Neon rain slicked the alleyway, reflecting the pulsating glow of the omnipresent Somniloquies logos emblazoned on every surface. Xander squeezed his paint-stained fingers around the worn leather satchel, anxiety prickling his skull like static. He shouldn't be here, hunched in this reeking back alley, waiting for a dream dealer in a city where nightmares wore Gucci and REM cycles were commodities. Yet, here he was, a starving artist chased by shadows and creditors alike, his only asset a paintbrush dipped in desperation.

When Edwin Sutherland introduced the concept of white-collar crime, he referred to the respectable businessmen of his day who had, in the course of their occupations, violated the law whenever it was advantageous to do so. Yet since the founding of the American Republic, numerous otherwise respectable individuals had been involved in white-collar criminality. Using organized smuggling as an exemplar, this narrative history of American smuggling establishes that white-collar crime has always been an integral part of American history when conditions were favorable to violating the law. This dark side of the American Dream originally exposed itself in colonial times with elite merchants of communities such as Boston trafficking contraband into the colonies. It again came to the forefront during the Embargo of 1809 and continued through the War of 1812, the Civil War, nineteenth century filibustering, the Mexican Revolution and Prohibition. The author also shows that the years of illegal opium trade with China by American merchants served as precursor to the later smuggling of opium into the United States. The author confirms that each period of smuggling was a link in the continuing chain of white-collar crime in the 150 years prior to Sutherland’s assertion of corporate criminality.

This 16 print ArtBook is the visual companion to duo'Xplore's 16 track music CD, also titled Dream Smuggler, released in February 2021.

Pippa Winterbourne runs Moorehaven, the Oregon Coast’s quirkiest bed-and-breakfast and former home of world-famous mystery writer A. Raymond Moore. Guests come there to write their own crime novels. When a real-life murder takes a local’s life and washes a handsome boat pilot into her arms, Pippa is yanked into a deadly plot of her own. A tangle of secrets crashes past into present, and Pippa must uncover clues dating back to Seacrest’s Prohibition days, including a secret Moore himself hid from the world. Juggling her book-writing guests, small-town intrigues, secret club agendas, and a possibly fatal attraction, Pippa must sort fact from fiction to know who to trust before a desperate killer claims a final revenge nearly a century in the making.

North Korea is dark. Literally dark—most of its regions are too poor to afford electricity and other basic needs. Figuratively dark—its daily life is hidden from outsiders, its citizens reticent, and its propaganda vast. And spiritually dark-its ruler, Kim Jong-il, is both worshipped and feared and the gospel is squelched without question. Into this darkness, Esther walked. Growing up a Chinese-Korean, Esther wanted nothing to do with Christianity until a visit to an underground church in China flooded her with the mercy and power of the Spirit—and she was given an unusual call: be a missionary to North Koreans. But again, Esther wanted nothing to do with it, or rather, with them. Rude, filthy, and abusive, North Koreans seeking refuge in China were the worst of the worst. However, when Esther slipped inside North Korea for the first time and witnessed for herself the shocking conditions, she finally understood: they acted desperate, because they were. Esther gave her all to her mission. Although imprisoned and tortured by both North Korea and China, sometimes destitute and always in danger, having few resources and little time for family, for the past fifteen years Esther has faithfully spread aid and the gospel witness to North Koreans. Smuggling Light is her true tale of bravery, humility, and complete reliance on the mighty hand of God in one of the darkest nations in the world.

The Smugglers' World examines a critical part of Atlantic trade for a neglected corner of the Spanish Empire. Testimonies of smugglers, buyers, and royal officials found in Venezuelan prize court records reveal a colony enmeshed in covert commerce. Forsaken by the Spanish fleet system, Venezuelan colonists struggled to obtain European foods and goods. They found a solution in exchanging cacao, a coveted luxury, for the necessities of life provided by contrabandists from the Dutch, English, and French Caribbean. Jesse Cromwell paints a vivid picture of the lives of littoral peoples who normalized their subversions of imperial law. Yet laws and borders began to matter when the Spanish state cracked down on illicit commerce in the 1720s as part of early Bourbon reforms. Now successful merchants could become convict laborers just as easily as enslaved Africans could become free traders along the unruly coastlines of the Spanish Main. Smuggling became more than an economic transaction or imperial worry; persistent local need elevated the practice to a communal ethos, and Venezuelans defended their commercial autonomy through passive measures and even violent political protests. Negotiations between the Spanish state and its subjects over smuggling formed a key part of empire making and maintenance in the eighteenth century.

A magical story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world’s great medieval cities, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature In the epic fashion of the great Arab explorers and travel writers of the Middle Ages, scribe and bookworm Mazid al-Hanafi narrates this journey from his remote village in the Arabian Desert. Dreaming of grand libraries, his passion for the written word draws him into a secret society of book smugglers and into the famed cultural capitals of the period—Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Granada, and Cordoba. He discovers a dangerous new world of ideas and experiences the cultural diversity of the Islamic Golden Age, its sects, philosophical schools, wars, and ways of life. Omaima Al-Khamis’s magical storytelling and her vivid descriptions of time and place trace a route through ancient cities and cultures and immerse us in a distant era, uncovering the intellectual debates and struggles which continue to rage today.

Reproduction of the original: The Smuggler of King ́s Cove by Sylvanus Cobb