Astral travel to the afterlife by two retired cops begins a tale that is both a ciffhanger and comic opera. After a lackluster career as a detective, Benny Spielmacher disappears during an impulsive astral journey to Heaven in search of inspiration for a musical version of Paradise Lost. His former partner, Roscoe Duffy, risks the deadly perils of Chaos to find him, and the two soon find themselves in a life-and-death struggle to defeat a colossal conspiracy that threatens God Himself. To complicate matters, Roscoe falls in love with the late Rose Trautman and must figure out how to conduct...

Small and inexpensive, Simple, Clear, and Correct: Essays provides a brief, yet thorough, introduction to writing college essays and research writing, presenting guidelines and explanations for each stage of the writing process.

Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China's ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many as died in the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America.
In vivid, gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's...

The smog beast wafted into downtown Los Angeles on July 26, 1943. Nobody knew what it was. Secretaries rubbed their eyes. Traffic cops seemed to disappear in the mysterious haze. Were Japanese saboteurs responsible? A reckless factory? The truth was much worse--it came from within, from Southern California's burgeoning car-addicted, suburban lifestyle. Smogtown is the story of pollution, progress, and how an optimistic people confronted the epic struggle against airborne poisons barraging their hometowns. With wit, verve, and a fresh look at history, California based journalists Chip Jacobs...