Riding Lucifer's Line


Book Description

The Texas-Mexico border is trouble. Haphazardly splashing across the meandering Rio Grande into Mexico is--or at least can be--risky business, hazardous to one's health and well-being. Kirby W. Dendy, the Chief of Texas Rangers, corroborates the sobering reality: "As their predecessors for over one hundred forty years before them did, today's Texas Rangers continue to battle violence and transnational criminals along the Texas-Mexico border." In Riding Lucifer's Line, Bob Alexander, in his characteristic storytelling style, surveys the personal tragedies of twenty-five Texas Rangers who made the ultimate sacrifice as they scouted and enforced laws throughout borderland counties adjacent to the Rio Grande. The timeframe commences in 1874 with formation of the Frontier Battalion, which is when the Texas Rangers were actually institutionalized as a law enforcing entity, and concludes with the last known Texas Ranger death along the border in 1921. Alexander also discusses the transition of the Rangers in two introductory sections: "The Frontier Battalion Era, 1874-1901" and "The Ranger Force Era, 1901-1935," wherein he follows Texas Rangers moving from an epochal narrative of the Old West to more modern, technological times. Written absent a preprogrammed agenda, Riding Lucifer's Line is legitimate history. Adhering to facts, the author is not hesitant to challenge and shatter stale Texas Ranger mythology. Likewise, Alexander confronts head-on many of those critical Texas Ranger histories relying on innuendo and gossip and anecdotal accounts, at the expense of sustainable evidence--writings often plagued with a deficiency of rational thinking and common sense. Riding Lucifer's Line is illustrated with sixty remarkable old-time photographs. Relying heavily on archived Texas Ranger documents, the lively text is authenticated with more than one thousand comprehensive endnotes.




An Apology to Lucifer


Book Description

Father Thomas Morelli thought he knew the story behind Lucifer's fall from Heaven. However, upon making the acquaintance of renowned book authenticator Lorenza Pellegrini and being invited to stay in the opulent Venice villa belonging to her "master," Thomas discovers he has only heard part of the story. In Boston, psychoanalyst, best-selling author, and outspoken atheist David Wright has been tasked to handle the funeral arrangements for his dear friend Albert Kennedy. What could have driven this controversial exorcist to take his own life? The answer, it seems, is contained in a tome that isn't supposed to exist. Joining forces, Lorenza, David, and Thomas must race against time to prevent an ancient battle from reigniting.




Vesuvius Club


Book Description

Meet Lucifer Box: Equal parts James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, with a twist of Monty Python and a dash of Austin Powers, Lucifer has a charming countenance and rapier wit that make him the guest all hostesses must have. And most do. But few of his conquests know that Lucifer is also His Majesty's most daring secret agent, at home in both London's Imperial grandeur and in its underworld of despicable vice. So when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to for help. Following a dinnertime assassination, Lucifer is dispatched to uncover the whereabouts of missing agent Jocelyn Poop. Along the way he will give art lessons, be attacked by a poisonous centipede, bed a few choice specimens, and travel to Italy on business and pleasure. Aided by his henchwoman Delilah; the beautiful, mysterious, and Dutch Miss Bella Pok; his boss, a dwarf who takes meetings in a lavatory; grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble; and the impertinent, delicious, right-hand-boy Charlie Jackpot, Lucifer Box deduces and seduces his way from his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (somebody has to live there) to the ruined city of Pompeii, to infiltrate a highly dangerous secret society that may hold the fate of the world in its clawlike grip--the Vesuvius Club.




Lucifer's Shadow


Book Description

Disillusioned by the darker side of Venice, English cataloguer Daniel Forster discovers a lost musical masterpiece within a library of dusty manuscripts and is drawn into a treacherous game of deception that spans three centuries, from the periods of Vivaldi and Rousseau to the present. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.




Motorcycle Illustrated


Book Description




The Lucifer Effect


Book Description

The definitive firsthand account of the groundbreaking research of Philip Zimbardo—the basis for the award-winning film The Stanford Prison Experiment Renowned social psychologist and creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo explores the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil. The Lucifer Effect explains how—and the myriad reasons why—we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women. Here, for the first time and in detail, Zimbardo tells the full story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the landmark study in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”—the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around. This is a book that dares to hold a mirror up to mankind, showing us that we might not be who we think we are. While forcing us to reexamine what we are capable of doing when caught up in the crucible of behavioral dynamics, though, Zimbardo also offers hope. We are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically. Like Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, The Lucifer Effect is a shocking, engrossing study that will change the way we view human behavior. Praise for The Lucifer Effect “The Lucifer Effect will change forever the way you think about why we behave the way we do—and, in particular, about the human potential for evil. This is a disturbing book, but one that has never been more necessary.”—Malcolm Gladwell “An important book . . . All politicians and social commentators . . . should read this.”—The Times (London) “Powerful . . . an extraordinarily valuable addition to the literature of the psychology of violence or ‘evil.’”—The American Prospect “Penetrating . . . Combining a dense but readable and often engrossing exposition of social psychology research with an impassioned moral seriousness, Zimbardo challenges readers to look beyond glib denunciations of evil-doers and ponder our collective responsibility for the world’s ills.”—Publishers Weekly “A sprawling discussion . . . Zimbardo couples a thorough narrative of the Stanford Prison Experiment with an analysis of the social dynamics of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.”—Booklist “Zimbardo bottled evil in a laboratory. The lessons he learned show us our dark nature but also fill us with hope if we heed their counsel. The Lucifer Effect reads like a novel.”—Anthony Pratkanis, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology, University of California




Lucifer's Queen


Book Description

I was born to give the devil his due.When I woke up naked next to the hottest man I've ever met, I had no idea just how much my life was about to change. And I had no clue the man was the devil himself.Literally.I promised to be his for all eternity, and so far, it's going well. Luke will give me anything to keep me happy: jewels, food, days in bed, and more. I don't need material things to stay. I feel more for Luke than I've ever felt before. But am I ready to give him my heart?I'm meant to be his queen, but now that Luke has found me, I'm in danger from everyone who opposes him. This isn't my first lifetime, and the last time he tried to crown me it ended in blood.My blood.Angels will do whatever it takes to stop my coronation. Luke promises it won't happen again. He says he'll sacrifice anything to protect me - even his soul. All I have to do is trust him.Only The Devil can protect me from Heaven.




American Lucifers


Book Description

The myth of light and progress has blinded us. In our electric world, we are everywhere surrounded by effortlessly glowing lights that simply exist, as they should, seemingly clear and comforting proof that human genius means the present will always be better than the past, and the future better still. At best, this is half the story. At worst, it is a lie. From whale oil to kerosene, from the colonial period to the end of the U.S. Civil War, modern, industrial lights brought wonderful improvements and incredible wealth to some. But for most workers, free and unfree, human and nonhuman, these lights were catastrophes. This book tells their stories. The surprisingly violent struggle to produce, control, and consume the changing means of illumination over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed slavery, industrial capitalism, and urban families in profound, often hidden ways. Only by taking the lives of whalers and enslaved turpentine makers, match-manufacturing children and coal miners, night-working seamstresses and the streetlamp-lit poor—those American lucifers—as seriously as those of inventors and businessmen can the full significance of the revolution of artificial light be understood.




Death is My Ride or Die


Book Description

Death Is My Ride or Die, the second book in Katarina E. Tonks’s thrilling Death Chronicles series, picks up immediately after the events of Death is My BFF. Faith and Death, now separated, must reunite and tackle an even bigger evil: Ahrimad. When all hell breaks loose, you might as well join the party. Faith Williams has managed to escape the clutches of Death and the gates of hell. But when she discovers she is the only one who can read the Book of the Dead, she realizes why her soul is so valuable to the forces of evil. Suddenly, someone Faith loves is stolen from her, bringing her back to the Devil’s door. To stop a common enemy, Faith is forced to team up with her irresistible but villainous “friend,” Death. Fighting alongside the enemy quickly becomes a dangerous game of saving the mortal realm while fighting forbidden feelings for each other. In the face of the epic battle that will wage in her wake, Faith must determine who is good, and who is evil—even if the line has blurred.




The Devil's Ride (gay Biker MC Erotic Romance Novel) (Sex and Mayhem Book 2)


Book Description

--- You don't fuck with the club president's son. ---Tooth. Vice President of the Coffin Nails Motorcycle Club. On a neverending quest for vengeance. The last thing he needs is becoming a permanent babysitter for a male hooker. Lucifer. Fallen. Lost. Alone. After a childhood filled with neglect and abuse, followed by his mother's suicide, Lucifer set out into the world alone. There was nothing for him out there other than taking it one day at a time. As the bastard son of the Coffin Nails club president, Lucifer never got much fatherly love. So when the Nails show up at the strip joint Lucifer works in, the last thing he expects is to be put in the custody of Tooth, the Nails Vice President famous for his gruesome interrogation techniques. The man proves to be the sexiest beast Lucifer has ever met. He's also older, straight, and an itch Luci can't ever scratch. Tooth's life came to a halt twelve years ago. His lover got brutally murdered, police never found the perpetrators, and all leads were dead ends. To find peace and his own justice, Tooth joined the Coffin Nails, but years on, he's gotten nowhere with the case, yet still lives on with the burning fire for revenge. Babysitting a deeply scarred teenager with a talent for disappearing is the last thing on his bucket list. He promised himself to never get attached to someone like him again. To make sure the openly gay boy is safe in the clubhouse, Tooth is stuck keeping an eye on him. The big, blue, attention seeking gaze is drawing Tooth in, but fucking the president's son is a complete no-go, even when both their feelings go beyond lust. What Tooth doesn't know is that Lucifer might hold the key to the closure Tooth so desperately needs. WARNING Contains adult content: a gritty storyline, sex, explicit language, violence and abuse. Inappropriate use of dental tools and milk. POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Themes: Prostitution, Outlaw Motorcycle Club, organized crime, homophobia, family issues, coming out, discipline/punishment, organ snatching, hurt-comfort, age gap Genre: contemporary gay erotic dark romance Length: ~ 125,000 words (Standalone novel, no cliffhanger.)