Books published by publisher Renaissance E Books Inc.

Not a mere reading, you will hear wraiths howl, the dead walk, and the massive old House of Usher fall in this unique new audio dramatization. This presentation is based on a classic radio script written by veteran scripter Les Crutchfield (who some sources consider a pseudonym for the then blacklisted screen writer Dalton Trumbo) and originally presented on the popular radio series Escape on the night of October 22, 1947. "The Fall of the House of Usher", a story told by the "last living friend of that unhappy man" Roderick Usher, has become a signature piece to be found in any truly comprehensive collection of Poe's classics of the uncanny and the bizarre.

Aerosmith. Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson. Nine Inch Nails. Ozzy Osbourne. U2. What do all of these artists have in common? They're rich and rowdy rock 'n' roll renegades whose wild stunts, dumb quotes, and out-of-control lifestyles are featured in Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things.--Where else will you find an explanation (goodness knows, we need one) of the Spice Girls' fourteen and one-half minutes of fame straight from the mouths of babes--Baby Spice, that is? "We're like a religious cult."--Or where will you learn Izzy Stradlin's (of Guns N' Roses) deep thoughts on the virtues of vomiting out of a bus going sixty-five miles an hour?--And how live octopuses end up in a bathtub with Led Zepplin's female playmates?Whether you're a Metallica or Madonna fan, you'll get plenty of jaw-dropping facts and anecdotes, along with biographical and career highlights of over eighty-eight raunchy rock 'n' rollers.From current starts like Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love, to classic rockers like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles, Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things is proof that rock music is still crazy after all these years.

The year is 1600. It is April and Japan’s iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun’s closest advisers is the centrepiece of this book. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts – some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject – offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan’s self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. This is a highly readable account of Adams’ voyage to and twenty years in Japan and that is supported by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams’ relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams’ ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions, as well as the scientific and technical support Adams was able to provide in the refining process of Japan’s gold and silver.

I lay there shaking like a Vegematic and sweating through the blankets. I prayed, "Please let me die or give me one minute of peace from this sickness." Then it happened. I knew then, and I still know now, that God did something for me that I could not do for myself. It was a gift. I was weak, alone, desperate, dying, and afraid. I surrendered. I prayed. He saved me. That's the only way I can explain what for me was the beginning of a miracle.Three Dog Nightmare is the autobiography of Chuck Negron, and it is the story of one of the most successful rock groups ever, Three Dog Night. But unlike so many rock bios, this is much more than a self-indulgent paean to sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.Three Dog Nightmare is a profoundly moral tale, an inspiring story of recovery and resurrection. But without a fall, there can be no resurrection. Few have fallen as hard, or as low. And even though we know the outcome, even though we know that he survived, Chuck Negron's is a story that seems at times almost too painful to read in its devastatingly sad portrayal of wasted talent, ruined chances, and burned lives.I shoved drugs into my system like a little kid eating candy. And in the end, it took away everything: my money, my fame, my wives, my children, and my self-respect. I traded a Mediterranean-style villa in the Hollywood Hills for a corner of an abandoned building where I slept on a filthy mattress I found in a vacant lot.That he survived at all is a miracle; that he has his career back on track and a new life devoted to helping other drug abusers is an inspiration.

This is a highly readable account of Adams' voyage to and twenty years in Japan, told for the first time from a Japanese perspective, and enriched by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams' relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams' ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), as well as the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions. This is the real story that inspired James Clavell's Shogun. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts - some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject - offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan's self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. The year is 1600. It is April and Japan's iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun's closest advisers with the status of hatamoto - the highest rank in samurai culture - is the centrepiece of this book.

The year is 1600. It is April and Japan's iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun's closest advisers is the centrepiece of this book. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts - some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject - offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan's self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. This is a highly readable account of Adams' voyage to and twenty years in Japan and that is supported by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams' relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams' ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions, as well as the scientific and technical support Adams was able to provide in the refining process of Japan's gold and silver.

Aerosmith. Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson. Nine Inch Nails. Ozzy Osbourne. U2. What do all of these artists have in common? They're rich and rowdy rock 'n' roll renegades whose wild stunts, dumb quotes, and out-of-control lifestyles are featured in Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things.--Where else will you find an explanation (goodness knows, we need one) of the Spice Girls' fourteen and one-half minutes of fame straight from the mouths of babes--Baby Spice, that is? "We're like a religious cult."--Or where will you learn Izzy Stradlin's (of Guns N' Roses) deep thoughts on the virtues of vomiting out of a bus going sixty-five miles an hour?--And how live octopuses end up in a bathtub with Led Zepplin's female playmates?Whether you're a Metallica or Madonna fan, you'll get plenty of jaw-dropping facts and anecdotes, along with biographical and career highlights of over eighty-eight raunchy rock 'n' rollers.From current starts like Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love, to classic rockers like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles, Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things is proof that rock music is still crazy after all these years.

A wildly comic romp through the realm of supernatural horror that will have fans of Weird Tales laughing themselves sick and set H. P. Lovecraft spinning in his grave. Charles Winterbottom thinks he's a heroic-adventurer archeologist in the mode of Indiana Jones. But if he's not, Winterbottom at least gets into more deadly perils in a day than Indiana does in a year. It's getting out of them that's hard! Discovering an unknown civilization in an underground catacomb, Winterbottom is immediately captured by the inhabitants and sentenced to be fed to the demon god Azathoth for desecrating a sacred place. As he stares in to the vast, reeking maw of Azatoth, about to be eaten and shaking in his boots, Winterbottom has not one clue about how to escape. And if knew what lay ahead - encounters with supernatural beings infinitely more terrifying than Azatoth! - Winterbottom would throw himself voluntarily down that demon's gaping maw. Beyond, and infinitely more deadly, than all those perils, at the end of his adventure lies an elegant dinner with a well-known Transylvanian count - with Winterbottom as the main course! Dinner with Dracula is a screwball take on a certain Mythos, and is sure to remind readers of the wacky landscapes and characters of Piers Anthony, Terry Prachett, Robert Adams, and Randall Garrett. Joe Vadalma is a former technical writer and the author of more than two dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, including the comic Retslu fantasies and futuristic novels like The Artifact and Takeover.

The classic of Eldritch horror! Here is one of horror master H. P. Lovecraft's eeriest tales of bone-chilling dread, in an all new reading by versatile performer/producer Bill Mills. What happened to Harley Warren in that cemetery in Big Cypress Swamp? Only Randolph Carter knew. And Carter was mad! Or was he? An ancient book from India in undecipherable characters sends two men on a quest into nameless terror beneath the surface of the Earth. Carter remains above, listening in via a handset, while Warren reels a phone line behind him as he descends beneath an ancient crypt. There Warren comes face to face with the terrible, the monstrous, the unbelievable. Yet it is not this that sends Carter over the edge into madness, but the final, fateful words he hears over the receiver. This dramatization is preceeded by a brief "mini-biography"of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Bill Mills' production of "The Statement of Randolph Carter" is an audio thrill ride for lovers of suspense, horror and gothic fantasy!