title: I Love My Smith and Wesson: A Novel (Rawhead Series)
author:  David Bowker 
description: Rawhead, the lethal antihero of this gruesome underworld thriller, is both a "fast, businesslike and thoroughly unpleasant" practitioner of "violence as God intended" and a demonic "elemental power" like a volcano, a lightning bolt and a "biblical plague." Part smoothly efficient hit man, part Frankenstein monster, part Heathcliff, Rawhead adds a note of maniacal mayhem ("[he] saw a man capering around in circles, blood fountaining from his cranium") while exerting a grim magnetism over "the Spirit of Darkness," an equally lethal lady assassin (and "ancient, bloodthirsty goddess" in her own right) hired by mob bosses to kill him. Bowker (<I>The Death You Deserve</I>) transplants the basics of L.A. noir&mdash;complete with satirical subplot about a desperate writer corrupted by hack television producers&mdash;to the usual squalor and debauchery of gangland Manchester, England, and adds a shot of rancid Victorian romance, culminating in a romantic tryst in a gloomy vicarage, "consummated... on a bed of human carrion." He highlights his punchy, deadpan prose with streaks of purple ("[b]efore you knew it, you were bleeding. Then you were pleading. Then you were dead") while keeping up a parade of piquant scumbags and well-paced, cringe-inducing violence. If the varying tones of gritty crime procedural, black comedy and gothic grand guignol sometimes clash, readers (those with strong stomachs, anyway) will be having too much fun to care. <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: HIDDEN CREEK SECRETS
  a hidden creek high novel
  JAXSON KIDMAN
  
  Contents
  Welcome to
  HIDDEN CREEK SECRETS
  Prologue
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Chapter 9
  Chapter 10
  Chapter 11
  Chapter 12
  Chapter 13
  Chapter 14
  Chapter 15
  Chapter 16
  Chapter 17
  Chapter 18
  Chapter 19
  Chapter 20
  Chapter 21
  Chapter 22
  Chapter 23
  Chapter 24
  Chapter 25
  Chapter 26
  Chapter 27
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  Welcome to
  I turned my head and Wes was already staring at me.
  In that moment - for just a second or two - I saw him as the Wes I once knew.
  But when I blinked, he was back to the new Wes.
  And one question was close to the tip of my tongue.
  You’re going to break my heart, Wes, aren’t you?
  * * *
  Written by Jaxson Kidman
  
  HIDDEN CREEK SECRETS
  Wes & Aira Book 1
  HOUSE BURNED DOWN? #check
  FORCED BACK TO MY OLD HOMETOWN? #check
  NEW SCHOOL? #check
  RUMORS, DRAMA AND B*TCHES? #triplecheck
  * * *
  What could make things worse for me?
  One name.
   
  Wesle