Böcker av John Lauricella

Next-door neighbors regard each other as small-stakes terrorists in this dark comedy set in a college town. Armand Terranova, once a petroleum-industry analyst, has escaped his Wall Street overlords in the wake of 9/11 by moving his family to Ithaca, NY, where he and his wife Leah have rebuilt an old house into their new home. Just across the property line, Luke Robideau lives with his elderly mother in a run-down Cape Cod wreathed with an aura of poverty and a dread sense of threats both foreign and domestic rising on all sides. During the summer of 2004, suicide bombers and IEDs kill American soldiers in Iraq. Al Qaeda kidnaps aid workers, translators, and journalists, then beheads them. In Afghanistan, the hunt for Osama bin Laden has stalled amid the caves of Tora Bora. In his renovated bungalow, Armand monitors America's wars even as he hides from them-a practice he shares unknowingly with Luke, who has stocked a sniper's nest in anticipation of fighting terrorists head-on. Luke and Armand have never exchanged a word and distrust each other on sight. Luke's cats and dogs roam freely and foul Armand's lawn and patio. Stalking the animals with a BB-gun, Armand feels his neighbor as a threat: an unmarried, ill-kempt big man who lives with his elderly mother. To Luke, Armand is an immigrant peasant lucky at Luke's expense. Luke depends on Mother's Social Security and siblings' checks to live in his childhood home, while his neighbor has a family, a renovated house, and enough money. How can a man feel safe in his ordinary life when his country is fighting two wars against hidden enemies and his neighbor seems a co-conspirator? When small-animal excrement begins to fly across the property line, paranoia, hostility, and suspicion tip toward violence and a confrontation only one man can win.

When a videotape shows up with a note talking blackmail, ADA Dale Cuffy knows it's a matter requiring an unofficial response - especially as the video catches him at an orgy with more than his pants down. Even worse is the fatal accident (in dying color) involving his wife, who appears to have instigated the crash, in disguise. How are these scenes related? Who played witness, on-the-spot with a camera? Can Dale thwart the blackmailer and be sure of keeping secrets? Shauna holds the key: the identity of the pornographer and the name of his apprentice. A narrative of operatic variety, The Pornographer's Apprentice dramatizes a young man's extreme and illicit gambit to satisfy his desire for one special woman - and how his friend's counterplot defeats his intentions. It is a story of sex and death, art and money, poetry and pornography, life's brevity and our yearning for permanence.

In 2094 ... ... citizens of Illumined Cities enjoy cerebral microchips and SexBot service ... .... Badlands desperadoes sabotage nuclear waste storages sites in Mexico ... ... detainees of Gulag Cuba wage jihad against Discipline & Punish ... ... Initiates and Adepts on Mars seek the Philosopher's Stone. J Melmoth and wife Raquel are leisured, privileged, self-indulgent, and at peace with the world that is. SmartBots do all the work, CellRenew keeps them young, organ cloning keeps them healthy, and microchips integrated with their prefrontal cortexes keep them connected. Newsstories manifesting on their windowall nag at their attention: Gulag Cuba remains full of detainees, New Age alchemists on Mars still cannot establish a viable atmosphere for the Red Planet, and EcoTerrorism is rampant across the Badlands of Mexico. Puzzling, that Gulag prisoners refuse microchip implantation despite rewards on offer. Inside Mars Colony's geodesic domes, Initiates and Adepts control the dispensation on Earth while Mexican guerrillas elude ambush and cheat death. Against long odds, they cross the Badlands and Sierra Madre in search of stolen families and an ancient treasure that may ransom them. Initiates know the secret to immortality lies in gold. It is a question of creating enough or of finding it. The paradise promised by a century of high technology and ancient knowledge seems at hand. Or is it? Why does Melmoth's SmartBot malfunction, and Raquel's follow suit? Why has the historical record been changed and the text of a famous novel tinkered with? Gulag detainees court death by resisting microchip enhancement. The Mexican's quest brings them to the ancient city of Teotihuacan - conveniently for the eggheads on Mars, who fail repeatedly to transform base metals into gold. And Melmoth? His head hurts. That microchip must be on the fritz. Can he remediate? In the world that is, it is late in day. For Melmoth. For everyone ... Tragic and comic, realistic and fantastic, 2094 is a narrative mosaic, a speculative dystopia jazzed with science-fiction and fretted with gold. It is a story of quest and protest, esoteric theology, Meso-American legend, and synthetic technologies. Visionary, sardonic, and fiercely honest, it imagines a future being born today.