Using her psychic gifts to help a distraught woman recover her memory, Lee wonders if she is harboring a killer when a body is found washed up in a local cove.
Salem’s WICH-TV program director Lee Barrett is about to discover no good deed goes unpunished . . . Lee has been promoted from field reporter to program director. Keeping track of all the shows and managing the local TV personalities—including a cowboy, a clown, and a performing dog—has her head spinning. Perhaps that’s what makes her take pity on the distraught woman she finds sitting alone on a bench on the Salem common. When she realizes that the poor woman doesn’t even know her own name, Lee takes her into the warmth of the home she shares with her Aunt Ibby and their clairvoyant gentleman cat, O’Ryan. Maybe Lee can use her own psychic gifts to divine the woman’s identity. Lee’s detective beau Pete Mondello wants to talk to the “Jane Doe,” but before he can investigate, he’s called to a crime scene. A body has been found washed up in a narrow harbor cove. As harmless as her new houseguest seems, Lee can’t help but wonder if she may be harboring a killer . . . Praise for the Witch City Mysteries “Perfectly relaxing and readable.” —Kirkus Reviews “This rewarding paranormal cozy series debut will have Victoria Laurie fans lining up to follow.” —Library Journal “An entertaining story that keeps readers guessing until the very twisted and eerie end.” —RT Book Reviews
A child and her grandfather discover together the secrets of the Grand Canyon. Richly illustrated with full-page watercolors, this book makes for great bedtime reading. For children
As a child, we all remember back in school when the sheriffs came to our class and spoke to us about the importance of telling the truth, how their job was to protect the community from criminals of all types; they instilled in us to always report a crime when you witness one. Even the vehicles they drove proclaimed to "protect and serve." We believed in and instilled those values in our children. When I grew up, I experienced quite the opposite of what I was taught, which was if you speak out against law enforcement that is involved in corruption, you will suffer irreparable consequences. This autobiography tells the truth about what happened when we "did the right thing" that we believed was our duty by calling out corruption in local law enforcement and the irreparable repercussions we suffered at the hands of the very people who were supposed to protect us. These past years I have prayed for the strength to forgive those who trespassed against us, but as the years went on, those involved continued with their lives, receiving promotions, pay raises, buying new homes, and obtaining new jobs; they, in a nutshell, went on with their daily lives as if it was just another day. With no thought to the ruins they had left our lives in. For us, there would be no new home, no job, and no raise; there would be nothing but trying desperately to put our lives back together. And the realization that those illegal acts we saw? Maybe we should have never done the right thing and turned a blind eye; then, we might have been left alone. Instead, in the end, doing the right thing costs us everything.
Knowing your enemies matters. Legendary military strategist Sun Tzu famously said "if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." When the Department of Homeland Security was founded in 2003, its stated purpose was "preventing terrorist attacks within the United States and reducing America's vulnerability to terrorism." The Bush administration's definition of the enemy as a tactic, terrorism, rather than a specific movement, proved consequential amid a culture of political correctness. By the time President Obama took office, Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders in the United States were forcing changes to national security policy and even being invited into the highest chambers of influence. A policy known as Countering Violent Extremism emerged, downplaying the threat of supremacist Islam as unrelated to the religion and just one among many violent ideological movements. When retired DHS frontline officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney bravely tried to say something about the people and organizations that threatened the nation, his intelligence information was eliminated, and he was investigated by the very agency assigned to protect the country. The national campaign by the DHS to raise public awareness of terrorism and terrorism-related crime known as If You See Something, Say Something effectively has become If You See Something, Say Nothing. In See Something, Say Nothing, Haney - a charter member of DHS with previous experience in the Middle East - and co-author Art Moore expose just how deeply the submission, denial and deception run. Haney's insider, eyewitness account, supported by internal memos and documents, exposes a federal government capitulating to an enemy within and punishing those who reject its narrative. In this well-documented, first-person account of his unique service with DHS, Haney shows why it's imperative that Americans demand that when they see something and say something, the servants under their charge do something to prevent a cunning, relentless enemy from carrying out its stated aim to "destroy Western Civilization from within."
Raymond Carver meets William Faulkner in this “pitch-perfect” short story collection that captures the hopes and fears of working-class Greeks during the country’s economic crisis (Los Angeles Review of Books) Ikonomou’s stories convey the plight of those worst affected by the Greek economic crisis—laid-off workers, hungry children. In the urban sprawl between Athens and Piraeus, the narratives roam restlessly through the impoverished working-class quarters located off the tourist routes. Everyone is dreaming of escape: to the mountains, to an island or a palatial estate, into a Hans Christian Andersen story world. What are they fleeing? The old woes—gossip, watchful neighbors, the oppression and indifference of the rich—now made infinitely worse. In Ikonomou’s concrete streets, the rain is always looming, the politicians’ slogans are ignored, and the police remain a violent, threatening presence offstage. Yet even at the edge of destitution, his men and women act for themselves, trying to preserve what little solidarity remains in a deeply atomized society, and in one way or another finding their own voice. There is faith here, deep faith—though little or none in those who habitually ask for it.