The deputy sheriff or sheriff of a county often is perceived as the lone officer protecting the citizens of a small town. Country Cop is the riveting story of one such deputy sheriff, Barry Goodson, and his experiences with the Parker County Sheriff’s office in the 1990s and early 2000s in North Texas. Goodson was required to answer any call for service within an area roughly the size of Rhode Island (just under 1000 square miles), where a backup officer could be many miles away, and so he often patrolled and handled calls alone in a county renowned for being a haven for drug manufacturers and dealers. Goodson puts the reader in his patrol car to vicariously share what it is like to be in county law enforcement. He reveals his officer’s skills, which include the ability to identify an offender immediately, to assess that offender’s immediate intent (apparent or not), and to decide on proper action before the offender can unleash his or her attack on that deputy or against the originally intended victim. More often than not, he employed “verbal judo” to de-escalate a situation instead of drawing his gun. Calls from dispatch ranged from a simple need to clear livestock from the highways to shots fired or a 150 mph high-speed auto chase of drug dealers. More often, drug dealer attacks erupted during a perceived normal traffic stop with the offender suddenly producing a weapon, forcing Goodson to use force to subdue the individual. During one domestic violence call Goodson and another officer forced entry to stop a violent father from extreme violence against his wife and two teenage sons, but then Goodson had to intercept the wife as she lunged forward with a pair of long scissors in an attempt to stab the other officer in the back. Country Cop gives the inside story of county law enforcement and will prove a valuable resource for those in criminal justice, those who aspire to a career in law enforcement, and to all who enjoy a good police story.

Country Cop is the story of Gaven, who finishes his tour of duty in the army and moves to the randomly selected town of Cove, Iowa, with two friends. After he gets settled and finds work in law enforcement, Gaven finds himself on the trail of an arsonist and possibly a murderer. The novel follows his exploits as he tries to solve the mystery of the Betty Boop Bandit.

He’ll always love Miranda Jefferson… But this cop has a job to do. Seeing his high school sweetheart after fourteen years fills Holly River police chief Carter Cahill with so many conflicting emotions. One thing hasn’t changed—the love that brought them together in the first place. But the single mother’s asking something Carter isn’t sure he can give. Is he a man who follows the law…or his heart?

A murder in a small Colorado town closely resembles unsolved crimes committed by a serial killer almost thirty years ago. Private investigator Teague Donovan learns of the recent murder and is instantly drawn to the case, because one of the victims in the past was his best friend, and he is determined to bring the killer to justice. Hoyt Newman, the detective in charge of the most recent case, is none too happy with Teague's interfering. At least not until a second homeless boy is tortured and killed. As the two men work together, they begin to develop an interest in each other -- one that seems fated not to come to fruition since Teague is city, through and through, and Hoyt is definitely country to the core.

A shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist recounts the story of how the criminal justice system allowed this to happen, and of how two men, Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, built successful careers on the back of that structure. For nearly two decades, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart. Here, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington tell the haunting story of how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system -- a relic of the Jim Crow era -- failed to deliver justice for its citizens. The authors argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, raising sobering questions about our ability and willingness to address these crucial issues.

America has become increasingly divided and polarized in recent years. With growing racial tension, animosity toward law enforcement professionals, government corruption, and disregard for the constitutional process, there seems to be no easy answer in sight. But Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke knows where we must begin: we must stop blaming others; look at our problems with open eyes; take ownership of our family, community, and country; and turn to God for solutions. Deeply rooted in Sheriff Clarke's personal life story, this book is not a dry recitation of what has gone wrong in America with regard to race. It's about the issues that deeply affect us today-both personally and politically-and how we can rise above our current troubles to once again be a truly great people in pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

"Francis O'Neill was Chicago's larger-than-life police chief, starting in 1901- and he was an Irish immigrant with an intense interest in his home country's music. In documenting and publishing his understanding of Irish musical folkways, O'Neill became the foremost shaper of what "Irish music" meant. He favored specific rural forms and styles, and as Michael O'Malley shows, he was the "beat cop" -actively using his police powers and skills to acquire knowledge about Irish music and to enforce a nostalgic vision of it"--

A ghost story that begins in everyday tragedy, from a distinctly American master of both forms: a "scary, sad, funny . . . mesmerizing read" (Stephen King) At Midnight on Halloween in a cloistered New England suburb, a car carrying five teenagers leaves a winding road and slams into a tree, killing three of them. One escapes unharmed, another suffers severe brain damage. A year later, summoned by the memories of those closest to them, the three that died come back on a last chilling mission among the living. A strange and unsettling ghost story, The Night Country creeps through the leaf-strewn streets and quiet cul-de-sacs of one bedroom community, reaching into the desperately connected yet isolated lives of three people changed forever by the accident: Tim, who survived yet lost everything; Brooks, the cop whose guilty secret has destroyed his life; and Kyle's mom, trying to love the new son the doctors returned to her. As the day wanes and darkness falls, one of them puts a terrible plan into effect, and they find themselves caught in a collision of need and desire, watched over by the knowing ghosts. Macabre and moving, The Night Country elevates every small town's bad high school crash into myth, finding the deeper human truth beneath a shared and very American tragedy. As in his highly-prized Snow Angels and A Prayer for the Dying, once again Stewart O'Nan gives us an intimate look at people trying to hold on to hope, and the consequences when they fail.

A runaway teen at Christmas… brings a special gift into her life. When Ava Cahill returns to Holly River to reunite with the son she gave up for adoption, she’s stunned to encounter Noah Walsh again. The attractive biker she knew six years ago had no idea of her secret. And now Ava’s mentoring his troubled daughter. As she and Noah rekindle powerful feelings, can she tell him the truth and become one forever family?

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell—can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives—McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.