Jack Branch, the last son of an aristocratic Old South family, has returned to his hometown, taking on the job of teacher at the local high school. When he sets his students a paper entitled 'The Most Evil Person', he expects essays on historical tyrants and literary villains. He doesn't expect Eddie Miller's choice - his own father. Throughout his life, Eddie has been known as 'The Coed Killer's Son', because when Eddie was eight years old, his father killed a local college student, dismembered her body, and buried the pieces in a local forest. Eddie's investigation of his own father's dark secrets steadily widens until, ultimately, it encompasses the whole town.
“The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review).
Inspired by memories of her beloved grandmother, photographer and author Alysia Burton Steele -- picture editor on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team -- combines heart-wrenching narrative with poignant photographs of more than 50 female church elders in the Mississippi Delta. These ordinary women lived extraordinary lives under the harshest conditions of the Jim Crow era and during the courageous changes of the Civil Rights Movement. With the help of local pastors, Steele recorded these living witnesses to history and folk ways, and shares the significance of being a Black woman -- child, daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother in Mississippi -- a Jewel of the Delta. From the stand Mrs. Tennie Self took for her marriage to be acknowledged in the phone book, to the life-threatening sacrifice required to vote for the first time, these 50 inspiring portraits are the faces of love and triumph that will teach readers faith and courage in difficult times.
Now the inspiration for the CBS Television drama, "The Unit." Delta Force. They are the U.S. Army's most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force). He is a master of espionage, trained to take on hijackers, terrorists, hostage takers, and enemy armies. He can deploy by parachute or arrive by commercial aircraft. Survive alone in hostile cities. Speak foreign languages fluently. Strike at enemy targets with stunning swiftness and extraordinary teamwork. He is the ultimate modern warrior: the Delta Force Operator. In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary counterterrorist unit. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process—designed to break the strongest of men—that singles out the best of the best: the Delta Force Operator. With heart-stopping immediacy, Haney tells what it's really like to enter a hostage-held airplane. And from his days in Beirut, Haney tells an unforgettable tale of bodyguards and bombs, of a day-to-day life of madness and beauty, and of how he and a teammate are called on to kill two gunmen targeting U.S. Marines at the Beirut airport. As part of the team sent to rescue American hostages in Tehran, Haney offers a first-person description of that failed mission that is a chilling, compelling account of a bold maneuver undone by chance—and a few fatal mistakes. From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to rescuing missionaries in Sudan and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force brings honor to these singular men while it puts us in the middle of action that is sudden, frightening, and nonstop around the world.
Mercenary Sonja Kurtz is brought out of retirement to blow up a dam and save an African wildlife paradise. Retired mercenary Sonja Kurtz is recruited to blow up a dam that threatens the existence of Botswana's premier wildlife area, the Okavango Delta. A coalition of environmentalists and safari lodge owners, including Sonja's former lover, Stirling Smith, are determined to see the dam destroyed, at any cost, but there are deals and double crosses going on behind the scenes. Well-meaning American wildlife researcher turned reality TV star, 'Coyote' Sam Chapman stumbles into the middle of the conflict and Sonja finds herself having to babysit a film crew while planning her daring raid. Old flames and new ones, a rebellious teenage daughter, and her estranged father are all in Sonja's sights as her mission to save The Delta turns into a full-blown civil war and a race to protect the one person she really cares for.
The bestselling author of Daemon returns with a near-future technological thriller, in which a charismatic billionaire recruits a team of adventurers to launch the first deep space mining operation--a mission that could alter the trajectory of human civilization. When itinerant cave diver James Tighe receives an invitation to billionaire Nathan Joyce's private island, he thinks it must be a mistake. But Tighe's unique skill set makes him a prime candidate for Joyce's high-risk venture to mine a near-earth asteroid--with the goal of kick-starting an entire off-world economy. The potential rewards and personal risks are staggering, but the competition is fierce and the stakes couldn't be higher. Isolated and pushed beyond their breaking points, Tighe and his fellow twenty-first century adventurers--ex-soldiers, former astronauts, BASE jumpers, and mountain climbers--must rely on each other to survive not only the dangers of a multi-year expedition but the harsh realities of business in space. They're determined to transform humanity from an Earth-bound species to a space-faring one--or die trying.
Bestselling writer Mickey Spillane, creator of the iconic Mike Hammer, plunges readers into a world of seedy violence, alluring beauties, and twisting allegiances and alliances. As the Cold War rages in the background, things are about to heat up for Morgan the Raider. Named for the famous English pirate, the notorious thief, heister, and conman may have knocked over his last Armored Car. Holed up in the hospital, he’s visited by feds who tell him they have him dead to rights for the robbery of $40 million. They offer him a lifeline: stay out of prison by granting another man his freedom. Before he knows it, Morgan is on the sun-drenched shores of the Communist island nation of Nuevo Cadiz, in service to the U.S. Government. The plan? Spring a political prisoner out of heart of a lawless, bloodstained Caribbean dictatorship—by getting thrown behind the same bars himself.
In The Place with No Edge, Adam Mandelman follows three centuries of human efforts to inhabit and control the lower Mississippi River delta, the vast watery flatlands spreading across much of southern Louisiana. He finds that people’s use of technology to tame unruly nature in the region has produced interdependence with—rather than independence from—the environment. Created over millennia by deposits of silt and sand, the Mississippi River delta is one of the most dynamic landscapes in North America. From the eighteenth-century establishment of the first French fort below New Orleans to the creation of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan in the 2000s, people have attempted to harness and master this landscape through technology. Mandelman examines six specific interventions employed in the delta over time: levees, rice flumes, pullboats, geophysical surveys, dredgers, and petroleum cracking. He demonstrates that even as people seemed to gain control over the environment, they grew more deeply intertwined with—and vulnerable to—it. The greatest folly, Mandelman argues, is to believe that technology affords mastery. Environmental catastrophes of coastal land loss and petrochemical pollution may appear to be disconnected, but both emerged from the same fantasy of harnessing nature to technology. Similarly, the levee system’s failures and the subsequent deluge after Hurricane Katrina owe as much to centuries of human entanglement with the delta as to global warming’s rising seas and strengthening storms. The Place with No Edge advocates for a deeper understanding of humans’ relationship with nature. It provides compelling evidence that altering the environment—whether to make it habitable, profitable, or navigable —inevitably brings a response, sometimes with unanticipated consequences. Mandelman encourages a mindfulness of the ways that our inventions engage with nature and a willingness to intervene in responsible, respectful ways.
Her choice is arranged marriage?or death?Kira al-Attiyah's hope for a bright future in the U.S. died along with her father. Now, royal family tradition demands she marry. Refusing? Not an option. Especially since honor killing isn't just urban legend. She knew what she had to do. She just never expected her intended to be a terrorist?Delta Force operator Ty Newcomb's mission was clear. He needed to make Kira fall for him, then secure an invite to meet her fiancé. From there, taking down the man who has been on the CIA high-value target list for over a decade would be easy. The hard part would be not developing real feelings for his beautiful target.With lives-and love-on the line, can Ty find a way to get the bad guy and keep the girl? Or will the price of completing the mission be his happily ever after with Kira? Danger Signs is the first novel of Quinn's newest series, Delta Force Echo, part of the World of Iniquus.
