More Guns Less Crime. Second Amendment issues. keywords: gun control, second amendment, guns, crime, violence

Emotionally exhausted from the events surrounding his partner's suicide, "Nameless" welcomes the chance for a quiet vacation that comes when San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Patrick Dixon proposes that the burnt-out detective drive Dixon's wife and son to their summer cottage on a remote High Sierra lake. In exchange, "Nameless" will have a week's free use of a neighboring cabin.The same week, unknown to both the assistant D.A. and "Nameless," also among the vacationers at Deep Mountain Lake is a recently paroled explosives expert, Donald Michael Latimer. The timing is not coincidental, for Latimer has meticulously devised a warped plan for revenge against the men who sent him to prison. His viciously ingenious boobytraps have already claimed the lives of two of his intended victims, and at Deep Mountain Lake he has lined up his next three targets: Pat Dixon, Dixon's twelve-year-old son, and "Nameless" himself.

It's a tough universe out there. A hard-hitting collection of the best fiction of Michael Z. Williamson, creator of the popular Freehold military SF saga, along with a helping of truth-telling nonfiction by a guy who has been there and done that, both at home and abroad.Duty in the face of danger on a planetary scale.  Pride and competence in the face of idiotic clients who hate that that they need your services, and an enemy who wants to make your bad day even worse. These are stories of the warriors and civilians who get things done in extreme situations, whether it's rescue from a ship broken in space and leaking air and radiation, hard choices by a brigade of mercenary swords in a world of blood and magic, or scramble and response by troops in the Sandbox doing what it takes to make it through another scorching, rocket-filled day.

The author of the spine-tingling thrillers Days of Drums and Last Rights has written his most complex tale yet, that of an innocent caught in the vortex of international political intrigue. Powered by characters whose ambition and cunning make them intolerant of any threat to their conspiracies, Gatekeeper also features a labyrinthine stage -- from the chambers of the American embassy in Paris and the North African ghetto of Marseilles to the glittering avenues and back alleys of New York City. Hollis Fremont has recently arrived in Paris to begin her job as a "visa slave" at the American consulate. Her return to the City of Light forces her to revisit tragedy: the mysterious assassination of her parents by a sniper's bullets fifteen years earlier. Hollis, an unprepossessingly beautiful young woman, soon attracts the notice of Paul McGann, deputy chief of mission, whose ardent attention to Hollis is matched by his violent temper and calculating treatment of...

Revenge is Sweet, but Love is Everything. As the Mating Ceremony draws near, the Leader of the Novus Pack, Raider Black, will claim his love, Theodora Morrissey, before all of Novus. As the painstaking preparations are made, Theodora fears herself unable to be the strong Queen that the Novus Pack requires. Adding to her self-doubt, the Lycan who attacked Theo and haunts her thoughts, is turned over to Novus. By Black's decree, Theo will decide for herself if she's ready to confront her rapist. What is meant as a kind gesture, adds fuel to the blaze of Theo's uncertainty. Can a pound of flesh heal a tortured soul? A Lycan would kill without thought. Can she? Will she? No matter her choice, will ghosts of the past forever prevent Theo from being the Queen that Black and Novus deserve?

When two teenagers steal a purse from a stroller, it results in an infant’s death. Unaware of the enormity of their crime, Zipp and Andreas are intent on committing another. They follow an elderly woman home, and Andreas enters her house with his switchblade. In the dark, Zipp waits for his friend to come out.Inspector Konrad Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre see no connection between the infant’s death and the reported disappearance of a local delinquent. And so while the confusion outside mounts, the heart-stopping truth unfolds inside the old woman’s home.Unflappable as ever, Sejer digs below the surface of small- town tranquility in an effort to understand how and why violence destroys everyday lives.From Publishers WeeklySkillful characterization and revealing detail lift Fossum's third mystery to be published in the U.S. featuring thoughtful, intelligent Insp. Konrad Sejer (after 2005's He Who Fears the Wolf). Handsome Andreas Winther, a self-absorbed, dangerously restless 18-year-old, manages to draw both sympathy and disgust from the reader. He roams the streets of an unnamed provincial Norwegian town in the evenings, accompanied by his socially inept friend, Sivert "Zipp" Skorpe, and fueled by the enormity of a secret he keeps. One evening, after mugging a young mother, Andreas decides to break into an old woman's house to rob her. His intended victim, Irma Funder, has a complicated health situation and a more complicated psyche. In defending herself, Irma pushes Andreas down the cellar stairs, where he lands unnaturally twisted, unable to move but alive. What develops between the immobile boy and the reclusive woman is a bizarre, excruciating, curiously tender relationship that serves as a pathetic and poignant balance to the hunt for Andreas conducted by Sejer and his police colleague, Jacob Skarre. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistFossum's Konrad Sejer procedurals, set in Oslo, are among the many Scandinavian mysteries that have followed Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series to the U.S. Her first novel to appear here, Don't Look Back (2004), was very much in the world-weary Wallander mold, with Sejer investigating a 15-year-old girl's murder and finding multiple layers of ambiguity. Although Sejer is present again this time, the story is much less like a contemporary European procedural and more like a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller. As Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre investigate a mugging and the disappearance of a delinquent, the reader sees what the coppers don't, following the tragic events in the life of the delinquent and the very disturbed elderly woman he encounters. At times this story is almost unendurably painful, as our sense of the inevitable clashes with our uncertainty about the outcome. All of the characters are victims of a kind, and all are trapped in one way or another. We feel equally trapped, by our proximity to so many lives gone wrong, and by our inability to close the book. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Amazon.com ReviewHow much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power. Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, shows that technological evolution moves at an exponential pace. Further, he asserts, in a sort of swirling postulate, time speeds up as order increases, and vice versa. He calls this the "Law of Time and Chaos," and it means that although entropy is slowing the stream of time down for the universe overall, and thus vastly increasing the amount of time between major events, in the eddy of technological evolution the exact opposite is happening, and events will soon be coming faster and more furiously. This means that we'd better figure out how to deal with conscious machines as soon as possible--they'll soon not only be able to beat us at chess, but also likely demand civil rights, and might at last realize the very human dream of immortality.The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese LittletonFrom Publishers WeeklyKurzweil's reasoned scenarios of a "post-biological future" are as harrowing as any science fiction. That's the appeal of listening on tape to the inventor and MIT professor's provocative speculations on what could occur once computers reach or surpass human-level intelligenceAthen start to self-replicate. Computers, with their integrated circuit chip complexity, are sneaking up on us on an accelerated curve, he argues, citing the example of chess master Gary Kasparov's shocking loss to IBM's machine Deep Blue in 1997. Do computers represent "the next stage of evolution"? Will technology create its own next generations? Kurzweil suggests a timeline inhabited by "neural-nets," "nanobot" robots and scenarios of virtual reality where sexuality and spirituality become completely simulated. It's bracing and compelling stuff, propelled by the author's own strong egotistical will to prove his version of the future. Reader Sklar is thoughtful, if at times overly heavy on the ironies. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Find yourself in another world in The Transall Saga, the latest adventure from Gary Paulsen:Mark's solo camping trip to the desert begins as any other camping trip, until a mysterious beam of light appears.  The trip turns into a terrifying and thrilling adventure when the light beam transports Mark into another time, and what appears to be another planet!  Although he is searching for his way back to earth, in the meantime he is forced to make a life in this unknown world.  He meets primitive tribes and shares the joy of human bonds, but this end of isolation in the new world also brings war and a struggle for power.From the Hardcover edition.While backpacking in the desert, thirteen-year-old Mark falls into a tube of blue light and is transported into a more primitive world, where he must use his knowledge and skills to survive.

"A fabulous fairy-tale mashup that deserves hordes of avid readers. Absolutely delectable." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review of award-winning series debut Enchanted Readers met the Woodcutter sisters (named after the days of the week) in Enchanted and Hero. In this delightful third book, Alethea Kontis weaves together some fine-feathered fairy tales to focus on Friday Woodcutter, the kind and loving seamstress. When Friday stumbles upon seven sleeping brothers in her sister Sunday's palace, she takes one look at Tristan and knows he's her future. But the brothers are cursed to be swans by day. Can Friday's unique magic somehow break the spell?

I knew from the moment I first saw him he was the one. The only boy I could ever want. The only boy I could ever love. Until the day he breaks my heart. Everything changes in the blink of an eye. When Nicholas Fairfield walks back into my life Im furious. But I love him. Someone will do whatever it takes to tear us apart. All I know is: I wont let them. Because Nick Fairfield? Hes mine.

**PLEASE NOTE: This is the JUST GOOD CLEAN FUN version of INDISCREET by New York Times bestselling romance author Kasey Michaels**Sophie Winstead is utterly perfect, from the top of her tousled honey-brown ringlets to the tips of her dainty pink toes. Indeed, any man in London Society would want her. The problem for Sophie lay in what they wanted her from her. For Sophie is the orphaned daughter of one Constance Winstead, the Widow Winstead, mistress of many men during her abbreviated lifetime. Woo her, win her, yes. Marry her? Don't be ridiculous!When the Duke of Selbourne and his lovely Connie met an extremely public and indiscreet end at a country party, Sophie was crushed by her double loss, for she had grown to love "Uncle Cesse" very much. She cried for days before her only companion (a French courtesan turned lady's maid), slowly and carefully brought her back to her usual sunny, perfect self.The Duke's son took refuge in anger, railed at the mess his father had left...