Three twenty-something young adults, working at low-paying, no-future jobs, tell one another modern tales of love and death.

Located halfway between Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona, Indio came into being as a railroad town in 1876 when the Southern Pacific Railroad completed this last link in its southern transcontinental route. Settling this arid land took ingenuity and courage, and Indio's early residents had both. In the 1930s, Indio became a mining town when 92 miles of tunnel were dug through its eastern mountains for the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the largest construction project in the United States during the Depression. World War II brought Gen. George Patton's Desert Tank Corps to train nearby and crowd into Indio for rest and relaxation. The completion of the Coachella Branch of the All-American Canal brought Colorado River water to the desert in the late 1940s, and a land boom ensued. Today Indio's reputation as the "Date Capital of the United States" and "City of Festivals" is long held and well deserved.

Palm Springs now joins Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley in California’s Noir Series arena. “Contrary to popular belief, noir doesn’t require a bleak city street for its setting. Nor water, for that matter. Noir thrives on secrets, lies and lust, all flowing plentifully through the jewel in the Coachella Valley’s fragile crown . . . For all the playfulness of the genre and the location, the wisecracks and the kidney-shaped pools, there is an unmanageable darkness waiting to seep in, like so much blood in the pool water.” —Los Angeles Times Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: T. Jefferson Parker, Janet Fitch, Eric Beetner, Kelly Shire, Tod Goldberg, Michael Craft, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Rob Roberge, J.D. Horn, Eduardo Santiago, Rob Bowman, Chris J. Bahnsen, Ken Layne, and Alex Espinoza.

Several books have been written about the history of the Coachella Valley, most of which focus on the efforts of white settlers to develop the valley's agriculture and tourism industries.But while some scholars have written extensively about the history of the Cahuilla Indians and ancient Lake Cahuilla, relatively little has been written about the immigrants from Mexico, Japan and other countries who have fueled the Coachella Valley's economic growth since the early 1900s, let alone the people who have come to this valley from other states.The Palm Springs Historical Society published a book in 2005 titled, We Were Here Too: The History and Contributions of the Original Mexican Families to the Palm Springs Village. But aside from a self-published book titled Coachella Valley Mexican American Pioneer Roots, which was produced by the Mexican American Pioneers in December 2009, and a commemorative yearbook, Coachella Valley Union High School: The First 50 Years 1910-1960, relatively little has been written about the immigrant history of Coachella and the eastern Coachella Valley.This book is an attempt to fill the void by highlighting some of the more interesting aspects of the eastern Coachella Valley's immigrant history, as told by several of the valley's pioneering immigrants and their descendants, in an effort to better inform our youth and everyone else, for that matter, about the significant economic and social contributions of immigrants in our community.This book includes many direct quotes from heretofore unpublished accounts of Mexican American pioneers who were interviewed in 2007 by Dr. Sarah McCormick-Seekatz as part of an oral history project organized by the Coachella Valley History Museum and Cultural Center in Indio. Dr. McCormick-Seekatz is one of a handful of historians who have taken an interest in researching various aspects of the Coachella Valley's immigrant history.

The book analyzes the problems and potential of renewable energy development for the Coachella Valley of California and provides a useful case study for renewable energy feasibility assessments for other areas. A conceptual model, Integrated Policy Assessment Theory for Renewable Energy, is given and justified for renewable energy development in the Valley. Further, Central Place Theory, well known in urban geography, is discussed and it is seen to be very relevant to the understanding the Coachella Valley’s city sizes and renewable energy markets, compared to the greater Los Angeles region. The book’s research methods include geospatial mapping and analysis and interviews leaders in small innovative firms, government agencies, and nonprofits. The many findings of the book include evaluation of how the Valley’s socioeconomic and transportation features influence renewable energy development, the scope of markets for solar and wind energy in the Valley, spatial confluences of renewable energy facilities with other features, and the future potential of ground-source heat pumps. Benchmark comparison of the Coachella Valley is done with two leading wind and solar regions elsewhere in the country, to assess the Valley’s evolution and opportunities in renewable energy. The book concludes by evaluating the prospects and problems for the growth of renewable entrepreneurship, manufacturing, assembly, and operations in Coachella Valley. This leads to policy recommendations grounded in the book’s research findings, which are intended for use by governments, businesses, and nonprofits. The hope is that many of the developmental experiences from the Coachella Valley will be helpful not only within the Valley but to other communities nationwide and worldwide.

The subprime crash of 2008 revealed a fragile, unjust, and unsustainable economy built on retail consumption, low-wage jobs, and fictitious capital. Economic crisis, finance capital, and global commodity chains transformed Southern California just as Latinxs and immigrants were turning California into a majority-nonwhite state. In Inland Shift, Juan D. De Lara uses the growth of Southern California’s logistics economy, which controls the movement of goods, to examine how modern capitalism was shaped by and helped to transform the region’s geographies of race and class. While logistics provided a roadmap for capital and the state to transform Southern California, it also created pockets of resistance among labor, community, and environmental groups who argued that commodity distribution exposed them to economic and environmental precarity.

The Delicate Dance: Living White Being Black A Memoir By: Paula Heariold-Kinney Societal forces that shaped her life as a black woman impact Paula’s life. She finds herself attempting to fit into a dominant white society. She describes events from childhood to present that contributed to her life experiences. She addresses her parents’ endeavors to teach her how to assimilate and to value the white culture in order to succeed in life. She finds herself concealing her cultural identify when she is in an all-white environment. A hurtful childhood encounter shaped her mindset in believing being black was a negative attribute. As a four-year-old, she experienced a very negative situation, which launched the beginning of a trajectory that compelled her to transform her life, by assiduously working diligently to assimilate into a white society. She captivates the love and strong foundation of growing up in a black family. Yet the complexity of doing a “delicate dance” between two cultures was not without anguish. Paula shares both her outward journey and her inward journey. Although she becomes a successful professional woman, it was fraught with experiencing emotional, mental, and psychological consequences.