Darren Hopkins, a young, naïve international businessman without government experiences is hired as a research analyst with the President’s National Security Committee and suddenly finds himself embroiled in a highly divisive struggle. He learns that so-called super patriots are acquiring weaponry from the Mid-East and that the CIA is trying to track the shipments. But the CIA fails and the potential volatility of a link between America’s domestic terrorists and international terrorists sends chilling shock waves throughout the nation. Secret deliberations of a newly formed Terrorism Task Force are constantly leaked to the domestic terrorists. It becomes impossible to trust anyone. Old friendships are torn asunder and families are ripped apart. The unbelievable turns believable as domestic terrorism erupts at all levels of American life and no citizen is left unscathed. Are the self-styled super patriots capable of doing what Nazi Germany and other nations have been unable to accomplish–bring the U.S. government to its knees? DON E. POST has an MA in sociology, MTh in theology, and a PhD in educational anthropology. A Professor and Dean for many years, he has worked extensively throughout the world as an international business consultant. He is the author of numerous books and articles.
Private investigator John McAlister is looking for something different. Something that doesn’t involve the divorce surveillance work he is so good at. But when high-powered society attorney Amanda Baker hires him to find a missing accused crack dealer, John gets more change than he bargained for when he learns that other accused drug criminals have gone missing. John’s search leads him through a world of urban drug dealers, country honkytonks, high society and twisted law enforcement, with a stop at one of Amanda’s divorce trials. Along the way, he learns some things he would rather not know, and narrowly escapes with his life. Set in Memphis and the surrounding Delta, “Bluff Walk” is a page-turning mystery thriller that captures the complexity of Southern society, high and low, and the haunting effects of the past on the present. CHARLES R. CRAWFORD has practiced with one of the oldest and largest law firms in Memphis for over twenty years. Author of several published articles and reviews, this is his first novel. Mr. Crawford is currently at work on the second in the John McAlister Mystery series.
Driven into exile from Carmena, Spain, in 1577, to escape the threat of death by the Inquisition, the Robledo family immigrates first to New Spain and then joins the Onate colonial expedition in 1596 to New Mexico. Set against the historically accurate backdrop of the colonial enterprise, and conveying a sense of New Mexico’s vast wilderness, freshness, beauty, and soul, the novel brings to life a courageous and devoted family bent on establishing a new homeland. Here is the true story of the Robledos’ tragic year of 1598 in which they suffer the deaths of two family members: Pedro Robledo the elder, from a prolonged illness and the rigors of the trail; and his son, Pedro Robledo the younger, as the result of an Indian attack at the Pueblo of Acoma in which eleven Spanish soldiers are killed. The difficulties of maintaining the colony during an era which would later become known as “The Little Ice Age” are revealed in intimate detail. Lacking adequate harvests, and semi-dependent upon their Pueblo Indian neighbors into whose villages the Spaniards have moved, the colonists are eventually reduced to eating roasted cowhides even as the Indians are eating dirt, coal, and ashes. In the end, some family members return to New Spain in 1601.
Outsiders seldom understand the curious amalgam of artists, galleries, misfits and hangers-on known as the Santa Fe Art Scene. In this collection of stories, we witness a group of Santa Fe painters confronting their art and life in creative ways, solving the ages-old problems of painting the perfect canvas, making that obstinate muse smile. Julia Brownell is a patrician beauty whose exhibition of gold-leafed paintings sells out on its opening night and creates an envious discord among her peers. As Parsley Tiddle approaches the end of his creative life, he will not give up his randy ways, to the delight of his younger friends and the wrath of his socialite sister. The narrator of the title story jeopardizes his friendship with Donald Strether, a painter of small abstractions and a devoted rascal, by his disclosures to the guests at a summer luncheon party in the foothills. Robert Fenwick, a New Mexico plein air painter of note, discovers that a commission for landscapes of the Barbados cane fields is a more upside-down proposition than he bargained for. There is a keen sense of irony and suitable punishment for the crime in Atwill’s stories, light-hearted views of the obstacles and the ever-present challenges to making a living from art. Several of the stories are concerned with goings-on in the studio of Alabaster Prynne, a wellborn, Philadelphia spinster, now in spattered coveralls, who befriends artists fresh from school and offers them her encouragement and cautions. The sprawling compound of adobe studios called Casa Marchment is the setting for a tale of earnest, untried artists as they find out that all is not what it appears in the estate of Victor Marchment, a brilliant landscape painter from the early years. Each story contains the secret to a Santa Fe painter, facing craft and life, and how he or she confounds the conventional view of what it is to be an artist. DOUGLAS ATWILL was born in Pasadena, California, earned a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and he served in the Army Counterintelligence Corps. After a long sojourn on a Piedmont cattle farm in Virginia and on the move throughout Europe, he settled in Santa Fe to pursue painting full-time. From a studio on Canyon Road, he paints landscapes and paintings of his own gardens. His work is shown in galleries throughout the West. Atwill’s avocation of restoring adobe houses and building them anew has earned him a reputation for excellence in taste and design, and his houses have been featured in many magazines and books. This is his first collection of short stories.
“Santa Fe is known as The City Different. But not just because of its beautiful scenery, its rich traditions or historical heritage. I think it’s the people—those wonderful individuals whose proclivities have labeled them a little the other side of center and who have added the spice to the life I enjoyed there for so many years. I hope the reader will enjoy some of my memories.” With that, Betty Bauer turns us loose to ponder over why streakers never bothered to streak in Santa Fe, why one prominent publisher found solace in the lid of an ornate cigarette box, and how Santa Feans solve the problem of trees standing in the way of building sites. Did you know that one restaurant owner attracted customers by having a full-grown bobcat prowl the premises? Or that Santa Feans still have a yearly celebration that started in 1712 and includes the burning of a thirty-foot dummy? What about the “five nuts in adobe huts”? Not to mention the mysterious and color-coded worshipers of St. Germain, or what happened when a zealous cop insisted a local landscaper’s station wagon was filled with marijuana plants. One man even had a dream of building a major opera house just outside of town! It’s all here—fifty years spent in soaking up everything that truly makes Santa Fe “The City Different.” BETTY E. BAUER arrived in Santa Fe in 1948 and lived there from 1953 to 2000. She and her partner, Marian F. Love, founded and published “The Santa Fean Magazine” from 1972 to 1994. She was very active in civic, municipal and cultural pursuits, having served as the first woman President of the Santa Fe Press Club (now defunct), the first woman President (now Chairman of the Board) of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, and President of the Santa Fe Festival of the Arts, as well as on numerous civic and municipal committees.
Maybe it was an innocent mistake, or could it have been sabotage? Either way, Dr. Moe Mathis is in a mess. After obtaining a positive biopsy and performing radical prostate cancer surgery on his lover’s father, pathology now finds no evidence of cancer in the surgical specimen. To make matter’s worse, Howard died of complications from that surgery, straining his relationship with Connie to the point of breaking. But that’s not the only arcane incident; recently Dr. Mathis has had a run of bad luck. The same day he operated on Howard, he also implanted a penile prosthesis in Mr. Calley for impotence. Now the surgical wound is infected with a mouth-dwelling bacterium, Streptococcus Viridans, leading Moe to conclude someone deliberately spit on his surgical instruments. Also Moe’s colt inexplicably starts to hemorrhage and quickly bleeds to death. In his garage, Moe performs an autopsy—the stomach contents reveal tiny pieces of the drug, Coumadin. This is no accident! Horses do not run down to the pharmacy and purchase a blood-thinner. Moe can only think of three people with grudges, who also had opportunity: his partner, Dr. Russell Wright; his office nurse, Diane Henrie and the reporting pathologist, Dr. Catherine Connelly. Moe’s attempts to identify the perpetrator has yielded nothing and now he suddenly finds himself in jail charged with fraud, conspiracy and murder-one. though it seems virtually impossible, his life, his career and his relationship with Connie all depend on his finding a way. From his cell, Moe fights off despair and tries to figure out how to get out of jail, solve these crimes, save his practice, restore his reputation and get Connie back. WARREN STUCKI is a graduate of the University of Utah School of Medicine and a board certified urologist. For the last twenty-three years, he has practiced medicine at Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George, Utah. He has served as Chief of Surgery, Chief of Staff and been a member of the Hospital Governing Board. A classical medical thriller, “Hunting for Hippocrates” is an intriguing change of pace from his first book, “Boy’s Pond.”
Maybe the doctors in Washington should have told the truth. Maybe the American people had a right to know. Maybe the truth was called for with things in the country as bad as they were. What was the truth about Edward? What was the dilemma he faced and why would his ultimate decision affect the country? And was Megan the true example of the new liberated female or did she exist to serve men–the men she chose? Why was she called a meddling tramp by Eithne and the lovingest woman on earth by Scott? What was Valerie’s secret? These are all questions Edward finally finds the answers to in this absorbing story of what happens when a powerful figure in American politics has his life shaken by personal tragedy in a fast-paced world. This edition continues the tradition that readers have grown to expect and appreciate from MILDRED CRAM, the author of FOREVER, one of the many novels that made her famous. She was well known for her short stories and television and motion picture scripts, and is the author of another book from Sunstone Press, BORN IN TIME.
They could be your next-door neighbors–Bill Masterson, Ronnie Wild, Riley Page and Frank Cummings–ex-hippies now living outwardly responsible and respectable lives. But these model citizens still yearn for the old days of freedom. Finally they find a way to break out of the mold and do something daring and different: robbing the tourist-crowded narrow gauge train. This completely modern western is filled with humor and sly glances at today’s society. ROBERT K. SWISHER JR. has been a ranch foreman and a mountain guide. An individual who knows the outdoors and western history, he has successfully combined these interests in stories, poems and novels. He is also the author of “The Land,” “Fatal Destiny,” “Only Magic,” “Last Day In Paradise” and “Love Lies Bleeding,” all from Sunstone Press. Of “The Land,” “Publishers Weekly” said: “If there were a category of historical romances written for men, this moving novel would fit the bill.”
Crumbling Indian and Spanish ruins, lost gold and a modern ranch are all part of The Land where centuries of men and women have lived, loved, fought and died. It is a novel of their hopes, dreams of wealth and power, their lust and greed. Symbolic of what this piece of earth means is the spear point made by Silver Moon and cast aside to be found by each successive generation. The spear point fills each possessor with the vision of the past and these ghostly visions have a determining effect on the fate of those who hold it in their hands. In the end, it is this ancient spear point that saves the ranch and its owner from disaster. ROBERT K. SWISHER JR. has been a ranch foreman and a mountain guide. An individual who knows the outdoors and western history, he has successfully combined these interests in stories, poems and novels. He is also the author of “The Last Narrow Gauge Train Robbery,” “Fatal Destiny,” “Only Magic,” “Love Lies Bleeding,” “How Far The Mountain” and “Last Day In Paradise,” all from Sunstone Press.