Meet Dolores 'Lola' Cruz. Going undercover is second nature for Private Investigator Lola Cruz, but she's out of her league when the case of a murdered Royals Courtside Dancer leads her to a local nudist resort. Parading around the sidelines of Sacramento's professional basketball scene in a barely-there cheerleading outfit is one thing--but parading around in nothing but a smile? If she has any chance of hiding this from her traditional family and on-again/off-again boyfriend Jack, she's going to have a lot more than her duct tape bra and killer dance moves to keep under wraps... Praise for the Lola Cruz Mysteries "Ramirez's muy caliente debut introduces Dolores "Lola" Falcon Cruz, a Sacramento, Calif., PI whose kung fu moves are only part of her chica charm. A missing persons case--the disappearance of 42-year-old Emily Diggs, who left her six-year-old son, Sean, stranded at school--turns into a murder investigation after a boater finds Emily's body near Riverbank Marina. Lola's old high school crush, Jack Callaghan, now a Sacramento Bee reporter, provides some unexpected help. Emily had approached Jack about her 18-year-old son Garrett's recent death--from what Emily believed was a "heart infection" due to a faulty tattoo. Lola's determined to uncover the facts and catch the killer, even if it means, gulp, getting a girly belly-button piercing. Ramirez keeps the action tight, the plot smart and humor light in this spicy blend of crime solving and romance. Lola's Latina perspective adds extra sizzle." - "Publishers Weekly" 4 1/2 Stars: "Tightly plotted, with scenes of laugh-out- loud humor, great dialogue and supporting characters, this is a sassy, fun story that will have you waiting impatiently for the next book." - "Romantic Times Book Reviews" Views: 15
Ballet intrigue, a best friend predicament, and a bullying problem to solve keep Amy plenty busy in a new adventure. Claire, the older sister of Amy Green's very best friend, Mills, has a dancing dilemma. Claire has landed the lead in Budapest Ballet Company's production of Romeo and Juliet. It's the role of a lifetime (not to mention that her Romeo is the hot and talented Hungarian dancer Péter Bako), so why does she seem so depressed? And why won't she talk to anyone about what's bothering her? Amy Green and her aunt Clover, advice-givers extraordinaire, are coming to the rescue. It may take some serious snooping and a trip to Budapest, but Amy and Clover are determined to help the budding ballet star get back on her feet. Views: 15
Eat, Sleep, Fuck is a series of one liners & the occasional jokes collected from the furthest corners of the world wide web. A few of these have even been attempted by the author himself to stoke his pathetic ego & to boost his low self-esteem for a few minutes. If you're easily offended, this book is not for you. If crass, crude, sexist & blatantly offensive humor turns you on & makes your day, welcome inside. Each book in the series has a collection of about 300 witticisms. Views: 15
When their best friend changes drastically, the Investigators suspect extraterrestrial troubleGeorgina and Poco should not be climbing an apple tree in the dark. But Poco, who talks to animals, has recently developed a serious crush on a robin, and she gets worried when the bird doesn't return to his nest one night. Poco convinces her friend to come with her to check on the nest, and while they're peering through the tree branches, they see strange glowing objects in the sky. The array of lights can only mean one thing: aliens. The next morning, Poco's robin returns and, more importantly, so does Angela. Angela had been the girls' best friend before moving to Mexico a year ago, but she comes back totally changed. Before, she was short, chatty, and imaginative. Now she is tall, sullen, and cold. When Georgina reminds her of their former club, the Investigators of the Unknown, Angela shrugs her off. Paco and Georgina realize that the aliens have claimed their first victim, and... Views: 15
Product DescriptionBook three in the Vitalis SeriesJeremy Sinclair cashed in every chip he had to earn passage on a research ship bound for the newly discovered planet, Vitalis. With debts to pay and a past he needed to escape a journey seven light years beyond the furthest Terran space lane seemed like just the thing he needed.Neither Jeremy, his fellow researchers, or the Terran Coalition Marines could be prepared for the reception the planet had waiting for them.Look for these other Vitalis booksBook 1 - New BeginningsBook 2 - The ColonyBook 3 - ParasitesBook 4 - *ScreamerBook 5 - *Squatter's Rights Views: 15
After reuniting with Lily, I had no doubt in my mind that she was the one for me. But like all marriages everyone gets tested. Add a dozen more problems coming from all directions—it could get extremely tricky.Does a man really have a limit when it came to the woman he vowed to love for the rest of his life?There was one thing I learned—that marriage was sacred…a sacred test.A test of will. A test of time. Views: 15
From award-winning editor Bill Pronzini comes The Mammoth Book of Short
Spy Novels—a classic book updated for spymasters. Thirteen outstanding
spy and espionage novellas, complete and unabridged, are gathered here
in one terrific volume. They represent a specially chosen collection
from the most accomplished writers in the field, including W. Somerset
Maugham on Ashenden, his operative in World War I and Ian Fleming on 007
in the Caribbean, as well as Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and John Jakes, among others. These works span
more than seventy-five years of espionage writing in the United States
and England, and feature secret agents, counterspies, and double agents
in settings from Japan to the former Eastern Bloc, and from World War I
onward. Views: 15
COURAGE > COWARDS As we approach the most important presidential election in America’s history, something has been lost among all of the debates, attack ads, and super- PACs—something that Americans used to hold in very high regard: THE TRUTH. Glenn Beck likes to say that “the truth has no agenda”—but there’s another side to that: people who have agendas rarely care about the truth. And, these days, it seems like everyone has an agenda. The media leads with stories that rate over those that matter. Politicians put lobbyists and electability over honesty. Radicals alter history in order to change the future. In Cowards, Glenn Beck exposes the truth about thirteen important issues that have been hijacked by deceit. Whether out of spite, greed, or fear, these are the things that no one seems to be willing to have an honest conversation about. For example: How our two-party POLITICAL SYSTEM often leaves voters with NO GOOD OPTIONS. How extremists are slowly integrating ISLAMIC LAW into our SOCIETY. How PROGRESSIVE “religious” leaders like JIM WALLIS are politicizing the Bible. How the CARTEL VIOLENCE on our border is FAR WORSE than people realize. How “LIBERTARIAN” has been INTENTIONALLY turned into a DIRTY WORD. How GEORGE SOROS has amassed enough MONEY and POWER to INFLUENCE entire ECONOMIES. In some cases, the truth is out there, but people simply don’t want to hear it. It’s much easier, and certainly a lot more convenient, to keep our blinders on. After all, as a quote attributed to President James Garfield made clear, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” Miserable or not, the truth can no longer be something we hope for; it must be something we live. When courage prevails, cowards do not—and this book was written to ensure that’s exactly what happens.About the AuthorGlenn Beck, the nationally syndicated radio and former Fox News television show host, is the author of Being George Washington, Broke, The 7, and 7 #1 New York Times bestsellers: An Inconvenient Book, The Christmas Sweater, Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Arguing with Idiots, The Original Argument, the children's version of The Christmas Sweater, and The Overton Window. He is also the author of The Real America and publisher of Blaze online. Visit GlennBeck.com. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.“ I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, ‘We must broaden the base of our party’—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.”—Ronald Reagan, 1975I’M SURE you’ve noticed how little choice there seems to be in politics. I hear it over and over again from people who call in to my radio show and tell me that they don’t see any point in voting since both candidates are equally terrible. They’re often right. In 2008, our choice for president was between a Republican who wanted to spend billions to “combat” global warming and a Democrat who wanted to spend hundreds of billions to do the same thing. In 2004, it was between the incumbent George W. Bush, whose embarrassing conservative record we’ll cover later, and John Kerry—a man who, by some accounts, had been the most liberal member of the Senate for multiple years. If it seems like no “real” conservative or libertarian candidate for president ever makes it very far it’s because they don’t. They are derided and marginalized by the establishment and mainstream media until their names become toxic. By the time the power base is done with a candidate who might pose a threat, he’s become the punch line to a joke, the plot of a Saturday Night Live skit, or the first thing that pops up on Google when you search for “homophobia” or “racist” or “idiot.” None of this is happening by chance. It’s a shell game, and the progressives who run our political parties, our universities, and our media treat the rest of us like tourists in Times Square. It may occasionally look as if libertarians and small-government candidates have a chance to win the prize—but that’s just the way they set up the con. The illusion of victory is omnipresent, but it’s just that—an illusion. A con can’t ever really be beaten. THE SHELL GAME TURNS 100The Big Con started right around 1912. America was given a “choice”: Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt. The New Freedom or the New Nationalism. Progressive or Progressive. That was the year that Republican became Democrat and Democrat became progressive. Later, after progressives finally had their hands on our wallets, they stopped calling themselves progressives and took the name “liberal” instead. When people caught on to that, the left changed the names to protect the guilty once again. The Con, RevealedHillary Clinton actually described these bait-and-switch word games pretty well during a 2007 debate after she was asked if she would define herself as “liberal.” You know, it is a word that originally meant that you were for freedom, that you were for the freedom to achieve, that you were willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual. Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned up on its head and it’s been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government, totally contrary to what its meaning was in the 19th and early 20th century. I prefer the word “progressive,” which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century. Progressives realized long ago that if you rig the game of politics against the small-government option, then you end up with a series of candidates who increasingly blur the line between the parties. Eventually the parties themselves become meaningless—empty vessels that simply serve to funnel money and power through the system. With very few exceptions, our elections are really no longer about whether to grow or cut government’s size and power, but rather by how much they should grow. We debate double-digit increases in social program spending versus single-digit increases. We debate how many new billion-dollar entitlements we should add instead of whether these programs should even exist in the first place. We debate whether teachers unions and the U.S. Department of Education should have more or less power, rather than whether the federal government should have any role in local education at all. All of this is part of the con, and it’s worked to absolute perfection. With very few exceptions even the “boldest” of conservative politicians submit budgets and bills that, a hundred years ago, would’ve been too far left for even a Democrat to propose. Whenever candidates or groups raise their hand and question these debates, invoke the Constitution, or propose “radical” ideas like a balanced budget amendment, shutting down overreaching and ineffective federal agencies, or adhering to the Tenth Amendment, they are ostracized. Why do you think the Tea Party was immediately branded as a bunch of racists and birthers? It’s because they posed a real threat of waking voters up to the fact that Americans are being presented with a never-ending series of false choices. The progressive establishment can’t allow real diversity to stand. The only hope we have of changing this is by first educating people as to how this happened and who’s behind it—and then by presenting a better way forward. That’s what the first two chapters of this book are all about: the virus—progressivism; and the antibiotic—commonsense libertarianism. Yes, we have plenty of other issues to solve, and many of them are covered in this book, but if we don’t start by treating the underlying disease then none of that will matter. So, let’s take a giant step back, get out of the weeds of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and cable channels and Twitter attacks, and ask ourselves this simple but important question: How did we ever get to the point where the conservative/libertarian point of view does not even get a seat at the table? THE RINO–AN ANCIENT SPECIESIt’s pretty easy to spot the people who don’t really fit into the Republican Party. A lot of times these are the same people who frequent the Sunday morning talk shows or are media darlings. I’m talking about people like Arlen Specter, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham. But these types of Republicans are nothing new. Theodore Roosevelt was one of the first RINOs (Republican in Name Only) in American history. Yes, I know, Roosevelt was brave and strong. He explored the world. He strung up rustlers in the Wild West. He wrote more history books than most people ever read. He edited a magazine. (Even if Newt Gingrich were around back then, Teddy Roosevelt would still have been the smartest guy in the room.) All of this made Roosevelt incredibly dangerous when he decided to get on board the Progressive train. And the longer he rode those rails, the more radical he got. His “Square Deal” was one thing. It started the ball rolling. It got the nose of big government under the Constitution’s tent by regulating business and the banks. But then Roosevelt’s progressivism got increasingly more toxic. After he left the White House, he unveiled something he called the “New Nationalism.” They Really Said ItYou know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. —JOHN MCCAIN AT A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE IN OCTOBER 2008And for government to not leave guarantees that you don’t have the ability to change, no private corporation has the purchasing power or the ability to reshape the health system, and in this sense I guess I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I [was] going to characterize my—on health where I come from, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning is okay. —NEWT GINGRICHThere’s a reason Barack Obama took time out in December 2011 from pretending he was FDR or JFK or Harry Truman or Lincoln (and from golf, too, come to think of it) to channel Roosevelt at Osawatomie, Kansas. Osawatomie is where, in 1910, Roosevelt gave a speech that would sound right at home in today’s Democratic Party. “We should permit [wealth] to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community,” Roosevelt told a crowd of thirty thousand listeners. “This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary. . . .” Two years later, Roosevelt doubled down, turning from rogue elephant to Bull Moose and running for president on his own Progressive Party ticket. The New York Times explained that Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressive Party convention was at best a gathering of “a convention of fanatics.” How bad was Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign? It made people think that Woodrow Wilson was conservative. That’s bad, but what’s far worse is that Roosevelt is the president who some prominent modern-day Republicans, like John McCain and Newt Gingrich, still look up to. Roosevelt certainly wasn&r... Views: 15
