Don’t tell me it’s terrifying. Terrify me. Filled with grief, Jules Belleno rarely leaves the house since her husband’s death while on duty as a police officer. Other than the reviews Jules writes on her blog, she has little contact with the outside world. But one day when she ventures out to the local grocery store, Jules bumps into a fellow customer . . . and recognizes him as her favorite author, Patrick Reagan. Jules gushes and thoroughly embarrasses herself before Regan graciously talks with her. And that’s the last thing she remembers—until she wakes up in a strange room with a splitting headache. She’s been kidnapped. And what she discovers will change everything she believed about her husband’s death . . . her career . . . and her faith.

This book takes a fun-filled look at the foibles, follies, pratfalls, and unpredictable world of the duck hunter, from the time his alarm rings at 3:00 a.m. until he stumbles into freezing marsh water two hours later, swamping his waders but not dampening his enthusiasm for the sport. Why do duck hunters do it? Sit in driving rain for hours awaiting ducks that may never come? Shiver in freezing boats and blinds in the most inaccessible, not to mention inhospitable, environs imaginable? Author-photographer Bill Buckley writes about these magic moments with humor and verve, but it is his brilliant color photographs that steal the show. The hapless hunter who watches helplessly as his partner's Suburban backs out of the driveway-and over the gun case that holds his favorite shotgun. Click! The faithful retriever that elegantly lifts its leg and makes a sop of the hunter's blind bag. Click! And the pained expressions on the faces of duck hunters caught in the act of enjoying their favorite sport. Click. Waterfowlers who sometimes question their own sanity can now take heart. It's all right, Buckley writes, if you like standing in swamp muck for hours on end. It's okay if your family thinks you're weird. Who cares if your girlfriend diagnoses you as obsessive-compulsive or sadomasochistic? The important thing is, you're not alone.

A sexy, sassy novel about three friends who've had their ups and downs - and the rollercoaster shows no sign of stopping any time soon! For romance author Renee, true love only exists in books - but her husband will do anything to keep her. Nurse Danielle has always had a thing for young thugs, until her latest squeeze, Ron, goes too far - and then her teen daughter announces she's pregnant. Admin assistant Kayla is waiting for married Reverend Leroy to leave his wife for her - until she catches him in bed with another woman.

A psychiatric case study masquerading a fancy-pants graphic novel, Misery Loves Comedy collects Ivan Brunetti's early issues (no pun intended) wait, let's rephrase that. Misery Loves Comedy collects the first three issues of the legendary comic book series Schizo in their entirety, as well as a host of miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam from various anthologies, c. 1992-2005. Readers will find the author's unwitting self-caricature as a paranoid, deluded young man intriguingly repugnant and often chuckle-inducing. Besides Brunetti's trademark nihilism, self-loathing, relentless depression, and inchoate, spittle-soaked misanthropy, these earlier comics offer a dollop of scatology and blasphemy for that extra puerile, lowbrow tang. These are comics for those who enjoy witnessing one man's sanity in its final death rattle, swinging its tail from anhedonia to schadenfreude and back again. Also: lots and lots of filthy jokes. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.9px Arial; color: #424242}

Charlize "Charlie" Edwards finally has it all: a house in Silverlake, L.A.'s hippest neighborhood, two fabulous best friends who always have her back, and a great (though hectic) job as the personal assistant to Hollywood's hottest movie star, Drew Stanton. But best of all, Charlie has a newly feathered love nest with Jordan, the sexy photographer she recently started dating. Maybe Charlie's journal of smart-alecky life advice—which she's always been better at writing than following—has finally helped put her on the right track. Unfortunately for Charlie, Drew is causing complete havoc on his new movie set, her eccentric family is descending upon L.A. for the upcoming holiday season, and her love life may be back to square one. Jordan has left L.A. to work on a film shooting in Paris, where the women are gorgeous, sophisticated, and possibly after her man. And Drew's handsome new producer, Liam, is an old crush who has reappeared to tug at Charlie's heartstrings. Charlie's torn between the misery of waiting for Jordan and the tingly feelings she has for Liam. But there's nothing misery—or seduction—loves better than a great glass of cabernet.

In a kind of social tour of sympathy, Candace Clark reveals that the emotional experience we call sympathy has a history, logic, and life of its own. Although sympathy may seem to be a natural, reflexive reaction, people are not born knowing when, for whom, and in what circumstances sympathy is appropriate. Rather, they learn elaborate, highly specific rules—different rules for men than for women—that guide when to feel or display sympathy, when to claim it, and how to accept it. Using extensive interviews, cultural artifacts, and "intensive eavesdropping" in public places, such as hospitals and funeral parlors, as well as analyzing charity appeals, blues lyrics, greeting cards, novels, and media reports, Clark shows that we learn culturally prescribed rules that govern our expression of sympathy. "Clark's . . . research methods [are] inventive and her glimpses of U.S. life revealing. . . . And you have to love a social scientist so respectful of Miss Manners."—Clifford Orwin, Toronto Globe and Mail "Clark offers a thought-provoking and quite interesting etiquette of sympathy according to which we ought to act in order to preserve the sympathy credits we can call on in time of need."—Virginia Quarterly Review