Richard Horton

This expanded, updated, and completely revised edition of The COVID-19 Catastrophe is the authoritative guide to a global health crisis that has consumed the world. Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinises the actions taken by governments as they sought to contain the novel coronavirus. He shows that indecision and disregard for scientific evidence has led many political leaders to preside over hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and the worst global economic crisis for three centuries. This new edition provides a systematic discussion of the pandemic’s course, national responses, more transmissible mutant variants of the virus, and the launch of the world’s largest ever vaccination programme. Only now are we beginning to understand the full scale of the COVID-19 crisis. We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic, and we need to learn them fast, because the next pandemic may arrive sooner than we think.

This expanded, updated, and completely revised edition of The COVID-19 Catastrophe is the authoritative guide to a global health crisis that has consumed the world. Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinises the actions taken by governments as they sought to contain the novel coronavirus. He shows that indecision and disregard for scientific evidence has led many political leaders to preside over hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and the worst global economic crisis for three centuries. This new edition provides a systematic discussion of the pandemic’s course, national responses, more transmissible mutant variants of the virus, and the launch of the world’s largest ever vaccination programme. Only now are we beginning to understand the full scale of the COVID-19 crisis. We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic, and we need to learn them fast, because the next pandemic may arrive sooner than we think.

Pepper is a fine colt. Pepper learns how to be a strong cow horse just like her mother, Patsy. She meets animals in the pastures and learns about cows, rivers and her Owner. The Owner quickly finds a buyer for Pepper and in the blink of an eye Pepper finds herself in a new home without her mother. Pepper, in her new home with her new Master, has to cope with the loss of her previous life with Patsy and the pasture she knew so well. In her new setting, Pepper begins to get familiar with her new Master and her surroundings. Pepper learns that her Master is becoming a Friend. In time, Pepper realizes that her Friend is really a Dear Friend. But, things change in a drastic way for Pepper and her Dear Friend. A cruel twist of fate finds them both and they must adjust to their new path of life. Will the change be one that both Pepper and her Dear Friend can survive?

A unique blend of consciousness theory, satire and contemporary science fiction, The Undernet is a fast-paced thriller set in the cultural wasteland of modern Los Angeles.Decadent Uncle Ray dies of an apparent heart attack, just minutes before Arthur French walks in the door from Tucson, Arizona to start his new career as an artist. This sets into motion a series of unfortunate interactions with the men and women of Ray's life -Sharon his unstable girlfriend, Marc, his steroidally-enhanced lawyer, and the mysterious Detective Turing, a voice on the phone which Arthur soon discovers is in fact a computer program that Ray built to influence the Federal Reserve's prime lending rate. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Turing insists it's not self-conscious, just highly suspicious about the death of its creator.Teaming up with the manic (if oddly self-effacing) computer program, Arthur investigates the circumstances behind Ray's death, uncovering a plan, and an entity, of mindbending comic proportions.

A wry comic mystery set in Los Angeles --the land where dreams go to die-- The Naked Raving Empty is the story of one desperate man's attempt to win the love of a fickle and perhaps sociopathic woman through a single act of brazen fraud. But in a culture where lying to yourself can be the only way to survive, fraud can sometimes reveal a deeper truth.Our hero's girlfriend has a boyfriend of her own, the other woman in his life is a drug-addled agoraphobic, and his only remaining friend is a fast-talking aggressively gay hustler with a penchant for dangerous stock swindles. The future looks bleak. So in a desperate act to revive his flagging career, Randy resorts to fraud. He creates a mystery, a wholly manufactured conspiracy around the sudden death of failed television actor Jack Kane, and he tries to sell this story to the highest bidder. But if the conspiracy is a lie, then why are so many people suddenly trying to stop him? "We believe in what we want after all; and we want what we cannot have. This I knew all too well from experience. But what came new on the floor of the holding cell was the final lock-step end to this reasoning--we believe in what we cannot have. So I would give them what they wanted, a conspiracy to grace their past with interest. I would pretend I had a mystery and interview the men and women of Jack Kane's life, recording their real responses to a mythical plot --the gold dildo that killed him and its mysterious disappearance."