TRADEBOOKS

by Dave Sykes; edited by David Lietner, PhD; cover design by Greg Walbert

While retired engineering professor Arthur Rotterham had the means to live a life of security and luxury,he chose to leave everything behind to travel to a remote island in the Pacific. His motive was a mystery to his children and close friends, and he became even more enigmatic as he started to build an outpost in a place where nobody belonged. What appeared to be the mission of a mad man was actually a deliberate plan to rectify a sixty year old mistake that altered the future of an innocent and isolated civilization. With the help of some unsuspecting friends, Arthur makes a stand against the most powerful military the Earth as ever known.

For a limited time only use Promo Code 4OFFUTOPIA for $4 off shipping fees when shipping to a local residence or business. $4 off is only available off of shipping fees when you choose Ship to Residence in Checkout. Pickup at main campus in Springfield or any of our educational centers is free. To choose this option choose Pickup order at an LLCC location.

CITY OF THE BEASTS

For Students' Sake: Bold Solutions for the College Retention Crisis

Overview

College students face numerous obstacles before they step into the classroom and then again when their academic careers begin. As such, the decline of student retention and success threatens the health of universities across the nation. Universities are challenged by declining enrollments, reduced financial resources, and an increased demand for accountability. Additionally, these institutions face pressures to compete internationally, as they struggle to meet the demands of an ever-advancing technological age. Now more than ever, college students make critical decisions about their classes based upon interactions with faculty and their own learning expectations, which are evolving as quickly as the technologies they use. Born out of experimental education tactics, For Students’ Sake! Bold Solutions for the College Retention Crisis explores the strategies and results of personalized learning. After 22 years of teaching college students, Carmen R. Allen realized that a large number of her students were failing, dropping the course, or simply disappearing. Her passion for student success pushed her to learn more about how to meet student needs, including early intervention tactics and personalized communication approaches, in order to create higher levels of student success. She experienced great success with her work and is optimistic that others will implement her strategies in order to better support their own students and positively impact them.

Lincoln Land Community College’s LLCC Press announces the publication of a collection of recipes, essays and artwork entitled, Garnish: A Celebration of Food and Culture.

Garnish features a diverse array of recipes from numerous countries and cultures, and uniquely highlights the wide range of programs and talent at LLCC. The recipes, provided over a number of years by students, college employees and community members, were originally collected for LLCC’s annual Multicultural Fest.

Throughout, Garnish features the talents of LLCC students and faculty. Recipes in Garnish were tested by LLCC Culinary Arts students, under the direction of instructor Denise Perry, to ensure quality and accuracy of ingredients. Nicole Denby, a student in Professor Thom Whalen’s graphic design class, designed the book’s cover and layout. Color photographs of several dishes appear throughout the book, each taken by students from LLCC instructor Emily Thompson’s digital photography courses. Instructors from the LLCC Arts and Humanities department encouraged students to write essays or design artwork for the book centered on the theme of food and culture. Color images of drawings, graphic designs and paintings accompany the recipes and showcase students’ talents in a multitude of formats.

From the back cover of Garnish: A Celebration of Food and Culture

“Food serves as an essential component of culture, and the recipes and art work contained in this collection highlight the rich diversity of our shared human experience. They remind us of how our diverse and personal heritages work together to unite and strengthen our culture and community. While these recipes offer opportunities to experience other cultural cuisines, they may also inspire us to start new traditions with family and friends.”

When a sheriff's deputy is brutally murdered, fellow deputy Margaret Donovan-his lover-questions every choice she has made as her life spins out of control. Struggling to find meaning amidst chaos, she returns to the faith in which she was raised. A friendship with a local nun motivates Margaret to hand in her badge and gun and devote her life to the convent. Poised to make her final profession and take the veil, Margaret learns of the murder of two students. Her former boss asks her to help him to solve the killings. Margaret soon links the recent murders and a thirty-year-old cold-case slaying of another Saint Dominic's student. She also realizes the first murder is entangled in a cover-up designed to protect some influential people. Working to identify the killer, her burdens escalate. Another child is on the killer's hit list, and she finds the detective with whom she's working, Bill Templeton, falling in love with her. Realizing she makes bad choices more often then she would like, Margaret desperately attempts to solve the murders and reconcile her spiritual and secular lives. Only God knows where it will all end, but Margaret's faith-and ultimately her love-will lead her to the truth.

In Until the Goodnight Smile, author Jim Dietz follows in the footsteps of masters like Nora Roberts (The Time Traveler’s Wife) and Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook), with his ability to weave an enchanting story around the tragic circumstance of the loss of a spouse. With remarkable skill, Jim Dietz takes readers on a journey to spend one full day with teacher Michael Norris as he readies and delivers his children to school, struggles through his classes and the pedantic school bureaucracy, and navigates the dangerous waters of modern day children thrust too soon into the world of adults. Yet always present, always with him in mind and spirit, guiding him through life is Norris’s wife, Elizabeth—and through their relationship, this novel achieves great purpose.

Weeks after the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, a newly-assembled unit of military prisoners must locate and rescue a platoon of soldiers lost within the forests of Germany - a Dirty Dozen-style mission aimed at making up for their indiscretions and clearing their names. But what begins as a standard, if dangerous, mission soon leaves the members of the rescue team lost amidst horros beyond their imaginations . . . Praise for THE LAST POST.

The House of Order, the first collection of composite stories by John Paul Jaramillo, presents a stark vision of American childhood and family, set in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Manito Ortiz sorts family truth from legend as broken as the steel industry and the rusting vehicles that line Spruce Street. The only access to his lost family's story is his uncle, the unreliable Neto Ortiz.

McEwan discusses his views on authorship, the writing process, and major themes found in his fiction, but he also expands upon his interests in music, film, global politics, the sciences, and the state of literature in contemporary society. McEwan's candid and forthcoming discussions with notable contemporary writers---Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Ian Hamilton, David Remnick, and Stephen Pinker---provide readers with the most in-depth portrait available of the author and his works.

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity. From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share of cult tragedies. But none has been quite so dramatic or compelling as the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which the Reverend Jim Jones and 913 of his disciples perished. Deborah Layton had been a member of the Peoples Temple for seven years when she departed for Jonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the South American jungle. When she arrived, however, Layton saw that something was seriously wrong. Jones constantly spoke of a revolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that he had enough control over the minds of the Jonestown residents to carry it out. But her pleas for help--and her sworn affidavit to the U.S. government--fell on skeptical ears. In this very personal account, Layton opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a riveting story of intrigue, power, and murder.

This historical compilation contains the photographs and letters of Kent Dunlap Hagler who, having been denied entry into the United States military forces, left his home of Springfield, Illinois and his place at Harvard University to become a volunteer ambulance driver with the American Field Service. This work brings Kent's letters and photographs to the public eye after almost a century and provides the reader with an eyewitness account of a young American at the heart of the European battlefields of the First World War. Over a two year period, Kent sent dozens of letters home describing his experiences and thoughts. Literate, humorous and with a keen eye for detail, Hagler's letters and pictures, supported with careful annotation and commentary, speak to us across the years from these pages.