Bøger udgivet af Words Take Flight Books

"I PERFORM THE SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE I HAVE PRACTICED LONG AND HARD. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC." So spoke Frank Spiegel, "Master of Illusion," in a shop that shouldn't have existed in a deserted, desert town in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico - a missed turn on his way to the Big Time. Frank knew that his witty stage presence and simple, but elegant, tricks weren't going to get him to the top. He needed something special - and found it in GAMES AND MAGIC: an Egyptian sarcophagus that the shopkeeper assured him possessed real magic. His troupe - Sonder, the equipment manager; Dexter, the prop master, driver and mechanic; Bess, Frank's assistant and the troupe's "mother" - traveled as a family, all willing to give up their lives for Frank's dream...and the chance to escape their pasts. Now, they were asked by the shopkeeper to part with "their most precious illusion" to help fulfill that dream. They would learn that magic was very real - and that the illusion that each of them most prized was that they had nothing to lose. And on New Year's Eve, the sarcophagus would prove that they were wrong. Dead wrong.

Being dead is like being born again and again for as long as there are thoughts to occupy - but what if your thoughts are...tainted? Nefarious - fronted by the charismatic, but troubled, Mai Evans - is poised for stardom when fate puts amateur guitarist Blue on the center stage. What follows is a fast lane to success - and an even faster downward spiral of drugs and sex...love and jealousy...madness and murder. The end leads back to the beginning - to the pool of Mai's dark creativity...and a curse he believes threatens to destroy everything and everyone he touches. But is the source of evil more mortal - and deadly? The truth awaits in the biggest lie of all.

"Throughout American history, every major conflict has been due to either a misunderstanding between parties or a failure to live up to a promise - and needless bloodshed was always the result." And bloodshed was something with which Janiss Connelly was all too familiar, either by her own or someone else's hand. Friends. Lovers. Enemies. But as the administrator of Cedarcrest Sanctum, it was a necessary evil: keeping the facility's residents safe - and, thanks to infusions of her vampiric blood, alive - was both her responsibility and mission. It is a mission that is jeopardized by a very old - and private - vampire living and working as a college professor in Charleston, West Virginia. Janiss visits to determine her undead "neighbor's" true intentions, only to find that she and Cedarcrest are on the professor's "syllabus." Left with no choice, the administrator must become the student and ask her own hated teacher for the deadly tutelage she needs to rescue the Sanctum. In "The Matriarch: Changeling," Janiss will learn that friends and enemies are never who they seem to be - a lesson that must be paid in blood.

After a woman in white is encountered along a lonely highway in Jackson County, West Virginia, an unusual number of vampires begin to turn up. Once their mysterious maker is discovered, Janiss Connelly must confront those she left behind in life before she can stop the sadistic murderer once and for all. The Matriarch: Guardians continues the undead saga of one-time coed Janiss Connelly, now the executive administrator of the Cedarcrest Sanctum, as she learns that while dealing with the living is harder in death than it is in life, the undead are more difficult - and deadly.

Powerful D.C. politicians are being removed from office by something other than elections - execution-style killings for which FBI Special Agent Nick Nettles is under pressure to find answers and suspects. That's when a weapons smuggling investigation drops Nick in the middle of an international scheme to expand gun distribution, block tighter U.S. gun laws and manipulate the public conversation on Second Amendment rights. For Nick, a lawman and gun-control advocate, uncovering the truth is personal - and could destroy his career and rock the nation, from the heights of government and industry to every citizen. But he isn't alone - someone else has bought into the high-stakes game and is going all-in to run guns off the table. Who will win when Death calls? THE STOUT STICK is a work of fiction. However, its central argument we see as no less outrageous than those being presented by the gun manufacturers and their lobbies, or the so-called "public servants" who pander to those manufacturers and lobbies for campaign contributions. No less outrageous, either, than the attitudes of that small, but vocal, portion of the electorate that sees even reasonable limitations to gun ownership as assaults on the Constitution and their perceived "God-given rights."

"THIS IS BEACH HAVEN, NOT THE BIG CITY; WE HAVE OUR OWN WAY OF DOING THINGS. WE DON'T NEED OUTSIDERS BUTTING IN, TRYING TO CHANGE THINGS." Lewis Porter was an outsider - asked by the local police to examine a murder scene because of his past...work experience. It was experience that he was more than happy to keep right where he left it: in the past. But people's pasts have a funny way of catching up with them. A string of mysterious disappearances of amateur poetesses in the sleepy New Jersey shore town of 1930s Beach Haven bring Porter out of self-imposed retirement and lead him from the beaches to the Pinelands in search of an answer and a killer - a killer who makes it personal. Porter finds more than death: beneath the sand and the trees runs a foul, hidden sewer of sin in which society's highest and lowest swim - all of whom have a stake in keeping their dirty truths from seeing light. And Porter is holding open the manhole cover. It's a case that not everyone wants solved - except Porter. The question is, will he finish the case before it finishes him? "Ever seen a dead man?" I was looking at one.

In January 1990, two Staten Island men, Michael Taylor and Philip Sarlo, brutally murdered Jimmy Zappalorti - not for money, not for revenge, but out of prejudice and hatred: Jimmy was a gay man. Beaten. Stabbed. His body thrown in the Arthur Kill to hide the crime. But Jimmy was found - and humanity rallied around the inhumanity. Taylor and Sarlo tried to silence Jimmy for being gay - but they only succeeded in giving a voice to change. Jimmy's killing fanned a firestorm of outrage among citizens groups, politicians and the LGBT community that led to the signing on July 10, 2000, of The New York State Hate Crimes Bill - the first of its kind in the state. Mr. Zappalorti tells Jimmy's story in his own voice: that of a brother who was Jimmy's protector in life and champion after his death, whose efforts continue to keep Jimmy's legacy alive to help maintain the fight for LGBT rights. It is a profoundly personal and universal a story, as the struggle for LGBT rights and equality continues in the face of ignorance, prejudice and, sadly, violence.