Hound Got Quotes

I'm impressed you got up here so quickly - and without a pack of court ladies hounding after you. Perhaps you should try your hand at being an assassin." He shook the hair out of his face. "I'm not interested in court ladies," he said thickly, and kissed her.

The widow’s eyebrows raised. “Ye’ve got all these nasty pooches to run around with and ye still might die?” “I’m going to go fight with a god, some demons, and a coven of witches who all want to kill me,” I said, “so it’s a distinct possibility.” “Are y’goin’ t’kill ’em back?” “I’d certainly like to.” “Attaboy,” the widow chuckled. “Off y’go, then. Kill every last one o’ the bastards and call me in the mornin’.

The world, someone once said, gives back what is given. In abundance. But then, as Kallor would point out, someone was always saying something. Until he got fed up and had them executed.

The hound and hare were both so wearied that the peasant got them all.

I like dogs better than knights. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face.” He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. “And that’s more than little birds can do, isn’t it? I never got my song.

Life bullies us son, but God don't. He had good reasons for fixin' it where if'n you git too sick or too hurt to live, why, you can die, same as a sick chicken. I've knowed a few really sick chickens to git well, and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin. Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if'n he's in the way. If'n you'd a got kilt, it'd mean you jest didn't move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog... When it comes to prayin' we got it all over the other animals, but we ain't no different when it comes to livin' and dyin'. If'n you give God the credit when somebody don't die, you go'n blame Him when they do die? Call it His Will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don't die but once't? Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if'n we can.

The P’lice Department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith. They got him on conspiracy, they were never quite sure who with.

You want our boy to grow up to be nothing but a no-account fiddle-footed rake, Aaron Kinney?” she said. “With never a thought in his head but to run wild in the woods with a passel of pesky hound-dogs?” “No, Cora,” Papa said. “But a coon hunt now and then ain’t going to ruin him. I was on a few myself and got over it.” “Yes, Mama pointed out, “but that was because I laid the law down about dogs. Hadn’t been for that, you’d still be fooling away your time in the woods, same as always. And we wouldn’t own a rag to cover our backs.

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan? 'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.' Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one? 'Ummm... no.' I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying. Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company. 'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said. 'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.' 'Flidais did it.' 'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.' I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there. 'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!' 'And every one of them in heat.' 'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!' He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering. 'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.' I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one step and stopped, looking up at me with a mournful expression, his ears drooping and a tiny whine escaping his snout. 'Only five?

Moriarty smiled his adder’s smile. And I relaxed. I knew. My destiny and his wound together. It was a sensation I’d never got before upon meeting a man. When I’d had it from women, the upshot ranged from disappointment to attempted murder. Understand me, Professor James Moriarty was a hateful man, the most hateful, hateable, creature I have ever known, not excluding Sir Augustus and Kali’s Kitten and the Abominable Bloody Snow-Bastard and the Reverend Henry James Prince. He was something man-shaped that had crawled out from under a rock and moved into the manor house. But, at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture.

I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and rune too, even though he would've offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.

The love has got to be bigger than everything else. The isolation, the separation, the danger. When the love is bigger than all of that – you just do it. You pay the price in uncertainty and sometimes bereavement, because every moment you’re together is worth the cost.

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head. “We’ve got a treat today, you know,” said the nurse, “watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don’t we?

Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven't you ever heard a story about Koschei? He's only got the one. Act one, Scene one: pretty girl. Act one, Scene two: pretty girl gone!

I always wondered what your type was, but I never imagined it would be a hard-core rocker!” Here we go. I had been hoping he'd be too sleepy for this conversation. “He's not my type. If I had a type it would be...nice. Not some hotheaded, egocentric male slut.” “Did you just call him a male slut?” Jay laughed. “Dang, that's, like, the worst language I've ever heard you use.” I glowered at him, feeling ashamed, and he laughed even harder. “Oh, hey, I've got a joke for you. What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians?” He raised his eyebrows and I shrugged. “I don't know. What?” “A drummer!” I shook my head while he cracked up at his joke for another minute before hounding me again about Kaidan. “All right, so you talked about my CDs, you had some cultural confusion with some of his lingo, then you talked about hot dogs? That can't be everything. You looked seriously intense.” “That's because he was intense, even though we weren't really talking about anything. He made me nervous.” “You thought he was hot, didn't you?” I stared out my window at the passing trees and houses. We were almost to school. “I knew it!” He smacked the steering wheel, loving every second of my discomfort. “This is so weird. Anna Whitt has a crush.” “Fine, yes. He was hot. But it doesn't matter, because there's something about him I don't like. I can't explain it. He's...scary.” “He's not the boy next door, if that's what you mean. Just don't get the good-girl syndrome.” “What's that?” “You know. When a good girl falls for a bad boy and hopes the boy will fall in love and magically want to change his ways. But the only one who ends up changing is the girl.

The dead man's face was pale and bloodless. The fierce white lights in the morgue showed up every detail mercilessly and every last pore and pock-mark was revealed, the history of a life, now reduced to a mere handful of scars. 'Always nice to see you Mark, but what brings you in so late on Friday afternoon?' Lambert said nothing, staring at Petrie's corpse, before turning to the coroner. John Humby was older and getting close to retirement and the two had been friends for a very long time. Humby resembled a large blood-hound, the more so the older he got and he was smiling over at Lambert, who was still thinking about the murder.

I came to regard my body in a new light. For the first time I apprehended the little mounds on my chest as teats for the suckling of young, and their physical resemblance to udders on cows or the swinging distensions on lactating hounds was suddenly unavoidable. Funny how even women forget what breasts are for. The cleft between my legs transformed as well. It lost a certain outrageousness, an obscenity, or achieved an obscenity of a different sort. The flaps seemed to open not to a narrow, snug dead end, but to something yawning. The passageway itself became a route to somewhere else, a real place, and not merely to a darkness in my mind. The twist of flesh in front took on a devious aspect, its inclusion overtly ulterior, a tempter, a sweetener for doing the species' heavy lifting, like the lollipops I once got at the dentist.

Y’all got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous—so strong!

Oberon said from behind the counter. I busied myself making Emily's tea and spoke to him through our link. 'Yes, well, she's decided to take the high road, so I'll be happy to walk it with her as long as she likes.' 'Nope. She's a witch. A polite witch, but still a witch. She's got a charm on her hair that would have had me giving her anything she wanted if I hadn't been wearing protection. Don't take anything from her, by the way.' 'Oh yes she does. Emily has probably already told her.' 'How would you know the difference if she did? You think all sausages are magic.

Enthusiasm is the first step," she said. "Artfulness comes later." "I hope I didn't disappoint you." "I'm not displeased, Jovanno. Hells, having a lover that's new to the dance means you can train him properly. Give me a few nights and I'll have you whipped into proper form." "The Asino brothers ... they always, well, they always invited me to go with them when they went out. To buy it, you know." "There's no shame in doing that. And there's no shame in not having done it. But those two are hounds, Jovanno. Any woman could smell it a mile away. Sometimes a run with the hounds is just what you're in the mood for, but in the end they'll always roll around in muck and shit on your floor." "Oh, they've got an endearing side," said Jean. "It comes out once a month, when the first moon is full. They're like backwards werewolves.

Now, let's talk about your current situation. I see that one of my hounds got a little rough with you." Kayson sees Falon's mocking smile and returns it. "Not as much as I did him when I pushed my sword through his head.

we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat - the propietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now - happy.

Oberon’s been kidnapped along with one of the werewolves, and that’s why we’re all so upset. We’ll talk more tomorrow, and I promise to answer all your questions if I survive the night,” I said. The widow’s eyebrows raised. “Ye’ve got all these nasty pooches to run around with and ye still might die?” “I’m going to go fight with a god, some demons, and a coven of witches who all want to kill me,” I said, “so it’s a distinct possibility.” “Are y’goin’ t’kill ’em back?” “I’d certainly like to.” “Attaboy,” the widow chuckled. “Off y’go, then. Kill every last one o’ the bastards and call me in the mornin’.

That was how he got there, seeking asylum, hounded—the forlorn reason for a straight arrow so assertively uxorious, so intensely and spotlessly monogamous, hurling himself at such an extraordinary moment into a situation he would have thought he hated, the shameful fiasco of being untrue.

Long before the dread monotheists got their hands on history’s neck, we had been taught how to handle feuds by none other than the god Apollo as dramatized by Aeschylus in Eumenides (a polite Greek term for the Furies who keep us daily company on CNN). Orestes, for the sin of matricide, cannot rid himself of the Furies who hound him wherever he goes. He appeals to the god Apollo who tells him to go to the UN—also known as the citizens’ assembly at Athens—which he does and is acquitted on the ground that blood feuds must be ended or they will smolder forever, generation after generation, and great towers shall turn to flame and incinerate us all until “the thirsty dust shall never more suck up the darkly steaming blood ... and vengeance crying death for death! But man with man and state with state shall vow the pledge of common hate and common friendship, that for man has oft made blessing out of ban, be ours until all time.” Let Annan mediate between East and West before there is nothing left of either of us to salvage.

So, here’s how it’s going to be,” she continues. “The doctor says I’ve only got a few months to live.” Tucker’s mouth flies open and panic distorts her features. She rises slowly from the couch and stumbles toward the front door. Opening it, she goes into Ella’s front yard. Ella makes a move to go after her when suddenly she hears a cry from outside that makes her blood turn cold. It sounds as if someone has taken the scream of a screech owl and the howl of a coyote and mixed them in hell. Ella has a memory of reading The Hound of the Baskervilles as a child and trying to imagine what the eerie howl of the hound must have sounded like. Now she is certain she knows what it sounded like and why even the intrepid Sherlock Holmes was unnerved upon hearing it.

I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and Rune too, even though he would’ve offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.

Before I could warn Azriel to hurry, the other two hounds were on me. One leaped right for me. I lifted my bow to intercept its jaws. The hound snapped it in two, hurling the wood away. I grabbed for a knife, just as the second one leaped- A roar deafened me, made my head ring. Just as one of the hounds was thrown off me. I knew that roar, knew- A golden-furred beast with curling horns tore into the hounds. 'Tamlin,' I got out, but his green eyes narrowed. Run, he seemed to say. That was who had been running alongside us. Trying to find us. He ripped and shredded, the hounds launching themselves wholly on him.

Nikolas.” The man’s voice was deep, rough, and familiar. Nikolas’s flare of aggression subsided as he realized the approaching figure was Rhys. “When you weren’t here to greet us, we got worried.” “I ran into a pack of Hounds,” Nikolas replied tersely. Rhys hesitated. “Is everything ok? “They’re dead. I’m not. Situation handled.

Under a Certain Little Star" My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity in case I’m mistaken. May happiness not be angry if I take it for my own. May the dead forgive me that their memory’s but a flicker. My apologies to time for the multiplicity of the world overlooked each second. My apologies to an old love for treating the new one as the first. Forgive me far-off wars for taking my flowers home. Forgive me open wounds for pricking my finger. My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss. My apologies to those in railway stations for sleeping comfortably at five in the morning. Pardon me hounded hope for laughing sometimes. Pardon me deserts for not rushing in with a spoonful of water. And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage, forever still and staring at the same spot, absolve me even if you happened to be stuffed. My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs. My apologies to large questions for small answers. Truth, do not pay me too much attention. Solemnity, be magnanimous to me. Endure, O mystery of being that I might pull threads from your veil. Soul, don’t blame me that I’ve got you so seldom. My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere. My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman. I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me, because I myself am my own obstacle. Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and then labor to make them light.

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it." There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory: Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises to attend to first, you notice the farmer's little boy standing silently before you with that maddening smile, which is halfway a leer, on his face, and when you ask him what's up, he says triumphantly 'The bull's busted out and he's eating the strawberry bed'. Policy planning was like that. You might anticipate a problem three or four months into the future, but by the time you'd got your ideas down on paper, the months had shrunk to three to four weeks. Getting the paper approved took still more time, which left perhaps three or four days. And by the time others had translated those ideas into action, "the thing you were planning for took place the day before yesterday, and everyone wants to know why in the hell you didn't foresee it a long time ago." Meanwhile, 234 other problems were following similar trajectories, causing throngs of people to stand around trying to get your attention: "Say, do you know that the bull is out there in the strawberry patch again?

Alec’s hand was at his lips. “You’ve got to go!” His voice cracked. “They won’t let you walk out of this, they don’t dare! I know them, Richard!” Richard tightened his arm around Alec’s shoulders, wordlessly trying to comfort, to drain the tension from the anguished spirit. But the touch was not enough. “Richard, I know them— they won’t let you live!” He turned his face in to Richard’s chest, his body clenched again in a frozen spasm not of weeping but of fury. At a loss, Richard turned again to the words that still flowed through his mind like water: Day followed day, with never night between: Feasting and all manner of delight Hedged him ’round like hounds their quarry’s heart—

I got back to the vehicles and spotted Ashley Voss right away. She was standing there waiting with her rucksack, ready to go. I walked up to her, smiled, and said, “Hey, what’s up? I’m Noah.” “Hi. I’m Ashley,” she said without much emotion. “Cool. Are you excited to come to our area?” I flashed her a grin. After a brief pause she said, “Yeah, the medics can use a female.” She was acting like a professional and I was acting more like someone standing at a bar trying to buy her a drink. As if that couldn’t be more awkward, right at that moment my radio squawked loudly, “Hey, can somebody get me that female medic’s roster number? I need it before we head out.” It was Jerry, ruining my game. I leaned over and hit the button and said a little too proudly, “I’ve got the female medic with me now. I will get that for you.” And before I could ask her what it was, Jerry came back over the radio, “Galloway. You’re with the female. Why am I not surprised?” Ashley gave me her roster number, and I sent it back to Jerry. I turned to Ashley and said, “I’m not a player, just wanted to know more about you.” She didn’t look that convinced. We got in the trucks and drove back. At the potato plant all the guys started sniffing this girl out like a bunch of hound dogs. One of the guys ran and grabbed her rucksack for her and carried it into the medic station, like he was a bellhop.

Inside it Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might take to be that of a young hound, but in truth she is a dreadful monster and no one—not even a god—could face her without being terror-struck. She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and carries off a man in each mouth.

So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because a child always believe that it is about himself. So if I am being hurt like this, I got to be a terrible person. Or.. if I was sexually abused, why didn't I fight back, I must be a very weak person. So there's a deep sense of shame. Then there's tremendous emotional pain that accrues from abuse and neglect. Tremendous emotional pain that is hardly possible for people to bear. Now they have to soothe their pain with substances or other compulsive behaviors. Then the trauma itself, given that the human brain develops in interaction with the environment, shapes the brain circuitry in such a way that the person will be more likely to find relief from the drugs. So the very phisiology of the brain is affected by early trauma. So then you take these traumatized people and you make their habit illegal... It is not illegal to drink yourself to death. It is not illegal to make yourself sick with emphyzema or lung cancer by means of cigarettes. But it is illegal to use other substances. So now you take these abused, traumatized people you place them outside the law, you put them in jails and you hound them all their lives, treating them like criminals and bad people and failures and rejects and less-than-human. And then we wonder how come they don't get better. So.. it is a self-perpetuating cycle of taking traumatized people and then re-traumatizing them. And then hoping at the same time: "why don't they listen? Why don't they get better? Why don't they give it up?". Well, they don't give it up because the more hurt they are, the more they need to escape.

When Elon was nearly ten years old, he saw a computer for the first time, at the Sandton City Mall in Johannesburg. “There was an electronics store that mostly did hi-fi-type stuff, but then, in one corner, they started stocking a few computers,” Musk said. He felt awed right away—“It was like, ‘Whoa. Holy shit!’”—by this machine that could be programmed to do a person’s bidding. “I had to have that and then hounded my father to get the computer,” Musk said. Soon he owned a Commodore VIC-20, a popular home machine that went on sale in 1980. Elon’s computer arrived with five kilobytes of memory and a workbook on the BASIC programming language. “It was supposed to take like six months to get through all the lessons,” Elon said. “I just got super OCD on it and stayed up for three days with no sleep and did the entire thing. It seemed like the most super-compelling thing I had ever seen.” Despite being an engineer, Musk’s father was something of a Luddite and dismissive of the machine. Elon recounted that “he said it was just for games and that you’d never be able to do real engineering on it. I just said, ‘Whatever.’” While

Maxim’s grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o’clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red-gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head.

When a middle school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, named Rick Riordan began thinking about the troublesome kids in his class, he was struck by a topsy-turvy idea. Maybe the wild ones weren’t hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? You’d call it Camp Half-Blood, Riordan decided, because that’s what we really are—half animal and half higher-being, halfway between each and unsure how to keep them in balance. Riordan began writing, creating a troubled kid from a broken home named Percy Jackson who arrives at a camp in the woods and is transformed when the Olympian he has inside is revealed, honed, and guided. Riordan’s fantasy of a hero school actually does exist—in bits and pieces, scattered across the globe. The skills have been fragmented, but with a little hunting, you can find them all. In a public park in Brooklyn, a former ballerina darts into the bushes and returns with a shopping bag full of the same superfoods the ancient Greeks once relied on. In Brazil, a onetime beach huckster is reviving the lost art of natural movement. And in a lonely Arizona dust bowl called Oracle, a quiet genius disappeared into the desert after teaching a few great athletes—and, oddly, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—the ancient secret of using body fat as fuel. But the best learning lab of all was a cave on a mountain behind enemy lines—where, during World War II, a band of Greek shepherds and young British amateurs plotted to take on 100,000 German soldiers. They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage. They were wanted men, marked for immediate execution. But on a starvation diet, they thrived. Hunted and hounded, they got stronger. They became such natural born heroes, they decided to follow the lead of the greatest hero of all, Odysseus, and

A Letter to the Reader I thought my dog dying was going to kill me. If I’m being honest, I still think it, some days. Most days. If I’m being honest, I still think it every day. Soul-mutt. Best friend. Not everyone understands, or will. That’s fine. I’ve never been one to want to share in grief, never been one to share much of anything. Only child, writer. A dog removes itself from the pack to lick wounds clean. A dog goes off, alone, to die. But we all know it—a family member, a friend, the sudden glazing of the eyes, the feel of a heart stopping beneath our hand. Our souls and selves dropping pieces each time someone exits this earth. Our identities, foundations shaken. Even sometimes bulldozed to nothing. This one brought me to my knees. At the time of writing this note, I can honestly say, I have never felt anything like this. I am truly surprised it hasn’t killed me. I always knew Barghest was going to die. Barghest’s death was (with the deaths of the others) the worst thing I could think of, and my job as I see it is to explore all the worsts. And all the bests, too. This book, or more accurately, an early, now unrecognizable version of it, was the first thing I ever seriously wrote. It was also what got me started on this path of Writer. Someone read this early snippet and believed in it, in me. This was a story that I wanted to tell from day one, ideas that hounded me then and have for all the years since. It’s taken ten years, an education, all the events of a decade of life, and more drafts than I’d like to count for me to tell this story in a way that felt right. In a way that is (I hope) befitting of you, most precious reader. And these dogged questions of guilt, shame, faith have nipped at my heels through everything. Funny, how they always draw just enough blood to keep us from running full tilt. But now. In the wake of a loss that has shaken me more than any I’ve lived through before, in a moment in which I find myself, like Sophie, questioning everything, questioning what the point of being here is at all, I have to say, It all feels very human and very small to confine and bind ourselves to anything that seeks to diminish us. This world and universe and existence is so expansive and evolving, and we choose to let ourselves be crippled by someone else’s ideas. We share life with mortality. We will die. Everyone we love will die. We will all face the dark. Together, or separate. We just don’t know. There is no self-help book, no textbook, no how-to that can tell us, definitively, what comes after. By the time any of us has the answers, we won’t be here to write them. None of us knows, even if we think we do. But here is what I do know: We live with death. And horror chooses not to turn away from it. Horror looks the darkness in the eyes. Horror dances with the absence, the loss. Explores ways for us—you, the reader, and me—to take it in our arms and spin around together. Ways to embrace the centrifugal force that is human striving, human searching. Mortal life. Dogs die. Humans die. We live with it, whether we want to or not. But from choosing to look, choosing not to turn away, from our embrace in the darkness, I hope that guilt and shame and any idea invented to hold you down in this glorious, nearly blinding existence, will seem, at the end of it all, very, very small. You, and me, spinning too fast for them to catch us. Thank you for continuing on this journey with me. With my characters, who are of course, now yours. These questions and worlds that I humbly share with you. That now belong to you. And while we keep hurtling through the unknown, as we spin round and round, I want to say, Here’s to dancing, book by book, question by question, through this vast, shining existence. Together.

Thorgil held out the hand she's been hiding. It was an odd, silvery color. "I can't move my fingers. I'm paralyzed." She laughed bitterly. "Once, Frith Half-Troll threatened to cut off my right hand so I could be a warrior no more. It seems she got her wish." ... "Remember Tyr? The god who sacrificed his hand to bind the giant wolf? It was a noble deed, to be sung about through all time - and you've done the same!" Thorgil looked up, and now the morning light reached the camp and shone onto her face. "So I have," she murmured. "Yes! You'll be known as - what shall we call you? Thorgil Silver-Hand, who fought the Hound of Hel. I'll make a song about it." "Oh, Jack," whispered the shield maiden. She blinked back tears, then shook her head angrily. "Curse this sunlight. It's making my eyes water... Thorgil Silver-Hand. I like that," she said.

I’d wait on that if I were you. I think he’s got his hands full for a while.” Sometimes all Daniel could do was sit back and shake his head at the constant ribbing between the two cousins. The situation didn’t matter; one of them was always hounding the other, in a cousinly way, of course.

I want to make you never want to leave from under me.” Stitch gave him one more kiss before finally pushing himself up. Stitch had no idea he had already reached his goal, but Zak was a reasonable man, and he wouldn’t make teenage-worthy promises or declarations. Life didn’t work that way in his world. Instead, he reached back with his hand without yet looking up. He was heavy with lazy, sweet exhaustion. “What’s this?” Stitch chuckled and pulled on his fingers. “Nothing. Just wanted to touch you,” muttered Zak, slowly turning his head and sprawling his cheek on the blanket to look back. He took a deep breath when Stitch pulled out his cock, leaving him boneless. “You can touch me whenever you want.” Stitch smiled at him with his eyelids lowered. He was the picture of satisfaction. Zak snorted and pulled on Stitch’s hand, getting to his feet. He didn’t want to think about the bad blood left over from the spying. Or the broken window. “That’s handy.” Stitch got rid of the condom and stroked Zak’s ass with a lazy grin. Zak sighed, looking at the large hand on his asscheek. “You know how to make a man feel special

We’ve traded quite a bit of information over the years,” Means said. “I worked out of Mason City for six years, so we got to know each other. He’s sort of a hound when it comes to women.” “Not sort of,” Lucas said. “He’s the fuckin’ Hound of the Baskervilles when it comes to women. Every time he gets around my daughter, I make sure I’ve got my gun.

Sir!" he called out. "The Great Chaffalo! My name's Touch, and I brought a bundle of straw. I'd be much obliged if you'd turn it into a horse." Nearby, the tall weeds rasped a little in the breeze. But that was all. He picked up the straw and hurried past broken windows to the rear of the house. "You there, Mr. Chaffalo? It's me, Touch, and I'm in a dreadful hurry. My great-uncle aims to cart me off to the orphan house, but that don't take my fancy. I ain't asking for a fine, high-stepping horse, sir. Just any four legs'll do, as long as one ain't lame. I'd be proper grateful, Mr. Great Chaffalo." Undiscouraged, Touch moved his bundle of straw back to the front of the house to try again. And he noticed the rocking chair was pitching as if someone had just got up. Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath. "If you were dozing, I don't mean to rile you up, sir. Maybe you heard of my great-uncle. Judge Wigglesforth? Crosscut saws don't come any meaner. I know I don't amount to much, for a boy, but I'm not shifty-eyed, the way he says. I hope you can see that, Great Chaffalo." Suddenly, Touch thought he could feel a pair of eyes watching him. The eyes in the poster! he thought. His hopes took a leap. "I aim to ride through the woods until I'm long out of reach, sir. He won't know where to look. I'll thank you everlastingly if you'll oblige me with a horse." A snarl burst out of the tall weeds. It wasn't a horse. It was a scruffy wild dog, its teeth looking like rusty nails. And it was coming straight for Touch. Touch began to shinny up a porch column, but he knew that hound was going to get its rusty teeth into his leg. Then he heard a snap of fingers and a voice in the air. "Hey! Hey!" The bundle of straw changed into a horse.

That dog’s smarter than I am.” She winked at Ash, and Ashley giggled. Then she left the house. Kristin gazed through the window and in the near distance, saw Rick, Madison, Danny and Quincy on their boat coming into dock. She immediately understood what her daughter hadn’t voiced. The dog’s real family was here now. Ashley would be left out. “The hordes will want lunch, so I’ve got to leave,” said Cathy. “I came over to invite you guys to supper. We’ll grill outside - very informal. I hope you can make it.” Kristin did not have a social calendar, but neither was she sure about having Rick’s “hands-on” family in her personal life. Still, after last night’s get together, it was probably too late for keeping many secrets. “What can we bring to the party?” “Oh, goody!” Cathy was back in form. “Rick will be happy.” The two women walked outside in time to see Quincy race toward Ashley and cover her with kisses. “Ugh!” Ashley protested. “You’re all wet and yucky, Quince.” She stepped back. “You would be too if you kept jumping in the lake for a swim.” Rick joined them, tee shirt soaked, hair standing on end. Eyes bright. He jerked his head toward his sister. “From now on, it’s either the hound or your monsters. Not both.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “Sure, sure, sure. When I see it, I’ll believe it. Ricky, the kids play you the way you play a fish - pulling in the line, letting it out, pulling it in until they catch you. And they always catch you.” She grinned at Kristin. “A real fish might escape, but this fish doesn’t have a chance with the kids. He

Behind him, a woman’s voice rises, fluid and mellifluous on words he does not understand, until Will pushed himself upright with both hands flat on the dew and got his feet under him in a crouch.

N.C. Chatterjee, one of Savarkar’s close colleagues in the Mahasabha, vented his frustration in a letter to Moonje: The entire Hindu population is with Gandhiji and his movement and if anybody wants to oppose it, he will be absolutely finished and hounded out of public life. The unfortunate statement of Veer Savarkar [opposing Quit India] made our position rather difficult in Bengal. It is rather amusing to find that Mr. Jinnah wants the Mussalmans not to join the Congress movement and Mr. Savarkar wants the Hindus not to join the same. Even when the Congress movement has made a great stir and it shows that it has got thousands of adherents.

call up his hounds from below. Sinewy, fire-hearted beasts, with translucent skin and teeth that spawned nightmares in dreams, the hounds roamed the land that night, searching for beauty and devouring those who got in their way. For Dacre assumed Enva was lovely to behold.

Waylon, my lazy basset hound, wandered his stumpy legs off the porch to greet his uncle.

For three or four years, Musk endured relentless hounding at the hands of these bullies. They went so far as to beat up a boy that Musk considered his best friend until the child agreed to stop hanging out with Musk. “Moreover, they got him—they got my best fucking friend—to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up,” Musk said. “And that fucking hurt.

That's when the cop noticed the two dogs in the back seat. "Oh, basset hounds!" the officer exclaimed. "They are adorable and I just got one myself!" The Flemings got off with a warning. Wrote

Beware of the hound He’s never been tamed Like cursive writing With a long last name Always hungry Scratchin’ at fleas Beware of the dog Wont’cha please   Beware of the cat He’s a little neurotic Like a moonshine high On antibiotics Always climbing In an old oak tree Beware of the cat Wont’cha please   Beware of the snake He’s a little greasy Like Delta Blues Or the Ole Big Easy Always crawlin’ Ain’t got no knees Beware of the snake Wont’cha please   Beware of the rabbit He’s always listenin’ Like a nosey neighbor Or a normal Christian Always eager Ill at ease Beware of the rabbit Wont’cha please   Beware of the man Born too rich Like the Bubonic plague He’s a son of a bitch Always selling Filled with greed Beware of the man Wont’cha please    

So now that you’re in like with me, do you think we should start color coordinating our outfits?” She rolled her eyes and groaned. During the last half hour of our car ride, I’d hounded her about her confession. Mostly because I liked to see her squirm. Well, and because she liked me. I was freaking stoked. So I teased her about everything from the necessity of pet names to the value of posting couples’ selfies on various forms of social media to suggestions about our “celebrity” name—I was rooting for Macity. “For what it’s worth, I’m in serious dislike of you right now.” I laughed, enjoying this way too much. “We should also start having sleepovers…since you’re in like with me.” She pressed her palms to her forehead then dragged them down her face. “Oh. My. God. I’m going to kill you before we even make it out of this car.” “Tomorrow I’ll run to the store and get extra toothbrushes so we can keep them at each other’s places. Should I get his and hers towels too?” She banged her head on the headrest. “Too soon?” I pulled into the parking lot of the marina. “Okay, only toothbrushes.” “I’m going to murder you with that fucking toothbrush if you don’t stop saying ‘in like’ with you.” I parked the car. “You started it.” The overhead light popped on as I got out. “Mason!” I laughed as the car door shut. Grumbling, she got out, and I greeted her on the passenger side. “One more, then I promise I’m done.” I shut her door and pushed her up against it. “I’m happy you’re finally in like with me because I’ve been in like with you for a while

You and I come from such completely different backgrounds, Viv. I was planning to be a nun!” Viv’s eyes widened in shock, but very briefly. “Well, you’d have been some kick-ass nun, that’s for sure. I’ve seen you with your boys—they don’t even sass. But something obviously changed your mind about the convent…” “Patrick Riordan, Sr., my husband. He hounded me until I gave in and dated him, then married him. And he’s been the only man in my life. The only one. I can’t imagine another man…” “You must have loved him very much.” “Well, of course I did, but that’s got nothing to do with it. I’m just far too mature to be thinking about a relationship with a man. Those days are gone. It was hard enough for me when I was young and my body was—” She stopped, unable to finish. “What? Maureen, you’re beautiful! Your figure is amazing! You play sports and your mind is quick and you seem so confident.” Maureen snorted. “Of course I’m confident. With my clothes on!” She took a drink of her wine. “Patrick was and will be the only husband of my lifetime.” Vivian

Now look,” he said. He felt the back collar of his shirt and jacket clutched in an iron grip and he whirled on the giant, hitting him square in the jaw with his fist. He suspected he’d broken his hand, but no way was he letting on. He did wince in pain, however, while the very large man merely turned his brick of a face to the side. “You shouldn’t’a done that, little man,” the guy said. It took him roughly one second to draw back his fist and plaster Sean in the face hard enough to send him reeling into the melons. Then to the floor. Sean saw a lot of stars and was aware of the melons as they began to bounce around the produce section. And there was blood—he wasn’t sure where from since his entire face felt as if it had been through a meat grinder. “Hey!” Franci shouted. “What’s the matter with you? I told you to leave it alone, he’s harmless!” “No good deed goes unpunished, I guess,” the big man said. “It looked like you needed help. Maybe you like being grabbed like that in the grocery store, huh, babe?” Sean muttered something about not being harmless and tried to get to his feet, without success. The big man said, “Just stay down where you are, buster.” But Sean was intent on getting up and he’d just about made it to his feet when the man took two giant steps in his direction. That was all it took for Franci to launch herself on the lumberjack with a cry of outrage. She had her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist and screamed bloody murder while pummeling him on the back. “I. Told. You. To. Leave. Him. Alone!” she shrieked. Paul Bunyan whirled around and around, trying to shake her loose, but she was on him like a tick on a hound. Then the scene got a lot more interesting. “No! No! No! No! No!” screamed a store manager, running up to them, followed closely by another man and a couple of young bag boys. A crowd gathered and the grocery employees peeled Franci off the lumberjack, but she was kicking her heart out the whole time. “The police are coming!” the store manager yelled. “Stop this at once! Stop!” And Sean absently thought, This really isn’t going how I planned. Right

Bandit’s Run From behind me came a rattle of brush and then, one of the boars was on me, aiming for my neck. I fell back, and dropped the gun. I brought my feet up to my chest and prepared to fight for my life. Then suddenly, there was another growl. But it was a much different sound this time. It was lower than the excited half-squeals of the wild boar and it froze us all. I saw my chance and got to my feet, spotting the gun a few feet away. As I went for it, I saw him. It was Bandit, my father’s old coonhound. He lurched through the forest, his teeth all fury, showing no fear. I picked up the gun and ran to him. Two boars leapt on the dog’s back, their golden eyes now green and focused. Bandit rolled, as he was taught to do. They fell from his back and the dog was on his feet again, positioned in front of me. I leveled the gun and aimed. I fired. The shot was deafening in the still of night and roared up the sides of the hills, echoing through the ravine. The whole herd took off running with Bandit in hot pursuit. I called after him as I ran blindly through the woods, following the loud bawl of the old hound. I was up and over a small hill, into the next ravine. Bandit was getting farther and farther away but I kept on running, trying to keep up. Before I knew it I was in the clearing where I had first started the day, only about 100 yards from the cabin. I could hear my mother’s voice calling for me and I ran to her. My father was at her side, already putting on his jacket to come and search for me. I hugged my mother and burst out crying, trying to explain what had happened. I could feel my father’s hand on my shoulder, he was telling me to calm down, everything was all right. I looked at him and said, “It was Bandit, Dad. He saved me. He came out of the woods, full speed, he…” “Bandit?” my father asked. The look on his face was one of confusion and wonder. “David, Bandit’s been dead for two years now, remember? We buried him up past those two hills, by that creek bed in the ravine. It must have been another dog, son.” I was going to tell him, tell them both, that I saw his face, I knew it was him, but something told me not to. As we all walked into the cabin together, I could hear a wail in the distance, coming from over the hills and down in a small ravine. Or it could have been the wind. -David Magill

day, the trigger was an older woman with deep wrinkles. To this day, I cannot be certain about what caused her to react so strongly. Perhaps she had used up her patience simmering in the sun for hours at the back of the line. Perhaps she had some desperately hungry grandchildren who she needed to get back to. It is impossible to know exactly what happened. But after she received her allocation of wheat, she broke the established rules of the feeding site and moved toward Bubba. She looked up at him and unleashed a verbal attack. Bubba, as gentle as ever, simply smiled at her. The more he smiled, the angrier she got. I noticed the commotion when our Somali guards suddenly tensed and turned toward the disturbance. All I could see was Bubba, head and shoulders above a gathering crowd, seemingly unperturbed, and smiling down at someone. His patient response only fueled the woman’s rage. I heard her sound of fury long before I spotted the source when she launched a long stream of vile curses at Bubba. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word that she was saying. It was now possible to understand her complaint. She was upset about the quality of the “animal feed” that was being distributed for human consumption. She was probably right in her assessment of the food. These were surplus agricultural products that United Nations contributing members didn’t want, couldn’t sell, and had no other use for. As this hulking American continued to smile, the woman realized that she was not communicating. Now, furious and frustrated, she bent down, set her plastic bag on the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirty, broken wheat, grain dust, dirt and chaff. She straightened to her full height and flung the filthy mixture as hard as she could into Bubba’s face. The crowd was deathly silent as I heard a series of loud metallic clicks that indicated that an entire squad of American soldiers had instinctively locked and loaded all weapons in readiness for whatever might happen next. Everything felt frozen in time as everyone waited and watched for Bubba’s reaction. A Somali man might have beaten the woman for such a public insult—and he would have considered his action and his anger entirely justified. I knew that Bubba had traveled half-way around the world at his own expense to spend three months of personal vacation time to help hurting people. And this was the thanks that he received? He was hot, sweaty, and drained beyond exhaustion—and he had just been publicly embarrassed. He had every reason to be absolutely livid. Instead, he raised one hand to rub the grit out of his eyes, and then he gave the woman one more big smile. At that point, he began to sing. And what he sang wasn’t just any song. She didn’t understand the words, of course. But she, and the entire crowd, stood in silent amazement as Bubba belted out the words to the 1950’s Elvis Presley rock-n-roll classic: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine. By the time he started singing the next verse, the old woman had turned and stomped off in frustration, angrily plowing a path through the now-smiling crowd of Somalis to make her escape. Watching her go, Bubba raised his voice to send her off with rousing rendition of the final verse: Well they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Ya know they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine.

Milton did his best to keep up, which is to say, he lagged behind, baying like a mortally wounded basset hound. The Fausters were to singing as Napoleon was to Extreme Frisbee. Milton’s Pang gullet only made things worse, drawing out each tortured “note” until it whimpered for release. Mr. Presley pulled the emergency brake on their duet. “We’ve all got talent, son,” he consoled. “Some folks just got to dig deeper than others to find it. Now, let’s give someone else a chance. You”—he waved his diamond-ringed fingers lazily toward Virgil—“step on up and show us what you’ve got.” Virgil rose nervously, his metal chair sighing with relief, and trudged up to the stage as Milton shambled off. Ever the good friend, Virgil tried to high-five Milton after his disastrous debut, but due to Milton’s Pang-suited delayed reaction, he just ended up slapping him in the head. “Sorry,” Virgil mumbled to his friend as he stood before the chalkboard. “Just follow my lead, son, and relax,” Mr. Presley slurred supportively. Mr. Presley began to mournfully croon. “Au signal du plaisir, Dans la chambre du drille, Tu peux bien entrer fille, Mais non fille en sortir …” Virgil pulled in a great breath and began to sing. “Bonne nuit, hélas! Ma petite, bonne nuit. Près du moment fatal.” In a word, Virgil’s voice was stunning. In another word, he was a virtuoso. In four more words, Milton was very surprised. Virgil’s thrilling spectacle of pitch and tone was like a vocal fireworks display, and his breath control left the rest of the class breathless. “Fais grande résistance, S’il ne t’offre d’avance Un anneau conjugale.” Riding

Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to come in.” He raises an eyebrow at that, and I find myself floundering to fill the silence. “I just meant that I really do have school tomorrow, and I need to get my sleep.” He still says nothing, just continues to stare. “I, um, I don’t think I’m ready for more right now. Not that what happened wasn’t great, and it’s not like I don’t want more, but I don’t run on less than a solid eight hours of sleep, and if you and I got started, who knows how long it could last?” Why isn’t he saying anything? Even my inner goddess is freaking out by his lack of response. “Not that I’m expecting it to last all night.” Crap, now he’s frowning. My hands even start to panic as I try to wave off the bad words coming out of my mouth. “Not saying you can’t. Most don’t. Hell, most take less than twenty minutes.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut. Up! I take a breath and puff out my cheeks like a freaking chipmunk. Might not look sexy, but at least it’s keeping me from spouting any more crap. I really don’t know what’s going on with me right now. Invasion of the Body Snatchers strikes again, it seems. He shakes his head before he snatches my keys out of my hands. “Twenty minutes wouldn’t even be long enough for me to eat you out before I take you,” he says in passing. My jaw drops, and I turn my head to watch him unlock my house and let himself in.

Got you, you coffee cup stealing sh*t.

The missus,” Ferguson continued, “devious wench that she is, was, in hindsight, far too keen to compromise. I expressed the firm opinion that I wanted a Labrador, for her part she wanted a poodle, and what we ended up with was Kevin. He is a Labradoodle, which I belatedly realised was what my wife wanted all along.” “Well,” said O’Rourke, “he seems nice.” “Nice. Yes, well, nice – that is exactly the problem. What I wanted was a manly hound, man’s best friend. What I got was something that looks as if it should be playing keyboard in an 80s pop band. I feel frankly ridiculous walking him about.

But Thanatos sniffed toward Bryce, almost as canine as the hounds in the shadows, and said, “Your starlight smells… fresher.” The hunger lacing the male’s words stilled Hunt’s chaotic mind—honing him into a weapon primed for violence. He didn’t give a shit if he never got answers about his parentage. If that asshole made one move against Bryce, ghostly forms or no— Bryce said nonchalantly, “New deodorant.

The award-winning American TV series Breaking Bad has a scene in its second season set in the murder capital of Ciudad Juárez. In this episode, American and Mexican agents are lured to a patch of desert just south of the border looking for an informant. They discover the informant’s head has been cut off and stuck on the body of a giant turtle. But as they approach, the severed cranium, turned into an IED, explodes, killing agents. The episode was released in 2009. I thought it was unrealistic, a bit fantastic. Until July 15, 2010. In the real Ciudad Juárez on that day, gangsters kidnapped a man, dressed him in a police uniform, shot him, and dumped him bleeding on a downtown street. A cameraman filmed what happened after federal police and paramedics got close. The video shows medics bent over the dumped man, checking for vital signs. Suddenly a bang rings out, and the image shakes vigorously as the cameraman runs for his life. Gangsters had used a cell phone to detonate twenty-two pounds of explosives packed into a nearby car. A minute later, the camera turns back around to reveal the burning car pouring smoke over screaming victims. A medic lies on the ground, covered in blood but still moving, a stunned look on his face. Panicked officers are scared to go near him. The medic dies minutes later along with a federal agent and a civilian. I’m not suggesting that Breaking Bad inspired the murders. TV shows don’t kill people. Car bombs kill people. The point of the story is that the Mexican Drug War is saturated with stranger-than-fiction violence. Mexican writer Alejandro Almazán suffered from a similar dilemma. As he was writing his novel Among Dogs, he envisioned a scene in which thugs decapitate a man and stick a hound’s head on his corpse. It seemed pretty out there. But then in real life some gangsters did exactly that, only with a pig’s head. It is just hard to compete with the sanguine criminal imagination. Cartel thugs have put a severed head in a cooler and delivered it to a newspaper; they have dressed up a murdered policeman in a comedy sombrero and carved a smile on his cheeks; and they have even sewn a human face onto a soccer ball.

Hi,” I said, feeling self-conscious that the dog might be judging me for sleeping with his human. But if the basset hound was feeling judgmental, it didn’t last because he rolled over and promptly went back to sleep.

Dorian bowed to her, opened the door, and they went inside. Let Ress and the guards think what they wanted. She unfastened the mask from her face, tossing it onto the table in the center of the foyer, and sighed as the cool air met her flushed skin. “Well?” she asked, leaning against the wall beside the door to her bedroom. Dorian approached her slowly, halting only a hand’s breath away. “You left the ball without saying good-bye,” he said, and braced an arm against the wall beside her head. She raised her eyes, examining the black detail on the sleeve that fell just above her hair. “I’m impressed you got up here so quickly—and without a pack of court ladies hounding after you. Perhaps you should try your hand at being an assassin.” He shook the hair out of his face. “I’m not interested in court ladies,” he said thickly, and kissed her. His mouth was warm, and his lips were smooth, and Celaena lost all sense of time and place as she slowly kissed him back. He pulled away for a moment, looked into her eyes as they opened, and kissed her again. It was different this time—deeper, full of need. Her arms were heavy and light all at once, and the room twirled round and round. She couldn’t stop. She liked this—liked being kissed by him, liked the smell and the taste and the feel of him. His arm slipped around her waist and he held her tightly to him as his lips moved against hers. She put a hand on his shoulder, her fingers digging into the muscle that lay beneath. How

While we waited for the eggs Peterkin asked, trying to sound casual, “This your hound-dog? What’s his name?” Bill Monroe looked at us and the dog as mean as a man can look. “He’s ourn all right. Bein’ a plain hound-dog he hain’t got a name.

Flower killers ( PART 1 ) Flower killers There is a war going on out there, Wherever you turn to see, it is everywhere, Guns firing bullets that bear one address: kill, Who? Just anyone do it at your free will, And the guns spray death in all directions, Giving rise to endless predilections, That of a father, a mother and a lover, Whoever the bullet may hit, is lost forever, And when bullets turn stray, They hit anything that comes in their way, It does not matter whether you are a foe or a friend, That time the bullet, only its purpose does defend, That to kill and shoot anyhow and anyone, It can be a father, a mother, a daughter, a lover, or just a human someone, And as the victim falls and collapses on the ground, The bullet pierces deeper like the canines of a hungry hound, And no matter how hard you tried it cannot be bound, Because the war is everywhere and so is its echoing and deathly sound, That tempts the bullet to travel and shoot someone, somewhere, And it couldn't be happier than now, because the war is everywhere, Yesterday a stray bullet whizzed through the air, And it hit a flower that had just bloomed and looked fair, Its petals got shredded into countless pieces, The pollen grains flew in the air and fell in different places, And as they fell, they all cried, “murder!” But the bullet had no intention to surrender, The tattered flower petals fell on the ground, I realised there is a new gang called, “flower killers” and they abound, The bee and the butterfly desperately searched for their missing flower, And ah the pain they felt as a dismayed lover, Their wings dropped and they fell to ground like dead autumn leaves, Where except the bullet, even death grieves, The other flowers looked helplessly at the fallen youth and it's still falling memories, And in honour of the killed flower, they named their garden, the garden of tragedies, And to pay their homages, they all wilted on the same day, The garden looked barren even on a new Summer day, The bullet that killed the flower lies embedded in the fence, Same bullet that killed someone who possessed nothing in self defence, Continued in part 2...

As they neared the glasshouse, they went on tip toes, making it a game of spying. When they got closer they noticed the closed venetian blinds. “They’ve got some of those slatted blinds, but there might be a place to peep in,” Brigit said. Then they noticed the sign saying: BEWARE OF THE FROG and they burst into delighted laughter. “What you laffin’ at?” said the frog as he sprang into view from behind an old up-turned bucket. Then he remembered that he was on guard and said: “Halt! Who goes dere? Friend or Foe?” Pidge and Brigit were astounded and delighted and they stared at the frog in happy disbelief. “You can’t talk,” Brigit ventured after awhile, her eyes wide and her voice full of doubt and hope at the same time. “You hear me awright,” the frog said accusingly.

Melodie Moonlight’s shadow lay flat on the floor, exhausted. “Get up and fight, you cur,” Melodie snarled in a sudden temper, “or you will be sent to the dark side of the Moon.” And the shadow got up and tried to fight. It crawled and cringed after her and did as she wished, because it knew that the dark side of the Moon would be death. A shadow needs light to live.

You know I need you, Hound. You. You know why. You know how it is with us.” He did not. “Don’t pull away from me,” she finished. “Woman--” Both her hands grabbed his cheeks and she got deeper in his face. “You’re mine and you know it.

Dumpling is the kind of dog that makes people on the street do double- and triple-takes and ask in astonished voices, "What kind of dog IS that?!" His head is way too small for his thick, solid body, and his legs are too spindly. His eyes point away from each other like a chameleon. One side of his mouth curls up a little, half-Elvis, half palsy-victim, and his tongue has a tendency to stick out just a smidgen on that side. He was found as a puppy running down the median of a local highway, and I adopted him from PAWS five years ago, after he had been there for nearly a year. He is, without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me. My girlfriend Bennie says it looks like he was assembled by a disgruntled committee. Barry calls him a random collection of dog bits. My mom, in a classic ESL moment, asked upon meeting him, "He has the Jack Daniels in him, leetle bit, no?' I was going to correct her and say Jack Russell, but when you look at him, he does look a little bit like he has the Jack Daniels in him. My oldest nephew, Alex, who watches too much Family Guy and idolizes Stewie, took one look, and then turned to me in all seriousness and said in that weird almost-British accent, "Aunt Alana, precisely what brand of dog is that?" I replied, equally seriously, that he was a purebred Westphalian Stoat Hound. When the kid learns how to Google, I'm going to lose major cool aunt points. Dumpling tilts his head back and licks the underside of my chin, wallowing in love. "Dog, you are going to be the death of me. You have got to let me sleep sometime." These words are barely out of my mouth, when he leaps up and starts barking, in a powerful growly baritone that belies his small stature.

...it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk. It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget. A man with nobody to care for is as lonesome as a lost hound dog, and as useless. If he's to feel of any purpose to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble.

was nearly ten years old, he saw a computer for the first time, at the Sandton City Mall in Johannesburg. “There was an electronics store that mostly did hi-fi-type stuff, but then, in one corner, they started stocking a few computers,” Musk said. He felt awed right away—“It was like, ‘Whoa. Holy shit!’”—by this machine that could be programmed to do a person’s bidding. “I had to have that and then hounded my father to get the computer,” Musk said. Soon he owned a Commodore VIC-20, a popular home machine that went on sale in 1980. Elon’s computer arrived with five kilobytes of memory and a workbook on the BASIC programming language. “It was supposed to take like six months to get through all the lessons,” Elon said. “I just got super OCD on it and stayed up for three days with no sleep and did the entire thing. It seemed like the most super-compelling thing I had ever seen.” Despite being an engineer, Musk’s father was something of a Luddite and dismissive of the machine. Elon recounted that “he said it was just for games and that you’d never be able to do real engineering on it. I just said, ‘Whatever.’” While bookish and into his new computer, Elon quite often led Kimbal and his cousins (Kaye’s children) Russ, Lyndon, and Peter Rive on adventures. They dabbled one year in selling Easter eggs door-to-door in the neighborhood. The eggs were not well decorated, but the boys still marked them up a few hundred percent for their wealthy neighbors. Elon also spearheaded their work with homemade explosives and rockets. South Africa did not have the Estes rocket kits popular among hobbyists, so Elon would create his own chemical compounds and put them inside of canisters. “It is remarkable

St Clairs Defeat" "Was November the fourth in the year of ninety-one We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson Sinclair was our commander, which may remembered be But we left nine hundred soldiers in that Western Territory At Bunker’s Hill and in Quebec, where many a hero fell Likewise out on Long Island, it is I the truth can tell But such a dreadful carnage, never did I see As happened all out on the plains, near the River St. Marie Our militia was attacked, just as the day did break And soon were overpowered, and forced into retreat They killed major Ouldham, and major Briggs likewise While horrid yells of anguished souls resounded through the skies Major Butler he was wounded the very second fire His manly bosom swelled with rage they forced him to retire Like one distracted he appeared, when thus exclaim-ed he Ye hounds of Hell shall all be slain but what revenged I’ll be We had not very long been broke, when General Butler fell He cries my boys I’m wounded, pray take me off this field My word says he, what shall we do, we’re wounded every man Go charge your valiant heros and beat them if you can He leaned his back against a tree, and there resigned his breath And like a valiant soldier, sunk into the arms of death When blessed angels did await, his spirit to convey Into celestial fields, he did quickly bend his way We charged again and took our ground, which did our hearts elate But there we did not tarry long, they soon made us retreat They killed our major Ferguson, which caused his men to cry Stand to your guns says valiant Ford, we’ll fight until we die Our cannon balls exhausted, artillery men all slain Our musketeers and riflemen, their fire they did sustain Three hours more we fought like men, and they were forced to yield While three hundred bloody warriors lay stretched across the filed Says colonel Gibson to his men, my boys be not dismayed I’m sure that true Virginians were never yet afraid Ten thousand deaths I’d rather die, than they should gain this field With that he got a fatal shot, causing him to yield Says major Clark, my heros, we can no longer stand We shall strive to form in order, and retreat the best we can The word retreat being passed around, they raised a dreadful cry Then helter skelter through the woods like wolves and sheep they fly We left the wounded on the field, O heavens what a shock! And many bones were shattered, and strewn across the rock With scalping knives and tomahawks, they robbed some of their breath While raging flames of torment, tortured other men to death Was November the fourth in the year of ninety-one We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson Sinclair was our commander, which may remembered be But we left nine hundred soldiers in that Western Territory