Edmund Herlihy, a notorious slumlord, was shot dead in front of one of his houses in North Philadelphia. The obvious suspect? A disgruntled tenant. Police detective Darryn Clark soon realizes that the answer is not so simple, as he plunges into a tangled web of deceit and corruption.

Imagine the look on your landlord's face when they see you reading this book! If you're really looking for the top 10 ways to kill your landlord, stop what you're doing and seek psychiatric help immediately! For the rest of you, bring some dark humor to your day! This book is all about the reaction you get when someone sees it sitting on your desk or if they witness you actually reading it! Chill out with it in the living room. Take it on a trip. The creative possibilities of being seen with this book are endless! There is a fun little story within the book, but that's secondary to the response you'll get when people catch a glimpse of you with this! Great for a practical joke or some lighthearted black humor, this prank book will surely bring a demented smile to the faces of those who share the same sick sense of humor as you. Also makes a great gag gift for friends, relatives, white elephant, all that kind of stuff. Sick fun for everyone!

The long-buried story of a Chicagoan's struggle for justice after four of hischildren perished in a tragic fire.

MYSTERIES / SUSPENSE / ADVENTURE “Promised Land” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins [Michael Bracken Presents short story] Security specialist Erie Hollar uncovers a sinister conspiracy on the moon’s Shackleton City. After discovering a body and surviving a brutal attack, Erie races against time to unravel the truth, dodging dangerous enemies and bureaucratic traps in a tense, moonlit sci-fi mystery. “The Great Diet Duplicity,” by Hal Charles [Solve It Yourself Mystery] Detective Kelly Stone investigates the theft of a cash prize at a dieting club’s annual weigh-in. Amid fire alarms and diet debates, can you solve the case before she does? “Murder of a Slumlord,” by Marc Egnal [Short Story] Detective Darryn Clark investigates the high-profile murder of a notorious slumlord in North Philadelphia. Amid a complex web of corruption and hidden motives, Darryn uncovers shocking secrets behind the crime. “Velda and the Three Happy Housewives,” by Ron Miller [Short Story] Private eye Velda’s latest case starts too close to home—just two floors down. What begins as a routine domestic disturbance quickly spirals into a tangled web of deceit, murder, and unlikely allies. A Mediterranean Mystery, by Fred E. Wynne [novel] A respectable English vicar finds himself embroiled in international intrigue and smuggling when he joins his wayward brother on a Mediterranean voyage. A thrilling tale of adventure, morality, and redemption. SCIENCE FICTION / FANTASY “Materialist,” by Janet Fox [short story] Barbara married for wealth, but after her grasping, elderly husband finally dies, a series of mysterious disasters unfolds. With a growing sense of dread, Barbara realizes the dead may hold more power than she ever imagined. “The Elevator Operator,” by Donald M. Munro [Barb Goffman Presents short story] Hugo Sanz, a long-time elevator operator, now a sentient hologram, faces more than difficult passengers in “The Elevator Operator.” As technology threatens his existence, dark secrets from his past resurface, leading to an eerie showdown. “The Tour Guide’s Tale,” by Anna Tambour [short story] A quirky tour guide shares a bizarre and darkly humorous tale of a colleague’s strange encounter with eccentric travelers. The story spirals into unexpected absurdity, blending wit, mystery, and a little menace. “Little Jimmy,” by Lester Del Rey [short story] A man returns to his childhood home, where he encounters something far more unsettling than nostalgia—an inexplicable presence tied to his past. Little Jimmy, a mysterious figure, challenges everything he thought he understood about life, death, and ghosts. “Mr. Biggs Goes to Town,” by Nelson S. Bond [short story, Lancelot Biggs series] A space freighter crew faces unexpected challenges when they are reassigned to a critical mission involving pirates on the planetoid Iris. With Lancelot Biggs’ quirky genius leading the way, they must uncover a new resource to save the mission—and thwart the criminals.

This book explores Bernard Shaw’s journalism from the mid-1880s through the Great War—a period in which Shaw contributed some of the most powerful and socially relevant journalism the western world has experienced. In approaching Shaw’s journalism, the promoter and abuser of the New Journalism, W. T. Stead, is contrasted to Shaw, as Shaw countered the sensational news copy Stead and his disciples generated. To understand Shaw’s brand of New Journalism, his responses to the popular press’ portrayals of high profile historical crises are examined, while other examples prompting Shaw’s journalism over the period are cited for depth: the 1888 Whitechapel murders, the 1890-91 O’Shea divorce scandal that fell Charles Stewart Parnell, peace crusades within militarism, the catastrophic Titanic sinking, and the Great War. Through Shaw’s journalism that undermined the popular press’ shock efforts that prevented rational thought, Shaw endeavored to promote clear thinking through the immediacy of his critical journalism. Arguably, Shaw saved the free press.

Who is killing the crime writers of London? Find out in this “consistently entertaining . . . crime debut from sci-fi veteran Brown” (Kirkus Reviews). London, 1955. When crime writer Donald Langham’s literary agent asks for his help in sorting out “a delicate matter,” little does Langham realize what he’s getting himself into. For a nasty case of blackmail leads inexorably to murder as London’s literary establishment is rocked by a series of increasingly bizarre deaths. With three members of the London Crime Writers’ Association coming to sudden and violent ends, what at first appeared to be a series of suicides looks suspiciously like murder—and there seems to be something horribly familiar about the various methods of dispatch. With the help of his literary agent’s assistant, the delectable Maria Dupré, Langham finds himself drawing on the skills of his fictional detective hero as he hunts a ruthless and fiendishly clever killer—a killer with old scores to settle. “[A] well-paced first mystery. . . . Readers will hope a sequel is in the works.” —Publishers Weekly

The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn "A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly “One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.

“All True Stories—from Police and Court Records Inside: Killer wanted to marry the corpse! – Pot smoker was a knife freak—Killed his own mother with a pickaxe—Preyed on young black women—Rosemary’s rosaries—Mad murderess slept in victim’s blood—And much more!” A ringing endorsement from one of America’s Top True Crime Editors: Krist Boardman is “one of the very best detective writers. He does a lot of detective-like work himself for an article… He’s got the formula down and he really knows the knack of adding a measure of suspense to the story.” Art Crockett, late editor-in-chief of The Official Detective Group of magazines, Harford County Sun.

This is the first book to analyze our suburban literary tradition. Tracing the suburb's emergence as a crucial setting and subject of the twentieth-century American novel, Catherine Jurca identifies a decidedly masculine obsession with the suburban home and a preoccupation with its alternative--the experience of spiritual and emotional dislocation that she terms "homelessness." In the process, she challenges representations of white suburbia as prostrated by its own privileges. In novels as disparate as Tarzan (written by Tarzana, California, real-estate developer Edgar Rice Burroughs), Richard Wright's Native Son, and recent fiction by John Updike and Richard Ford, Jurca finds an emphasis on the suburb under siege, a place where the fortunate tend to see themselves as powerless. From Babbitt to Rabbit, the suburban novel casts property owners living in communities of their choosing as dispossessed people. Material advantages become artifacts of oppression, and affluence is fraudulently identified as impoverishment. The fantasy of victimization reimagines white flight as a white diaspora. Extending innovative trends in the study of nineteenth-century American culture, Jurca's analysis suggests that self-pity has played a constitutive role in white middle-class identity in the twentieth century. It breaks new ground in literary history and cultural studies, while telling the story of one of our most revered and reviled locations: "the little suburban house at number one million and ten Volstead Avenue" that Edith Wharton warned would ruin American life and letters.

Black and white turn to shades of gray as the sinister Diablo offers the seduction of wealth to those willing to murder for it. It's up to detectives Ventura, Pretraius, and Lakota Rising Star to tie the clues together and stop the killings.