Bøger af Carl Reader

With the Devil on his deathbed, he decides to indulge in a final literary effort to clear his name and put the blame for all the madness and cruelty in the world where it belongs, on humans. He offers up this little book of evil stories that detail the violent, twisted, sick souls of people, noting how humans view such behavior as normal. The Devil spares no one in his indictment. It is a tragic spectacle he presents: he exposes the rottenness of mankind. And when he passes, all is wiped away ...

Dirty Presidents and Me is a comical sexual romp through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s starring Lauralee Bramble, the official White House courtesan and nymphomaniac, a presidential sex-toy. After learning her trade at Woodstock, Lauralee applies her talents to servicing one fictional president after another, from Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan to Bush and Clinton. It's a satirical sexual autobiography to make the Lewinsky scandal blush, and is perhaps the filthiest book ever written.

Joshua Skettleton, a narcoleptic Confederate soldier, is bat-shit crazy. The hope that he'll see his son Josh again and the friendship of another soldier, Jeb Charles, help him to cling to some semblance of humanity while the rank butchery, race, religious hatred and greed of the rich tear his soul apart and nearly destroy his body. Two separate stories intertwine in the book, that of his arrival home and his fight to remain alive in some of the most horrific battles of the Civil War - with the help of Jeb Charles. In alternating chapters, we see Skettleton's progress as he travels the final six miles home and then flash back to his participation in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg and more. His attempt to reach home is interrupted by Lester and Constance Engles, a mad couple who give him food and shelter in exchange for a sympathetic ear and the skill he exhibits with his Mississippi rifle, while exploiting him for their own ends. When the book switches to the battle scenes, Skettleton suffers from the uncontrollable urge to fall asleep in the middle of the horror, which allows him to cope and stay alive. Jeb Charles, who's been with him since the beginning of the war, keeps Skettleton alive despite the man's mental illness and propensity to doze off at the worst possible moment. Truly horrific battle scenes and the unfolding tale of his time coming home combine in the end as Skettleton discovers just how mad war has made him, but by then it's too late to salvage even a small piece of himself. War, religion and greed combine to plunge him into a Southern fantasy world where a racist horror is the norm and reality becomes a dream.

Gwendolyn Gladys Gavin, the sometimes hideous, sometimes gorgeous and always quirky Blue Mountain witch, has a young son she doesn't much like, and she lets him know it in no uncertain terms, such as informing him she might still abort him, even though he's already born. She has that sort of power. Of course, being a witch requires some very absurd and questionable behavior, such as cooking and eating the men you meet in a bar and temporarily killing off children so that their parents pay you to bring them back to life. These things Gwendolyn does with relish, and you might even laugh at her while she does them, so the abuse she heaps on her son isn't all that bad in comparison. Thomas Gavin understandably develops some personality problems, which she takes full advantage of. Since Gwendolyn loves her destructive profession, things get worse, as she develops her craft and engages an entrepreneurial spirit to wring every last buck out of her witchcraft and its various enterprises. As all this is taking place, Thomas falls in love with a girl she's killed and brought back to life, but even that simple grace of loving is denied the harried couple. Gwendolyn uses both her boy and the girl to further her empty murderous enterprises, bamboozle a town and create a vast financial enterprise based on her lust for money and power and the suffering of her hapless son. She asserts her power over Thomas and the world she hates in ruthless and sometimes hilarious ways, and creates an empire that astonishes the world.

Forced to move to Montana with her parents' murderers, half-mad Maggie climbs the walls of her home at night, only to discover blood-spitting vampires trapped in vats on her roof. A lover helps her discover her powers, and the two brave severe attacks to save her brother and fly hordes of trapped vampires in vats through fire and smoke to imprisonment in a mountain, only to be trapped themselves. Yet that's not the worst of it ...

The story of William Penn is one of great personal tragedy as well as great ability and courage in the face of religious persecution. In England in the seventeenth century, Penn was jailed six times for his beliefs as a Quaker, yet through his connections at court and his deep understanding, good will and intelligence, he managed to establish Pennsylvania as a free, democratic colony. This book tells in the form of his personal testimony of the hangings, beatings, intimidation and imprisonments suffered by those in England, and of how Penn transformed the political and religious oppression of the old order into the freedom of the New World. Thomas Jefferson called Penn the greatest law-giver the world has ever known, and Jefferson borrowed from Penn's Charter of Privileges to create the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. As a Founding Father, Penn has rarely been given credit due him for the political and religious freedom of America, but without Penn there might never have been an independent and free United States.

A spring morning in Montana is shattered when Joseph Smith emerges from his tepee and his young wife is shot dead at his feet. He races after his wife's murderer but kills Three Pigs before he finds why the man murdered his bride. He returns to Bannack, where his three other wives fall victim to the plot against Smith and where Smith and his sidekick extract a bloody, Old West-style revenge.

Gatsby Girls, a sequel to the classic novel The Great Gatsby, continues the saga of a Jazz Age dream gone wrong, that of Jay Gatsby for Daisy Buchanan. The dreamer is dead, but Daisy is unrepentant and plans an abortion before leaving her drunken, abusive husband, Tom. She enlists the help of a gangster, a drugged friend, and Nick Carraway, but her scheme fails and another deadly tragedy ensues.

In A Circle of Stars is an epic adventure revolving around the aftermath of one of the most famous battles in American History, The Battle of the Little Bighorn, only this time it's told as fiction from the point of view of the Native Americans who won the battle. Custer is dead, Sitting Bull is fearful about what revenge the U.S. Army is about to take on his people and Fallen Hawk, the fictional young warrior who killed Custer in the book, is still not satisfied his revenge is complete. Days later, it appears to Fallen Hawk that it's the U.S. Army that's taken revenge when he discovers his wife, Mountain Cloud, has been murdered in an odd, ritualistic way. Many blame him for the murder while others strangely insist he marry again immediately, but in a fury he goes on the warpath to find his wife's killers.The action continues with the U.S. military relentlessly hunting down Sitting Bull and his band, while the desperate Lakota Sioux use every possible means of escape and fight for their very existence. As Fallen Hawk learns more and more about the murder of his wife, the hopelessness of the Lakota's situation becomes apparent, but his fierce nature forces him to continue his quest for the killers. Fallen Hawk constantly seeks out the murderer and this leads him to many adventures and furious battles, to the love of a new wife, Kicking Up Dust, and on a spiritual quest. Fallen Hawk is nearly elevated to the position of war-chief, as he fights the U.S. cavalry, endures the mistrust of his tribe and closes in on capturing the killer. Finally, as the book ends in tragedy, Fallen Hawk discovers the astonishing reasons for his wife's murder and the person who perpetrated the crime. Many of the main characters of In A Circle of Stars are well-known. Characters like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall and others have essential roles, but the main character, Fallen Hawk, is fictional. In A Circle of Stars re-creates the Native American west in a way that puts you on the Great Plains as part of the world of the Lakota, a world that vanished with the defeat of Sitting Bull and his people.

The Stolen Child is a novella of one very special day in the life of a boy in the 1950s, a day that defines his existence from then on. The day begins with a kiss from a girl and ends with a devastating insight into his mother's life, a life that has veered tragically off-course due to the death of a soldier in World War II. In between, the boy experiences in a child's way just about everything a person can experience in life, from love to work to death to marriage to spirituality and betrayal and war and the loss of love. He goes to his father's job site and views an unearthed pile of bones and his father explains what he believes happens after death. He comes home to a marriage ceremony conducted by his sister that unites him with the girl who kissed him to begin the day, and he plays war with some awful neighborhood boys who believe it's their job to inflict horrible pain on him. He sees his mother interact with his mad uncle, another victim of World War II who's cracked up into an emotional wreck and who ruins the evening's meal. And at the end of the day, he loses the love he thought he had, after he learns of a similar but far more terrible loss suffered by his mother and an apparent but accidental betrayal by his father. A seamless work, not separated by chapters but presented as a continuous flow of life in words, The Stolen Child teaches in one day many of the lessons of sadness and woe that life inevitably inflicts on us.

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