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IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

An intimate portrait of two men who cherish the slim bond between them and the dream they share in a world marred by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men," begin to go awry.Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck described his work, "a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands." A rarity in American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films. Steinbeck's tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels.--front flap

“It manages to delight, and frequently to entrance, old and new readers [and] continues to engage our hearts and minds today with an indescribably brand of affectionate sympathy.”—F. Gonzalez-Crussi, from the Introduction An international bestseller, translated into eighteen languages, Paul de Kruif’s classic account of the first scientists to see and learn about the microscopic world continues to fascinate new readers. This is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered the microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them. De Kruif writes about how seemingly simple but really fundamental discovers of science—for instance, how a microbe was first viewed in a clear drop of rain water, and when, for the first time, Louis Pasteur discovered that a simple vaccine could save a man from the ravages of rabies by attacking the microbes that cause it.  

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0307269752 (ISBN13: 9780307269751)

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel.  Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in our nation.

Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer," Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with "intensity." Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit. Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive--until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl...as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.

A Gathering of Old Men: The Way It Used to BeI selected A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines as the Moderator's Choice for September, 2017, for On the Southern Literary Trail. This is the fourth book by Professor Gaines to be read by "The Trail."Come join us.All but one of Ernest J. Gaines' works are set in and around Bayonne, Louisiana. Perhaps a bit strange for a man who has spent more than half his life in California. But it is something that comes as no surprise considering Gaines' childhood. He was born January 15, 1933, on a plantation in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana. He was one of twelve children. They were among the fifth generation of the family to live on that plantation. His Grandparents were slaves. His ancestors lie buried in a cemetery at the rear of that plantation. Many of the graves bear no marker, no names, nothing to identify his ancestors.By the time Gaines was nine he was picking cotton on the plantation. He lived in a small cabin among many others that at one time had been slave quarters. His first education was in the plantation school, held in the plantation church. No black child attended a school where white children were allowed to go. It was the way it used to be. Neither Gaines or any of the other children on the plantation had access to a library. Those were for whites only. It was the way it used to be.Gaines and his siblings were raised by an aunt. She was crippled, unable to walk. She was raising Gaines, his brothers, and sisters, when she could only crawl. Ernest Gaines lived in poverty for the first fifteen years of his life. But his mother and stepfather took Ernest with them when they moved to Vallejo, California. Imagine waking in a new world. Imagine entering a library for the first time at the age of sixteen. The library was two stories tall. Non-fiction was on the first floor. Fiction on the second. Gaines went to the second story. He began to devour novels. He looked for books with people like him in them. He couldn't find them. Even a California library had no books by black authors. That was the way it used to be. He discovered he didn't care for other Southern novelists. He searched for novels set in farm country, the closest he could come to the life of his young years. He read John Steinbeck and Willa Cather. "See, I came from a society -- the South -- in which I wasn't supposed to do things, wasn't supposed to investigate things. I was supposed to stay in my place."Gaines only returned to Louisiana for short visits. However, as he entered college he was well aware of the Civil Rights Movement. It was the admission of James Meredith to Ole Miss that sparked in Gaines the need to return to Louisiana. After the publication of his first novel, Catherine Carmier in 1964, Gaines returned to Louisiana. He split his year six months in California, six months in Louisiana.From 1981 until 2004 when he retired, Ernest J. Gaines became Professor Gaines, the writer in residence at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He and his wife have a home on land once part of the plantation on which he lived as a child. He moved the plantation church on to his property. When he walks through the old cemetery he cannot find the grave of the aunt who raised him.What is it that drives Ernest J. Gaines to continue to set his work in Southwest Louisiana? In This Louisiana Thing That Drives Me: The Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines Gaines wrote:\
  "I wanted to smell that Louisiana earth, feel that Louisiana sun, sit under the shade of one of those Louisiana oaks, search for pecans in that Louisiana grass in one of those Louisiana yards next to one of those Louisiana bayous, not far from a Louisiana river. I wanted to see on paper those Louisiana black children walking to school on cold days while yellow Louisiana busses passed them by. I wanted to see on paper those place parents going to work before the sun came up and coming back home to look after their children after the sun went down. I wanted to see on paper the true reason why those black fathers left home--not because they were trifling or shiftless--but because they were tired of putting up with certain conditions. I wanted to see on paper the small country churches (schools during the week), and I wanted to hear those simple religious songs, those simple prayers--that true devotion....And I wanted to hear that Louisiana Dialect--that combination of English, Creole, Cajun, Black. For me there's no more beautiful sound anywhere--unless, of course, you take exceptional pride in "proper" French or "proper" English. I wanted to read about the true relationship between whites and blacks--about people I had known."\
I love the novels of Ernest J. Gaines. He is among my favorite authors. Being a native born Southerner, growing up in Alabama, and white, Gaines opened a world to me to which I return again and again. I finally met Professor Gaines late in October, 2014. I consider him the most significant writer I have ever met. I also consider him to lack the recognition he deserves as an American writer. I am not alone in my belief.Madison Smart Bell reviewed A Gathering of Old Men upon its publication in 1983. He wrote, "I think he's oddly underrated, because he's one of those black writers who has been on the program for a long time." Bell went further to say this book was "the best-written novel on Southern race relations in over a decade." Returning to the thought that Gaines was underrated, Bell wrote, "At certain times he has been greatly celebrated, and his subsequent work has not gotten the attention it should have. But people like Ernest Gaines are a lot more important than anyone has fully recognized."This is my second reading of A Gathering of Old Men. I've also listened to the wonderful Audible edition of the novel. It fully captures the flavor of Gaines' use of multiple narrators. I have previously said I could not decide whether this novel or The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was my favorite. After multiple reads, this novel takes the lead for me. I do chalk it up to the powerful multiple narratives of those old men who gathered on one day to throw off the oppression which they had endured thirty years or more.Gaines captures the decades of racism endured by the old men who share crop the Marshall plantation. Each tells the story behind the reason they are there this particular day. Listening to each of them is reminiscent of the chorus of a Greek tragedy.What drives each of the old men is a recognition they will no longer bow to the shame they and their ancestors have accepted until the unbelievable has happened. A black man has killed a white man. The dead man is Beau Boutan a Cajun farmer who has leased land worked by them as sharecroppers for generations. The mule and plow has been replaced by the tractor. The Boutans and their Cajun neighbors have inflicted rape, murder, and humiliation on the old men. Once word gets out that Beau is dead, all anticipate that the father, "Fix Boutan" will night ride into their quarters to dispense their own version of justice.All the men who gather are there to claim they each killed Boutan. The suspect in the killing is Matthu, the only black man to ever stand up to Fix Boutan and beat him in a fair fight. Candy Marshall the heiress to the Marshall plantation considers Matthu and all the men who arrive at his house to be "her people." Orphaned when her parents died in an automobile accident, Candy considers Matthu to be her Parrain or Grandfather. She engineers the scheme to gather the old men, all carrying shotguns with the same shot shells as Matthu's gun, to protect the man.What ensues is a taut novel as local Sheriff Mapes attempts to deal with all these old men and Candy Marshall, each who claim to have killed Beau Boutan. Nothing will break their story. As Mapes bullies each of the old men, each reveals the tragedies of their lives they will no longer endure.Gaines draws the story to a conclusion in a surprising denoument. Set in the 1970s, Gaines paints a vivid portrait of a South beginning to change, but not having changed enough. This is a novel of hope, found strength, and courage. Any reader will never forget A Gathering of Old Men.

Cards Against Humanity is an adult party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements, using words or phrases typically deemed offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect, printed on playing cards. It has been compared to the earlier card game Apples to Apples (1999).

In Star Trek Online, the Star Trek universe will appear for the first time on a truly massive scale. In this massively multiplayer online game from Cryptic Stud...

Featuring gameplay that automatically adjusts to the player's skill level and innovative game design that makes reading music visually fun and intuitive, Rocksm...

Call of Duty delivers the gritty realism and cinematic intensity of World War II's epic battlefield moments like never before - through the eyes of citizen sold...

Several video games based on the Magic: The Gathering franchise exist for multiple systems. Some have attempted to translate the card game to electronic play nearly exactly; others have taken more liberties and drawn more from the setting than the actual rules of the card game. Benefits of successful video game versions of the card game include convenience, practice, and challenge. However, artificial intelligence for a game such as Magic is an extremely hard problem, and such software usually must be continuously updated to stay current with recently released card sets. Video game versions often expand on artwork, and may include unique cards that rely on randomness, effects which would be difficult or annoying to duplicate in real life.

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns, and be included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.The name Scrabble is a trademark of Mattel in most of the world, except in the United States and Canada, where it is a trademark of Hasbro. The game is sold in 121 countries and is available in more than 30 languages; approximately 150 million sets have been sold worldwide, and roughly one-third of American and half of British homes have a Scrabble set. There are approximately 4,000 Scrabble clubs around the world.

[Xbox Live Arcade] Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO....

Reload, rev up and ride out. The new Tournament is faster, higher and meaner. Land and air based vehicles take combat to a new level; while an arsenal of new we...

Chess is a board game between two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The current form of the game emerged in Spain and the rest of Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from chaturanga, a similar but much older game of Indian origin. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide.Chess is an abstract strategy game and involves no hidden information. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The player controlling the white pieces moves first, followed by the player controlling the black pieces. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in "check") and there is no way for it to escape. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.

A criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients.

1975 drama film based on the novel by Ken Kesey

Mourning his dead child, a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of de

A punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar.

A family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic, and possession.

2015 American supernatural horror film by Robert Eggers

A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. Only one food platform and two minutes per day to feed. An endless nightmare trapped in The Hole.

2019 film directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities. They must try to escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.

1995 neo-noir crime thriller film by David Fincher

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

Steven, a charismatic surgeon, is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behavior of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister.

A young woman is followed by an unknown supernatural force after a sexual encounter.

2014 horror film by David Robert Mitchell

A wealthy art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband's novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a symbolic revenge tale.

2016 American drama film directed by Tom Ford

A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station discover a rapidly evolving life form that caused extinction on Mars and now threatens all life on Earth.

Hoping to walk away with a massive fortune, a trio of thieves break into the house of a blind man who isn't as helpless as he seems.

2016 American horror film directed by Fede Álvarez

A deaf and mute writer who retreated into the woods to live a solitary life must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.

A father and son, both coroners, are pulled into a complex mystery while attempting to identify the body of a young woman, who was apparently harboring dark secrets.

A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.

A struggling mother of three forms an unexpected bond with the night nanny hired to help with her newborn baby.

A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.

2018 science fiction psychological horror film

Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a mother and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.

A simple yet proud farmer in the year 1922 conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to assist. But their actions have unintended consequences.

Charles Roger Pomfret Hodgson (born 21 March 1950) is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the former co-frontman and founding member of progressive rock band Supertramp. Hodgson composed and sang the majority of the band’s hits such as "Dreamer", "Give a Little Bit", "Take the Long Way Home", "The Logical Song", "It's Raining Again", and "Breakfast in America".Hodgson left Supertramp in 1983 and moved his family away from the Los Angeles music scene to live a simpler lifestyle close to nature and be home with his children as they were growing up. Hodgson returned to touring in 2001. He often writes about spiritual and philosophical topics, and his lyrics have been described as personal and meaningful.

A modern take on the cases of Sherlock Holmes, with the detective now living in New York City.

Project sees Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele in front of a live studio audience bantering about a topic weaved between filmed shorts and sketches.

An exploratory ship from Earth faces intergalactic challenges 400 years in the future.

No-holds-barred Aussie comedian Jim Jefferies hosts his satirical weekly U.S. talk show, covering the news, U.S. politics, pop culture, global issues and whatever else happens to be bothering him at the moment.

Holistic detective Gently relies on the universe to unravel mysteries based on the 'interconnectedness of all things'.

An actress raises her three daughters while juggling the pressures of working in Hollywood and being a single parent.

Stephen Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of THE LATE SHOW on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015. The comedy-variety-talk show is broadcast five nights a week from the Ed Sullivan theater in New York.

The personal and professional life of Dev, a 30-year-old actor in New York.

Convicted of a decade old crime of transporting drug money to an ex-girlfriend, normally law-abiding Piper Chapman is sentenced to a year and a half behind bars to face the reality of how life-changing prison can really be.

Amy Schumer switches from sketches, doing stand up, to interviewing people on the street and people of interest usually following a certain theme.

A woman is rescued from a doomsday cult and starts life over again in New York City.

A Craftsman's Legacy is a PBS series that follows host Eric Gorges, a renowned metal shaper and motorcycle builder, on his quest to work with America's finest craftsmen and document what it means to be a modern day maker.

Follows two couples living under the same roof who struggle to keep their relationships alive while pursuing their individual dreams.

Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmannis an American TV talk/news show owned, hosted and produced by political commentator and radio host Thom Hartmann, and Hartmann's production company (which also produces his radio show), Mythical Research, Inc., and is represented by WYD Media, Inc. The Big Picture started in 2008 in Portland, Oregon, as a half-hour TV show and was originally syndicated exclusively on Free Speech TV.Over the next few years, more community TV stations and cable systems picked it up, and Hartmann moved to Washington, DC, taking both his radio show andThe Big Picturewith him. With that move, he expanded the show to an hour, and also licensed the show to RT, partially in exchange for use of their television studios and facilities. While the show is licensed to RT, it is entirely owned by Hartmann's company, which has contractual editorial control over the program. The editorial staff of the show are employees of Hartmann's company, while the TV production staff work for RT.

A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.

British crime drama television series, first broadcast in 2010

A famous guest host stars in parodies and sketches created by the cast of this witty show.

A sketch-comedy series that parodies life in Portland, Oregon.

Nine noble families fight for control over the lands of Westeros, while an ancient enemy returns after being dormant for millennia.

Former Daily Show host and correspondent John Oliver brings his persona to this weekly news satire program.

American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver

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