...It began a couple of years ago when my family decided that we were going to go watch a Cubs vs. Cardinals game. It was in Chicago and we had well over twenty people traveling with us. They were all family, and most of them are Cardinal fans. Me being a Cubs fan and having to ride up to Chicago on a bus filled with the opposing crowd was extremely draining. The whole ride up there I was just praying that the ride back would be better. After the long ride we went to our hotel and settled in, because the next day was the big game. We left the hotel to find a place to eat, luckily we could walk most places, and were able to avoid Chicago’s hectic traffic. We were walking down the street when we smelled the aromas coming from the bar on the corner, so naturally we went in to see what the amazing scent was. We went in and found out it was barbecue, so I got some wings, topped with honey barbecue. They were extremely tender and the sauce tasted like a piece of heaven....
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...Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis For Billy Fitzgerald I can still hear him shouting at me Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking-had he the gold? or the gold him? —John Ruskin, Unto This Last Preface I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? For more than a decade the people who run professional baseball have argued that the game was ceasing to be an athletic competition and becoming a financial one. The gap between rich and poor in baseball was far greater than in any other professional sport, and widening rapidly. At the opening of the 2002 season, the richest team, the New York Yankees, had a payroll of $126 million while the two poorest teams, the Oakland A's and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, had payrolls of less than a third of that, about $40 million. A decade before, the highest payroll...
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...THE MARTIAN CHILD by David Gerrold Toward the end of the meeting, the caseworker remarked, "Oh - and one more thing. Dennis thinks he's a Martian." "I beg your pardon?" I wasn't certain I had heard her correctly. I had papers scattered all over the meeting room table - thick piles of stapled incident reports, manila-foldered psychiatric evaluations, Xeroxed clinical diagnoses, scribbled caseworker histories, typed abuse reports, bound trial transcripts, and my own crabbed notes as welclass="underline" Hyperactivity. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Emotional Abuse. Physical Abuse. Conners Rating Scale. Apgars. I had no idea there was so much to know about children. For a moment, I was actually looking for the folder labeled Martian. "He thinks he's a Martian," Ms. Bright repeated. She was a small woman, very proper and polite. "He told his group home parents that he's not like the other children - he's from Mars - so he shouldn't be expected to act like an Earthling all the time." "Well, that's okay," I said, a little too quickly. "Some of my best friends are Martians. He'll fit right in. As long as he doesn't eat the tribbles or tease the feral Chtorran." By the narrow expressions on their faces, I could tell that the caseworkers weren't amused. For a moment, my heart sank. Maybe I'd said the wrong thing. Maybe I was being too facile with my answers. The hardest thing about adoption is that you have to ask someone to trust you with a child. That means that you have to be willing to...
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...Color-- -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9Text Size-- 10-- 11-- 12-- 13-- 14-- 15-- 16-- 17-- 18-- 19-- 20-- 21-- 22-- 23-- 24 TWILIGHT By Stephenie Meyer Contents PREFACE 1. FIRST SIGHT 2. OPEN BOOK 3. PHENOMENON 4. INVITATIONS 5. BLOOD TYPE 6. SCARY STORIES 7. NIGHTMARE 8. PORT ANGELES 9. THEORY 10. INTERROGATIONS 11. COMPLICATIONS 12. BALANCING 13. CONFESSIONS 14. MIND OVER MATTER 15. THE CULLENS 16. CARLISLE 17. THE GAME 18. THE HUNT 19. GOODBYES 20. IMPATIENCE 21. PHONE CALL 22. HIDE-AND-SEEK 23. THE ANGEL 24. AN IMPASSE EPILOGUE: AN OCCASION twilight STEPHENIE MEYER LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY New York Boston Text copyright © 2005 by Stephenie Meyer All rights reserved. Little, Brown and Company Time Warner Book Group 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Visit our Web site at www.lb-teens.com First Edition: September 2005 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meyer, Stephanie, 1973— Twilight : a novel / by Stephanie Meyer. — 1st ed. p. cm. Summary: When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human. ISBN 0-316-16017-2 [1. Vampires — Fiction. 2. High schools — Fiction. 3. Schools — Fiction. 4. Washington...
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...TWILIGHT By:Stephenie Meyer ======================================================== Contents Contents ii PREFACE 1 1. FIRST SIGHT 2 2. OPEN BOOK 18 3. PHENOMENON 33 4. INVITATIONS 43 5. BLOOD TYPE 55 6. SCARY STORIES 73 7. NIGHTMARE 86 8. PORT ANGELES 100 9. THEORY 118 10. INTERROGATIONS 131 11. COMPLICATIONS 146 13. CONFESSIONS 175 14. MIND OVER MATTER 193 16. CARLISLE 226 17. THE GAME 235 18. THE HUNT 255 19. GOODBYES 266 20. IMPATIENCE 276 21. PHONE CALL 288 22. HIDE-AND-SEEK 295 23. THE ANGEL 307 24. AN IMPASSE 311 EPILOGUE:AN OCCASION 327 ======================================================== Meyer, Stephanie, 1973— Twilight : a novel / by Stephanie Meyer. — 1st ed. Summary: Grade 9 Up–Headstrong, sun-loving, 17-year-old Bella declines her mom's invitation to move to Florida, and instead reluctantly opts to move to her dad's cabin in the dreary, rainy town of Forks, WA. She becomes intrigued with Edward Cullen, a distant, stylish, and disarmingly handsome senior, who is also a vampire. When he reveals that his specific clan hunts wildlife instead of humans, Bella deduces that she is safe from his blood-sucking instincts and therefore free to fall hopelessly in love with him. The feeling is mutual, and the resulting volatile romance smolders as they attempt to hide Edward's identity from her family and the rest of the school. Meyer adds an eerie new twist to the mismatched, star-crossed lovers theme: predator...
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...The Lucky One - Nicholas Spark CONTENTS l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Epilogue Chapter One Clayton and Thibault Deputy Keith Clayton hadn't heard them approach, and up close, he didn't like the looks of them any more than he had the first time he'd seen them. The dog was part of it. He wasn't fond of German shepherds, and this one, though he was standing quietly, reminded him of Panther, the police dog that rode with Deputy Kenny Moore and was quick to bite suspects in the crotch at the slightest command. Most of the time he regarded Moore as an idiot, but he was still just about the closest thing to a friend that Clayton had in the department, and he had to admit that Moore had a way of telling those crotch-biting stories that made Clayton double over in laughter. And Moore would definitely have appreciated the little skinny-dipping party Clayton had just broken up, when he'd spied a couple of coeds sunning down by the creek in all their morning glory. He hadn't been there for more than a few minutes and had snapped only a couple...
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...Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Copyright © 2008 by Alloy Entertainment All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Poppy Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 For more of your favorite series, go towww.pickapoppy.com First eBook Edition: November 2008 The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The characters and events in this book are fi ctitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. ISBN: 978-0-316-04286-4 Contents 1: A WAVERLY OWL TAKES HER TUTORING DUTIES SERIOUSLY—REGARDLESS OF HOW SERIOUSLY HER TUTEE DOES. 2: A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS HOW TO TAKE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM—EVEN WHEN IT HURTS. 3: A WAVERLY OWL ALWAYS ENJOYS A GOOD SURPRISE. 4: A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS HOW TO SHARE. 5: A WAVERLY OWL NEVER ACCEPTS A RIDE FROM A STRANGER. 6: THE WAY TO A WAVERLY BOY'S HEART IS THROUGH HIS… 7: A GOOD WAVERLY OWL IS NEVER ASHAMED OF HER FATHER. 8: A WELL-BRED OWL IS ALWAYS POLITE TO STRANGERS. 9: A WAVERLY OWL HAS FAITH IN HIS ROOMMATE. Page 1 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html 10: A WAVERLY OWL IS ALWAYS READY FOR THE APPEARANCE...
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...10010. www.stmartins.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Indante, Dan. The complete a**hole's guide to handling chicks / Dan Indante and Karl Marks. p . cm. ISBN 0-312-31084-6 1. Man-woman relationships. 2. Interpersonal relations. I. Tide: Complete a**hole's guide to handling chicks. II. Marks, Karl. III. Title. HQ801.M37135 307-dc21 2003 2002045213 10 9 8 CONTENTS Introduction: Chicks, What the Fuck? Fifty Tips on Being a Better Asshole ix xiii 1. From Birth to Beating Off The Birth of an Asshole The Purest Form of Asshole Gimme My Toy, You Bitch! Crossing the Dance Floor How Do I Get Her? The Beginning of the End Roughing Up the Suspect 1 1 1 2 3 4 6 2. High School Welcome Mat Firsts The Back-Seat Boogie Chicks Are the Enemy Watch Your Back—Your Friends Won't 8 8 9 15 16 20 vi C O N T E N T S Pecking Order Your First Pincushion So You're Looking to Get Laid High School Final Examination 22 29 31 32 3. College Welcome Mat Your High School Girlfriend You're Not in Kansas Anymore The Chick Roster—Understanding the Enemy The Male Pecking Order Whither the Chicks? Building Your Rep Dating (i.e., Getting Blackout-Drunk and Having Sex) Buttering Her Biscuit College Final Examination 34 34 35 38 42 51 52 56 63 69 70 4. Ages 21-27 Welcome Mat You're Not in...
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...Michael Fisher Michael Fisher The Blood Letter The Blood Letter The Blood Letter Written by: Michael Fisher Jr. Copyright: October 23, 2014 -Preface- In mid-evil times there was an unorthodox treatment for any ailment at the time, it was called bloodletting. When the nobles were ill, no matter what the affliction was, the surgeons with their hideous beak nosed masks and the blacked out eyes would come in and perform a bloodletting. The bloodletting consisted of placing leaches randomly on the afflicted one’s body, and allowing them to suck the sickness out of the host body. They would also place small incisions in precise placements to allow the “bad blood” to flow out of the infected body. More times than not, the patient died, but they always assumed it was because the infection was too far gone. Or even that the Devil himself had a hunger for that person’s soul. Even during the time of the black plague outbreaks, smallpox, cholera and the many other ramped diseases of the dark ages, the bloodletting practice was incorporated. Even during the Salem witch trials this method was instilled as a form of torture to get confessions of witchcraft form the accused, and also to try to rid them of the evil blood received from the devil. The practice was thought to have died out with the knights, nobles, and the kingdoms of old, and destroyed along with the witches…or so we thought. Fast forward many centuries from the dark ages to the modern days of the cell phone...
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...A Place In This World don`t know what I want, so don`t ask me Cause I`m still trying to figure it out Don`t know what`s down this road, I`m just walking Trying to see through the rain coming down Even though I`m not the only one Who feels the way I do [Chorus:] I`m alone, on my own, and that`s all I know I`ll be strong, I`ll be wrong, oh but life goes on I`m just a girl, trying to find a place in This world Got the radio on, my old blue jeans And I`m wearing my heart on my sleeve Feeling lucky today, got the sunshine Could you tell me what more do I need And tomorrow`s just a mystery, oh yeah But that`s ok [Repeat Chorus] Maybe I`m just a girl on a mission But I`m ready to fly [Repeat Chorus] Back To December I'm so glad you made time to see me How's life? Tell me, how's your family? I haven't seen them in a while You've been good, busier than ever We small talk, work and the weather Your guard is up, and I know why Because the last time you saw me Is still burned in the back of your mind You gave me roses, and I left them there to die So this is me swallowing my pride Standing in front of you, saying I'm sorry for that night And I go back to December all the time It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine I go back to December, turn around and make it alright I go back to December all the time These days, I haven't been sleeping Staying up, playing back...
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...I dreamed of her last night again. As vivid as always, I was left with the idea of her and no image. She stood before me, her face in shadows, obscured from my view. Her hands reached out to me, beckoning me forward. Seeming to float, I moved toward her, long slender fingers gently grabbing my wrists, pulling me forward. Happily I submitted to her embrace, feeling her naked breasts press against mine, her skin silkily brushing against mine, intoxicating me with the sensations. Still, I couldn't see her face, the one part of her I really wanted to see. Frustrated, I tried to cup her face with my hands and force it into the light. Laughing lightly, she resisted, pulling away completely, turning from me. Watching the muscles in her naked back flow as she walked away, I felt entranced. Sexual desire and lust coursed through me, my blood warming and traveling as my need grew. My head felt light as I again went to her, this time to a bed that appeared in the room. With a sure touch she pushed me down onto the bed, not that I fought her any way. I was dying to see her, dying to see the face on this woman who had tormented my dreams too often, but I was also hungry for her touch. With confidence born of shared love, she began to stroke my body, her caresses fanning the flame within me. I know I must have been moaning, but I couldn't hear anything but the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. For the thousandth time I let myself sink into her love making, not...
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...Suzumiya Haruhi: Volume One: The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi Colour Illustrations These are color illustrations that were included in volume 1. Cover Page Inside Flap Chapter 1 "Normal humans don't interest me." Chapter 2 Haruhi gets Mikuru into a bunny outfit. Chapter 7 "Hey Kyon, what's that giant?" Prologue Flap The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi Prologue Prologue When did I stop believing in Santa Claus? In truth, this sort of silly question holds no real significance for me. However, if you were to ask me when I stopped believing that the old man wearing the red costume was Santa, then I can confidently say: I have never believed in Santa, ever. I knew that the Santa who appeared at my preschool Christmas party was a fraud, and now that I think about it, every one of my classmates shared the same look of disbelief watching our teacher pretend to be Santa. Although I had never seen mommy kissing Santa Claus, I was already wise enough to be suspicious about the existence of an old man who worked only on Christmas Eve. However, it took me quite a bit longer to realize that the aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters and espers in those effects-filled 'good guys versus evil organization' cartoons didn't actually exist either. No, wait, I probably did realize, I just didn't want to admit it. Deep inside my heart I still wanted those aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters, espers and evil organizations to suddenly appear. Compared to this boring, normal...
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...ALSO BY NEIL STRAUSS The Long Hard Road Out of Hell WITH MARILYN MANSON The Dirt WITH MOTLEY CRUE How to Make Love Like a Porn Star WITH JENNA JAMESON Don't Try This at Home WITH DAVE NAVARRO THE GAME PENETRATING THE SECRET SOCIETY OF PICKUP ARTISTS Neil Strauss Regan Books An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers Cover silhouettes are from the following fonts :Darrian's Sexy Silhouettes by © Darrian (http://westwood.fortunecity.com/cerruti/445/), Subeve by © Sub Communications (http://www.subtitude.com),NorpIcons 1 and Norp Icons 2 by © DJ Monkeyboy (http://www.djmonkeyboy.com). "The Randall Knife": Words and Music by Guy Clark © 1983 EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. and GSC MUSIC. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission. In order to protect the identity of some women and members of the community, the names and identifying characteristics of a small number of incidental characters in this book have been changed, and three minor characters are composites. THE GAME COPYRIGHT © 200 5 BY N E I L STRAUSS. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. HarperCollins...
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...Acclaim for Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke “Just as dark and outrageous as his previous work. … His voice is so distinctive that he exists as a genre unto himself.” —The Washington Post “Palahniuk’s language is urgent and tense, touched with psychopathic brilliance, his images dead-on accurate. … [He] is an author who makes full use of the alchemical powers of fiction to synthesize a universe that mirrors our own fiction as a way of illuminating the world without obliterating its complexity.” —LA Weekly “Puts a bleakly humorous spin on self-help, addiction recovery, and childhood trauma. … Choke’s funny, mantra-like prose plows toward the mayhem it portends from the get-go.” —The Village Voice “Oddly, defiantly, addictive.” happily —Daily News “[Choke] shines a flashlight into America’s dark corners. … As darkly comic and starkly terrifying as your high school yearbook photo.” —GQ “Palahniuk is a gifted writer, and the novel is full of terrific lines.” —The New York Times Book Review “[Palahniuk’s] most enduring trait … is that marvelous quicksilver voice of his. … The exuberance of his language makes it still worthwhile to brave these often chilly and dark waters.” —The Oregonian “Choke is another welcome antidote to antiseptic consumer life, and you can’t blame it for grabbing you by the throat.” —Maxim “Palahniuk is a cult writer in the truest sense.” —Entertainment Weekly “His subversive riffs conjure a kind of jump-cut cinema of the diseased imagination, resulting...
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...GONE GIRL August 29, 2013 GONE GIRL Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn Screenplay by Gillian Flynn TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX 10201 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 FINAL SHOOTING SCRIPT AUGUST 29, 2013 Revisions September 15, 2013 & September 27, 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT 2014 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. NO PORTION OF THIS SCRIPT MAY BE PERFORMED, PUBLISHED, REPRODUCED, SOLD OR DISTRIBUTED BY ANY MEANS, OR QUOTED OR PUBLISHED IN ANY MEDIUM, INCLUDING ON ANY WEB SITE, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. DISPOSAL OF THIS SCRIPT COPY DOES NOT ALTER ANY OF THE RESTRICTIONS SET FORTH ABOVE. GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn Based on the Novel By Gillian Flynn Yellow Revised Pink Revised Blue Script White Script — - 9/27/13 9/15/13 8/29/13 7/30/13 Al BLACK SCREEN NICK (V.0.) When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. FADE IN: INT. BEDROOM SOMETIME Al - We see the back of AMY DUNNE’S HEAD, resting on a pillow. NICK (V.0.) I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, Nick runs his fingers into Amy’s hair. NICK (V.0.) Trying to get answers. He twirls and twirls a lock, a screw tightening. NICK (V.0.) The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? AMY wakes, turns, gives a look of alarm. * BLACK SCREEN 2 EXT. NORTH CARTHAGE MORNING 2 - A carved faux-marble entry—reading FOREST...
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