Robert Stone

Gerald Walker is an actor, lover, sufferer, a man unable to commit himself to either failure or success. For him life is a matter of inner resources – a matter of getting through the day. Sex helps; alcohol helps; drugs help. But now, abandoned by his wife and feeling as though he may die quite soon, Gordon needs something more. A dream. And following the dream he decides on is love – love in the shape of Lu Anne. Following her to Mexico where she is filming a movie he he’s scripted, it doesn’t matter to Gordon that Lu Anne to is fighting for survival, clinging to sanity, and that Gordon may be the one thing she needs to push her over the edge. ‘A fine, complex, often funny tale, full of lights and shadows, with great dialogue and a sharp sense of character and place’ New York Times Book Review

For two decades Robert Stone made his living on the high seas. A modern-day pirate, he was a pioneer saturation oil-field diver, treasure hunter and smuggler, which brought him more money than he knew how to spend. Stone spent the last ten of his smuggling years in Africa, where he traded in illicit fuel. The murky waters of the Niger delta were his place of business as he operated in the most corrupt regime in the world, a place ruled by money and guns. Protected by the military he sold his black cargo to legitimate businesses all over the world, making millions of dollars in the process. Chasing Black Gold is a tale straight out of Hollywood, one which throws the reader into a world where suitcases full of millions in cash are flown around the globe on private jets, where the corrupt practices of Third World governments and military regimes must be mastered and a world of numbered bank accounts and countries of convenience, where living under false IDs and money laundering are all in a day’s work.

Winner of the Best Guidebook Award from Outdoor Writers Association of California San Luis Obispo County is located where the white sand beaches of Central California merge with the dramatic Big Sur coastline. Ranging inland from the Pacific Ocean are oak-studded hills, verdant farmland, pristine mountain lakes, and the 5,000-foot Santa Lucia Range of the Los Padres National Forest. The unique geography and a temperate, year-round climate creates an outstanding hiking environment.Day Hikes Around San Luis Obispo now includes over 150 day hikes throughout the coastal county. This greatly expanded third edition is easily the most comprehensive hiking guide in the area. The trails take the hiker along the scalloped Pacific coastline to secluded coves and tide pools, to rocky promontories along the chain of volcanic morros, through wetland sanctuaries, across massive sand dunes, and up cool interior canyons. Highlights include waterfalls, bluffs, long stretches of beach, lighthouses, lakes, rivers, swimming holes, extraordinary rock formations, and panoramic views that span from the inland mountains to the ocean. Many hikes are found in or near San Luis Obispo, although most hikes are located in undeveloped tracts of land and along 100 miles of coastline. A range of hikes is included, from easy coastal walks to high elevation climbs.Statistics, accurate driving and hiking directions, and numerous maps make these hiking adventures stress free. Dog admission information is included as well as an index.Companion guides include Day Hikes On the Central California Coast, Day Hikes Around Big Sur, and Day Hikes Around Santa Barbara.

A young person has a tremendous amount of information to assimilate and try to make sense of. The daily routine of getting up and going to bed often sandwiches events that, with hindsight, could be described as bizarre but at the time accepted as the norm. Normality is a term reserved for the adult world because when a young person's experience has no benchmark for comparison, everything is normal. These short tales demonstrates a youthful innocence of simply accepting and being awestruck with the unintended consequences. Young people found entertainment more by accident than by planning. The same mindset is still around but sometimes hidden by a digitally enhanced world. These stories have been changed slightly to protect the innocent and also the not so innocent. But, like all fiction, they have their origins based on fact. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did recalling them.

In an elite New England college, Professor Steven Brookman embarks upon a careless affair with a brilliant but reckless student, Maud Stack. She is a young woman whose passions are not easily contained or curtailed, and is known as something of a firebrand on campus. As the stakes of their relationship prove higher than either one could have anticipated, their union seems destined to yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "Fast-paced and] riveting . . . Stone is one of our transcendently great American novelists." -- Madison Smartt Bell "Brilliant." -- Washington Post At an elite college in a once-decaying New England city, Steven Brookman has come to a decision. A brilliant but careless professor, he has determined that for the sake of his marriage, and his soul, he must end his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences. Death of the Black-Haired Girl is an irresistible tale of infidelity, accountability, the allure of youth, the promise of absolution, and the notion that madness is everywhere, in plain sight. "At once unsparing and generous in its vision of humanity, by turns propulsive and poetic, Death of the Black-Haired Girl is wise, brave, and beautifully just." -- Boston Globe "Unsettling and tightly wrought--and a worthy cautionary tale about capital-C consequences." -- Entertainment Weekly "A taut, forceful, lacerating novel, full of beautifully crafted language." -- Los Angeles Review of Books

A Flag for Sunrise is a novel of Americans drawn into the maelstrom of Tecan, a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. At a mission on the coast a priest is lapsing into alcoholic mysticism, while a young American nun is veering towards commitment to the cause. In a bar in Brooklyn, Frank Holliwell is lunching with an old CIA friend who is begging for a favour. On the Tex–Mex border, Pablo, a Coast Guard deserter, loco on speed, is about to take a job carrying mysterious contraband to Tecan. As these lives converge, as this small, crowded world erupts, the novel builds to an electrifying climax.

Big Sur is an awesome stretch of spectacular coastline in Central California. The Santa Lucia Mountains quickly rise over 5,000 feet from the ocean. This magnificent landscape begins near Carmel at Point Lobos State Reserve and extends 75 miles south to Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County, just south of the Monterey County line. The steep coastal mountain range and rugged shoreline isolate the Big Sur country, which maintains an unspoiled, rustic charm and relaxed, leisurely pace. This completely revised and updated edition of Day Hikes Around Big Sur includes 99 great day hikes along the coast and throughout the interior mountains. Hikes, which take from one hour to all day, range from easy beach strolls to strenuous mountain climbs with panoramic coastal vistas. The diverse terrain is a hiker's paradise with a well-designed trail system of more than 300 miles. The network of trails venture into the beautiful canyons and across the slopes and peaks, offering unparalleled views of the mountains merging with the coastline. Along Highway 1 are endless views of the scalloped coastline and the deep blue Pacific. Awe-inspiring bridges span numerous creeks and deep canyons. Highlights along the miles of trails include isolated beaches, eroded coves with tide pools, rugged marine terraces, redwood and Monterey cypress groves, shady canyons, waterfalls dropping into mossy glens, lighthouses, and vertical cliffs with crested ridges. Statistics, accurate driving and hiking directions, and numerous maps make these hiking adventures stress free. Dog admission information is included. Most trails can be accessed from Carmel Valley Road or Highway 1, including many beach access points. Companion guides include Day Hikes Around Monterey and Carmel and Day Hikes On the California Central Coast.

‘At once religious discussion, love story, mystery, delivered with the verve of an airport thriller . . . The central character of this book is Jerusalem; the book reeks of its myriad mythologies and beliefs . . . Damascus Gate is an amazing read . . . a rare and remarkable feast of writing’ Scotland on Sunday ‘The heir of Conrad, Hemingway and, crucially, Graham Greene, Stone is at his best when his characters are in extremis . . . the scenes of violent confrontation could not have been rendered more powerfully by any other writer . . . formidable’ Sunday Telegraph ‘A book that is not afraid to take on the big themes like faith, faction, spirituality, tribalism, identity and injustice . . . It is also an extraordinary treatment of Jerusalem itself . . . With Stone, it has found the kind of imaginative interpreter that every city waits for’ Sunday Times ‘Writing this good should be engraved on tablets of stone in letters of fire and blood. Fantastic’ Uncut ‘Stone has a journalist’s eye for detail, but a novelist’s eye for irony . . . Damascus Gate is rich with theme and atmosphere . . . few writers could even attempt to capture, as Stone does, both the intense, combative spirituality of Jerusalem and the festering menace of Gaza’ Esquire

Michael Ahearn, a professor at a rural college, sheds his comfortable assumptions when he becomes obsessed with a new faculty member from the Caribbean, Lara Purcell. An expert in Third World politics, Lara is seductive, dangerous - and in thrall, she claims, to a voodoo spirit who has possession of her soul. Impassioned and determined, Michael pursues Lara in her native island of St. Trinity, heedless of the political upheaval there. Together they desperately attempt to reclaim all that Lara has lost. Yet island intrigue ensnares them. Lara sacrifices herself to ritual and superstition. Michael is caught unawares in a high-stakes smuggling scheme. In his feverish state of mind, the world becomes an ever-shifting phantasmagoria. He is, himself, possessed.

Monterey County lies along an incredibly beautiful and scenic coastal stretch of the Pacific Ocean in Central California. The rugged, weathered shoreline is fronted by the Santa Lucia Mountains, separating the coast from the rich agricultural land. Carmel, Pacific Grove, Monterey, and other picturesque communities dot a landscape abundant with green valleys, woodlands, beaches, parks, natural preserves, and secluded bays along the oceanfront. This completely updated edition of Day Hikes Around Monterey and Carmel includes 128 hikes from the north end of Monterey Bay to the Big Sur coastline. Many hikes are found along the amazing coastline; other hikes explore the interior mountains and hillsides. The routes have been chosen to offer a great selection of shoreline excursions, beaches, residential paths, wilderness hikes, cool canyons, and panoramic overlooks while including a range of hiking levels. Coastal walks include blufftop terraces, tidepools, coves, massive sand dunes, whale-watching locations, tidal marshes along the Pacific Flyway, and breath-taking hillside routes along dramatic headlands carved by the pounding surf. Scenic neighborhood walks link piers, boardwalks, and natural areas. Some trails include atmospheric forests of old-growth redwoods, rare stands of Monterey cypress, or California condor nesting sites amongst craggy rock pinnacles. Other highlights include lighthouses, historic sites, long-spanning bridges, ridgetop overlooks, sweeping coastal views, and paths alongside the Monterey Bay Aquarium and marine refuge. Hikes take from one hour to all day. A range of hikes is included to accommodate every level of experience. All trails can be accessed from Highway 1, including many beach access points.Companion guides include Day Hikes Around Big Sur and Day Hikes On the California Central Coast.

This thorough account of the life and films of the Spanish-Basque filmmaker Julio Medem is the first book in English on the internationally renowned writer-director of Vacas, La ardilla roja (Red Squirrel), Tierra, Los amantes del Círculo Polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle), Lucía y el sexo (Sex and Lucía), La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra (Basque Ball) and Caótica Ana (Chaotic Ana),Initial chapters explore Medem’s childhood, adolescence and education and examine his earliest short films and critical writings against a background of a dramatically changing Spain. Later chapters provide accounts of the genesis, production and release of Medem’s challenging and sensual films, which feed into complex but lucid analyses of their meanings, both political and personal, in which Stone draws on traditions and innovations in Basque art, Spanish cinema and European philosophy to create a complete and provocative portrait of Medem and his work.

"A stunning novel by a great American writer."--Washington Post Jerusalem: home to seekers, heretics, hustlers, and madmen of many faiths. In this most fractious city, a plot unfolds to bomb the sacred Temple Mount. Christopher Lucas, an expatriate American journalist, stumbles upon the plot while investigating religious fanatics. Entangled in the intrigue are a nightclub singer, an unstable Jewish guru, a strung-out Kabbalist seeking the messiah, and a soldier of fortune routinely found at the world's violent clashes. A confrontation in Gaza, a chase through riot-filled streets, a cat-and-mouse game in an underground maze--as Lucas races against time, he uncovers the duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem's sacred struggle. An explosive bestseller, Damascus Gate lays bare the dangers at the fringes of faith. "A transcendent thriller."--Time "Brims over with plots, subplots, and an impressive array of incisively drawn characters . . . The range of Stone's] knowledge is spectacular."--The New Yorker "Damascus Gate asks enormous questions about cosmic truth--and its effect on those who think they own it--with intensity, intellectual rigor and abiding morality."--San Francisco Chronicle

The 7th edition includes changes reflecting modern understanding, terminology and teaching of the musculoskeletal system. There are changes on 42 different pages including many new or enhanced notes on function and 20 new descriptions or explanations of anatomical relationships. All muscle illustrations are new.

The 7th edition includes changes reflecting modern understanding, terminology and teaching of the musculoskeletal system. There are changes on 42 different pages including many new or enhanced notes on function and 20 new descriptions or explanations of anatomical relationships. All muscle illustrations are new.

In this book, Robert L. Stone follows the sound of steel guitar into the music-driven Pentecostal worship of two related churches: the House of God and the Church of the Living God. A rare outsider who has gained the trust of members and musicians inside the church, Stone uses nearly two decades of research, interviews, and fieldwork to tell the story of a vibrant musical tradition that straddles sacred and secular contexts. Most often identified with country and western bands, steel guitar is almost unheard of in African American churches--except for the House of God and the Church of the Living God, where it has been part of worship since the 1930s. Sacred Steel traces the tradition through four generations of musicians and in some two hundred churches extending across the country from Florida to California, Michigan to Alabama. Presenting detailed portraits of musical pioneers such as brothers Troman and Willie Eason and contemporary masters such as Chuck Campbell, Glenn Lee, and Robert Randolph, Stone expertly outlines the fundamental tensions between sacred steel musicians and church hierarchy. In this thorough analysis of the tradition, Stone explores the function of the music in church meetings and its effect on the congregations. He also examines recent developments such as the growing number of female performers, the commercial appeal of the music, and younger musicians' controversial move of the music from the church to secular contexts.

The Central California coast has some of the most spectacular scenery in the state. Rugged coastal terraces are backdropped by mountain ranges that run parallel to the Pacific coastline. Picturesque communities dot a landscape abundant with valleys, white sand beaches, cool forests, and natural preserves. The surf crashes onto craggy headlands and carved canyons along the Big Sur stretch of coast. Day Hikes On the California Central Coast includes 120 hikes along 400 miles of coastline between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The hikes describe how and where to access the best trails and features from Highway 1, offering many opportunities to explore the beautiful landscape. Highlights include tidepools, off-shore rock formations, huge dunes, wildlife observation sites, expansive overlooks, canyons, waterfalls, and lighthouses. The best trails in the state and county parks are featured, as well as city trails that are often overlooked. A wide range of hikes accommodates amateur to avid hikers. Companion guides include Day Hikes Around Monterey and Carmel, Day Hikes Around Big Sur, Day Hikes Around San Luis Obispo, Day Hikes Around Santa Barbara, and Day Hikes On the California Southern Coast.

A first work of nonfiction by the award-winning author of Dog Soldiers is a tribute to the 1960s that is told through a series of personal vignettes recounting his global experiences, from his final year in the military and Antarctic trip to his work as a correspondent in Vietnam, where he witnessed the invasion of Laos. Reprint.