I've always thought that Matlacha (say Mat-la-SHAY), the funky Pine Island Florida fishing village cum art colony would be a perfect setting for a mystery, when along comes Jessie Murphy, the perfect gal to sort out the riff from the raff of it all. You've got to love this lady, a Goodwill fashion queen, who comes across as a ditzy airhead whose best buddy is a Gargoyle named Gar. Jessie's taken time off from her job, thrilled to be rekindling the flame of romance with her treasure-hunting guy, Will Rolins, who adores her. Will has just made a wonderful archeological discovery, aka buried treasure. He's offered to support Jessie in her painting career if only she'll rejoin him in the sandy, salt-water and flip-flop lifestyle she adores. As she arrives in Matlacha, Jessie, to her horror, is met instead with the crime scene tape in place, bloodstains on the floor and pinholes where Will's treasure maps should have been. The sheriff insists that Will's death was a suicide but he refuses to release the police report and Jessie is bewildered. It is true that Will was often depressed and sometimes controlling. But why kill himself when he's fulfilled his life's dream? If he meant to kill himself why would he ask Jessie to join him? The facts don't sit straight with Jessie. She is determined to sort out the case. Jessie's a red-headed Irish Bostonian, whose art career has gone on the back burner as she struggles to earn a living. Meanwhile, certain investigative skills Jessie has acquired--a stint in a private investigator's office, classes in theater and karate--all come into play as she trails suspects and sometimes overplays her hand, arousing the suspicions of whoever it is who makes crank calls to her in the middle of the night. Do not be fooled, there's way more to Jessie than meets the eye, and do not, repeat, do not miss this true beach read with a pelican's eye view of Florida's magnificent barrier island landscapes. Sara Williams - author of Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night

The system outlined in this book reveals the exact system used by all the top-earning adjunct professors in the field. This book will take you from your first teaching assignment all the way up through making 6-figures a year or more as an adjunct In this book Dr. Rubin will also outline the new developments in the adjunct field that YOU can exploit for your benefit. For example, he'll expose how to take advantage of: * The trend of community colleges becoming 4-year colleges * Colleges cutting back full-time faculty * What university hiring freezes really mean for adjuncts * The increase in the number of online schools * Current economic conditions creating a pent-up demand for future expansion This is all vital information for your future success as an adjunct professor teaching both online and on ground.

This is a book of brine and lime, landscapes vast, whether of water or of prairie, and wisdom wise enough to remain fluid for growth. There is subversion afoot in this volume, all the more satisfying for its sound and delicate movements; Yes, the wise will whisper. daniels reserves her shouting for its just effects; just as effective as the sure, fine voice singing from these pages. William Michael Sinclair, Graduate of Iowa Writers Workshop

'What a nutjob!' - Geoff Dyer 'Questions that occurred to me as I read this brilliant, baffling book: What the hell is this? Who the hell is this? Is this poetry?' - Tom Bissell Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J. D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience - as a janitor, night watchman, adjunct professor, drunk, exterminator, dutiful son -he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud. In prose wound as tight as a copper spring, Daniels takes us from the highways of his native Kentucky to the Balearic Islands and from the Pampas of Brazil to the rarefied precincts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His travelling companions include psychotic kindergarten teachers, Israeli sailors, and Southern Baptists on fire for Christ. In each dispatch, Daniels takes risks - not just literary (voice, tone, form) but also more immediate, such as spending two years on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu team (he gets beaten to a pulp, repeatedly) or participating in group psychoanalysis (where he goes temporarily insane). Daniels is that rare thing, a writer completely in earnest whose wit never deserts him, even in extremis. Inventive, intimate, restless, streetwise and erudite, The Correspondence introduces a brave and original observer of the inner life under pressure.