Twenty-three-year-old Brooke Taylor is still trying to come up with her own definition of normal. The doctors at Westside Mental Institution call her cold-blooded and insane. Brooke prefers to think of herself as a healthy mix of insane and genius. Recently released from the psychotherapy sessions to begin a new life, the strikingly beautiful Brooke is headed to Louisiana to visit friend. Now all she can do is wonder whether she will ever have anything positive to contribute to society or whether her high-octane, remorseless lifestyle will kill her before her next birthday, It is 2001.

A few days later Brooke enters a grocery store in Independence, Louisiana, a black cowboy hat perched on her head and icy-blue eyes that reveal nothing. She immediately finds herself caught in the middle of a dramatic robbery. As a man in a ski mask waves an AK-47 and demands the customers follow his orders, Brooke wages was against the gunman, and uncovers a deadly conspiracy.

In this novel based on true events, a young woman with a shadowy past puts her shrewd attitude and intuitive skills to work as she gives the two deadly perpetrators a night they will never forget. Louisiana is never the same again. " "A masterpiece of suspense intrigue. Brooke Taylor is one of the most complex and bizarre characters ever. Once again, Fuller does a great job."" -Rigwood Village Book Club

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and the their five children, the oldest of whom was nine-years-old and the youngest, twins, barely one, pulled up stakes in the Lower Forty-eight and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans twenty to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society’s fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselves pitted in a life or death feud with unscrupulous neighbors who would rob from new settlers, attempt to burn them out, shoot them, and jump their claim.

The Cobbs were chechakos, tenderfeet, in a lost land that consumed even toughened settlers. Everything, including their “civilized” past, conspired to defeat them. They constructed a cabin and the first snow collapsed the roof. They built too close to the creek and spring breakup threatened to flood them out. Bears prowled the nearby woods, stalking the children, and Lester Cobb would leave for months at a time in search of work.

But through it all, they survived on the strength of Norma Cobb---a woman whose love for her family knew no bounds and whose courage in the face of mortal danger is an inspiration to us all. This is her story.

"In my state of shock and dismay, I asked God over and over again, "Why?" Always, before closing my eyes at night, I prayed for my sons, asking God to keep them healthy, happy, and safe. I never dreamed that a horrific crime would take one of their lives. This nightmare was indeed unbelievable. I was unable to focus. I kept thinking that there had been a mistake; I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't James who had been killed. I found myself rambling on and on in an attempt to comprehend the reality that I had lost my oldest son. The situation was hopeless. "

A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust.

This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.

On July 2, 1970, tourists in Australia spotted a smashed car, teetering precariously on a cliff edge, overlooking the raging ocean below. It seemed the car would fall into the water at any moment, but the car lingered ... as did a mystery, revealed when police traced the license plate to the Crawford household. Here, the police discovered the shocking truth: a mother and her three children had been murdered, with the husband and father-now missing-the main suspect.

The quadruple homicide sent a wave of panic through Australia. Where was the husband? And what would make a father kill his own children? There was much speculation but few answers, as the Crawford patriarch remained missing. Forty years passed-forty years of "Australia's Most Wanted," police dead ends, and silence ... until an unidentified body appears in a Texas morgue.

"Almost Perfect" is the firsthand look at a terrible crime from the perspective of Greg Fogarty-a neighbor to the Crawford family and later a member of the Victoria Police Force, Australia. Using his skills of observation and investigation, Fogarty has put together a tragic and detailed crime narrative with a shocking conclusion. Could a morgue in San Angelo, Texas, hold the body of Australia's most sought-after murderer ... or will the Crawford homicide remain unsolved forever?

In Iron Man, Lynne Bryan writes in such an insightful, thought-provoking and moving way about disability, the vulnerability of the body and of the mind, and about the frailty and also the strength of our corporeality. She also writes so thoughtfully about the ways in which women's access to head space and physical and economic space for creativity can be restricted, limited, blocked - sometimes by the people they love best and who love them best; but also of course sometimes by themselves.

From the author of King of Heists and The Big Policeman, comes the third book of history and crime in Gilded Age New York City--this time focused on the sensational grave robbery, ransom, and return of the remains of A. T. Stewart, a.ka. "The Merchant Prince of Manhattan," one of the wealthiest men in the world. The third in the New York City Gilded Age Crime Trilogy by J. North Conway.

On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered in cities across the nation after police shot two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a young man stepped out of an SUV wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high-powered rifle. He killed five officers and wounded eleven others. It fell to a small group of cops to corner the shooter inside a community college, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. Crisis negotiator Larry Gordon, a 21-year department veteran, spent hours bonding with the gunman - over childhood ghosts and death and racial injustice in America - while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end. Thompson's minute-by-minute account includes intimate portrayals of the negotiator, a surgeon who operated on the fallen officers, a mother of four shot down in the street, and the SWAT officers tasked with stopping the gunman. Their stories go to the heart of the deeply pressing issue of race and policing in the USA, and reflect America's divide over how to view the men and woman assigned to protect us.

Henry Reid Farley is just twenty-eight years old on November 8, 1898, when he is elected Sheriff of Monterey County. Less than a year later, Sheriff Farley lay in his grave. Now the citizens of Salinas are out for revenge. Immediately after the sheriff's murder, local gun stores open their doors in the dark of the night to hand out weapons to several people intending to hunt down George Suesser, the man responsible for the death of the youngest sheriff ever in the history of the State of California. As cries for his lynching echo throughout the streets of Salinas, Suesser is discovered in a crawl space only eighteen inches wide deep in his cellar. The angry citizens of Salinas demand swift justice. The case against the accused is about to begin. Murder, Salinas Style: Book Three shares a unique glimpse into the lives of both a murderer and his victim while revealing the compelling history of a California town, its citizens, and the violence that would become its legacy.

Gianni Russo was a handsome twenty-five-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set up her brother Sonny, played by James Caan, for a hit. Russo didn't have to act - he knew the Mob inside and out, from his childhood in Little Italy, to Mafia legend Frank Costello who took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger to New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club (he was acquitted of murder when the court ruled this as justifiable homicide). Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli and scores of other celebrities. He went on to star in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films in which he also acted as producer. Hollywood Godfather is his no-holds-barred account of a life lived on the edge. It is a story filled with violence, glamour, sex - and fun.

?The story of a friendship that started in law school and ended with the largest insider trading scandal in Canadian history, this eye-opening chronicle reveals for the first time how Gil Cornblum and Stan Grmovsek worked together to rip off Wall Street and Bay Street for over $10 million. Cornblum would scout around his law offices in the middle of the night, looking for confidential information on mergers or takeovers. When he found something, he would tip off Grmovsek, who would make the stock market trades that would gain them illegal profits. From the joint investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the FBI, to Cornblum's resultant suicide and Grmovsek's 39-month prison sentence, Tip and Trade covers the double lives of the twosome and their inevitable downfall. First-person interviews, conducted with Grmovsek from prison, give insight into what case prosecutors called a classic "Hollywood" insider trading tragedy.

This book seeks to unravel the issues associated with the crime of murder, providing a highly accessible account of the subject for people coming to it for the first time. It uses detailed case studies as a way of exemplifying and exploring more general questions of socio-cultural responses to murder and their explanation. It incorporates a historical perspective which both provides some fascinating examples from the past and enables readers to gain a vision of what has changed and what has remained the same within those socio-cultural responses to murder. The book also embraces questions of race and gender, in particular cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity on the one hand, and the social processes of 'forgetting and remembering' in the context of particular crimes on the other. Particular murders analysed included those of Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman and the Bulger murder.

The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climb of Mount Everest in this profound and free-flowing memoir-an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth's highest peak to the soul's deepest reaches. What drives a person to the edge of one of the most difficult and revered mountains in the world? How much is one willing to sacrifice and suffer to pursue an authentic and bold life? The most accomplished mountain runner of all time, Kilian Jornet ponders these questions as he contemplates his record-breaking climb of Mount Everest, exploring the mountain's changing nature over four seasons and his own existence. As he recounts a life spent studying, tending, and ascending the greatest peaks on earth, Jornet ruminates on what he has found in nature-simplicity, freedom, and spiritual joy-and offers a poetic yet clearheaded assessment of his relationship to the mountain . . . at times his opponent, at others, his greatest muse. In this sweeping, soulful journey-the flip side of stories like Into Thin Air-Jornet illuminates with beauty and brilliance what it means to be an athlete, a competitor, and a human facing the greatest life challenges-for him, the mountain he yearns to climb and honour.

Supported by strong ratings and a rich history, The Real Deadwood provides background and historical accuracy for the figures depicted on the hit HBO series, and takes a broader look at the times that spawned them. Covering law and order, politics, journalism, and early medicine, and examining some "historical guest stars" who may play a factor in future Deadwood episodes (Teddy Roosevelt was an acquaintance of series protagonist Seth Bullock and made several visits to the lawless town; Bullock turned away Wyatt Earp when he offered his services as a lawman)-The Real Deadwood will allow readers to traverse the unpaved streets of an outlaw town without ever getting their boots dirty.

At the end of the First World War, there were 270,000 demobilised Australian soldiers in Europe. Getting them home after the Armistice was a task of epic proportions that would take more than two years. In the meantime, how to keep these disgruntled, damaged men with guns occupied? In a word: sport. The Oarsmen tells the story of the servicemen who survived the war to row for the coveted King's Cup at the 1919 Royal Henley Peace Regatta. Competing against crews from the US, New Zealand, France, the UK and Canada, the Australians were a ragtag bunch of oarsmen thrown in an old-fashioned boat and expected to race. Many had seen the worst of the action during the war at Gallipoli and the Western Front, and carried scars both physical and psychological. The baggage they brought to the boat would soon threaten to capsize the whole endeavour. Combining first-hand accounts with lively prose, this never-before-told story approaches the First World War from peacetime and illuminates history in vivid and compelling detail. Interweaving the soldiers' personal stories from before, during and after the war, The Oarsmen paints a fascinating picture of how these men, and society, transitioned from an unprecedented war to a new sort of peace.

'People didn't talk about the team, they talked about the mob that came with them' Terrifyingly vicious, brilliantly organised, tremendously feared and highly fashionable, the InterCity Firm were the most notorious football hooligan gang the country had ever seen. Bestselling author Cass Pennant was one of the I.C.F.'s best-known figures and has used his unique position as a West Ham insider to bring together these first-hand accounts of the men who were at the eye of storm, both on and off the terraces. In this classic account of football hooliganism at its terrifying height, all the faces of the West Ham firm reveal their memories and thoughts about the violence, the battles, the campaigns, the run-ins with the authorities, and all that came with it. Congratulations, you are just about to meet the I.C.F...

Cassie was only thirteen when her mother died of a degenerative illness, leaving her vulnerable to sexual predators in the Halifax area who had been grooming her since the age of eleven. She fell through the net of the care system and reached out for friendship, only to be consumed by an escalating spiral of abuse. This harrowing and truly shocking story captures in vivid detail how gangs of men were able to ply a child with drink and drugs, then rape her and pass her around their associates with no one seemingly able to step in and prevent it. Cassie was lost in a world of appalling degradation for years before a local policeman and caring social worker became instrumental in helping her to escape and rebuild her life. In 2016, the largest case of child sexual exploitation ever brought to trial at that time in the UK resulted in the conviction of 17 men. Since Cassie's abusers were jailed, child safeguarding policies have improved so that vulnerable children like Cassie should never again fall through the net and become prey.