A fantasy about the hunt for a serial killer in a place called Mong where the dream world intersects the real world.

The question of an erotic readership has always vexed scholars. With little evidence of anyone's actually reading erotic material, scholars have made due with variations of an "ideal reader" approach. Insofar as it presupposes authorial intention and a stable meaning this theoretical model proves unsatisfactory. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carnal Reading proposes a new theory of erotic reading that refigures bodily responses as constitutive of cognitive understanding. Chapters explore the enthusiasm inspired by religious reading, the impressionable and "permeable" nature of the early modern body, contemporary literary critiques and the potential eroticism immanent in language.

Caught up in the politics of the vampire world, psychic Sookie Stackhouse learns that she is as much of a pawn as any ordinary human in this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series—the inspiration for the HBO® original series True Blood. With her knack for being in trouble’s way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte’s, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but her attention is divided when she realizes that her lover, Eric Northman, and his “child” Pam are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot—which is much more complicated than she knows...

At the close of the 24th Century, a series of revolutions has caused the galaxy to descend into chaos. With the Galactic Union’s Army stretched thin, mercenary units have arisen for those who have the need—and the means—to hire them… Captained by former Detached Guerrilla Forces Colonel R.A. “Rags” Cutter, the Cutter Force Initiative is one of the best. A specialized team consisting of both aliens and humans, the Cutters offer services ranging from fight training and protection to extraction and assassination—as long as the target deserves it and their employer makes good on payday. When they’re hired to find and rescue Indira, the soon-to-be-married daughter of the Rajah Ramal of New Mumbai, the teams’ first task is to identify the kidnapper. The obvious suspects are insurgents who want to overthrow the rajanate, but as other forces enter the game and an assassination attempt is made on Ramal, the Cutters realize that their in-and-out extraction job is about to get a lot more interesting—and a lot more lethal…

In these innovative essays, Vivian Sobchack considers the key role our bodies play in making sense of today's image-saturated culture. Emphasizing our corporeal rather than our intellectual engagements with film and other media, Carnal Thoughts shows how our experience always emerges through our senses and how our bodies are not just visible objects but also sense-making, visual subjects. Sobchack draws on both phenomenological philosophy and a broad range of popular sources to explore bodily experience in contemporary, moving-image culture. She examines how, through the conflation of cinema and surgery, we've all "had our eyes done"; why we are "moved" by the movies; and the different ways in which we inhabit photographic, cinematic, and electronic space. Carnal Thoughts provides a lively and engaging challenge to the mind/body split by demonstrating that the process of "making sense" requires an irreducible collaboration between our thoughts and our senses.