Below the Belt


Book Description

Alternative lifestyles are anathema to the inhabitants of rural areas of the Bible Belt. Even gays and lesbians themselves resist the notions of community and self-identification espoused by city queers. As Wilson demonstrates, it is the combination of internalized self-hatred, the influence of the right-wing Republicans and religious fervor, together with the hatred, fear, and suspicion aroused by the intervention of gay and lesbian activists from urban areas, that determine the tenor of gay life in the American rural South. A series of shocking interviews with local religious leaders and medical experts whose opinions shape local discourse in sexuality, abortion, feminiosm, and AIDS are the foundation for this revelatory study.




Below the Belt


Book Description

Stone Barrington lands in hot water in this thrilling adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. Newly ensconced in his Santa Fe abode with a lovely female companion, Stone Barrington receives a call from an old friend requesting a delicate favor. A situation has arisen that could escalate into an explosive quagmire, and only someone with Stone’s stealth and subtlety can contain the damage. At the center of these events is an impressive gentleman whose star is on the rise, and who’d like to get Stone in his corner. He’s charming and ambitious and has friends in high places; the kind of man who seems to be a sure bet. But in the fickle circles of power, fortunes rise and fall on the turn of a dime, and it may turn out that Stone holds the key not just to one man’s fate, but to the fate of the nation.




Below


Book Description

Professional diver Will Sturman and brilliant and beautiful oceanographer Valerie Martell must stop a school of voracious sea creatures before they devastate the world's oceans.




The Stars Below (Vega Jane, Book 4)


Book Description

THIS. MEANS. WAR. The explosive conclusion to David Baldacci's instant #1 worldwide bestselling and award-winning fantasy series. From the beginning, the fight was coming. Vega Jane fought her way out of the village where she was born, crossed a wilderness filled with vicious creatures, and raised a ragtag army behind her. But each triumph earned through grit and pain only brought her closer to him.Necro. A sorcerer whose unspeakable evil is matched only by his magical power.Vega and Necro are on a collision course. The clash between his awesome power and her iron will is going to shake the stars down. Their fight will seal their fates . . . and determine the future of their world. The battle rages in The Stars Below, the furious conclusion to legendary storyteller David Baldacci's #1 global bestselling Vega Jane series.




Below the Belt


Book Description

In a sizzling MMA romance from Sidney Halston (“An author to watch!”—Cherry Adair), a former title contender turns the tables on his knockout trainer with a lesson in seduction. Once one of the most sought-after names on the mixed martial arts circuit, Antonio “Scarface” Marino watched his career go down for the count as he chased skirts and made tabloid headlines. Now he’s finally making a comeback, and it’s all thanks to Francesca Silva, a Brazilian bombshell as tough as any of her fighters. But who’s the real Francesca: the trash-talking trainer who rides him hard, or the vulnerable woman who blushes at his touch? Francesca went to the mat to sign Tony because she believes he still has the potential to bring big success to her gym—if she can keep his head in the cage and out of her personal life. After a short-lived marriage soured her on love, a one-night stand is all she can handle. Now Tony’s kisses are stirring up complicated feelings—especially when he agrees to face her ex in the ring. Francesca’s used to freezing guys out. But Tony’s tempting her to give in to the heat. Don’t miss Sidney Halston’s Panic series: PULL ME CLOSE | MAKE ME STAY | KISS ME BACK | WHAT ABOUT US And look for all of her hard-hitting MMA romances: AGAINST THE CAGE | FULL CONTACT | BELOW THE BELT | LAID OUT | FIGHTING DIRTY | STACKED UP Praise for Sidney Halston’s Against the Cage “Against the Cage is funny, steamy, scorching—and holy hot MMA fighter, I wanted more! Five stars all the way!”—New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Toni Aleo “A steamy and fun romance that will leave readers begging for more!”—New York Times bestselling author Cherry Adair “Halston’s new series opener creates an organic and sensual dynamic between Jack and Chrissy that makes an easy buy-in for readers. And if the story isn’t endearing enough, Jack’s feisty Chihuahua/pit bull mix will have readers instantly hooked and eagerly awaiting the second series installment.”—Library Journal Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.




It Came from Below the Belt


Book Description

IT CAME FROM BELOW THE BELT, BY BRADLEY SANDS Meet Grover Goldstein: Twenty-First Century rascal, trainee provocateur, boy next door who won't stop snickering at you from behind the lawn gnome. Swallowed by a giraffe and regurgitated oodles of years into the future, Grover must satisfy his urge to go home-even if it means going back to high school and helping his severed, and sentient, penis win the presidential election. Come along to Assumption High as Grover tries to answer the age-old question, What if I had forgotten then what I don't know now? Absurdism at its finest, and part of the new and expanding Bizarro genre, this highly-anticipated first novel is by the editor of the zine Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.




Strangers Below


Book Description

Before the Bible Belt fastened itself across the South, competing factions of evangelicals fought over their faith's future, and a contrarian sect, self-named the Primitive Baptists, made its stand. Joshua Guthman here tells the story of how a band of antimissionary and antirevivalistic Baptists defended Calvinism, America's oldest Protestant creed, from what they feared were the unbridled forces of evangelical greed and power. In their harrowing confessions of faith and in the quavering uncertainty of their singing, Guthman finds the emotional catalyst of the Primitives' early nineteenth-century movement: a searing experience of doubt that motivated believers rather than paralyzed them. But Primitives' old orthodoxies proved startlingly flexible. After the Civil War, African American Primitives elevated a renewed Calvinism coursing with freedom's energies. Tracing the faith into the twentieth century, Guthman demonstrates how a Primitive Baptist spirit, unmoored from its original theological underpinnings, seeped into the music of renowned southern artists such as Roscoe Holcomb and Ralph Stanley, whose "high lonesome sound" appealed to popular audiences searching for meaning in the drift of postwar American life. In an account that weaves together religious, emotional, and musical histories, Strangers Below demonstrates the unlikely but enduring influence of Primitive Baptists on American religious and cultural life.




Below the Root


Book Description

In the “Newbery Honor–winning author’s compelling fantasy” for young adults, a boy is chosen to rule his idyllic land—only to discover its dark secrets (Publishers Weekly). Green-sky is an ideal place. Violence doesn’t exist. Its citizens, the Kindar, glide from tree to tree and exchange happy thoughts. This is all thanks to their rulers, the Ol-zhaan. And on his thirteenth birthday, Raamo D’ok is chosen to become one of the Ol-zhaan. Raamo is surprised to be named a Chosen. He isn’t a very good student—but the Ol-zhaan believe he has strong Spirit-force. But during his training, Raamo discovers that these good rulers aren’t as benevolent as they appear. They harbor secrets about his people, his family, and what lies below the forest floor. Now Raamo must decide: Should he keep the peace, or reveal the secrets that the Ol-zhaan have protected for so long? This ebook features an extended biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder.




Liturgies from Below


Book Description

It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.




Below the Line


Book Description

Considers the work of television set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-program casters, and public-access and cable commissioners in relation to the globalized economy of the television industry