It doesn't matter how good your plan is. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how ruthless or unscrupulous you are -- a bad partner means things go wrong when you're doing a job. This bank hit goes so right -- until it all falls apart.Do you like a story where a brave knight mounts his steed and saves a damsel in distress and the two of them live happily ever after? Well Michael Mattingly sure doesn't! He's writing the stories around here, and he likes his stories to be completely ridiculous!Join Michael and his seven-foot-tall purple dragon friend Boris as they embark on adventures through the strangest landscapes possible, meeting talking beans and polar bears and anything else you could dream up. On this particular day Michael and Boris must find and slay a TERRIBLE monster! Do they have what it takes? Will they survive? And can they finish before lunch?"The Ridiculous Adventures of Michael Mattingly: The TERRIBLE Monster" can be read by kids ages 8-11, and enjoyed by anyone who likes a ridiculous story.

Susan is the protagonist. She stumbles her way into a modelling agency.Coming out of her recent rumpus with Sheik Hari Al-Najib in the British Virgin Islands, teleoperator Clarity Nice flies out of BVI to Florida, in order to stay in Miami, and to avoid taking another plane back to Macau. Awaiting for her there in Asia, are those who purchased the ring by Mauboussin that Clarity received in Singapore, a ring kept by videographer Plum Bailey in BVI, which shows a symbol in one of the baguettes, known as the 'incomplete triangle'.While in transit in Florida, she is arrested by Customs and Border Immigration at Miami International Airport, after showing up in a list of people to watch, involved with the theft of federal bonds, previously held by the shady Cayman Islands banking agent Buddha Talk. To avoid going to a local detention center, Clarity is hired by Lloyd, a representative of the shady banking agent, who tells her that his boss wants a beachhead in South Florida, in the fast food beef and burger market. The market for burgers in the region, is dominated by rivals Moe Alamy, and by her protege, Gavino di Laure, the owners of the Mclannan's burger franchise, and of its mascot, Ollie the clown.Clarity reaches the lavish home of Buddha Talk in the Florida Keys, Swankeye, to help him out with 'business'. The banking agent, whose real name is Joe Mannen, has been having some problems with Cayman authorities. Inspectors Taylor and Marville are inquiring in his home in Florida, about the renewal license of Mannen's main business in the Cayman Islands, Lofty Bank. Mannen's reputation as a mobster has been dented with local Cappi of South Florida, by the disappearance of one million in stolen bonds, formerly held in his home in Cayman, now under Federal custody, after a whistle blower in a strip club called Milton's, told di Laure about the stolen bonds held by Mannen's pilot.In a meeting involving the various mobsters who rule the meat packing, distribution, and retail segments in South Florida, Mannen is left without a share of the meat business, and with the swamped Everglades territory of Monroe as the only turf to establish any burger related business. The only real business di Laure allows for Mannen is a small pawnshop in Miami, called the Gladeview pawnshop.Mannen knows that di Laure wants him out of South Florida, without any business at all. To restablish credibility with Cappi, using a manual called Cocoanomics found in a liquidation notice listed in the Cayman Islands Gazette, Mannen sends off Clarity to learn of di Laure's plans. She becomes a regular employee of Mclannan's, attending the rigorous training program of Ollie Burger University at the Mclannan's training center in Boynton, Florida. Dodging the henchman of Di Laure, Ambrosio, she will have to find a way to alter the Ollie burger of the franchise, to elicit a sale by Di Laure to Mannen of some of the locations of the profitable burger restaurants.

Hazel Bannock is the heir to the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major oil producers with global reach. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, Hazel's private yacht is hijacked by African pirates. Hazel is not on board at the time, but her nineteen year old daughter, Cayla, is kidnapped and held to ransom. The pirates demand a crippling twenty billion dollar ransom for her release. Complicated political and diplomatic considerations render the civilized major powers incapable of intervening. When Hazel is given evidence of the horrific torture which Cayla is being subjected to, she calls on Hector Cross to help her rescue her daughter. Hector is the owner and operator of Cross Bow Security, the company which is contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. He is a formidable fighting man. Between them Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.

Judy Hammer has accepted the challenge of Richmond, Virginia's police department to try and reverse the escalating crime statistics in the city. She brings with her Deputy Chief Virginia West and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer. They find a lot of things they are all too familiar with - teenage gangs, a rash of robberies at cash dispensers, street corner drug-dealing, racial tensions, too many people with too many guns and a cardiac inducing lack of parking spaces. They also meet resentment from the established police force and over-high expectations from the city's institutions. Then a computer virus crashes the police computer, freezing their screens with a design of blue fish, and the same blue fish appears on the statue of Jefferson Davis, which a graffiti artist has turned into a black basketball player and a gang called the Pikes claim it is their symbol, which also has links to the robberies. In an incredibly fast-moving police procedural Patricia Cornwell takes her readers on a roller-coaster ride of action and emotion. Show more Show less

The fearless investigative reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a mob billionaire, Grisha Grigorenko, is shot and buried with the trappings due a lord. No one makes the connection, but Arkady is transfixed by the tapes he discovers of Tatiana’s voice, even as she describes horrific crimes hidden by official versions. The trail leads to Kaliningrad, a Cold War “secret city” and home of the Baltic Fleet, separated by hundreds of miles from the rest of Russia. Arkady delves into Tatiana’s past and a surreal world of wandering dunes and amber mines. His only link is a notebook written in the personal code of a translator whose body is found in the dunes. Arkady’s only hope of decoding the symbols lies in Zhenya, a teenage chess hustler.

Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows that nobody in tiny Potts County actually wants to follow the law and he is perfectly content lazing about, eating five meals a day, and sleeping with all the eligible women. Still, Nick has some very complex problems to deal with. Two local pimps have been sassing him, ruining his already tattered reputation. His girlfriend Rose is being terrorized by her husband. And then, there's his wife and her brother Lenny who won't stop troubling Nick's already stressed mind. Are they a little too close for a brother and a sister? With an election coming up, Nick needs to fix his problems and fast. Because the one thing Nick does know is that he will do anything to stay sheriff. Because, as it turns out, Sheriff Nick Corey is not nearly as dumb as he seems. In Pop. 1280, widely regarded as a classic of mid-20th century crime, Thompson offers up one of his best, in a tale of lust, murder, and betrayal in the Deep South that was the basis for the critically acclaimed French film Coup de Torchon.

Glen was surprised to hear his father had three wills. But what he read in them taught him more about his father, his life and about himself. This is a tale about being a father, a son and a brother - and the bonds that bind for life.1969. The Rolling Stones perform a free concert in London’s Hyde Park. Flying high on grass and LSD, Peter, Barnard, Bree, and Tristan rock along with nearly a quarter million people as The Stones make history. With them is Pandora, the once-famous fashion model whose downward spiral into addiction made international headlines, now clinging desperately to the belief that only a power greater than herself can restore her to sanity.After the concert, these five friends decide to take a weekend jaunt to the country to visit Hampton Close, a crumbling old country house Peter recently inherited from his Great Uncle, Basil Townsend. A former protégé of Aleister Crowley, Basil Townsend was once one of Britain’s most notorious practitioners of the Black Arts. But inside a locked room at Hampton Close, an ancient evil from a distant land lies festering in the warm, wet darkness, waiting…waiting…waiting…

A First Shot Fired: Part Five and April installments of Tin Universe Daily all for the low price of FREE!! Plus this month bonus 8 page comic book script story from the unpublished Tin Universe archives.Looking out from the cliff top the day after the dark event, the search for something to cling to goes on. The answer was there yesterday, does it still remain, through all the destruction that rained down? Belief in something small is often the biggest tool to carry and while others succumb to the night that falls in the middle of the day, hidden high at the top of the cliff could be the one thing that everyone is looking for.This was written a long time ago, back in 2001. It is about depression and in the darkest of times trying to cling on to hope, even when everything is hopeless, and inexplicably dark that you can feel no escape.

The tomb of China’s First Emperor, guarded by an underground army of terra-cotta warriors, has remained sealed for more than 2,000 years. Though it’s regarded as one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world, the Chinese government won’t allow anyone to open it. Why? That question is at the heart of a dilemma faced by former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone, whose life is shattered when he receives an anonymous note carrying an unfamiliar Web address. Logging on, he sees Cassiopeia Vitt, a woman who’s saved his life more than once, being tortured at the hands of a mysterious man who has a single demand: Bring me the artifact she’s asked you to keep safe. The only problem is, Malone doesn’t have a clue what the man is talking about, since Cassiopeia has left nothing with him. So begins Malone’s most harrowing adventure to date; one that offers up astounding historical revelations, pits him against a ruthless ancient brotherhood, and sends him from Denmark to Belgium to Vietnam then on to China, a vast and mysterious land where danger lurks at every turn.

On the day Dr. Ray Klein wins his parole, the disciplinary perfection of Green River Penitentiary in Texas is torn apart by riot - more a tribal war - of unimaginable ferocity. As the inmates take over, the River sucks all inside further toward the abyss. Klein must choose. He must either claim his freedom and abandon his friends and the woman he loves to die, or he must risk all and fight. "Green River Rising" is a thriller that grabs you at the outset and imprisons you in the iron grip of its headlong plot until the final page. It is also an intelligent, literate, philosophical novel about choice, courage, and love - the dark, violent, sexy story of one man's moral choices in the amoral maelstrom.

When Theo discovers the father he thought died when he was a baby is still alive, he's determined to find him. The clues lead him to lonely Rachel, who has problems of her own, including parents who compare her unfavourably to her long-dead sister. But when Rachel and Theo are attacked by men from RAGE - the Righteous Army against Genetic Engineering - they are rescued by strangers and taken to meet a mysterious figure who leads them to make startling discoveries about their identities, which will affect their past, present, and future in dramatic and life-altering ways...

True Detective fans should read this book, the first of the Val Bosanquet mystery series. Val, a former New Orleans detective, is offered a job as Chief of a campus PD. A Haitian child killer he helped convict for the murder of her mother has just been enrolled at the university. Val stumbles across new evidence. Corporate corruption and Voodoo make for a volatile mix in the Deep South.All Bailey wants is to be a good negotiator, and to impress his boss and teacher, the legendary Drew Fletcher. He admires Fletcher for his skills in the field, but that doesn’t stop him admiring the man for other, more romantic reasons as well. In a tense hostage situation, it’s pretty unlikely Bailey’s usual, rash behaviour will cover him in glory, but in his dreams, it’s all going to happen just like in the movies.When he finally acts to protect his boss, it doesn’t go the way he hopes -- or does it? Will Bailey get to play the hero and get the guy of his dreams?

A father sells his soul to save his son but when the devil returns to collect his debt, the father refuses to give up his soul thus he is cursed until the devil gets what is rightfully his.At some point in the continuum of life comes the realization that one is indeed mortal. The phrase, “today is the first day of the rest of your life”, slowly becomes more poignant. Finally, the concept of one’s days being numbered becomes a constant companion. This story relates an experience of a man caught up in the end-game. Present day demographics would suggest that a number of readers would have more than a passing interest.William Gardner is proving himself to be a wordsmith of some note. THE QUESTIONER is an easy read with bountiful and beautifully manicured dialogue. He is also the author of the well-received fictional novella, A TALE OF TWO LEGACIES. It too is available on Smashwords.

Learn how Silicon Valley started raising capital. In this book you will see our character Rick transform into the Saintly figure by God and attempt to take his rightful position at the head of God's drug smuggling ring.Half Moon Bay Part IIFREE Adult Coloring Book and bonus fiction within.What will we see now in this crime fiction thriller story.Rick loses his father, and God that uses the Catholic Church to smuggle drugs offers him a job. Will he take it..?He must choose to live the life he used to know or become a Saint in Gods drug smuggling ring.Accept his new life as a Saint and using the Catholic Church as a cover to smuggle drugs into Half Moon Bay, CA.Rick tries to find out what truly has happened to his father as he runs into a Detective that offers him real information on the organization that his os working for.The goal is set to invest into America's future and smuggle a tanker full of drugs into Half Moon Bay during the Super Bowl. All the while trying to elude the FBI, and finding out what really happened to his father.An excerpt from this crime fiction thriller...The moonlight hits St. James softly in the face lighting his way as he walks toward dock number 2311. Over at the dock, the boats are parted with the moonlight as it shines off the darkened water and moves in a dance along with the boats. He looks at the paper from God, and holds his wrist to the scanner at the gate. The dock creaks as he walks toward the Old Endeavor yacht. Sister Maria opens the hatch and looks at him. The moonlight sparkles in her eyes, and they each see each other and smile."I've been waiting on you," Sister Maria says.St. James follows Sister Maria into the living quarters of the yacht. St. Peter smiles and hands him a bible. St. James opens it and reveals a half-pound of marijuana. "Welcome to the family," St. Peter says, with an enlarged smile. The three of them pack bibles filled with drugs into boxes.This is part II of III.Download Now..!

A private investigator is on the trail of a psycho who's has a taste for blood.When Miss Graham's singer friend doesn't come home she hires a private investigator Keith Jackson to bring her back. But he finds her horribly murdered. Then more women began to follow. Keith realizes he's on the trail of a psycho. Will Keith be able to stop this crazy dude before he kills again?This novel is action and mystery.