Playful as well as profound-and as bawdy as he was witty-William Shakespeare is hardly the stuffy, obscure writer who inhabits so many modern classes in English Literature. And yet students often leave the classroom without ever discovering the man behind the marble legend. In this timely and enlightening collection of Shakespeare's sonnets, author and poet Jeffrey Caminsky puts some of the fun back in the Bard's most private and personal set of poems. At once sensitive and tender, yet often skewering mistresses and patrons alike, the poems sing with passion and wit. With explanatory notes to...

New starships are nothing but trouble. It's something Roscoe Cook heard his old commander say, often quite loudly. But he never believed it until he got a starship of his own, and faced the task of getting the ship and its temperamental crew ready to sail. In The Sirens of Space, the first volume of the Guardians of Peace adventure series, Captain Cook and his crew prepare for a journey that will span the galaxy as they introduce 21st Century readers to life in the 26th Century. And it begins on the frozen sands of Planet Ishtar....

In the Star Dancers, the second book in the Guardians of Peace science fiction adventure series, we see what happens when civilizations and species clash. The reader learns about the alien culture of the reptilian race known as the Crutchtans, which is suffering from internal divisions. We also meet Gal'Shenga, an alien leader anxious to achieve his dream of reforming and modernizing his society, and his nephew Ga'Glish, commander of the alien fleet. But Terra has problems of its own, and the Terran Cosmic Guard has its hands full: pirates and privateers are still infesting their skies, as...

The clash of civilizations has never been pretty, especially for the losers. Struggles between cultures are inevitable, and have always been with us. The less we know about an alien culture, the harder it is to avoid misunderstandings, and the easier it is for things to get out of hand. Unfortunately, the 26th Century is no different...except that the conflicts are even uglier when the combatants belong to different species. And when the future of each race hangs in the balance, civilization itself can be among the first casualties. In Clouds of Darkness, the third book in the Guardians of...

Formed in 1976, Ridgewriters is a group of writers in Southeastern Michigan that meets each week to offer each other critiques, advice, and to share ideas and experiences about writing. Gathering in the Spicer House in Farmington Hills, Ridgewriters also participates in various cultural and artistic events in and around the Greater Detroit Area. The membership includes poets, essayists, and novelists of varying levels of experience, from promising amateurs to professional writers. The Ridgewriters Anthology 2012 is the group's first published anthology.

Sooner or later, we all face a moment of truth. For Roscoe Cook, that moment arrives when he comes face-to-face with his own past, as the Cosmic Guard - the mightiest military force the Galaxy has ever seen - takes aim at his home, and everyone he loves. With its Interstellar Navy no more than a rag-tag collection of pleasure boats and a few rusty frigates, Planet Isis stands alone as the last bastion of human civilization untouched by the madness that has swept the rest of Humanity. Hated by half the galaxy, and denounced as a traitor from one end of Terra to the other, Admiral Cook is all...