Urban City

How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences.

Having found the tragic truth that an art degree is worth less than the paper it is printed on, Jacquelyn Jones is frustrated with her dead end work as a graphic designer for a marketing firm....But then she heard about City of Champions Online. For the first time, a developer partnered with a tabletop RPG maker to use their system to create a VRMMORPG, and it was one of the systems designed to be used with superhero games! Now, she just has to find a way to become the heroine she's always wanted to be.

The rise of Texas cities is a fascinating story that has not been previously told. Yet it is essential for understanding both the state's history and its contemporary character.

Every night Benita dreams. She envisions her home is a beautiful city of clean, silver buildings. She dreams of a queen banished for not sharing the secret of her powers. And when she wakes, nothing she sees matches what she envisioned. The city she lives in is crowded with trash and debris, and the structures are covered with thick grime. She must decide what's more real: the world she has known since birth, that she can touch and see, or the world she dreams, that she feels with her heart.

Dilbert Pinkerton's not the greatest private detective, but he's good at sniffing out clues. Of course, it's hard to take a five-foot-nothing mutant armadillo in a trench coat and fedora seriously. He sticks his snout where it doesn't belong far too often while digging for the truth. So when some rich dame asks him to steal - ahem, retrieve - a pearl necklace from her ex-husband, Dill almost reconsiders. Until, that is, she offers him so much money that he can't refuse.

Pete Axthelm follows the 1969 - 70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players’ efforts, accomplishments, and failures.

In Saving America's Cities, Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal.

Michael Andrews and Gail Sommers have finally found the love that had eluded them for so long. But their romance has uncovered an ancient evil curse neither of them could have anticipated. It does more than bring down a plague on their houses - it unleashes something far more sinister that can destroy humanity. Now they must choose: battle the evil forces out to destroy them, or continue to meet in secret while the rest of the world burns.

In a walled city of a mile-high iron guild towers, many things are common knowledge: No book in any of the city's libraries reveals its place on a calendar or a map. No living beasts can be found within the city's walls. And no good comes to the guilder or foundling who trespasses too far from their labors. Even on the tower rooftops, where Errol Thebes and the rest of the city's teenagers pass a few short years under an open sky, no one truly believes anything uncommon is possible within the city walls.

Chicago socialite and art patron Geneva Langley has brought scandal to her family for the last time. Her latest and boldest act of immodesty is too much for her father to bear, and he banishes her to Seattle, along with her scheming, ambitious husband, Nathan. Seattle is a far cry from Chicago—the streets are muddy, the society backward, and Ginny feels stifled and alone.

Mein Leben drehte sich einst um Gerechtigkeit. Als ausgebildete Kriegerin für das Volk von Shadow City habe ich nie infrage gestellt, was mir beigebracht wurde … bis jetzt. Mein vorbestimmter Partner und ich stehen endlich auf derselben Seite – und die Liste unserer Feinde wird immer länger. Alles, was wir gelernt haben, hat sich verändert und uns beide zur Angriffsfläche gemacht.

Ich hätte nie erwartet, mich zu verlieben... besonders nicht in meinen Feind. Als ich über eine Gruppe entflohener Dämonen stolpere, ändert sich alles. Mir fällt die Verantwortung zu, Shadow City zu schützen. Als der Kampf tobt, spüre ich einen Impuls in meiner Seele, der mich zu einem sexy Dämon mit mokkabraunen Augen zieht. Er ergibt sich freiwillig... aber ich traue ihm nicht. Ich hätte ihn auf der Stelle töten sollen. Er wird zum Auslöser für noch mehr Dämonenangriffe, aber ich kann ihn nicht aufgeben.

Sam Flint lives in a world of monsters and magic, and as a quasi-immortal, he is King. Well, King of a hole in the wall apartment infested with more rats than the politicians shiny offices up in Standard Heights. The life of a private eye in Necrotown isn't glamorous, but Sam has all he as ever wanted wrapped up in the sexy embrace of his kitsune wife, Fox. Unfortunately, landlords and rent wait for no man and Sam needs to get paid fast. When big bellied and bigger pocketed Lloyd Burgess hires Sam for a quick snatch and grab of his wayward daughter, Sam is all in.

Cities rather than individual pioneers have been the driving force in the settlement and economic development of the western half of North America. Throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, western urban centers served as starting points for conquest and settlement. As these frontier cities matured into metropolitan centers, they grew from imitators of eastern culture and outposts of eastern capital into independent sources of economic, cultural, and intellectual change.

What does it mean to be truly human? When an orphaned kit fox named Tom is transformed by a witch’s spell into a 12-year-old boy, he’s given a deadline of summer’s end to become fully human. Befriended by fellow orphan Nora, he spends the summer enjoying normal human activities, always fearing that he won’t discover how to become fully human in time, and unaware that soon he and Nora will be fighting for their lives....

In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than 30 feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are 14-year-old Molly McHugh.

Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He's compelled to volunteer at the local Children's Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week. Oh, and he's also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc's pyre in 1431. He's just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk show claiming to be Joan, and absolution seems closer than it's ever been . . . but how will he find her?

Fortunetellers. Demotivational speakers. Disillusioned shapeshifters. You never know quite who—or what—you'll run into in Psychic City, but that's what makes life interesting for a PsyOps agent.

Still, in the City is a collection of stories about the practice of urban Buddhism - when a New York City subway becomes a mobile temple, when Los Angeles traffic becomes a vehicle for awakening, when a Fifth Avenue sidewalk offers a spiritual path through craving, generosity, and sorrow. Practicing in the city comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities, and this book is attuned to both.

Magic City's future hangs on the roll of the dice, or the turn of a card. Will fortune favor Ruby Achera, or turn against her? All the threads of criminal activity in Magic City are weaving together to form a dangerous web. The anti-human movement and the Drow who leads it have found common cause with the troublemaker in the Council. The PDA is the wildcard. Will they help her or turn against her?