Showing results by author "J.J. Smith" in All Categories

Mucker, Boogster, Cheesy, and Bob, also known as The Abominators, are the most mischievous characters you will ever have come across. Their interests include: chaos, mayhem, and filling the school toilets with strawberry jelly. Their interests definitely do not include: making friends with panty-wanty-woowearing new boy, Cecil Trumpington-Potts. Cecil, however, is certain he can change their minds.... Will an adventure involving baked beans, a midnight quest, and an escaped bear help to change their minds? There’s only one way to find out....

Looking ahead to future airpower requirements, this engaging and ground-breaking book on the history and future of American combat airpower argues that the USAF must adapt to the changes that confront it or risk decline into irrelevance. To provide decision makers with the necessary analytical tools, Jeffrey J. Smith uses organizational modeling to help explain historical change in the USAF and to anticipate change in the future.

Max Stark is a trained circus clown whose tricks can be downright terrifying - especially for his ex-wife. News anchor Laura Stark thought she’d seen the last of her devious ex-husband, but a series of sinister pranks has her convinced Max is back - and hell-bent on turning her life upside down. After she broke a controversial story that left her unable to rely on New York’s finest, Laura turns to a pair of eccentric private investigators for help.

When mystery novelist David Reid marries his British editor, Kate, they seem perfectly matched. But soon Kate spirals into a deep sadness and, within two years, leaves.Just as the shock of her absence sets in, David gets word that Kate has been struck and killed by a subway train. Was her death an accident? A suicide? A murder?A tortured soul, David becomes obsessed with the works of Johannes Vermeer and, as he tries to uncover the truth about his wife, becomes fixated on two of the Dutch master’s paintings featuring beautiful, unknowable women.The more David learns, the less he wants to know — especially when he discovers Kate had been having an affair. Soon he finds himself entangled in a web of deception and betrayal, and facing the chilling question: How much do we really know about those we love?

The son of Russian expatriates, London-based writer Alex Ostroff longs to publish a masterpiece. But his manuscripts find only rejection - as does Alex himself when London’s literary set unceremoniously toss him from a party. Heeding the advice of his exasperated agent, Alex finally writes about his own experiences. As he mines his childhood for inspiration, he becomes obsessed with finding the truth about his parents.

After fleeing to Paris to escape communist rule, Polish émigré and piano player Jerzy Wozzeck finds it nearly impossible to support his family on his low-paying bistro gigs. So when a friend offers a fat payoff for handling a string of deliveries, Jerzy quickly finds himself in the uneasy employ of an anonymous suit and his sensual assistant. With a couple of flawless jobs under his belt, Jerzy starts living the good life - until, on one such run, he stumbles across a corpse and realizes his benefactors will go to any lengths to protect their operations.

What is embryonic stem cell research? Why is it so controversial? What is its relationship to human cloning? Events are moving so fast and biotechnology seems so complicated that many of us don't have an informed opinion about issues that are remaking the human future before our very eyes.

Mark Noble plans a surprise proposal to his girlfriend during a Caribbean vacation. But before he can pop the question, she disappears, and his father - a world-famous celebrity doctor who seems to have perfected mind-control - is killed in a mysterious fire back home. While searching for his girlfriend, Mark finds himself chased by two thugs, and the race is on to find out the truth of her disappearance before it’s too late. Mark’s investigation uncovers a sinister connection and a secret he doesn’t even know he possesses.

When history professor Jill Bowman learns of her husband’s murder in a seedy motel room, she knows he had no business being there. Not the serious, sincere psychiatrist Peter Freytag — the man she’d known so intimately.

Enveloped in grief, Jill struggles to piece together seemingly impossible events, and slowly she learns Peter’s secrets. But Jill discovers dark parts of herself as well… secrets she’d never known she was keeping.

In this modern-day Orpheus tale, one man descends into Paris’s hellish underworld to find his missing wife — and learn the dark secrets of her past. Adam Füst thought he knew his wife, Honnie. But when he begins investigating her sudden disappearance, he’s shocked to find so much of her a mystery. In order to find Honnie, Adam must enter the darkest shadows of the City of Lights. Paris’s sex shops, dark streets, and the people who inhabit them simultaneously repel Adam and draw him deeper, giving him a painfully clear look into Honnie’s past — and his own soul. Adam’s grief eventually gives way to his obsession with finding Honnie, taking his very sanity to the breaking point. Will learning the truth about Honnie push him over the edge?

Wilmington, Delaware, is one of those cities that feels more like a small town. Neighbors know one another, and businesses cater to the needs of the citizenry. But what happens when the local car salesman suffers one lost sale too many, when one more customer decides to buy from the competition because the price is too high, interest rates aren’t friendly, or that shade of blue just won’t work?

With the police on his back and his agency taking sleazy cases he never thought he’d have to, Paul Chang erupts under the job’s pressures and sees his personal demon, an alter ego he calls the dragon, emerge. Only the training from his martial arts teacher and old friend Shu keeps Chang sane. But his ex-wife Colleen and a journalist are being stalked by someone trying to make it look like Chang is the aggressor, and when the harassment turns deadly, the lives of everyone close to him are in danger.

Nick Copeland is an ad man. Correction: was an ad man. He’s been living the pretty-good life, but somewhere under the mountain of bills is buried whatever happiness he had. Nick Copeland is an ad man. Correction: was an ad man. He’s been living the pretty-good life, but somewhere under the mountain of bills is buried whatever happiness he had. Desperate, Nick looks for work at a job fair, but instead reconnects with an old college friend who’s in it even deeper.

A very ordinary day in the lives of the four Hodges-Bradley children takes on frightening dimensions in the aftermath of what seems like a typical California earthquake. A year and a half has passed since the great sorceress Morgana Shee, with the children's help, closed the last gateway to the Wildworld, a shimmering parallel universe of legend and danger.

In another age, the pathways connecting Earth to the Wildworld were sealed, forever separating humans from the shimmering parallel universe where legends still live. A great sorceress, Morgana Shee, guards the solitary gate between the worlds. She alone holds the secret of Fell Andred, her mansion built directly on the Great Coastal Passage, whose mirrors are the last doorways to enchantment.

Amelie and Janet are in love with the same man: Janet's husband. One knows it; the other doesn't. Or does she? As best-selling novelist Amelie Ferrar knows, an affair with a married person is like a work of fiction - a kind of spy story with its own rules, customs, and private rituals. But like any spy story, there will inevitably be a betrayal: something will slip; someone else will find out; someone may even die. As Amelie falls deeper into her obsession with the man she loves - and his wife - the twisted ending to this story is one that not even she could have seen coming....

D Is for Demons is the fourth book in an epic series of 26 horror anthologies. You will find a collection of 13 terrifying stories from some of the finest independent writers on the scene today. From the disturbing to the humorous, from the gruesome to the psychological, D Is for Demons contains a range of unsettling stories that will make you sleep with the lights on!

Elena Gilbert es la reina del instituto de Fell's Church y no está acostumbrada a que le digan que no. Pero Stefan Salvatore, el guapo y misterioso alumno nue-vo del que se ha encaprichado, sólo muestra indiferencia hacia ella. O al menos eso cree Elena. Stefan, que buscaba en Fell's Church un lugar donde empezar de cero, no tarda en darse cuenta de que no puede escapar de su pasado.

A recent release from a glorified prison system, Jeraldine Adelric wants nothing more than to live as legally as possible so she’s never sent back to Joab. As she buys her ship and works toward being an owner and proprietor, she also finds a potential new love in Arloa, an older woman, an aristocrat, and someone way out of her league. As her crew takes their first job, problems arise. Not only are they ill-prepared for the work, but the virus that rages through their planet hits her crew, and Jerry has to make a choice. Who will she save and who will she kill?

We are all influenced every single day of our lives by both the positive and well as the negative. Influencing people requires you to have a certain power over them.