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...

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...