New Releases by Charles Wilson

In October 2000, The Canberra Times broke a story about the misuse of Liberal MP Peter Reith’s government funded Telecard. The card was for member’s personal use to have access to a public telephone when no other telephone was available. Mobile phones at the time were not in common use. Unauthorized calls to the tune of $50,000 had been rung up on the Workplace Relations Minister’s Telecard after he had given his son, Paul Reith, the card’s PIN in contravention of the Remuneration Tribunal’s guidelines. For more than two weeks the media was in uproar, smelling the blood of a hardnose conservative politician. Editorial writers, political commentators, and radio talkback hosts charged Reith with the Telecard’s misuse. This was another case, they said, of a rorting politician coming to grief over his all too frequent nose in the trough. The author took a different view. In the opening chapter of The Telecard Affair: Diary of a Media Lynching Second Edition, he writes: ‘While the media and the Labor Party had Peter Reith battered and strung up as a public warning, I will argue that the Telecard Affair is not about former Workplace Relations Minister, Peter Reith. It is not about MPs’ rorts. It is not about the usual ‘snouts in the trough.’ It is essentially about the media as the sharpest corrupting influence in our social and political life. It is about those media groups who function as amoral commercial enterprises. It is about journalists who betray their calling and are seduced, or coerced, by people who rule themselves according to their materialist objectives. It is about the slow death of public justice.’ The Telecard Affair was a paradigm case of the media’s irresponsible and ideologically driven misuse of their disproportionate power in the state. The author’s analysis of the media’s reporting of the Telecard Affair is unrelenting and targets some well-known media figures. He has undertaken a thorough revision of the text and added further comment to the political uproar of twenty-three years ago.

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 1976.

La vie de Scott Warden bascule le jour où il est témoin de l''apparition du premier Chronolithe à Chumphon, en Thaïlande. Ce monument hors du commun célèbre la victoire du seigneur de la guerre Kuin. Mais cette victoire n''aura lieu que dans vingt ans et trois mois. Qui peut bien être ce Kuin dont on ignore tout ? Et comment ce monument a-t-il pu venir quasi instantanément du futur ? Autant de questions auxquelles vont tenter de répondre Scott et son ancien professeur de physique, Sulamith Chopra, pendant qu''autour d''eux le monde semble s''écrouler, dans l''attente de l''avènement de Kuin. Un grand roman de science-fiction aux allures de thriller scientifique empreint, comme souvent chez Robert Charles Wilson, d''humanisme et de mélancolie.

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.

Building effective state institutions before introducing democracy is widely presumed to improve different development outcomes. Conversely, proponents of this “stateness-first” argument anticipate that democratization before state building yields poor development outcomes. In this Element, we discuss several strong assumptions that (different versions of) this argument rests upon and critically evaluate the existing evidence base. In extension, we specify various observable implications. We then subject the stateness-first argument to multiple tests, focusing on economic growth as an outcome. First, we conduct historical case studies of two countries with different institutional sequencing histories, Denmark and Greece, and assess the stateness-first argument (e.g., by using a synthetic control approach). Thereafter, we draw on an extensive global sample of about 180 countries, measured across 1789–2019 and leverage panel regressions, preparametric matching, and sequence analysis to test a number of observable implications. Overall, we find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument.

MYSTERY ROMANCE AND SUBVERSION Fr Jos van Engelen, a Dutch missionary priest stationed in New Guinea before World War II, is recalled to Holland to help his superior general combat suspected ideological subversion within his fraternity. He arrives in March 1940. After the Nazis invade Holland, he is drawn into covert operations by British intelligence. It all goes horribly wrong, and he is forced to flee to Amsterdam where he goes to ground. When the Nazis fire on the crowds gathered on Dam square in May 1945, he saves a young woman and her baby from being crushed in the stampede. It is the start of an unspoken relationship with the Strict Reformed Truus van den Donker, and a deadly tussle with her brutish occultist husband. After the war, he has a running conflict with those he suspects of undermining the order’s ways and of betraying him. The conflict comes to a head during and after the Second Vatican Council, with the conflict settling on the council’s document on the liturgy. The strife results in more measures to get him out of the way. At the same time, he must confront sinister occultist forces that want him dead. The unspoken love of the woman he can never have keeps his spirits from being crushed. This is a story of unswerving faith and commitment against diabolical forces Fr Jos and Truus could hardly conceive. Book One of the CONCILIAR SERIES develops the early story of Fr van Engelen and Truus van den Donker with the location of the story in Holland, New Guinea and Australia. The period is from 1940 to 1970. Both will appear in coming titles in the series. The CONCILIAR SERIES will consist of six connected but stand-alone stories. The themes of the ‘Goddess’, neo-paganism, the occult and Gnosticism are threads through the stories. The Second Vatican Council and the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (1965-1975) form the background. The author attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the times. The first book in the series was TIMES OF DISTRESS, the Second book, FEELINGS DIE NOT IN SILENCE, and the third DESCENT INTO HADES: A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY. COUNTERCULTURE DREAMS, book 4, is due 2022.

A history of colonial Australia, not of the famous and heroic, but of the small people, the anonymous people who were the heartbeat of a growing nation In this first book of his social history series, the author sets out on a journey through Australia’s colonial history with his ancestors from British Isles. All arrived by the 1830s, two on the First Fleet in 1788. Most are from central and southern England. Four are from two little villages close by each other in Wiltshire: Semley and Donhead St Mary. In addition, two convicts and one free settler came from Dublin, Monaghan, and Donegal in Ireland, and a farming family of four came from Aberdeen in Scotland. It is surprising how much he finds out about them all—joys, successes, and tragedies. Their lives are anything but dull. James Joseph Wilson, who narrowly escaped the gallows and was surprisingly literate for a man thrice convicted of burglary, arrived in Port Jackson on board the Prince Regent in 1827. The colonial authorities assigned him to Robert Lowe, one of the Colony’s early landholders. Lowe sent him to Mudgee in north-western New South Wales to shepherd his flocks. Young 18-year-old hutkeeper James Joseph was one of the first inhabitants in the Mudgee area. He teamed up with fellow convict Michael Jones to look for land. They married sisters Jane and Elizabeth Harris, daughters of free settlers, and travelled northwest to the Coonamble area, 330 miles from Sydney, to set up their farms. The two freed convicts and the Harris sisters became his great-great-grandparents. Nine convicts are in the direct line of his ancestors. He traces their lives against the social and historical background of colonial Australia, presenting a very different picture from the view usually found in school history books. They all thrive, taking advantage of their second chance. This book is the story of their redemption. Besides offering the reader an interesting, sometimes gripping family story, he reveals the cultural continuities in which his ancestors acted and how they responded to those continuities in a totally different physical environment. He seeks to discover to what extent the outlook, culture and character of his ancestors worked to make his extended family and him what they are. Naming his family Catholic is not gratuitous. Religion, as a social and political force, always plays an important role in a nation. It is emphatically the case in Australia where the national establishment threw together a sizable underclass of (Irish) Catholics with the Protestant Ascendancy. How was that to work out in a democratic order where there was no legal disqualification based on religion? He deals with that. Second, of my original ancestors only three were Catholic. The rest were a mixture of Protestants, from the Church of England to Scottish Wesleyans, to dissenters. How the Wilsons ended up Catholic makes an interesting story. And, finally, perhaps most importantly, he sketches a picture of the way Australia developed as a new people and a new nation. In 1950, most Australians had an ancestry like his.

A discounted ebundle of author Robert Charles Wilson''s Hugo Award-winning and critically-acclaimed Spin Saga Trilogy, which includes: Spin, Axis, and Vortex “Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a storyteller.” —Stephen King on Spin “Wilson does so many fine things, it’s hard to know where to begin to praise him.” —The Washington Post on Spin Spin One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives... Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger. Axis Visit the "world next door"—the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world—and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria. Vortex Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself. Tor books by Robert Charles Wilson Last Year The Affinities Burning Paradise Julian Comstock Blind Lake The Chronoliths The Perseids and Other Stories Bios Darwinia Mysterium A Bridge of Years A Hidden Place At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Kids love fast food. And the fast food industry definitely loves kids. It couldn''t survive without them. Did you know that the biggest toy company in the world is McDonald''s? It''s true. In fact, one out of every three toys given to a child in the United States each year is from a fast food restaurant. When Eric Schlosser''s best-selling book, Fast Food Nation, was published for adults in 2001, many called for his groundbreaking insight to be shared with young people. Now Schlosser, along with co-writer Charles Wilson, has investigated the subject further, uncovering new facts children need to know. In Chew On This, they share with kids the fascinating and sometimes frightening truth about what lurks between those sesame seed buns, what a chicken ''nugget'' really is, and how the fast food industry has been feeding off children for generations. This edition features a new introduction by Eric Schlosser.

Young ER doctor Michael Sims feels too many of his patients are dying without cause. Shannon Donnelly, the Congressman''s beautiful daughter, believes the police are wrong in ruling her father''s death a suicide. Now they''re teaming up uncover the truth about a terrifying medical experiment involving nerve regeneration and organ transplants. It''s backed by millions of dollars. It''s protected at the highest levels of government. But there are no volunteers, no donors. There are only ordinary people who check into this Mississippi hospital...and discover that death isn''t he worst thing they have to fear. Getting "chosen" is....

National bestselling author Charles Wilson delivers a cutting-edge thriller based on real-life experiments at improving human intelligence currently underway in both government and private circles. Imagine a computer chip no bigger than the tip of a pencil. This chip, if implanted in a human brain, could give someone encyclopedic knowledge, lightning-fast reflexes and superior learning skills. In a remote military hospital in Montana, an experiment is being performed: implant the chip into the brains of five volunteers. These volunteers, four men and one woman, are all serving life sentences in prison. The experiment works...but the five criminals escape. One young doctor is pulled into the intrigue by the baffling murder of his medical school mentor. Can this one doctor stop the conspiracy of five powerful opponents...whose driving desire is absolute and total control?

IN MEXICO...the charred remains of a medical clinic hold a clue to an experiment that can change the world. IN LOS ANGELES...a famous model, desperate to have a baby of her own, sends a detective to track down a legend...and a doctor missing for twenty years. IN BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI...a little boy plays with matchs and smiles. IN A SECRET LOCATION...the radical procedure begins, leading to a scientific miracle ...or the beginning of a nightmare. What does the next step in high-tech reporduction hold for humankind? In a tale as real as tomorrow''s headlines, a rich, successful woman takes a desperate gamble to have a child. A young lawyer discovers a fatal flaw in an unethical experiment. And a new life begins -- a life that could signal a revolution in modern medicine...or the end of us all.

After becoming a part of the Tau, one of twenty-two large global network Affinities in the near future, young Adam Fisk thinks his life has improved for the better until the different Affinities begin to go to war with one another in a conflict that will change Adam''s world forever.

Botschaften aus der Zukunft Rätselhafte Artefakte erscheinen eines Tages auf der Erde – doch sie stammen nicht von Außerirdischen, sondern von uns selbst, von einer zukünftigen Menschheit, die Botschaften in die Vergangenheit schickt. Doch was haben diese Botschaften zu bedeuten? Ein Wettlauf gegen die Zeit beginnt ...

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.

"Cassie [Iverson], eighteen years old, lives in the United States in the year 2014--but it''s not our United States and it''s not our 2014. Cassie''s world has been at peace since the Great Armistice of 1914. But Cassie knows the world isn''t what it seems. Her parents were part of a group who gradually discovered the awful truth: that for decades--back to the dawn of radio communications--human progress has been interfered with, made more peaceful and benign, by an extraterrestrial entity"--

"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.

From the Hugo-winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America 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 Plague of Infertility, 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 City. 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 a new Ajax-Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people 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 falsely accused and executed Bryce. Treachery and intrigue dog Julian''s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian''s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob. As told by Julian''s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks- and answers-the age-old question: "Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?"

He was designed to be the perfect man. And at first the experiment seemed a success. John Shaw - the product of secret government research into enhanced intelligence - was from birth far beyond anything human. Brilliant and charismatic, John could have been anything he wanted - except that which he longed for more than anything. To be normal. So John created Benjamin: an alternative persona, a way of coping with people who hated what they could not understand. He was everything that John wasn''t - but now those very differences are killing him. Benjamin has become the dominant personality, more and more often in control. John''s altered body has left his mind at risk - and unless he can discover the truth that will fuse both parts together, both he and Benjamin will die. Robert Charles Wilson spins one of his most stirring, tightly woven tales with The Divide. Reminiscent of Flowers for Algernon, it is at once an adventure story and a sensitive look at the consequences of man''s actions - and of one man''s quite literal search for himself.

"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."

Tom Winter thought the secluded cottage in the Pacific Northwest would be the perfect refuge—a place to nurse the wounds of lost love and happiness. But Tom soon discovers that his safe haven is the portal of a tunnel through time. At one end is the present. At the other end—New York City, 1963. His journey back to the early 1960s seems to offer him the chance to start over in a simpler, safer world. But he finds that the tunnel holds a danger far greater than anything he left behind: a human killing machine escaped from a bleak and brutal future, who will do anything to protect the secret passage that he thought was his alone. To preserve his worlds, past and present, Tom Winter must face the terrors of an unknown world to come. From Robert Charles Wilson, the Hugo Award-winning author of Spin, A Bridge of Years is a classic science fiction story of time-travel and human transformation. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Paul Martin is not sure what he is, where he is going, and who he is going with – until he meets Persephone Stickx with whom he falls in love. Super confident modern Persephone is determined to lead Paul to inner enlightenment through the divine feminine. Paul meets Persephone when friend property dealer Brad brings Persephone and her partner Hayden to Paul’s house in the pristine hinterland, a haven for environmentalists and counterculture enthusiasts. Persephone and Hayden show a keen interest in an old religious picture Paul bought at the local market. They say the picture represents bondage for Paul. They want to help Paul break that bondage. Their enthusiasm to help intensifies when they learn Paul knows Fr Robbie Pleasance, who is before the courts for the sexual abuse of a minor. Paul was in a relationship with the priest, and he needs to act. They enlist brilliant lawyer Aleta Broadbent. To lead a reluctant Paul to inner enlightenment, Persephone and Hayden expose him to a ritual that aims to expose the divine feminine. But it does not go as Persephone plans. The ritual fails. Instead of Persephone leading Paul to the divine feminine, she finds her growing affection for Paul leading her away from her salvific task. Hayden sees the relationship sabotaging their enterprise and breaks it up. Paul is despairing. By this time, a band of media people and lawyers pursuing clerical sexual abuse is circling Paul. What can he do to escape Aleta’s manipulation and the media’s attention and have Persephone with him again? The barriers seem invincible as he drawn farther into a vortex of a national media frenzy over the alleged abuse of a minor by the city’s Catholic archbishop.

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.

In an altered America where machines no longer work and magic holds sway, former lawyer-turned-visionary leader Cal Griffin guides his small band on a quest toward the Source of the Change -- following a trail he hopes will reunite him with his abducted sister, Christina, transformed into one of the powerful, enigmatic beings called "flares." Armed with little more than compassion and a determination to heal the world, Cal, the warrior Colleen Brooks, Russian physician Doc Lysenko, and bipolar street wizard Herman "Goldie" Goldman encounter old foes and new friends in a landscape of unimaginable beauties and magnificent horrors -- forced to confront the frightful secrets of an emissary from a dread region and to trust in a brilliant triumvirate of grad students who could get things running again ... at a terrible cost—as the final moves in humankind''s ultimate nightmare are played out in the depths of the Ghostlands.

Since its inception in 1865, the Detroit Police Department has been a trailblazer and pioneer in adopting revolutionary advances in law enforcement that are essential to policing today. The Detroit Police Department was among the first police departments to put its officers on bicycles and developed one of the earliest motorized forces using motorcycles, ultimately becoming the first department to utilize Harley Davidson motorcycles. Of its firsts, arguably the most important and synonymous with the city of Detroit being recognized as the "Automotive Capital of the World" is the department''s deployment of its first patrol car in 1909. This photographic book highlights the Detroit Police Department''s rich history, resplendent with groundbreaking advancements in the field of law enforcement. Over the years, many of the issues that proved challenging to large metropolitan cities, such as urban unrest, school busing, labor disputes, crime, and poverty, also produced challenges for the department. This book illustrates how the department met those challenges and continued to serves its community with the utmost professionalism, respect, and pride. The vision of the Detroit Police Department is "building a safer Detroit through community partnerships," a with the unquestioned dedication and hard work exhibited by Detroit''s fi nest, this vision has become a reality.

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.

''Chew On This'' reveals the truth about the the fast food industry - how it all began, its success, what fast food actually is, what goes on in the slaughterhouses, meatpacking factories and flavour labs, the exploitation of young workers in the thousands of fast-food outlets throughout the world, and much more.

2017 Aurora Awards Best of the Decade Finalist 2004 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Novel Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, "writes superior science fiction thrillers." His Darwinia won Canada''s Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe. At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can''t contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch. Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why. The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Marguerite Hauser and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma. Marguerite believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic--and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project''s observers. But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon.... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.