Download or read book Ballots Belles and Blackmail A Beauty Pageant Cozy Mystery written by Brittany E. Brinegar and published by Britt Lizz Publishing. This book was released on 2024-04-26 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy this small-town mystery series from Brittany E. Brinegar, author of laugh-out-loud Texas whodunits... Judges bribed, election tied. Every smile hides a secret hotter than a jalapeno. Welcome to Lake Falls, Texas, where the air is thick with excitement and suspicion. In the midst of an emergency election for sheriff, tensions rise as the two candidates find themselves locked in a tie. As the town braces for another round of voting, sabotage rears its ugly head, prompting private eye Lizzie to step in and unravel the tangled web of deceit. Meanwhile, at the train station, a Southern Belle pageant adds a splash of glamor to the small-town scene. But behind the dazzling smiles and fluttering fans, rumors swirl of judges being bribed to sway the outcome. Determined to uncover the truth, reporter Samantha dons her undercover persona, delving into the heart of the pageant world. With the fate of the sheriff's office hanging in the balance and whispers of corruption echoing through the town, twin sisters Lizzie and Samantha must navigate a maze of secrets and scandals to untangle the mysteries of ballots, belles, and blackmail. Will they uncover the truth before it's too late, or will their charming town fall prey to the dark forces at play? ---------------- Ballots, Belles, and Blackmail is a stand-alone case in the Twin Bluebonnet Ranch Mysteries. If you love quirky small-town characters, best friend shenanigans, and a Dalmatian sidekick, this series is for you! Twin Bluebonnet Ranch Mysteries: Series Order Book 1: Caverns, Clues, and Cowboys Book 2: Friday Night Frights Book 3: Silent Nights and Shoplifting Book 4: Ghostwriters and Gravediggers Book 5: Antiques, Alibis, and Auctions Book 6: Secrets, Lies, and Poisonberry Pies Book 7: Rodeo, Ransom, and Fireworks Book 8: Sleuths, Sabotage, and Sandcastles Book 9: Turkey, Thievery, and Twins Book 10: Ballots, Belles, and Blackmail Book 11: Texans, Tourists, and Treachery Book 12: Softball and Stickups

Download or read book Turkey Thievery and Twins A Small Town Holiday Cozy Mystery written by Brittany E. Brinegar and published by Britt Lizz Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy this small-town holiday mystery from Brittany E. Brinegar, author of laugh-out-loud Texas whodunits... They wanted a feast, but what they got was a mystery with all the trimmings. Twins Samantha and Lizzie hoped for a peaceful Thanksgiving in their charming Texas town. But when Lizzie's boss, a seasoned private investigator, entrusts her with a baffling case, their holiday takes a curious turn. A priceless family heirloom, on loan to the museum, vanishes during the annual Pilgrim Pageant in front of hundreds of witnesses. Left in its place is Gobbles, the town Turkey, who every year gets a stay of execution for the holiday feast. Lizzie suspects the elusive newcomer orchestrated the daring switcheroo. Tensions flared between him and her boss, when he attempted to purchase the heirloom the day prior. The case seems open and shut. But there's a hitch: the town newcomer has an unbreakable alibi. Samantha and Lizzie are determined to leave no cranberry unturned as they unravel a web of secrets and prove even the tightest alibis can't hide the truth when the twins are on the case. ---------------- If you love quirky small-town characters, best friend shenanigans, and a Dalmatian sidekick, this series is for you! Twin Bluebonnet Ranch Mysteries: Series Order Book 1: Caverns, Clues, and Cowboys Book 2: Friday Night Frights Book 3: Silent Nights and Shoplifting Book 4: Ghostwriters and Gravediggers Book 5: Antiques, Alibis, and Auctions Book 6: Secrets, Lies, and Poisonberry Pies Book 7: Rodeo, Ransom, and Fireworks Book 8: Sleuths, Sabotage, and Sandcastles Book 9: Turkey, Thievery, and Twins Book 10: Ballots, Belles, and Blackmail Book 11: Texans, Tourists, and Treachery Book 12: Softball and Stickups

Download or read book The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report written by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Download or read book Houdini Tarzan and the Perfect Man written by John F. Kasson and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2002-07-02 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable new work from one of our premier historians In his exciting new book, John F. Kasson examines the signs of crisis in American life a century ago, signs that new forces of modernity were affecting men's sense of who and what they really were. When the Prussian-born Eugene Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder, toured the United States in the 1890s, Florenz Ziegfeld cannily presented him as the "Perfect Man," representing both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity extolling self-development and self-fulfillment. Then, when Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan swung down a vine into the public eye in 1912, the fantasy of a perfect white Anglo-Saxon male was taken further, escaping the confines of civilization but reasserting its values, beating his chest and bellowing his triumph to the world. With Harry Houdini, the dream of escape was literally embodied in spectacular performances in which he triumphed over every kind of threat to masculine integrity -- bondage, imprisonment, insanity, and death. Kasson's liberally illustrated and persuasively argued study analyzes the themes linking these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context. Concern with the white male body -- with exhibiting it and with the perils to it --reached a climax in World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today.

Download or read book The Complete Poetry of James Hearst written by James Hearst and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the regionalist movement that included Grant Wood, Paul Engle, Hamlin Garland, and Jay G. Sigmund, James Hearst helped create what Iowa novelist Ruth Suckow called a poetry of place. A lifelong Iowa farner, Hearst began writing poetry at age nineteen and eventually wrote thirteen books of poems, a novel, short stories, cantatas, and essays, which gained him a devoted following Many of his poems were published in the regionalist periodicals of the time, including the Midland, and by the great regional presses, including Carroll Coleman's Prairie Press. Drawing on his experiences as a farmer, Hearst wrote with a distinct voice of rural life and its joys and conflicts, of his own battles with physical and emotional pain (he was partially paralyzed in a farm accident), and of his own place in the world. His clear eye offered a vision of the midwestern agrarian life that was sympathetic but not sentimental - a people and an art rooted in place.

Download or read book America s Obsessives written by Joshua Kendall and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When most of us think of Charles Lindbergh, we picture a dashing twenty-five-year-old aviator stepping out of the Spirit of St. Louis after completing his solo flight across the Atlantic. What we don't see is the awkward high school student, who preferred ogling new gadgets at the hardware store to watching girls walk by in their summer dresses. Sure, Lindbergh's unique mindset invented the pre-flight checklist, but his obsession with order also led him to demand that his wife and three German mistresses account for all their household expenditures in detailed ledgers. Lucky Lindy is just one of several American icons whom Joshua Kendall puts on the psychologist's couch in America's Obsessives. In this fascinating look at the arc of American history through the lens of compulsive behavior, he shows how some of our nation's greatest achievements-from the Declaration of Independence to the invention of the iPhone-have roots in the disappointments and frustrations of early childhood. Starting with the obsessive natures of some of Silicon Valley's titans, including Steve Jobs, Kendall moves on to profile seven iconic figures, such as founding father Thomas Jefferson, licentious librarian Melvil Dewey, condiment kingpin H. J. Heinz, slugger Ted Williams, and Estee Lauder. This last personality was so obsessed with touching other women's faces that she transformed her compulsion into a multibillion-dollar cosmetics corporation. Entertaining and instructive, Kendall offers up a few scoops along the way: Little do most Americans know that Charles Lindbergh, under the alias Clark Kent, sired seven children with his three German "wives." As Lindbergh's daughter Reeve told Kendall, "Now I know why he was gone so much. I also understand why he was delighted when I was learning German."

Download or read book Careful ish written by Honey Parker and published by Careful-Ish. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overeating. Oversharing. Overindulging. Over it all. Video chats. Not enough distancing. Alcohol. What could go wrong? And what are people doing when they think nobody is watching? Meet six friends who are COVID quarantining in The Greatest City On Earth. They struggle to have a social life, pay the bills, launch new businesses, hold on to long-distance relationships, not go nuts, wipe, and maybe, just maybe, still have sex. How can people in lockdown have so much drama? There's the nice Jewish fledgling TV news chick with a boss who won't stop dumping her purse into her green reporter's lap. Meet the African-American financial young gun who's trying to not quit before he gets fired. His white-punk roommate is a mathematician turned chef whose out-of-work antics could drive anyone crazy. The hard-edged Chinese-American floral designer who's harboring a secret is getting into fights with the socially-distanced supermarket line standers outside her window. The post-hippie hair stylist who now sports an article in front of her name is getting a special "package" from the parcel delivery guy. And the token ne'er-do-well from the Middle East is setting up an obstacle course in his penthouse apartment. Can he get himself on that ninja warrior TV show? All of these ridiculous people have something in common: a standing weekly cocktail date that they are determined to maintain while being socially distant and, well, careful-ish.

Download or read book The Empty Glass written by J.I. Baker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early-morning hours of August 5, 1962, Los Angeles County deputy coroner Ben Fitzgerald arrives at the home of the world's most famous movie star, now lying dead in her bedroom, naked and still clutching a telephone. There he discovers The Book of Secrets - Marilyn Monroe's diary - revealing a doomed love affair with a man she refers to only as "The General." In the following days, Ben unravels a wide-ranging cover-up and some heartbreaking truths about the fragile, luminous woman behind the celebrity. Soon the sinister and surreal accounts in The Book of Secrets bleed into Ben's own life, and he finds himself, like Monroe, trapped in a deepening paranoid conspiracy. The Empty Glass is an unforgettable combination of the riveting facts and legendary theories that have dogged Monroe, the Kennedy's, the Mafia, and even the CIA for decades. It is an exciting debut from a remarkable new thriller writer.

Download or read book Out Of Control written by Kevin Kelly and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.

Download or read book Liquid Modernity written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meaning. Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today.

Download or read book The Help written by Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original publication and copyright date: 2009.

Download or read book The Mysteries of New Orleans written by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-22 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most scandalous books published in America at the time. "Reizenstein's peculiar vision of New Orleans is worth resurrecting precisely because it crossed the boundaries of acceptable taste in nineteenth-century German America and squatted firmly on the other side . . . This work makes us realize how limited our notions were of what could be conceived by a fertile American imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century."—from the Introduction by Steven Rowan A lost classic of America's neglected German-language literary tradition, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855. Inspired by the gothic "urban mysteries" serialized in France and Germany during this period, Reizenstein crafted a daring occult novel that stages a frontal assault on the ethos of the antebellum South. His plot imagines the coming of a bloody, retributive justice at the hands of Hiram the Freemason—a nightmarish, 200-year-old, proto-Nietzschean superman—for the sin of slavery. Heralded by the birth of a black messiah, the son of a mulatto prostitute and a decadent German aristocrat, this coming revolution is depicted in frankly apocalyptic terms. Yet, Reizenstein was equally concerned with setting and characters, from the mundane to the fantastic. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New Orleans, the amorous exploits of its main characters uncannily resembling those of New Orleans' leading citizens. Also of note is the author's progressively matter-of-fact portrait of the lesbian romance between his novel's only sympathetic characters, Claudine and Orleana. This edition marks the first time that The Mysteries of New Orleans has been translated into English and proves that 150 years later, this vast, strange, and important novel remains as compelling as ever.

Download or read book The Devil s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2021-03-16T22:46:04Z with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Download or read book McGraw Hill s Dictionary of American Idoms and Phrasal Verbs written by Richard A. Spears and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2006-02-03 with total page 1100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the language of Nebraska . . .and 49 other states With more entries than any other reference of its kind,McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs shows you how American English is spoken today. You will find commonly used phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, proverbial expressions, and clichés. The dictionary contains more than 24,000 entries, each defined and followed by one or two example sentences. It also includes a Phrase-Finder Index with more than 60,000 entries.

Download or read book The Paris Affair written by Teresa Grant and published by NYLA. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long-buried secrets rise from the ashes of war... In the wake of the Battle of Waterloo, Paris is a house divided. The triumphant Bourbons flaunt their victory with lavish parties, while Bonapartists seek to avenge their defeat only to face capture and execution. Amid the turmoil, British attaché and intelligence agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, discover that his murdered half-sister, Princess Tatiana Kirsanova, may have borne a child—a secret she took to the grave. Malcolm suspects Tatiana's silence was owed to more than mere fear of impropriety. As Malcolm and Suzanne scour the ballrooms and boulevards of Paris in search for answers, they learn that the child was just one of many secrets Tatiana had been keeping. The princess was the toast of Paris when she arrived in the glamorous city, flirting her way into the arms of more than a few men—perhaps even those of Napoleon himself—and the father must be among them. But in the melee of the Napoleonic Wars, she was caught up in a deadly game, and now Malcolm and Suzanne must race against time to save her child from a similar fate... "Shimmers like the finest salons in Vienna." —Deborah Crombie "Meticulous, delightful, and full of surprises." —Tasha Alexander "Glittering balls, deadly intrigue, sexual scandals. . .the next best thing to actually being there!" —Lauren Willig

Download or read book The Man Who Saved New York written by Seymour P. Lachman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2011 Empire State History Book Award presented by New York State Archives Partnership Trust The Man Who Saved New York offers a portrait of one of New York's most remarkable governors, Hugh L. Carey, with emphasis on his leadership during the fiscal crisis of 1975. In this dramatic and colorful account, Seymour P. Lachman and Robert Polner's examine Carey's youth, military service, and public career against the backdrop of a changing, challenged, and recession-battered city, state, and nation. It was Carey's leadership, Lachman and Polner argue, that helped rescue the city and state from the brink of financial and social ruin. While TV comedians mocked and tabloids shrieked about the Big Apple's rising muggings, its deteriorating public services, and the threats and walkouts by embattled police, firefighters, and teachers, all amid a brutal recession, Carey and his team managed to hold on and ultimately prevailed, narrowly preventing a huge disruption to the state, national, and global economy. At one point, the city came within a few hours of having to declare itself incapable of paying its debts and obligations, but in the end stability and consensus prevailed, and America's largest city stayed out of bankruptcy court. The center held. Based on extensive interviews with Carey and his family, as well as numerous friends, observers, and former advisors, including Steven Berger, David Burke, John Dyson, Peter Goldmark, Judah Gribetz, Richard Ravitch, and Felix Rohatyn, The Man Who Saved New York aims to place Carey and his achievements at the center of the financial maelstrom that met his arrival in Albany. While others were willing to let the city go into default, Carey was strongly opposed, since it would not only affect the state as a whole but would have reverberations both nationally and internationally. In recounting the 1975 rescue of New York City and the aftershocks that nearly sank the state government, Lachman and Polner illuminate the often-volatile interplay among elite New York bankers, hard-nosed municipal union leaders, the press, and influential conservatives and liberals from City Hall to the Albany statehouse to the White House. Although often underappreciated by the public, it was Carey's force of will, wit, intellect, judgment, and experiences that allowed the state to survive this unparalleled ordeal and ultimately to emerge on a stronger footing. Further, Lachman and Polner argue, Carey's accomplishment is worth recalling as a prime example of how governments—local, state, and federal—can work to avoid the renewed the threat of bankruptcy that now confronts many overstretched states and localities.

Download or read book Lord Lyons written by Thomas Wodehouse Legh Newton (2d baron) and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: