Dr. Fuddle and the Gold Baton

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Warren L. Woodruff

Fantasy

Story Merchant Books

Jackson Bryant, the millionaire plaintiff lawyer who turned to pro bono work in Dead Peasants, is caught up in the collision of money and politics when he receives a call from his old army buddy Walt Frazier. Walt needs his assistance in evaluating security for Texas Governor Rob Lardner at a Halloween costume fundraiser thrown by one of the nation's richest Republican billionaires at his mansion in Fort Worth. Miriam Van Zandt is the best marksman among The Alamo Defenders, an anti-government militia group in West Texas. She attends the fundraiser dressed as a cat burglar--wounds the governor and murders the host's brother, another Republican billionaire. She is shot in the leg but manages to escape. Jack is appointed special prosecutor and must call on the Texas DPS SWAT team to track Van Zandt and attack The Alamo Defenders' compound in a lonely part of West Texas. Van Zandt's father, founder of the Defenders, is killed in the attack and Miriam is left in a coma. The authorities declare victory and close the case-but Jack knows better. The person behind the Halloween massacre has yet to be caught. When Walt and the protective detail are sued by the fundraiser host and the widow of the dead man, Jack follows the dark money of political contributions from the Cayman Islands to Washington to Eastern Europe, New York and New Orleans to track the real killer and absolve his friend and the Protective Detail of responsibility for the massacre. Dark Money is a thriller, a mystery and an expose of the corruption of money in politics caused by the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United.

Dark Money

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thompson, Larry D.

Thrillers & Suspense

It’s the summer of ’62, and twenty-five-year-old journalist Rory Long receives a phone call at quitting time: it’s Marilyn Monroe. She wants to personally compliment him on a review he wrote of the new collected works of poet Carl Sandburg. She then enlists the cub reporter to tell her story; she doesn’t want to be remembered as a joke. When they meet, Rory is captivated by her knowledge of classical music, art and literature. As their relationship intensifies, Rory experiences a coming-of-age inspired by this side of Marilyn few know, and at the same time, Marilyn is influenced by Rory to begin reassessing her own life. But when Rory’s boss assigns him to write an article on the unsolved murder of the Black Dahlia, paranoia and tension mount. File papers go missing, then mysteriously return. An unknown covert organization watches Marilyn Monroe’s every move, thinking she may hold a clue to the Dahlia case. And just when Rory can feel he’s getting closer to the truth, J. Edgar Hoover himself intervenes to request that Rory be reassigned. Rapid changes are about to unfold in the land of the free, and they may be more costly than even Rory can surmise. In Art Johnson’s latest novel, he continues his style of combining historical fact with fiction to offer the reader a steady stream of drama, tension and humor. Marilyn, My Marilyn reveals fresh insight into the most iconic woman of modern times, not as a biography, but with a view of a nation which often buries the truth with its dead.

Marilyn, My Marilyn

Literature & Fiction

Johnson, Art

Genre Fiction

If there's a story distracting you during the day and keeping you awake at night, ask yourself: Is this a great story? If your answer is yes, then this is the book for you.Writing a book or a screenplay that causes that effect is the bar, the end-all, dope, the cat's ass. Storytelling is the mind and heart's counterpart to sex--an essential act of communication by which life itself is perpetuated. After you read a good book or see a great movie, what do you do? You share it with a friend.Part I of Tell Your Story to the World & Sell It for Millions is a step-by-step guide for writing your own top-notch page-turner. Part II teaches you the cutthroat publishing and Hollywood ropes so you, too, can achieve commercial success and join the ranks of writers making seven, eight, and nine figures annually.In our encounters with other publishers, managers, producers, studio execs, attorneys, coaches, and agents, we found ourselves agreeing with them about one thing: it's never a great scenario to submit a terrific concept that is unprofessionally executed. Our mission is to shave years off your learning curve and make your storytelling dreams come true.

Tell Your Story to the World & Sell It for Millions

Business & Money

Atchity, Kenneth

Cerasoli, Lisa

Industries

Jim Croce spoke of time in a bottle. I speak of dreams and wishes, and of those things seen and felt by us all. We often find that our time has passed so quickly, and wish we could store it somewhere, returning to it when we sense its passing. Most often, we pine for the loss of love, or at least the waning of its intensity. We get used to each other and let that love, that passion, that promise of fulfillment, fade. So we find alternatives and allow life to pass by while standing on the platform waiting to get on that train into the future where we have so little left. Yet there is so much more, and we only need to revive our memories in our hearts and minds. If we choose conflict over peace it is undoubtedly because we have been raised to do so. Men have always found reasons to fight, often coming from a leader who wants to conquer and the advisors who declare the enemies and the reasons we must destroy them. But it is a rare occasion that we must really do so. It is for the powerful we act; for them we serve, even though their promises are most always broken. The depth of our willingness to come to their aid seems ancient within our souls. I believe it can be otherwise, and that bringing it to light might help us to focus more upon those beliefs we find as part of our spiritual side, like faith in a power greater than ourselves. Churches, temples, and mosques continue to fill on Saturdays and Sundays. We choose people to speak for us, yet we have become the silenced. We seem to have accepted a culture of people who race for the positions of responsibility, but once the reins are in their hands, they steer in directions chosen only by them and for them. We, the People, are usually left behind to clean up the droppings of their mount as they ride off into the sunset. We must not be silenced by what we see, and how we are treated. That is not the nature of any free people—lest we forget. —Gary Wenkle Smith

Long Night of the Soul

Wenkle Smith, Gary

Poetry

He had a couple of weeks to kill.When Strider, an unassuming hiker fresh off the Appalachian Trail, needs extra cash, a curio shop owner suggests Winter’s Farm, a popular stop for hikers looking for day work. What seems like a lucky break turns into a series of horrors as one by one his fellow hikers disappear, including his fiancee.A cast of colorful characters complicates his quest to find her, and after stumbling on the dark truth his search turns to a desperate escape from the farm’s kooky owner.But a foreboding electric fence stymies his chance of freedom, in High Voltage, A.B Gibson’s most thrilling novel yet.

High Voltage

Gibson, A.B.

"When I landed in California in 1989, I followed the rest of the passengers to baggage claim. There, one woman caught my attention. I knew she was my mother, even though I hadn't seen her since I was three. When our eyes met, she knew who I was, too. The closer I got, the colder and more distant the space between us became. This was my first memory in my new world, my first jolt of freedom."
The pain and shame and worthlessness that I experienced when I escaped the Children of God cult at fourteen became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was derivative of the abuse and severe neglect I had suffered since birth. And so was my brother, Michael. We were born second-generation Children of God cult members and had known no other life. Our father was devoted to the organization and was abusive both physically and emotionally, and our mother had parted ways with him when we were just two and three. Adults had started experimenting sexually with us by the time we were ten and eleven. We had been brainwashed to believe our leader, "Moses David," was to be followed without question. We read the Bible daily; we read "Mo Letters" about rape and hell and the fate of "backsliders"—people who went against the cult. We were told that horrible things would happen to us if we left. Our subconscious minds ruled our behaviors once we entered the real world, the "Whore," as the C.O.G. called America. Deluded as we were, we backslid into our own demise. I started experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and sex. I attempted suicide. Yet, I still managed to graduate from high school with the help of my aunt and uncle. By that point, however, my mother and stepfather said I was an adult, and so I was left to figure out how to exist on my own. I had no understanding of the big world. I had no useful social skills or any skills. I didn't even know how to drive. I lived with one boyfriend until he realized I was an empty soulless human shell, and then I'd move onto the next. After spending several years on the streets in Hollywood, I ended up wandering Venice Beach for a few months. I would stare at the ocean longingly, begging for it to take me home. It was so beautiful, and I was nothing. Then one day, a couple police officers found me standing on the median of a Freeway down in Santa Monica. They took me in and I spent a year in a mental institution recovering. And then I was released.
I was up north again, wandering around San Francisco. This was in 1998. I was at a gas station. My brother walked up. I hadn't seen him in years. His smile was as magnetic as ever. He saw the tracks in my arms and asked me to please stop hurting myself. He bought me a burrito, said I was too thin. I wanted to be better for Michael and myself, so, I went to the Children of God cult in San Francisco—to recover in the safety of the only arms I'd known as a child. But my story doesn't stop there....
To imagine a happy ending with a life like mine seems impossible. They wanted to take away my body, my soul, my choices, and my voice. But, the one thing they did not anticipate was that I would find within myself the strength of will to do more than just survive. And the gift of will would become mine.

The Gift of Will: A Road to Forgiveness: A Passageway to the Divine

Palmer, Marie

Religion & Spirituality

When Yellowstone backcountry ranger Will McCarroll is fired for breaking the rules one time too many, he disappears into the backcountry to continue his decades-long mission of protecting the park’s wildlife. Will is hell bent on saving a wounded grizzly bear whose fate is all but certain: euthanasia. In his quest, Will stumbles onto a secret meeting of the Alliance, a political movement determined—at any cost—to force the transfer of public lands into state hands. Blackfeet wolverine biologist Johnny Yellow Kidney has taken a forced hiatus from his work in Glacier National Park to head a project born of a high-profile journalist’s loss from a highway tragedy. The goal: to construct safe highway crossings for Montana’s wildlife. Once again, Johnny and Will’s paths cross, not only through both men’s romantic connection to Yellowstone Magistrate Judge Annie Peacock, but also in each man’s race to save the two- and four-leggeds they’ve sworn to protect. Time is running out in Yellowstone Country—and for Will, Johnny, and those they’ve dedicated their careers to defending, the stakes couldn’t be higher.“A gorgeous book. Grizzly Justice is a riveting read, the majesty and magic of its landscapes and wildlife illuminating every page. I couldn’t put the book down and closed the last page with a deep sense of gratitude for our national parks and profound respect for those who fight to protect them. This book will bring transformational awareness to its readers. It certainly did for me.”-Ruth Wariner, New York Times bestselling author of The Sound of Gravel. “April Christofferson weaves together her knowledge of the cadences of the natural world, the complexity of behavior that enables injustice, the redemption that passion provides to individual initiative, and the foibles of the human heart.”-Jeff Hull, bestselling author of Broken Field: A Novel “Guaranteed to make any reader late for dinner, or even breakfast.”—Booklist on Clinical Trial

Grizzly Justice

Christofferson, April

Grow Your Cash Flow

Weber, Ana

Personal Finance

Until Death Do Us Apart

North, Cade

Humor & Satire

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