Bored Bookworm

Note: This book includes a music sampler CD, which is not available with the digital ebook edition.

You know that your dog's hearing is very sensitive, but did you know that you could create an environment of sound to improve the health and well being of your canine companion? Now, psychoacoustic expert Joshua Leeds and veterinary neurologist Susan Wagner show you how with Through a Dog's Ear. Using the latest science on how dogs hear and react to sound, Leeds and Wagner bring you a treasury of practical tools for enhancing the lives of our best friends. Join these two innovators for fresh insights on the inner auditory life of your dog, featuring:

• How to use sound as a tool to help alleviate separation anxiety, excitement with visitors, thunderstorm panic, and other behavior challenges
• For nervous dogs: tips and tricks for making any house or apartment more comfortable for canines
• Keys to understanding how our dogs hear the human world—including orienting responses, sensory confusion, and over- and under-stimulation

Sounds True's new book and music series Through a Dog's Ear was featured in a 4 minute segment on February 22, 2008, on The Early Show on CBS.

To learn about the research behind this music and the author's Shelter Program, visit www.throughadogsear.com

A forceful and accessible discussion of Christian belief that has become one of the most popular introductions to Christianity and one of the most popular of Lewis's books. Uncovers common ground upon which all Christians can stand together.

A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history-the Salem witch trials.

Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.

As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.

Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.

• Greatness May Get You Nowhere
  
• Focus Groups Don'ts
  
• The More You Say, the Less People Hear &
  
• Seeing the Forest Around the Falling Trees.

"A gay, punk-rock Chinese American in the age of AIDS, Chin confronts all manner of hypocrisy."—San Francisco Chronicle

98 Wounds is a series of improbably linked stories that reimagines and reconciles the abject, the outlaw, the ostracized, the misfits, and the cranky contrarians among us.

Gay people have never been as free—or divided—as in today's society. As the gay majority surges into the mainstream, a social construct has emerged depicting "Good Gays" and "Bad Gays." Endless mythmaking goes into dehumanizing the Bad.

Barebackers, poz sexpigs, meth-users, sexual libertines, and fetishists have been blamed, shamed, and disdained. Any vicious untruth or loathsome rumor about them—even those contrary to science or common sense—is accepted without question.

The characters populating 98 Wounds run roughshod in a city spiraling towards collapse. They broker urgent desires in constant pursuit of identity, obsession, rituals of hope, even the simplicity of an ordinary life. They unwaveringly root for their own understanding of belonging, contentment, pleasure, and love.

In 98 Wounds, either we are all damned, or we are all saved: a sentiment that speaks to all cultures in these uncertain times.

Award-winning writer Justin Chin is the author of six books, including Bite Hard (Manic D Press) and Mongrel (St. Martin's Press). His works have been widely anthologized. Born in Malaysia, raised and educated in Singapore, shipped to the United States by way of Hawaii, he currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet—Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, the billy-bumbler—encounter a ferocious storm just after crossing the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two . . . and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.

In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man” preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day’s trials by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother often read to him at bedtime. “A person’s never too old for stories,” Roland says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them.” And indeed, the tale that Roland unfolds, the legend of Tim Stoutheart, is a timeless treasure for all ages, a story that lives for us.

King began the Dark Tower series in 1974; it gained momentum in the 1980s; and he brought it to a thrilling conclusion when the last three novels were published in 2003 and 2004. The Wind Through the Keyhole is sure to fascinate avid fans of the Dark Tower epic. But this novel also stands on its own for all readers, an enchanting and haunting journey to Roland’s world and testimony to the power of Stephen King’s storytelling magic.

• Howard Cushman is just your ordinary family man living the American dream with a wife of 25 years, 2 kids, a dog, a successful business, and want of nothing. That is, until he wakes up in a hospital bed after an accident he remembers little or nothing about, which kills three other people. Problem is, one of the people killed was someone's daughter, and she ended up under Howard's truck. That someone is seeking revenge, and will get it in ways only realized in Howard's dreams. 
• It isn't long after the accident before Howard starts having horrendous nightmares that are so realistic he begins to question his own sanity. Everything he does from that point on will affect his life in ways he couldn't have imagined before the crash. In the page-turning style of a contemporary horror novel, with the edge-of-your-seat suspense of a psychological thriller, and some unbridled wicked terror, Howard tries desperately to solve the mystery and stop the dreams before his family is completely and literally torn apart.
• "Dream Sweet" is a little bit "Crime and Punishment," it's a little bit "Thinner," it's a little bit "Nightmare on Elm Street," and, it's a whole lot Terence Matedero.

It's those damn stockings that get me every time. They have this sexy little line down the back and I can't help but stare at her legs. . .constantly. And you'd think she'd be all over me like every other female in the Seattle area. I'm young, good looking, and one day I'll be Alpha Male of my family's Pack. But Professor Irene Conridge acts like I don't even exist. How is that possible? Now she's got enemies coming out of the woodwork and I have to protect her. Why? Because that's the kind of man I am. Yes, I am that amazing. Of course, it doesn't hurt that while I work to secure her safety, she'll be hanging out at my house. That's hours. . .days even that I've got Irene Conridge right where I want her.

I'm too dangerous for her. I know it, but I can't get my sexy new neighbor out of my head. When I hear her scream one night, the absolute last thing I expect to see is Miranda Shaw--star of my hottest fantasies--being attacked by a vampire. Now the undead jerk is after her, and I'm the only thing standing between the beautiful lady and a killer who just won't stop. Well, too bad for him, because that vamp has just made the worst mistake of his afterlife--he's tangled with a shifter. And Miranda, well, she's so busy watching out for him that she won't see me closing in on her--not until it's too late--and I'm about to show her just how wild I can get. . .

• In the rural town of Brisbane, Idaho, Jim Billingsley thinks his nightmare is finally over when he puts his violent wife, Barbara, behind bars. But are his children, Michael and Sandra, really safe? Can he protect them from the monster that happens to be their mother? A life of drugs, alcohol, and physical and mental abuse say otherwise. Barbara wants her kids back, she wants revenge, and there's little Jim can do about it. 
• Mommy Monster is a definitive page-turning genre bender. Part horror, part psychological thriller, part edge-of-your-seat suspense. It surprises the reader at every turn, and culminates with an ending that gives the reader reason to cheer on Michael as he struggles to save his sister's life. Emotionally draining, this family overcomes struggle after struggle and their lives are changed forever.