Showing results by author "A. Ballard" in All Categories

A must-listen for any J. G. Ballard fan, this “capstone to a magnificent career” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the essential sequel to Empire of the Sun. Published in 1991, this semiautobiographical novel is a daring masterpiece from “one of the most important and intelligent voices in contemporary fiction” (Susan Sontag). “Rueful the way Primo Levi’s work was” (New York Times Book Review), the novel follows 15-year-old Jim Graham as he leaves the ruins of postwar Shanghai, only to find that he cannot escape his own obsession with death.

Mega-selling author Ken Blanchard teams up again with his Whale Done coauthors to apply to parenting young children the simple principles that have proven so effective in many settings, from training killer whales to improving personal effectiveness to raising business performance.

The Disneyland® Hotel: The Early Years 1954-1988 captures the amazing construction of this landmark resort and tells the story of how it became one of Southern California's premier destinations for family vacations. The book includes vintage photos, memorabilia, and a foreword by the son of the original owner of the hotel.

Customer service is the single most pressing problem for business managers and people in any service or sales operation, especially at the retail level. In fact, many experts believe that you build a business from the customer up.

Selena, My Savior, which can be called an irreverent cross between The Maltese Falcon and Spinal Tap, features eccentric characters, razor sharp dialog, subversively dark humor, and grotesque predicaments that satirize everything from rock stars to occult societies, politicians, film producers, and even serial killer culture itself. The reluctant star of the human comedy – idealistic, gorgeous, and repressed Patricia Rodgers (a desperately poor writer on what she calls “Unpopular Culture”) – is forced by events to become madder, badder and, for a terrifying and soul-crushingly ...

Funeral Directors, Ryan Ballard and Brian Waters discuss life, death and the story of funeral service.

Yet again J. G. Ballard’s inimitable clairvoyance is on display in this timely, powerful story of a community shattered by a massive act of violence. A massacre rocks a suburban utopia - 32 adults murdered, and their children missing - in Running Wild, one of Ballard’s most dazzlingly subversive works of fiction.

Isaiah has given up everything for his faith. His family won't speak to him and he contracted a serious illness while on his mission that has sapped his physical strength. Desperate to become independent he takes a temporary job doing handyman work for Denny and Julie Miller. Dawn has been living with the Miller's while she finishes college, but with graduation just around the corner she is struggling to decide what to do next in her life.

The 47-day siege of Vicksburg orchestrated by Grant resulted in the eventual surrender of the city and fulfilled a major strategic goal for the Union: command of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the war. In this revealing volume, Michael B. Ballard offers the first in-depth exploration of Grant's thoughts and actions during this critical operation, providing a never-before-seen portrait of the general in the midst of one of his most notable achievements.

From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

Eve is the typical, happy teenager living in her futuristic, global society. During a trip to the local supercenter, she finds herself in the middle of a “Chaos” attack by a group of anarchists known as the Universal Defiance. After almost losing her life in the bedlam, Eve convinces herself that it is best to move on and pretend as if nothing happened. Months later, Eve’s worst nightmare comes to life when she runs into the Defiance again...only this time her life is changed forever.

On the arid, war-plagued terrain of central Africa, a manic doctor is consumed with visions of transforming the Sahara into a land of abundance. But Dr. Mallory’s obsession quickly spirals dangerously out of control.

An anthology of exceptional Science Fiction short stories. Volume 4: The Earth is a non-renewable resource, overpopulation is problematic, when only the war machines are left. Stories include "The Dwindling Sphere" by Willard Hawkins, "Billennium" by J. G. Ballard, and "Rust" by Joseph E. Kelleam.

Millennium People tells the story of David Markham, a psychologist who is searching for the truth behind a bomb that exploded on a Heathrow baggage carousel, killing his ex-wife. Infiltrating a shadowy protest group responsible for her death, David finds himself succumbing to the charismatic charms of the group's leader, who hopes to incite a violent rebellion against the government by his fanatical adherents, the spiritually and financially impoverished members of Britain's white middle class.

Millions of Baby Boomers got beach houses, free education, jobs for life and a franking credit-fed retirement. But Millennials have been handed a housing crisis, crippling student debt, the gig economy, a cooked planet, a truly broken political system and now wars, inflation and a global pandemic, as a treat. This fully sucks. But never fear–this book is going to fix everything. Through the power of jokes, history, interviews and sass, so-called comedian Tom Ballard unpicks how his generation got here, and explains why we should probably do a revolution.

Guy W. Ballard (July 28, 1878-December 29, 1939) and his wife, Edna Anne Wheeler Ballard, founded the I AM Movement. Ballard served in the US Army in World War I and then became a mining engineer. Both he and Edna studied theosophy and the occult extensively. In 1930 Ballard visited Mount Shasta in California, where he met another hiker who identified himself as the Count of St. Germain. These experiences are recorded in the three books Ballard wrote using the pen name Godfre Ray King.

In this book, we will explore the history, the properties, and the applications of blank, the first number. Blank is not just a symbol or a placeholder. It is a number that represents the absence of quantity, the origin of counting, and the foundation of arithmetic. Blank is also a concept that has profound implications for logic, algebra, geometry, calculus, and even physics and cosmology.

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists wrest control over a small South Pacific island in hopes of cultivating it into their own private Eden. But paradise is not quite what it seems in this “searing” (Kirkus Reviews) send-up of environmentalism, feminism, and extremism of all sorts.

One party. One wild night in her entire life and Faith Car winds up pregnant! What were the odds? And what were the odds that the handsome stranger who'd gotten her pregnant had only made love to her because of a stupid bet! And now he didn't want anything to do with her or the baby that was growing inside her.

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.