Showing results by author "Fiona Maazel" in All Categories

Meet Phil Snyder: new father, nursing assistant at a cutting-edge biotech facility on Staten Island, and all-around decent guy. Trouble is, his life is falling apart. His wife has betrayed him, his job involves experimental surgeries with strange side effects, and his father is hiding early onset dementia. Phil also has a special talent he doesn't want to publicize - he's a mind reader and moonlights as Brainstorm, a costumed superhero.

Thurlow Dan is the founder of the Helix, a cult that promises to cure loneliness. With its communes and speed-dating, mixers and confession sessions, the Helix has become a national phenomenon - and attracted the attention of governments worldwide. But Thurlow, camped out in his Cincinnati headquarters, is lonely - for his ex-wife, Esme, and their daughter, whom he hasn't seen in 10 years. Esme, for her part, is a covert agent who has spent her life spying on Thurlow, mostly to protect him from the law. Now, with her superiors demanding results, she recruits four misfits to botch a reconnaissance mission in Cincinnati.

"That night was a lesson learned: There's the erotic's of a woman who feels so miserable and wrecked and anxious and sad she will get on her knees and let four people have at her with varying degrees of rupture and bliss, and then there's everything else." The Common, guest editor of Recommended Reading 2.4, publishes stories with a strong sense of place, yet the opening of Interpreters of Men Get It On sets the story to be the "Middle of Nowhere."

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.