Howard Books

Now in a completely revised and updated edition, Howard Massey's Basic Plumbing With Illustrations is the definitive "how to" manual for installing code-approved plumbing in residential and light commercial buildings. Systematically laid out in twenty-three chapters, Basic Plumbing With Illustrations covers all of the fundamentals of the plumbing trade including planning and sizing, installation, maintenance, common layout, materials, and code requirements. Invaluable and practical information is provided on inspections, floor plans and plot plans, drawing and reading isometrics, code definitions, and materials. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of charts, tables, installation diagrams, and rough-in measures, Basic Plumbing With Illustrations is enhanced further with a glossary of plumbing terms, plumbing abbreviations, extensive study questions at the end of each chapter, and a section with all the correct answers. This is the ideal text for students and apprentices, as well as practicing professionals in the field.

Basic Plumbing with Illustrations is a handy reference book for designers, engineers, and draftsmen. There are a lot of illustrated examples showing best practices when laying out residential and light commercial plumbing that minimize extra fittings, are UPC compliant, and work for stacked and flat systems.
Also handy are rough-in dimensions for common fixtures, drain, waste and vent sizing charts, and cold and hot water supply sizing info. that includes a neat explanation of solar hot water heating methods.
this reference goes hand in hand with another Massey authored Publication entitled "Planning, Drain, Waste, and Vent Systems".

This book shows you everything about plumbing, including septic systems, solar water heaters, and hooking up swimming pools and spas--not to mention the basic and industrial plumbing fixures and techniques. This book is extremely interesting.

This book has been more frequently used than any other as a textbook for courses in pastoral counseling in graduate theological schools. It is comprehensive and has stood the test of time.
Richard Dayringer, ThD, author of THE HEART OF PASTORAL COUNSELING

A great text for students, pastors and other practising counselors. It contains goals every counselor should strive to achieve. Clinebell also describes the positive characteristics a counselor should portray . The methods and types of counseling are also spelt out in this book. This book is an invaluable guide for me, one which can be adapted to some of the situations in my country.

This book is a must have if you are considering going into, or practicing, pastoral care.

The Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders Series appears to be underappreciated. The series is excellent and all of the books I have seen from it are first-rate; I currently own 4 books and have leafed through many others. They also represent the only book-length accounts of some battles.

The Battle of Cloyds Mountain is a great example of the quality of the series. It details the events of a relatively small campaign that occurred in the western portion of Virginia during the spring of 1864. The campaign was launched by the Union with the goals of destroying part of the Virginia and Tennessee railroad and the Confederate saltworks at Saltville. The main battle of the campaign took place near Cloyds Mountain. The result was a Union victory with 688 Federal casualties and 538 Confederate casualties.

The book is very well written and easy to follow. McManus provides a balanced treatment to both sides and clearly presents the events seemingly without bias. 7 maps are provided which are of very high quality. I strongly recommend this book to Civil War buffs. This is likely to be the only account of this campaign to be written for the foreseeable future.

Howard McManus discovered and researched this forgotten Southwest Virginia battlefield. Before his research, even the location of the battlefield was unknown. This interesting battle deserves more attention than it has gotten. Not only is McManus a thorough researcher, he can write also.

A terrific account of a very often overlooked Civil War battle. Quite detailed but still manages to be a good read.

A stranger appears in your life. He's attractive, but even more, he's charismatic, sexually alluring, but aloof. Everybody who meets him falls in love with him. And he's mysterious, suddenly disappearing and then popping back up again in the most unexpected places and times, but always with coincidental (almost magical) significance. And he's got a message for you--and for the world. And he wants you to spread it. He gives you a manuscript, and then he disappears again, leaving you with a mission.

This is certainly a familiar theme in mythological writing. From Richard Bach's Messiah or Myles Connolly's very Catholic Mr. Blue to the gospel stories themselves about Jesus, one of the ways "revealed" or spiritual insight is traditionally presented is as "the book within the book." There's a story about meeting the charismatic message giver, and within that story is the story or teaching he gives.

This happens in real life. It's not just a theme in literature or mythology. It's an actual experience people have. In my own life, my nicknamesake and first collaborator Toby Marotta entered my life in an almost magical way, invited me to help him edit his masterpiece Harvard doctoral dissertation into a publishable book, and then, leaving me with a copy to rewrite (and a message about the meaning of the gay rights movement), he disappeared with his exotic Parsi lover to search for crystals in India.

I just made it sound more magical and mysterious than it really was: Marotta's partner was a geology professor from India who imported minerals as a sideline business to teaching. This was just a business trip and I was left with just a copyediting job. But it was the start of my own writing career--and of my own understanding of gay consciousness.

So when Howard Cook relates the tale of his meeting the elusive, charismatic Bradford Lightfoot Dare in the strangest of places over a period of many years, I was ready to believe the story on several levels from the mythic to the mundane. Cook's story of Brad Dare is quite intriguing. He first shows up in a Trappist monastery, then as a nude model for life-drawing classes in Washington, DC. He's a dance partner to debutantes and a most eligible bachelor in the nation's capital. Next he's a Jesuit seminarian studying Teilhard de Chardin, and a little later, he appears unexpectedly as a housemate in a hippie household in Greenwich Village in the apartment previously occupied by the New York Queen of the Gypies--with writer Norman Mailer indirectly making the reintroduction. Then he becomes a gay porn star in San Francisco and a character in the development of West Coast New Age thought along with Ken Kesey and Alan Watts.

Especially because the tale begins in the 1950s, I couldn't help being reminded of Fred Demara, "The Great Imposter," (played by Tony Curtis in the movie) who beguiled the American public in those days with his story of living many identities, including Trappist monk. But Bradford Dare comes across in Cook's telling not as a daring adventurer (though look at his name!) thumbing his nose at convention and legalities, but as a dedicated and driven seeker of transcendent truths, though no less rebel.

Dare shows up again in Cook's life many years later, after Cook has successfully marketed a couple of books. He's been studying and thinking and making notes all these years, and now asks Howard Cook's assistance in articulating and promulgating the wisdom and enlightened insight he's gained.

And that's the book within the book: Bradford Lightfoot Dare's proposal for how to modernize Christianity and recreate the Church. Partly tongue-in-cheek and partly with multi-layered symbolism, Dare calls his message the first encyclical of Pope John the Beloved.

Blending modern-day physics and cosmology, a little Teilhard and a little Matthew Fox, comparative religion, some Joseph Campbell, intelligent New Age thought, progressed Christianity, American political idealism, evolutionary theory, postmodernism, (and here and there what seem like loose associations), Pope John the Beloved calls for a new Church of the Second Coming--also referred to (iconoclastically) as the Church of Kingdom Come - COKC (try pronouncing the acronym).

It's a sex-positive religion based in an evolutionary model of human nature with an openly gay priesthood (with a somewhat progressed understanding of the role of homosexual consciousness in evolution). Some of the tenets of COKC are intentionally controversial (like the proposal that genetic science will soon allow humans to reproduce in the lab, avoiding all the dangers of unregulated breeding, and taking advantage of the opportunity to improve human nature at the molecular level). But the suggestions for an updated religious model come across as heartfelt and genuine.

I've tended to focus on the frame of the story rather than the content. Brad Dare would probably prefer I was writing about his ideas rather than Cook's presentation. But I will leave readers to study Dare's "encyclical" on their own: it's a little overwhelming to summarize in a few paragraphs in a book review. I think men in the gay spirituality movement will recognize many of the themes (like the question "Was Jesus gay?"). But some of the ideas are fresh and come from unexpected directions (like the "final anthropic principle" in quantum cosmology). And, at any rate, it's not so much the conclusions that will draw readers into the book as the process. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, the debate is interesting and the argumentation thought-provoking.

For me, as reviewer, the most thought-provoking was the question whether Brad Dare is an alter-ego and literary device of Howard Cook's multi-faceted mind or a "real" person. In a way, it doesn't make any difference.

I must say I was disappointed at the end of the book that the framing story is not recapitulated. I wanted to know what happened to Brad Dare. All we get at the end is that he is working on a follow-up about the Church of the Gay Salvation.

Be Done on Earth is a neat example of an ancient literary and mythical dynamic by which wisdom is personified in a charismatic person who inspires those caught in his magic spell to discover their own insights and to surpass him. I was pleased to suspend disbelief and enjoyed the book--just as 30 years ago at the start of my writing career I was willing to suspend disbelief and let my friend and fellow Toby be an inspiration and watershed in my own life.

I wonder if there's something "inherently gay" in finding inspiration in a charismatic person instead of an authoritarian institution or revealed text. I think that might be one of the subjects in Pope John the Beloved's second encyclical...

This review appears in White Crane Journal #71

Be Done on Earth is a subtle and complicated book. Like Arnold Toynbee
it sees Western civilization as the product of "Christendom" and raises
this question: Can Western civilization survive the challenge of Islam?
That the current geo-political conflicts are nothing less than a clash
of civilizations, and traditional terms like Armageddon are evoked in
describing current global conflicts. We are reminded that 21
civilizations have evolved on earth so far, and all are either dead or dying.
That Muhammad is the anti-Christ is taken for granted. Like Matthew Fox,
Hans Kung, John Shelby Spong, the author stresses the fact that
Christianity as an organized religion is rapidly being replaced by secularism.
Can can Western civilization survive? The answer is yes, but only if
it can "set its religous house in order." Be Done on Earth quotes
extensively from Alvin Boyd Kuhn's book, A Rebirth for Christianity, and
argues that for Christianity and therefore Western civilization to
survive Jews and Christians must rediscover their common origins in a
primitive religion that may even pre-date the pyramids. To become truly
catholic Christianity must become cosmic, discard its outmoded literalisms
and re-read its scriptures in the light of current sholarship. The
book's thesis that human evolution is now in an evolutionary phase
transition is presented in a cosmological and millenniel frame of reference.
The Gospel according to Luke, says the author, is a literary hybrid, a
cross between the gospel genre and a pre-meditated literary myth in the
Platonic vein. That interpretation puts Christianity squarly in the
camp of genetic engineering, the new eugenics, and transhumanism. Only
a "postmodern" reformulation of dogma can bring about a true
reformation. Which means that myth, metaphor, and cultural bias are necessary
parts of any religio-political ideology. Religious experience is deeply
and ineluctably subjective, or transcendental. Chapter 8 describes
the transcendental as a "fifth dimension." The title of chapter 11 is
"Notes toward a Postmodern Metaphysics" and lists a number of dogmas
for reformulation in the light of contemporary knowledge, or items for an
updated Christian metaphysics. Be Done on Earth is the kind of book
that has to be read more than once. The bibliography contains more than
100 items. All this may sound like heavy reading, but this book
actually reads like a novel. Don't miss it. It's a kind of book you can read
again and again and find new things to think about. The conversation in
chapter III, for example, "Expostulation and Reply" takes on a deeper
meaning when read a second time. I would give Be Done on Earth more
than 5 stars if I had more..

This book is astonishing! What's behind these global conflicts, these endless wars and pyrrhic victories? Answer: mankind is in a phase transition; Homo sapiens, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, is metamorphosing into Homo nobilis stellaris. And that evolutionary process can be described by the terms Resurrection, Transfiguration and Ascension. In short, the Second Coming, as Carlo Suar?s has insisted, is a hand. The Jesus dogma that the kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth, that the kingdom of heaven is within you, that in the kingdom of heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, is becoming a reality. Eroticism and procreation are separating. The Gospel According to Luke is a literary hybrid, a cross between the gospel genre and the premeditated literary myth in the Platonic vein. Rightly read Luke's gospel establishes scriptural precedence for genetic selection and artificial insemination.
BE DONE ON EARTH is divided into 17 chapters. The first 4 chapters take the reader through a bird's-eye review of the American pop culture scene of the past half century: the McCarthy era, the counterculture movement, the sex revolution, the New Age. Two statements in these introductory chapters are highly significant: 1) This book is the work of Pope John the Beloved, who calls this book his "first encyclical," 2) Procreation and Eroticism are becoming disjoint.
Chapter V is a manifesto: "Physics and Christian metaphysics are in fundamental agreement regarding the relation of intelligent life to the cosmos. Misreading the Jesus narrative as literal history has led to Christianity's present decadence. By recognizing that physics and Christian metaphysics are consonant Western civilization, sorely challenged by militant Islam, can set its religious house in order and recover its messianic elan."
Chapter V also gives the reader a list of definitions of the terms used, and states the book's thesis in an abstract : "Recently - in less than one circuit of the solar system around the galaxy - a new species, Homo sapiens, has appeared on Earth. Within the past 60,000 years two genes involved in determining the size of the Homo sapiens brain have changed significantly. That factor plus the present burgeoning of technology and the empirical sciences indicate that the species is evolving at an accelerating rate. In the third millennium CE the pace of Homo sapiens evolution may reasonably be expected - in a socially stable global environment -- to become asymptotic."
Homo sapiens are now polarizing around two tribal centers, militant Island and decadent Christendom (a term used interchangeably with Western Civilization) competing for territorial dominion on a global scale. Mohammad, in Christian eyes, is anti-Christ, while the West in Muslim eyes, is a crusading empire of infidels.
Insistently set in a cosmic and millennial frame of reference, BE DONE ON EARTH constitutes a remarkable discourse, the political upshot of which is that the church cannot belong to the state, and in the present millennium the state, by reason of the messianic He-shall-reign-forever-and-ever principle, will, can and must belong to the church.
Challenging, thought-provoking, this books will shock and outrage all those who are at ease in Zion. For BE DONE ON EARTH throws fuel on the flames of our current culture wars, and is bound for that reason alone to be highly controversial. We look to see it topping the best-seller list in non-fiction before the 4th of July. Highly, highly recommended.

one "of the most important" haggadot.... teaching that the traditional "celebration of Passover has led to complacency in dangerous times, like the Holocaust, that lulled us into a sense of freedom we did not have" (Mr. Steingroot's review comes from his book KEEPING PASSOVER.)

"a wonderfully innovative haggadah"

"Children friendly.... [and yet] the Preface is an education in itself.... It can be studied at any time of the year, and it will provide a number of concepts of how the entire body of knowledge of Judaism should or could be studied". [Mr. Marshall's review belongs to the public domain.]

From Foreword:

"The time has come for the over-the-road bus driver of America to have a few moments in the sun. Howard Suttle has lived the life, written the words and drawn the pictures that will do just that. Howard did it all for Greyhound, our most famous bus company, on U.S. Highway 66, our most famous highway. His stories range from small laughs to huge tragedies. They all say much about buses and the people who drive and ride them, but also much about the human condition and spirit.
- Jim Lehrer, Host of 'The News Hour' on PBS"

Sample stories:

Meeting My Future Wife, The Application, Now We Start Driving, The Christmas Tree, Gunnin' for Romeo, One Thousand Cows, The Vanishing Vodka, & The Cricket Invasion.

From Preface:

"It was 1951, only a few months after starting my driving career of 28 years with Greyhound. As I sat at road-side rest stop, having coffee and telling a fellow driver about some incident that happened on old Route 66, he told me that I should keep notes and someday, I might want to write a book. ...

Well, it seems to me now that this little conversation took place only a short time ago; but, as I write this, it seems kind of odd that I am now, indeed, 66 years of age. Up until this time, I have been very uninterested in attempting such a thing. But, after looking back down the road two and a half million miles, I have decided to share some of these true stories. .....

I've seen every emotion displayed that's humanly possible: temper, rage, jealousy, selfishness, greed. Some were brought on by drunkeness, drugs, and other misfortunes of the human spirit. The one emotion I would like to acknowledge far above all the rest is a four-letter word called 'love.' It is so mysterious that it simply cannot be explained by an old ex-bus driver. Still, I would like to thank all of the people whom I have seen display it so freely back over the years." - Howard Suttle

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Howard Suttle's book and I can relate to all the things that happened to him during his driving career. If you like buses, then this book is a must read.
A retired Greyhound driver.

True stories of driving for the Big Dog along Route 66. Written in a freindly, come-on-along style that makes it a pleasure to travel the road with Howard Suttle. Humor, tragedy and a love of the road are reflected in each of the stories. For anyone who ever wanted to drive a bus, or take a cross-country trip while allowing someone else to do the driving this is a must read.

I love this book! I've never explored any art history books before, but this was a great first experience. Hibbard has a gift for explaining all of the details of Bernini's works, without bombarding you with unknown lingo or being long-winded. I would highly recommend this book, especially if you plan on going to Italy someday.

The content i.e details of Bernini's sculpture is very interesting to know.
The author makes us look at the sculptures in an expert way by mentioning things like - one sculpture having an inaccurate centre of gravity. The concept of one medium used to look like the other being immoral was new to me.
And just one sentence that I needed to know, about how Bernini viewed his work -' he considered most of his works far inferior to the Beauty that he knew and conceived in his mind'. Bernini's work and his interest in it seems like 'progressive improvement'. So It was interesting to know that he was inspired in a way that didnt stop at one work or with the greater beauty that he saw, he never seems to have been at loss for inspiration.
My favourite is Cornaro Chapel.

Hibbard is one of the world's most respected and informed historians of sculpture. And he's a good writer too. That sums up my review. Enjoy the reading and the wonderful photographs!!!

The author opens and sifts the hearts of her characters, gripped by compromise and access to sensitive top secrets, through choices, motivations, and stubborn wills. Straight out of today's news of deadly intrigue games, the phantom tentacles of betrayal, and redemption. Competent, smooth storytelling.

In Betrayal in Paris, Adrienne Winters returns to Paris to find the truth behind her tainted family name. She finds not only the truth, but also herself. I highly recommend this story of deception and lies with an underlying message of the Christian faith and it's importance for ones life here on earth.

In Betrayal in Paris, Adrienne Winters returns to the place of her childhood, Paris, to find the truth behind her tainted family name. In her quest for answers to the CIA's betrayal of both her father and beloved brother, she finds not only the truth, but also herself. Betrayal links real events of today's headlines with a fictional story of the Winters family to draw readers into a suspense filled novel that is impossible to put down. I highly recommend this tale of deception, lies, and the need for truth with an underlying message of the Christian faith and it's importance for ones' life here on earth

Dear AMAZON,
Thank you very much for this book.
Excellent, very good printed and beautiful book.
Very usefull for musicians and other intellectual people.
Vakhtang,
Georgia

This well-illustrated book makes for an intriguing reference on some of the greatest American artists of the 20th century. Lots and lots of books and studies fail to join jazz and blues at all, and none do as clearly or as effortlessly as this much-needed and very worthwhile volume. It is both comprehensive and sensible.It covers a lot of ground. Though I wish it had more information on specific solos, which is where we really get a grasp of the depth of artistry here, this is the best book of its kind I have seen and I am grateful for it.

The innovative user-friendly touch of the Internet links is integrated into the sections of many of the artists (i. e., not put in an appendix or resources section at the back of the main text) by graphics with a web address. Another reader-friendly touch is a graphic noting the most representative recording by a particular musician. This is especially helpful considering the long careers, many recordings, and evolving styles of many of them. Most of the photographs show the artists in performance. Blues and Jazz are taken decade by decade from the early years through the nineteen twenties down to the eighties and the contemporary era, with a closing section on the instruments and equipment going with the two long-lasting and changeable types of music. Profiles of each artist cover biographical background, music career, and the artist's influences on or contributions to the field. For historical overview, comprehensive treatment of all the leading jazz and blues performers, and primary references cited, the "Illustrated Encyclopedia..." is an ideal introduction to these interrelated fields of music.

I was extremely interested in this collection since it was written by a fellow Polish man and I truly enjoyed the hybrid of sci-fi, religion, time travel, politics and quiet horrors that they author so eloquently has put together. My interest in his style has paid off as the tales were not mere horror stories but stories that stuck a fork in my brain and stirred it like noodles as I enjoyed them and read them with high intensity.

"Black Pockets" is a very unusual collection of shorts, delivering a knock out punch while each tale as brief as it might be is potent with anticipation of what the few shorts pages pack. It's a wonderful trip for those who are pressed on time and who still want to read an excellent piece of writing with almost instant satisfaction while they get the chilly answer in a few pages.

For lovers of short stories "Black Pockets" is a tantalizing myriad of different types of horror as it trespasses on chapters about Personal Terrors, Political Horrors and Metaphysical Fears. Zebrowski is a fine craftsman when it comes to words as he shapes and molds them into hair- rising good tales that make the reader wonder in awe how he could have possibly thought all of these up. He proves that no matter how crazy the killer or the protagonist is in each of his tales, people are more similar than different and in those dark corners of their subconscious is where the real monster hides. The subtle yet tantalizing touches of macabre intermixed with time travel, amnesias, international politics, people who leave their houses and find themselves transported to the past, goblins in a medieval castle and mermaids on the shore at midnight safeguarding a sacrificial secret are just a few of the rays his imagination sends out into the reader's universe.

George Zebrowski reaches out beyond the known zones of imagination and delivers tales about murderous spouses in denial, Jesus going through a time machine form being stabbed on the cross to being robbed in an alley two thousand years later, haunted spiders in a piano, a Fidel Castro zombie who would never die just like the dictator who keeps surpassing everyone, fears of broken teeth, adultery, battles in outer space and medieval castles and every day terrors that haunt each and every one as he dares them to read his tales and sleep with the lights on. It takes a master to turn the ordinary into extraordinary and that's the quality of story telling and fine craftsmanship that Zebrowski proudly presents in this intimate and profound collection of very strong short stories. For those tired of the usual banal horror shorts this is a luxe collection that will keep them up at night and keep the tales circulating in the memory long after they are digested.

- Kasia S.

Black Pockets, $24.95 US, is an unusual anthology of horror stories -- penned by science fiction author George Zebrowski -- that will linger in your mind, long after you've read them. Although the book collects stories from throughout his career, almost half of these nineteen stories have been published online or in magazines since 2003.

Let me reveal where some of these stories were previously published: Amazing Stories, Castle Fantastic, Chillers, Conqueror Fantastic, Envisioning the Future, Infinity Five, Microcosms, More Phobias, Phantoms of the Night, Science Fiction Review, Strange Bedfellows, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Silver Gryphon, The Twilight Zone Magazine. Those that are magazines are mostly still in publication.

A novella -- Black Pockets -- written just for inclusion here fills one fifth of the anthology. Bruno is our protagonist in this weird revenge yarn. This fellow hates a guy called Felix Lytton. On his deathbed, Felix unexpectedly grants Bruno a strange power he's acquired, but with conditions. Bruno must eradicate Felix's remaining enemies.

Concept not withstanding, the stories in Black Pockets shiver together under three umbrellas: personal, political, and metaphysical. The gems of the anthology are generally personal, according to Zebrowski. Jumper, Hell Just Over the Hill, and the jaw dropping Takes You Back are a few of the sensations that occupy the first eighty two pages with aplomb.

Kill your fears by confronting them? That's what Dr. Cheney wants his patient Ms. Melita to do in Jumper, a psychological thriller about a telecommunications executive that has a cruel and vindictive father. The good doctor unwittingly begins to fall in love with her over five sessions. In their final meeting, something truly awful occurs.

Perhaps you've taken a strange vacation at some point in your life? None stranger than the one Richard Barrow takes in Hell Just Over the Hill. Following an argument (with his girlfriend Rita) he hops on a bus to Chicago to clear his head, intent on smoothing things out tomorrow, only he never gets that chance.

Of these nineteen stories, my favorite is Takes You Back, a tale about a married man -- Gerard -- that uncovers a loophole in time. If you were sent thirty months back in time, with the prospect of confronting yourself, what would you do? Spencer, a cosmic kitty, figures prominently throughout the pretzel-logic narrative.

Considering the four stories about tyrants, two are superlative. I Walked With Fidel and General Jarulzelski at the Zoo are worthy of perusing. Although one was written in the nineties, and the other in the eighties, both have a timeless quality despite the changes that have occurred since the fall of Russian and Eastern European communism.

Kill Fidel if you were given the opportunity? That's what the erstwhile protagonist in I Walked With Fidel gets to do, although he is squeamish and reluctant to eliminate Castro when given the perfect chance. Fact is, the Guardsman stationed at Guantanamo Bay has become enamored of the zombie dictator, made money off him too.

Even though I'm probably missing some of the political implications buried in the tale General Jarulzelski at the Zoo, that didn't stop me from enjoying it. When you get down to brass tacks, it's mainly about Poland's relationship with Russia. Use of `animals in a zoo' is clear metaphor for those trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

The Alternate, only seven pages long, packs a wallop. Our protagonist here is named Bruno Lumet -- maybe the Bruno appearing in the other stories -- but in this nugget that fronts the anthology, he's unquestionably the victim. His being murdered is not the stunner. Surprise resides in who's killed him.

So to sum up, I'd give George Zebrowski's Black Pockets a hardy recommendation. It's always interesting when an author chooses to write outside the genre that earned him his notoriety, and this anthology of wicked short stories proves no exception to that rule. I look forward to reading more of George's intense tales of personal horror.


The Book:
Black Pockets,
Golden Gryphon Press

ISBN:
1930846401

Pages:
275 Pages

Rating:
5 Stars


Nineteen Stories:

I. Personal Terrors
Jumper
The Wish in the Fear
Hell Just Over the Hill
The Alternate
Earth Around His Bones
Fire of Spring
First Love, First Fear
Passing Nights
Takes You Back

II. Political Horrors
I Walked With Fidel
General Jarulzelski at the Zoo
The Soft Terrible Music
My First World

III. Metaphysical Fears
Interpose
The Coming of Christ the Joker
Nappy
A Piano Full of Dead Spiders
Black Pockets
Lords of Imagination

Black Pockets And Other Dark Thoughts by George Zebrowski is an impressively entertaining collection of this accomplished author's memorable short stories of horror gathered together under one cover, and includes the novella "Black Pockets" which was written especially for this anthology of dark fantasy. Combining metaphorical lore and a born storyteller's skills, Black Pockets contributes works analyzing personal, political, metaphysical, and vividly intimate stories ranging from the dwellings of Gore Vidal in The Coming Of Christ The Joker, to the mind of Tim and the mysterious girl in First Love, First Fear. Black Pockets is very highly recommended reading, particularly for horror fantasy enthusiasts for its deft authorship of original and highly evocative tales that will haunt your dreams long after the volume is finished and set back upon the shelf.