hothouse politics of Earth, Zoe is optimized to face Isis''s terrors. Now at last Zoe has arrived on Isis. But there are secrets implanted within her that not even she suspects--and the planet itself has secrets that will change our understanding of life in the universe. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Everything you don''t want to know about fast food.

"An intelligent horror story with skin-crawling entertainment. Crooked Tree is one of the rare books that uses Indian lore with intelligence and respect. The result is an unusual thriller whose supernatural roots are native witchcraft and the werewolf-like concept of ''the Grizzly Woman''." ---Denver Post "An intense, meticulously researched thriller that handles Native American beliefs with both suspense and dignity." ---New York Times "It makes your hair stand on end. A cross between Jaws and The Exorcist." ---Liz Smith, New York Newsday "Crooked Tree is a story of considerable suspense and plentiful action. The author does a professional job of building a suspension bridge for disbelief." ---Boston Globe "Crooked Tree is flat-out terrific. Well-crafted with lush descriptions of Michigan''s north country, this book will send chills down your spine as it builds suspense upon suspense." ---Detroit Free Press "Crooked Tree is a well-conceived thriller, intelligently crafted. It was a book that I could not put down." ---James Kirkwood, playwright, A Chorus Line

Jack the Bookman Ltd July 04.

Every book in this series has earned the classic status due to its popularity, durability, and uncompromising quality. All books in the Unity Classic Library series feature hardcover binding with gold engraving, colorful endpapers, library nameplate page, author photograph, and biography. The series makes a beautiful display on a library shelf, and each book is a respected addition to any metaphysical collection.This book gives a new perspective on forty-seven events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, and is presented in the form of daily lessons. A study guide is included.

From the Gulf of Mexico''s shallow waters to the deepest parts of the Pacific, terror comes to the surface when six-year-old Paul Haines sees two older boys disappear under the surf. His mother, Carolyn, a charter boat captain on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, finds herself embroiled in the tragedy to an extent she could never have imagined. Soon to be an NBC miniseries.

This well-written book covers both practical aspects of investigation and the theoretical underpinnings. Starting with ideas for team building, the volume offers concrete guidance about the most effective structures available to teams. . . . This volume will be of interest to those wishing to start a team and also to existing team members who want assistance with optimizing team development. --Virginia Child Protection Newsletter "Highly recommended." --Family Violence & Sexual Assault Bulletin Book Club As child abuse investigation and intervention evolved throughout the past decade, it has become clear that no single discipline or agency can meet the needs of abused children and their families. This practical, timely, and accessibly written book focuses on how to develop, operate, and maintain effective investigative teams. It examines how law enforcement officers, child protection workers, prosecutors, medical professionals, and mental health clinicians can form coordinated investigative teams for fact finding, child protection, and criminal prosecution. The authors devote a series of chapters to investigative interviewing, investigative protocol, preparing for the child interview, the child interview process, corroborating interviews, and interviewing the suspect. Other chapters include discussion on building teams, and the roles and responsibilities of the team members (child protective services, law enforcement, prosecutors, mental health representative, and child welfare agency counsel). The book concludes with two important chapters on the team decision-making process and decision making in complex environments. A must read for all professionals and those in training who are, or will be, involved in child sexual abuse investigations.

From the author of "Top Decisions", "Managing Organizations" (with Rosenfeld), "Managing Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations" and "Strategy of Change", this book focuses on strategy and leadership in business and management.

With its new approach to the key problems of modern strategic management, this book provides a critical appraisal of current ideas about total quality management, flexibility and excellence, testing them against case material drawn from a wide range of different organizational settings.