A middle-of-the night phone call summons NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli and her partner, Detective P.J. Parker, to a politically sensitive murder scene. The victims—a U.S. Senator, the pastor of a mega church, and a self-made music industry billionaire—appear to have been killed during a sex orgy. Pressure is mounting to cover up the circumstances. But Corelli and Parker are enraged by the words scrawled in blood on a mirror, and their hearts are broken by what they find hidden in a closet. Now the partners vow to find the killer and expose the unsavory lives of these men while seeking justice for the real victims in this case—the children.
Message In Blood is a story of street justice. Jace White is getting out of prison after doing 6 years for bank robbery., but his mom's voice over the phone gives him a bad feeling about it. Upon his release, his worst fears are realized: His baby sister has been murdered! Now, full of grief and a burning anger, Jace has to get down to business to find out who killed his sister and everyone else who was involved. However, Jace didn't do all that prison time without making some like-minded friends who rally to him with an undying loyalty that only having each other's backs for years in prison can forge. Leaving a trail of blood and bodies a mile wide, Jace found out who called the shot that killed his little sister and it's the last person he would have ever expected. And, Jace White is the last person you would ever want to know that you were the reason his little sister was killed.
Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.
The quest for youth only leads to death… The Blood Countess—Elizabeth Bathory, a true monster of history—is one of the most infamous serial killers. Said to have murdered 650 young women for their blood, she believed bathing in it would preserve her vitality and beauty. It's a story that has always fascinated archaeologist and TV host Annja Creed. Something so fantastic could only be a story. So what is Annja to make of the girl she finds dying on the side of the road…from blood loss? There's something eerie in this small Slovakian town, where rumors of vampirism hang unspoken in the air. Yet, out of fear, the locals say nothing. Shut out by the police, Annja only digs deeper into the strange death, uncovering troubling scraps of evidence—and cover-ups. Her one lead is an enigmatic retired police officer who has been investigating the disappearance of more than twenty women. All of them young. All of them beautiful. The only way Annja can see to uncover the truth is by becoming the Blood Countess's next victim….
NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker are assigned what should be a straight-forward murder investigation. But what seems to be the simple murder of a man found in a park gets more complicated when they identify him as Ned Rich, a somewhat paranoid investigative reporter who seems to be living above his means. The more they dig, the more victims of Rich’s blackmail they find. And figuring out which one killed him seems like an impossible task. But then they stumble on the project Rich was working on at the time of his death—a not so white supremacist and a threat to our democracy—and the focus of the investigation turns to people who will do anything to protect their reputations and the secrecy of their traitorous goals. Undeterred by the threats and attacks, Corelli and Parker battle to drag the traitors into the light—and put their lives on the line to defend all they believe in.
A Council member murdered… Devon on the run… A vial of Magic Poppy left at the scene could spell Devon’s doom. Cressa was to leave for New Orleans with Devon. But now, her world has turned upside down. Through it all, she refuses to believe Devon has been readdicted to the Poppy, regardless of what the evidence suggests. House Trelane is in turmoil. The mission on hold. Lorenzo pushes his advantage at Council. And Cressa’s headed for New Orleans after all. But will it help Devon or waste precious time to find the real killer and put the Beast to rest? Addicted in Blood is the continuing story of Cressa and Devon and their search for the truth of their origins.
Because of grace, good things happen even in the midst of a bad world. To the casual observer it may look like chance or luck. But to the person who knows Jesus, its undeniable that this undeserved goodness is nothing else but His grace.When Jesus walked on earth, He brought grace into every encounter, to every person. Even now, all around us, God is working out beautiful grace stories. Open the pages of this devotional book for a daily encounter with Jesus and His surprising, endless, life-changing grace.
Courage. Honor. Loyalty. All fine things, but they’ve led John Ringo to kill a man. He was raised right and he knows he’s not a murderer, but otherwise he’s a mystery even to himself. Doc Holliday claims to have some insights, but Doc is too devoted to Wyatt Earp to spare much attention for the man who’s already lost his soul. Which leaves Johnny Ringo prey to the distractions of a demon. Imaginary or not, if this creature abandons him, too, then surely his sanity is forfeit – and what will his life be worth then? This Queer Weird West novel follows these three along the complex trails that lead into and out of Tombstone, Arizona in 1881.
A 2006 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime. With intimate access to the families, award-winning journalist Diane Fanning's Written in Blood spins a heart-wrenching true crime tale that's been the subject of an acclaimed documentary, "The Staircase", and an HBO TV miniseries starring Colin Firth. An army brat-turned-marine, Michael Peterson saw combat in Vietnam, and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. The Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple- well-respected, prosperous, and happy. All that came crashing down in December of 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home in an exclusive area of Durham, North Carolina. But blood-spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband stood accused. Prosecutors introduced evidence at trial that sixteen years earlier, Peterson was one of the last people to see his neighbor alive before she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home in Germany. A dramatic trial followed in the explosive final chapter of a life that no novelist could ever have conceived...
