As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined, until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing and too earth-shattering in its implications, to be forgotten. Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us, and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.

"Set in the wilds of Washington State, Greenloop was once a model eco-community--until nature's wrath made it a tragic object lesson in civilization's fragility. Offering a glorious back-to-nature experience with all the comforts of high-speed Internet, solar smart houses, and the assurance of being mere hours from Seattle by highway, Greenloop was indeed a paradise--until Mount Rainier erupted, leaving its residents truly cut off from the world, and utterly unprepared for the consequences. With no weapons and their food supplies dwindling, Greenloop's residents slowly realized that they were in a fight for survival. And as the ash swirled and finally settled, they found themselves facing a specter none of them could have predicted--or even thought possible"--

"It's only January, and the year has already brought blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest. But for journalist Allie Burns, bad news provides an opportunity to escape the "women's stories" to which her editors confine her. Striking up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan, she begins covering international tax fraud, then gets wind of a group of Scottish ultranationalists aiming to cause mayhem ahead of the devolution referendum. Their stories quickly get attention, and create enemies for the two young up-and-comers. Are they enough to provoke the ultimate revenge?"--

"In Chaotic Neutral, political scientist Ed Burmila tracks the evolution (or devolution) of the Democratic Party-from the New Deal era to the pandemic, when, even in the midst of a genuine national crisis, the Dems could not manage to pass such sweeping progressive legislation. Why did the Democrats initially abandon their principles, and why haven't they been able to grasp that they need a new strategy in the face of decades of diminishing returns? To offer guidance, Burmila identifies ten recurring patterns of behavior and key aspects of their approach to politics that have left the Dems politically inept and in the position of permanent also-rans-even when they win! If we are going to be stuck with a two-party system for the foreseeable future, Burmila argues, then the Democratic Party must become an effective counterweight to the Republicans' death cult. Breaking free of these pathologies of learned helplessness and attachment to the status quo is the only way to get there. Chaotic Neutral captures not only the Democrats' calculated shift toward neoliberalism and the center, but also the Republican party's response of moving further right, in the knowledge that the Dems will continue trying to meet them in the middle. It also explains that the Democrats' refusal to acknowledge this new political reality has brought them increasingly out of touch as the stakes climb higher. To understand the possibilities for their survival, we need to consider how and why the Democrats got here, and where they must go next"--