Best Selling Books by Michael Bishop

Seventeen of writer Michael Bishop''s favorite stories were handpicked from his previously uncollected works to create this compelling collection, providing an excellent overview of a career that includes award-winning science fiction, horror, fantasy, satire, space opera, and mystery. In "A Tapestry of Little Murders, " a murderer attempts to escape along a literal road to self-destruction. A medical missionary, tortured by government thugs, reveals her dying wish in "With a Little Help from Her Friends." In "The Procedure, " an operation to remove a tumorous growth will hopefully excise from the patient''s mind and body all tendencies toward faith and superstition. From futuristic mystery and Vietnam-era dark fantasy to theological speculation on Christ''s death, a variety of lyrical voices speak through these haunting stories. An essay by the author divulges the genesis of each story.

Joel-Brock Lollis''s family has vanished into the labyrinthine Sporangium below a curious Georgia emporium, Big Box Bonanzas. Glimpses of an older J-B Lollis of the Atlanta Braves on a BBB television suggest that Joel-Brock may never get back his parents and sister. The Valorous Smalls--almost-ten Joel-Brock, lively teen Addi, and tiny detective Valona--forge their way into the mushroom realm to change that possible future. Young readers who enjoy quests with marvels in the kingdom of the weird--mushroom warriors! mazes! time games! giant slugs!--will find much to interest, amuse, and surprise them in Michael Bishop''s unusual fantasy, Joel-Brock the Brave and the Valorous Smalls, well and profusely illustrated in pen-and-ink by Orion Zangara.

Since its first publication in 1908, generations of adults and children have cherished Kenneth Grahame’s classic,The Wind in the Willows.For in this entrancing, lyrical world of gurgling rivers and whispering reeds live four of the wisest, wittiest, noblest, and most lovable creatures in all literature—Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad of Toad Hall. Like true adventurers, they glory in life’s simplest pleasures and natural wonders. But it is Toad, cocky and irrepressible in his goggles and overcoat, whose passion for motorcars represents the free and fearless spirit in all of us; just as it’s Toad’s downfall that inspires the others to test Grahame’s most precious theme—the miracle of loyalty and friendship. From the Paperback edition.

This collection gathers together Michael Bishop''s mainstream stories set in Georgia or featuring characters from Georgia. Two stories, the opener and the closer, have conspicuous fantasy or science-fictional elements. The collection represents the culmination of a career-long project that Bishop did not fully realize he had embarked upon, but that he did always have in the back of his mind.

How far would you go to achieve ultimate power and have your every dream fulfilled? Would you steal for it? Would you torture for it? Would you kill for it? For Ramond Jamison these questions are all too real. In a world where he is surrounded by love and goodness, a darker path has revealed itself to him. A path that offers his every fantasy. A path that bestows his every want, and asks for only one thing in return... His soul. The lives he touches along the way will forever be changed. Each victim feels their own unique and distinct pain. A torment that not only causes them great suffering, but affects all those around them. The road that leads Ramond to his every desire is not paved with gold, but instead is formed with the blood and tears of all those who stand in his way. It''s a road of destruction and death, and in the end the one he hurts the most just may be himself. When playing Devil''s advocate is a way of life, be careful what you ask for, it just might get you!

The British Land Rover 4x4 has grown from 1948 to become one of the world''s leading automotive brands. Exactly how it all came together back in the late 1940''s and early 50''s has been the topic of interest and debate for many years. This was until two Australian enthusiasts, Michael Bishop and Alex Massey quite literally stumbled across senior member of the original Land Rover development team, Arthur Goddard living in Brisbane, Australia in 2009. The discovery led to many of the myths and tales surrounding the early vehicles to be heard as it happened from Arthur''s point of view. Then to a trip by Arthur to visit his old work place in Solihull and to the vehicle that he helped bring to life back in 1948. The book contains both a technical and human side to this incredible story as well as a great reunion between Arthur and his old colleague Spen King who went onto design the Range Rover in the 1960''s. This is truly a unique story from the time of post War World two Britain to modern day Australia and how the iconic 4x4 grew up so quickly in the 1950''s to become the world leader that it is today.

Gérard Garouste, Colette Deblé, Georges Rousse, Geneviève Asse, Martial Raysse, Christian Jaccard, Joël Kermarrec, Danièle Perronne, Daniel Dezeuze, Philippe Favier, Daniel Nadaud: after the eleven essays ofContemporary French Art 1, devoted to major artists from Ben Vautier and Niki de Saint Phalle to Annette Messager and Gérard Titus-Carmel, the present volume pursues its interrogations of thewhat, the how and the why of contemporary plastic production of some of France''s finest practitioners. If, as ever, such production can reveal elements of an interweaving of individualized preoccupations and modes, endless specificities demarcate and affirm originalities that pure theory and its leveling anonymity may obscure. Thus is it that Gérard Garouste is alone in that obsession with ''indianness'' and ''classicalness''; that Colette Deblé''s gesture is drawn implacably to the unseenness of female representation; that Georges Rousse plunges photography into the realm of matter''s poetic sacredness; that Geneviève Asse traverses a pure seemingness of abstraction to attain to an intimacy of silence; that Martial Raysse''s ''hygiene of vision'' may endlessly renew and hybridize itself. Christian Jaccard, too, will explore with uniqueness an art of materiality at the frontier of metaphysics; Joël Kermarrec will offer us the inimitable exquisite traces of surging desire and deception; Danièle Perronne''s boxes and stringings, her paintings and her sheetings will unfold a psychic infinity at the heart of form. And, if Daniel Dezeuze seeks namelessness and pure structuration, the latter yet surge forth via works that relentlessly identify a gesture so distant, we may feel, from the at once sobering and ceremonial microproliferations of a Philippe Favier or the tense but genial articulations of Daniel Nadaud''s sculptural imagination.

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Few teams have enjoyed a more dramatic reversal of football fortunes than Baylor. From its first team in 1899 to the championship teams of the ''20s to Coach Grant Teaff''s revival of the program, Bears Handbook is a celebration of Baylor football.