Daily Archives: August 4, 2021

Servant, Mercenary, Brother: A Dresden Jakobs Vignette Collection Vol. I (The Mercenary and the Mage)by Selina R. Gonzalez

When Dresden Jakobs’ parents moved to Monparth, they wanted a better life for their children. Indenturing their young son for ten years to some nobleman so they could pay their debts wasn’t the plan. But Regulus Hargreaves isn’t at all what Dresden expected. Is it possible for a master and servant to be friends?

This prequel novella to Prince of Shadow and Ash (The Mercenary and the Mage book one) traces Dresden and Regulus’ friendship through a series of vignettes as they grow up and their roles and life situations shift and change–from servant and master, to brothers-in-arms, to brothers. This volume can be read before or after reading The Mercenary and the Mage duology.

Skinny Legs and All: A Novelby Tom Robbins

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations….

It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine–while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils.

Skinny Legs and All deals with today's most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the "end days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat.

In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Womenby Stevie Cameron

Verteran investigative journalist Stevie Cameron first began following the story of missing women in 1998, when the odd newspaper piece appeared chronicling the disappearances of drug-addicted sex trade workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. It was not until February 2002 that pig farmer Robert William Pickton would be arrested, and 2008 before he was found guilty, on six counts of second-degree murder. These counts were appealed and in 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its conclusion. The guilty verdict was upheld, and finally this unprecedented tale of true crime could be told.

Covering the case of one of North America's most prolific serial killers gave Stevie Cameron access not only to the story as it unfolded over many years in two British Columbia courthouses, but also to information unknown to the police – and not in the transcripts of their interviews with Pickton – such as from Pickton's long-time best friend, Lisa Yelds, and from several women who survived terrifying encounters with him. Cameron uncovers what was behind law enforcement's refusal to believe that a serial killer was at work.