WANTED: GROOM Hayley Parrish thought her dateless existence couldn't get any worse—until her mother decided Hayley needed a husband. But when Mom started matchmaking, Hayley had no choice but to invent a fiancé—in self-defense. Then she won the Valentine's Day wedding of her dreams. And suddenly Hayley needed a groom, fast…. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED Justin Brooks didn't know what hit him. One minute he was telling Hayley that the "groom" she'd hired couldn't make it. The next minute he'd become Sloane Devereaux, Hayley's imaginary beloved. Not that he'd mind being loved by the gorgeous brunette…but the thought of marriage terrified him! Almost as much as a wedding night with Hayley tempted him…. Manhunting… She's got a plan—to find herself a man!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents—from the author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers. With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's The Death of a President and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. With Hellhound On His Trail, Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see. With a New Afterword
Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. Martin Luther King’s lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on 4 April 1968. From the start, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader’s death. Over time many Americans became convinced the government investigations covered up the truth about the alleged assassin. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. However, Mel Ayton believe the answers to the many intriguing questions about Ray and how conspiracy ideas flourished can now be fully understood. Missing from the wild speculations over the past fifty-two years has been a thorough investigation of the character of King’s assassin. Additionally, the author examines exactly how the conspiracy notions came about and the falsehoods that led to their promulgation. The Man Who Killed Martin Luther King is the first full account of the life of James Earl Ray based on scores of interviews provided to government and non-government investigators and from the FBI’s and Scotland Yard’s files plus the recently released Tennessee Department of Corrections prison record on Ray. Most importantly, the testimony of Anna Sandhu has often been ignored by writers but her story is crucial in gaining an understanding of Ray’s deceptive ways. A courtroom artist, who, after listening to Ray’s story, later married him. Also missing from accounts of the alleged ‘conspiracy’ is the story told to this author by Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Deputy Warden Rolland H. Cisson, which decisively renders Ray’s claims of innocence to be bogus. In the short-lived freedom he acquired after escaping from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967, following being sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses, he traveled to Los Angeles and decided to seek notoriety as the one who would stalk and kill Dr. King, who he had come to hate vehemently. From the time of King’s murder, the reader will follow Ray to solitary confinement in a Nashville prison. Then, six years later, on 10 June 1977, James Earl Ray again escaped from prison, this time with five others. Ray was the last to be recaptured, having survived only on wheatgerm. Finally, the book relays Ray’s stabbing by several black inmates, then his resulting diagnosis with Hepatitis C, which caused his death twelve years later, in 1998.
In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, draws on years of interviews and never-before-disclosed CIA files to weave together a riveting narrative of the ex-agent's journey to Iran and the hunt to rescue him. The result is an extraordinary tale about the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace. Its colorful cast includes CIA operatives, Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, White House officials, gangsters, private eyes, FBI agents, journalists, and a fugitive American terrorist and assassin. Missing Man is a fast-paced story that moves through exotic locales and is set against the backdrop of the twilight war between the United States and Iran, one in which hostages are used as political pawns. Filled with stunning revelations, it chronicles a family's ongoing search for answers and one man's desperate struggle to keep his hand in the game.
New York Times–Bestselling Author: “Frank’s reconstruction of Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s murder and its aftermath is remarkably convincing.” —The New York Times Written by two-time Edgar Award winner Gerold Frank, An American Death examines the infamous 1968 assassination of the legendary civil rights leader in Memphis, Tennessee, in vivid, extensive detail. Frank casts a light on historical truth and builds a coherent narrative of events amid the chaos and conspiracy theories that surround Dr. King’s murder. The author recounts the details of April 4, and delves into the shocking events leading up to the fateful day, including James Earl Ray’s background and escape from prison, and the manhunt and quest for justice that followed the killing, in this riveting account of a crime that shook a nation. “Provide[s] insight into James Earl Ray and the rather squalid world from which he emerged . . . persuasively argued.” —Worldview “Frank’s picture of Ray . . . is remarkable.” —Time Includes photographs
A deep dive into James Earl Ray’s role in the national tragedy: “Superb . . . a model of investigation . . . as gripping as a first-class detective story” (The New York Times). On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, by a single assassin’s bullet. A career criminal named James Earl Ray was seen fleeing from a rooming house that overlooked the hotel balcony from where King was cut down. An international manhunt ended two months later with Ray’s capture. Though Ray initially pled guilty, he quickly recanted and for the rest of his life insisted he was an unwitting pawn in a grand conspiracy. In Killing the Dream, expert investigative reporter Gerald Posner reexamines Ray and the evidence, even tracking down the mystery man Ray claimed was the conspiracy’s mastermind. Beginning with an authoritative biography of Ray’s life, and continuing with a gripping account of the assassination and its aftermath, Posner cuts through phony witnesses, false claims, and a web of misinformation surrounding that tragic spring day in 1968. He puts Ray’s conspiracy theory to rest and ultimately manages to disclose what really happened the day King was murdered.
Murkin was the code name chosen by the FBI for their investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. Today, 20 years after the fatal shooting of the civil rights leader, Philip H. Melanson, a renowned authority on American political assassinations, unveils his own investigation into the murder. Melanson . . . has done an exhaustively thorough job on the still-mysterious King assassination. After following Melanson's meticulous pursuit of seemingly every lead in the case--including interviews with the men whose names were used as aliases for alleged killer James Earl Ray--there can be little doubt in the reader's mind that neither of the two official versions of what happened could have been the whole truth. The first was the ever-popular notion of the lone killer: Ray. The second, propounded by a clearly inept congressional investigation a decade after the 1969 shooting, was that an ill-defined racist conspiracy was behind the assassination. What seems unarguable is that Ray, a petty criminal, could not have killed King unaided. There are too many improbabilities--the source of his carefully chosen Canadian aliases, the identity of the `fat man' who brought him a `letter' in Toronto during his escape, the odd setup at the rooming house from which the shot was fired. It is Melanson's thesis that there was high-level intelligence involvement, probably by the CIA, which was violently alarmed by King's anti-Vietnam stance. Publisher's Weekly Murkin was the code name chosen by the FBI for the investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. Today, twenty years after the fatal shooting of the civil rights leader, Philip H. Melanson, a renowned authority on American political assassinations, unveils his own investigation into the murder. Through extensive interviews, research, and Freedom of Information Act requests, Melanson analyzes the official investigations, the evidence, the performance of law enforcement officials, the role of James Earl Ray, and the questions of conspiracy. Much of the data presented has never before been published. Based on his detailed investigation, Melanson offers a revisionist interpretation of the King case, demonstrating that it remains unsolved. Melanson argues persuasively that both the FBI's conclusion that Ray acted alone and the later 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations decision that Ray was backed by a conspiracy of St. Louis-based white supremacists are not supported by the evidence. Although Melanson concludes that Ray did not, in fact, act alone, he contends that the official investigations were so flawed that the conspirators behind him are still unidentified. His own conclusions regarding the probable source of the conspiracy offer a sobering indictment of the ways in which powerful interests, left unchecked, can wreak havoc on American democratic processes.
Traces the rise and fall of the original Stax Records, touching upon the racial politics in Memphis in the 1960s, the personal histories of the sibling founders, and the prominent musicians they featured.
"They will catch you sooner or later," could be the theme of this book on famous manhunts, except for teen ager Joey Spears, in the Foreword, who was buried as an "unknown. Some are memorable, some have been forgotten, but in each one a desperate fugitive is trying to run, and generally failing. From famous killers like John Wilkes Booth, who murdered President Abraham Lincoln, to criminal John Dillinger, the "Robin Hood crook" according to the newspapers of the day, who killed many others. This book includes one of the worst of all, Theodore "Ted" Bundy, who killed and then used the bodies of many pretty young women. Some are now on death rows in prisons, where they belong, and some are in prison awaiting the next meeting in court. And some, like Michael Goodwin, who was convicted of arranging the murders of speed king Mickey Thompson and his lovely wife Trudy, swear they are innocent and are only waiting for a court to free them. Each story is different, but every one is gripping.
