Thirty years ago, Harry Winslow's wife and children died in a tragic house fire while he was out of the country on a mission for Uncle Sam - or did they? Someone has left Harry an envelope containing photos of his wife and children some years after they were supposed to have died.Freshly retired from his years as a Government Agent, Harry turns to Sam Prichard. Sam and Indie managed to track down his family, but the incredible story only gets wilder from there. An old friend of Harry's had staged the deaths of his family, while leading his wife to believe that Harry was the one who had died, and that the KGB was coming for her family. In desperation, she allowed him to take her out of the country and create new identities for herself and her children.Now the truth is out, and Harry and his wife are reunited, but then his old friend is murdered and Harry is the only viable suspect. Will Sam be able to prove his innocence? It's a game of poker - and the chips are human lives.

What would you do if your child went missing?...Meet retired cop, Sam PrichardSam Prichard was a cop, and a good one, until the bullets took out the joint of his right hip. Now he's trying to learn to live without being a cop, and getting to know his neighbors, learning to walk again and even ride a motorcycle. Life is bearable, barely, but then he gets asked to find a missing child, and the lure of getting back into some kind of police work is too much for him to resist. When he teams up with computer whiz Indiana Perkins, he suddenly becomes one of the best investigators he's ever even known.Now, he's found the missing child, but it's thrown him right into the middle of something that may be a drug war--or could be a chance to stop the next 911! There's no way out for Sam, so he's in for the ride of his life, but when the girl he's becoming fond of is suddenly drawn into the line of fire with her own little daughter, Sam is ready to forget all the rules and do whatever is necessary to win the day.See why people are calling it "the next Jack Reacher" yourself by scrolling up and downloading your copy today!

When a Balkan beauty gets in trouble over some missing diamonds, whom else can she turn to but the world-famous Nero Wolfe? Especially since she claims to be Wolfe's long lost daughter! The stakes are suddenly raised when a student at this woman's fencing school ends up dead after a pointed lesson. As Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, thrust and parry into a tangle of documents, identities and international intrigue, another student body turns up, expertly skewered through the heart. Is Wolfe's long lost daughter the black sheep of the family, a hot-blooded mistress of murder? “It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained—and puzzled—millions of mystery fans around the world. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout.

What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"—the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior—has been unable to account for the difference. Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation—one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike—underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions—as historical narrative, not inference—follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.

Although she is the most popular novelist in history, with over two billion books sold worldwide, Agatha Christie lived a life shrouded in secrecy and fueled by curiosity. Nearly as notorious for her aversion to the press as she was for her 80 books and collections of short stories, Christie made no secret of her need for privacy. Utilizing over 5,000 previously unpublished letters, notes, and documents, award-winning biographer Richard Hack allows Christie to write again, 33 years after her death. Duchess of Death is her story, as full of romance, travel, wealth, and scandal as any mystery Christie ever crafted. There have been numerous biographies of the Queen of Crime, all of which claim to be definitive. However, Duchess of Death is the first to draw from such an enormous number of previously unpublished correspondence and notes, effectively establishing it as the most authoritative, penetrating look at the personal and literary life of Christie.

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.

SEX, BOOZE, AND... DEATH?Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B014JOV24KBook II: http://www.amazon.com/gp/B014IF1VOQMeet retired cop, Sam Prichard.Sam opens his practice as a Private Investigator, and gets his first real case almost instantly: Find Barry Wallace, a local rock singer who was on the verge of making it big, and vanished suddenly! When Barry's body turns up minus his head and hands, the case becomes ominous, and now he has to find a killer, instead!The evidence comes together, and leads to the discovery of the missing body parts on the estate of a well known talent agent, who stood to gain a lot of wealth if Barry had only agreed to sign the contract he had arranged, and the man is arrested for murder. But Sam gets a bigger surprise when that same man hires him to prove his innocence, and Sam follows a convoluted trail of clues to discover who really killed Barry, and wanted to frame the agent for the crime!Meanwhile, Sam has blundered into taking a job as the new lead singer for Barry's band, and may be on the edge of a whole new career for himself! Come along for the ride, and you'll get to hear Sam Prichard sing his heart out!See why people are calling it "the next Jack Reacher" yourself by scrolling up and downloading your copy today!

Known as either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ ‘managerialism’, ‘new managerialism’ or ‘new public management’, this new narrative has, irrespective of moniker, permeated the institutions of higher education almost everywhere. Taking this as its context, this volume is founded on a comprehensive international comparative analysis of the evolving role of middle-level academic managers—deans, heads of department and their equivalents. The chapters address key questions that will determine the future of academe: have the imperatives of management theory caused a realignment of the values and expectations of middle-level academic managers? In what way do the new expectations placed on this group shape the academic profession as a whole? And, whose interests do middle-level academic managers represent? Based on material presented at one of the high-level Douro Seminars on research into tertiary education, this volume systematically combines theoretical views with empirical analysis. It argues that ‘managerialist’ pressure has resulted in changes in the way academic performance is measured. There has been a shift in criteria away from research reputation, teaching and scholarship to the measurement of performance based upon management capacities. This has given middle-level academic managers a pivotal role halfway between the predilections of high-level decision makers and the maintenance of academic values and control. The enhanced expectations and more defined functions of middle-level academic managers are in clear contrast to earlier times, when the position was considered a public-spirited rite of passage for career-minded academics. Despite this, the contributors to this book believe that the middle-level managers in the ten countries examined are neither corporate lackeys nor champions of academe. It is becoming increasingly clear that the ability of organisations to achieve their aims is largely dependent on the skill and dedication of middle managers. Past studies of organisational dynamics have been preoccupied with the executive level of management. This text, which will be of great interest to researchers and policy makers alike, attempts to redress the balance.

"Genuinely fascinating reading."—The New York Times Book Review "Diverting and patently authoritative."—The New Yorker "Grand and fascinating … a history, a compendium and a critical study all in one, and all first rate."—Rex Stout "A landmark … a brilliant study written with charm and authority."—Ellery Queen "This book is of permanent value. It should be on the shelf of every reader of detective stories."—Erle Stanley Gardner Author Howard Haycraft, an expert in detective fiction, traces the genre's development from the 1840s through the 1940s. Along the way, he charts the innovations of Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as the modern influence of George Simenon, Josephine Tey, and others. Additional topics include a survey of the critical literature, a detective story quiz, and a Who's Who in Detection.