Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Both in now @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

George Hall is an unobtrusive man.

A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie.

He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray.

Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together – as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely. A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness – literally – of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.

[Daveo]

Weary: The Life Of Sir Edward Dunlop by Sue Ebury. . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

A biography about Sir Edward Dunlop, whose war diaries were published in 1986.

This book should be of interest to anyone wishing to read about World war II and the conditions and events in the Japanese prisoner of war camps.

[Daveo]

While They Slept: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family by Kathryn Harrison

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

Early on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents.

Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. Billy then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, “We’re free.” But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence? The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents.

And it required each of the two survivors–one a convicted murderer, the other suddenly an orphan–to create a new identity, a new life. In this mesmerizing book, bestselling writer Kathryn Harrison brilliantly uncovers the true story behind a shocking and unforgettable crime as she explores the impact of escalating violence and emotional abuse visited on the children of a deeply troubled family.

With an artistry that recalls Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, and her own The Kiss, Harrison reveals the antecedents of the murders–of a crime of such violence that it had the power to sever past from present–and the consequences for Billy and for Jody. Weaving in meditations on her own experience of parental abuse, Harrison searches out answers to the question of how survivors of violent trauma shape a future when their lives have been divided into Before and After. Based on interviews with Billy and Jody as well as with friends, police, and social workers involved in the case, While They Slept is Kathryn Harrison’s unflinching inquiry into the dark heart of violence in an American family, and a personal quest to understand how young people go on after tragedy–to examine the extent as well as the limits of psychic resilience.

Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss “a powerful piece of writing, a testament to evil and hope.” The same could be said about While They Slept.

[Daveo]

The Paradiso Files: Boston's Unknown Serial Killer by Timothy M. Burke. . .

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

In this bold and suspenseful true-crime story, former homicide prosecutor Timothy M. Burke makes his case against one Leonard Paradiso.

Lenny “The Quahog” was convicted of assaulting one young woman and paroled after three years, but Burke believes that he was guilty of much more – that Paradiso was a serial killer who operated in the Boston area, and maybe farther afield, for nearly fifteen years, assaulting countless young women and responsible for the deaths of as many as seven.

Burke takes the reader inside the minds of prosecutors, police investigators, and one very dangerous man who thought he had figured out how to rape and murder and get away with it. The Paradiso Files generated headlines when first published in February 2008. Nine days later, Paradiso died at the age of sixty-five without commenting on any of Burke’s accusations, including that he murdered Joan Webster, a Harvard graduate student who disappeared from Logan Airport in 1981.

Boston-area prosecutors announced in September 2008 that Burke’s revelations had led them to reopen the unsolved murder cases of three young women – Melodie Stankiewicz, Holly Davidson, and Kathy Williams.

There were “too many similarities between the individual cases to ignore,” a prosecutor involved in the new investigation said. Burke’s account leaves little doubt that Paradiso’s deeds should go down in infamy, alongside those of the Boston Strangler.

[Daveo]

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh...

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, is up to his old tricks with his new work of transgressive short fiction. Irvine Welsh's first short-story collection since his debut work The Acid House presents five extraordinary stories, which remind us that he is a master of the short form, a brilliant storyteller, and - arguably - one of today's funniest and most subversive writers.

In "Rattlesnakes" three young Americans, lost in the desert, are accosted by two armed Mexicans. A Korean chef and a Chicago socialite find themselves connected through the disappearance of a pooch named Toto in "The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park."

And in the title story, Mickey Baker -an expat English bar owner living on the Costa Brava - tries to keep all of his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid's weight at the sexual maximum, attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his ex-wife and Spanish gangsters. In typically Welshian fashion, the characters and settings are anything but typical. These stories will make you laugh and gasp.

[Daveo]

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

In 2005, two tragedies - the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina - turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoir of "war, disasters and survival," is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper's ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons.

Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery. He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother's penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt).

The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service.

Covering tragedies in far-flung places like Burma, Vietnam, and Somalia, Cooper quickly learned that "as a journalist, no matter ... how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others."

Cooper's description of these horrors, from war-ravaged Baghdad to famine-wracked Niger, is poignant but surprisingly unsentimental.

In Niger, Cooper writes, he is chagrined, then resigned, when he catches himself looking for the "worst cases" to commit to film. "They die, I live. It's the way of the world," he writes.

In the final section of Dispatches, Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina, the story that made him famous.

The transcript of his showdown with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (in which Cooper tells Landrieu people in New Orleans are "ashamed of what is happening in this country right now") is worth the price of admission on its own. Cooper's memoir leaves some questions unanswered -there's frustratingly little about his personal life, for example - but remains a vivid, modest self-portrait by a man who is proving himself to be an admirable, courageous leader in a medium that could use more like him.

[Daveo]

Golf - The Cure for a Grumpy Old Man by Peter Alliss. . .

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

Peter Alliss has been entertaining huge TV audiences for the BBC and ABC in America for many years. In this new anecdotal but thoroughly practical book, Peter Alliss sets out to promote golf as the answer to middle-aged discontentment. Peter Alliss has no difficulty giving compelling reasons as to why golf is the perfect game for adults - breathtaking scenery, fresh air, camaraderie and instant therapy. The author describes how to go about taking up the game, what equipment is necessary to buy and who to contact for lessons. With the aid of line drawings, he describes the basic techniques of golf, how to maintain a consistent swing and how to build up self-confidence. GOLF - THE CURE FOR A GRUMPY OLD MAN is aimed at regular golfers whose skills have deteriorated and would-be golfers who need the guidance as to which path to follow. Alliss's humorous but always helpful book will confirm the great game as a really accessible and hugely enjoyable pastime to pursue for both men and women.

[Daveo]

Che Guevara by David Sandison

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

Childhood and early years in Argentina, and motorcycle travels through Latin America. Five years of guerrilla warfare in the mountain jungles of Cuba's Sierra Maestra Havana falls to Castro's rebels, Che Guevara is made Minister in charge of National Production, Finance Minister and head of the National Bank. The Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy/Kruschev missile crisis. Heading diplomatic missions to China, India, the Soviet Union and the United Nations. New revolutionary struggle against the military regime in Bolivia, and death at the hands of government troops. Hero of the revolutionaries around the world and an icon for radical youth to this day.

[Daveo]

America's Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard....

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe..

Applied Austrian economics doesn't get better than this. Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a staple of modern economic literature and crucial for understanding a pivotal event in American and world history. The Mises Institute edition features a new introduction by historian Paul Johnson. Since it first appeared in 1963, it has been the definitive treatment of the causes of the depression. The book remains canonical today because the debate is still very alive. Rothbard opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed's policies of the 1920s, demonstrating that it was quite inflationary even if the effects did not show up in the price of goods and services. He showed that the stock market correction was merely one symptom of the investment boom that led inevitably to a bust. The Great Depression was not a crisis for capitalism but merely an example of the downturn part of the business cycle, which in turn was generated by government intervention in the economy.

Had the book appeared in the 1940s, it might have spared the world much grief. Even so, its appearance in 1963 meant that free-market advocates had their first full-scale treatment of this crucial subject.

The damage to the intellectual world inflicted by Keynesian- and socialist-style treatments would be limited from that day forward.

[Daveo]

Land of Jade. A Journey from India through Northern Burma to China by Bertil Lintner

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

In August 1995, "Mr de Souza from Goa", his considerable body wrapped in a blanket, his jet black hair flowing gently in the breeze, and his eyes hidden by huge, dark, stylish sunglasses, arrived in Nagaland.

With his diminutive and highly pregnant travel companion, he had slipped past various Indian checkpoints and intelligence setups, and a fantastic journey into hidden Burma began.

The book that resulted from this journey has become a classic on recent Burmese history.

Bertil and Hseng Noung Lintner spent one and a half years travelling through northern and eastern Burma from 1985 to 1987.

Lintner describes with care and deep insight the struggle by the Kachin and Shan ethnic groups against Burmese army rule, and records the decline and fall of the CPB--the Communist Party of Burma.

During their 2,275 kilometre trek, at times in great danger, they wrote the history of a 40-year forgotten war, a history which would otherwise never have been committed to paper in such rich detail.

Their daughter Hseng Tai was born in Nagaland in India at the inception of the journey. The 1996 edition is updated, and contains a wealth of hitherto unpublished photographic material as well as detailed maps and plans..

[Daveo]

Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison by T.J. Parsell

Remember a book you have not read is he same as a new book? @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

When seventeen-year-old T.J. Parsell held up the local Photo Mat with a toy gun, he was sentenced to four and a half to fifteen years in prison.

The first night of his term, four older inmates drugged Parsell and took turns raping him.

When they were through, they flipped a coin to decide who would "own" him. Forced to remain silent about his rape by a convict code among inmates (one in which informers are murdered), Parsell's experience that first night haunted him throughout the rest of his sentence.

In an effort to silence the guilt and pain of its victims, the issue of prisoner rape is a story that has not been told.

For the first time Parsell, one of America's leading spokespeople for prison reform, shares the story of his coming of age behind bars.

He gives voice to countless others who have been exposed to an incarceration system that turns a blind eye to the abuse of the prisoners in its charge.

Since life behind bars is so often exploited by television and movie reenactments, the real story has yet to be told. Fish is the first breakout story to do that.

[Daveo]

Pat Nixon: The Untold Story by Julie Nixon Eisenhower. . . .

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

This portrait follows the former First Lady from her birth in a boomtown mining shack to the White House and is full of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes glimpses of historical figures.......

[Daveo]

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett.......

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, returns in this blistering novel.

Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok's District 8, but nothing like the snuff film he's just been sent anonymously.

Furiously fast-paced and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts more than lives up to the smart and darkly funny originality of its predecessors.

[Daveo]

Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer by John Leake. . . . .

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

"I was a greedy, ravenous individual, determined to rise from the bottom to the top . . . It wasn't me!" - Jack Unterweger's final words to his jury"

Serial killers rarely travel internationally. So in the early 1990's, when detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department began to find bodies of women strangled with their own bras, it didn't occur to them at first to make a connection with the bodies being uncovered in the woods outside of Vienna, Austria.  

The LAPD waited for the killer to strike again.

Meanwhile, in Austria, the police followed what few clues they had, the case intrigued many reporters, but few as keenly as Jack Unterweger, a local celebrity.

He cut a striking figure, this little man in expensive white suits. His expertise on Vienna's criminal underworld was hard-earned.

He had been sentenced to life in jail as a young man. But while incarcerated, he began to write and his work earned him the glowing attention of the literary elite. The intelligentsia lobbied for his release and by 1990, Jack was free again.

He continued writing, nurturing his career as a journalist. But though he now traveled in the highest circles, he had a secret life.

He was killing again, and in the greatest of ironies, reporting on the very crimes he had committed, with unprecedented access to Jack's diaries and letters, John Leake peels back the layers of deception to reveal the life and crimes of Jack Unterweger, and in unnerving detail, exposes the thrilling twists - both in the United States and Europe - that led to Jack's capture and Austria's "trial of the century.

[Daveo]

Howard Hughes Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue by Geoff Schumacher. . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange

One of the most famous and enigmatic Americans of the twentieth century, Howard Hughes challenged Hollywood's conventions and packed theaters with his blockbuster films Hell's Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw.

He thrilled the world with his aviation exploits, shattering air speed records, flying around the world in record time and building the world's largest aircraft.

Hughes was linked with almost every major film beauty of the 1930's and '40's, making him a favorite subject of the nation's gossip columns.

One of the world's first billionaires, Hughes transformed his father's small fortune into a vast business empire.But for all his celebrated achievements, Hughes' later years in Las Vegas - when drug addiction, bizarre behavior and a casino buying spree dominated his days - continue to draw the public's fascination.

Geoff Schumacher, a veteran journalist and the author of Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas, delves into the Las Vegas years of Howard Hughes in this engrossing portrait of a man whose impact on the city is still being felt today.

[Daveo]

The Green by Troon Mcallister

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

The Ryder Cup. A biennial tournament considered the premier event in the golfing world, pitting the twelve best players in the United States against the twelve best of Europe in a contest so pressure-filled it can paralyze even the most battle-scarred tour veterans. United States captain Alan Bellamy, with one precious slot unfilled and none of the remaining top tour players willing to sign on against a clearly superior European squad, makes a desperate decision in his attempt to preserve America's golfing honor: he selects as his twelfth man one Eddie Caminetti, a low-life, two-bit hustler from a municipal course in South Florida. The most prestigious tournament in golf will never be the same. As the unforeseen consequences of Caminetti's participation on the Ryder team unfold riotously, Troon McAllister takes us into the minds and souls of elite professional athletes and poses a question as old as golf itself: Why would God create a game even He can't play?

[Daveo]

A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay . . .

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse.. The author of No Time for Goodbye returns with a haunting psychological thriller that blends the twists and turns of Gillian Flynn with the driving suspense of Harlan Coben, in which a man is troubled by odd sounds for which there is no rational explanation. College professor Paul Davis is a normal guy with a normal life. Until, driving along a deserted road late one night, he surprises a murderer disposing of a couple of bodies. That’s when Paul’s "normal" existence is turned upside down.

After nearly losing his own life in that encounter, he finds himself battling PTSD, depression, and severe problems at work. His wife, Charlotte, desperate to cheer him up, brings home a vintage typewriter - complete with ink ribbons and heavy round keys - to encourage him to get started on that novel he’s always intended to write. However, the typewriter itself is a problem. Paul swears it’s possessed and types by itself at night. But only Paul can hear the noise coming from downstairs; Charlotte doesn’t hear a thing. And she worries he’s going off the rails. Paul believes the typewriter is somehow connected to the murderer he discovered nearly a year ago.

The killer had made his victims type apologies to him before ending their lives. Has another sick twist of fate entwined his life with the killer - could this be the same machine? 

Increasingly tormented but determined to discover the truth and confront his nightmare, Paul begins investigating the deaths himself. But that may not be the best thing to do. Maybe Paul should just take the typewriter back to where his wife found it. Maybe he should stop asking questions and simply walk away while he can. . .

[Daveo]

C by Tom McCarthy.........

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse.

C follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him. Born to the sound of one of the very earliest experimental wireless stations, Serge finds himself steeped in a weird world of transmissions, whose very air seems filled with cryptic and poetic signals of all kinds.

What follows is a stunning tour de force in which the eerily idyllic settings of pre-war Europe give way to the exhilarating flight-paths of the frontline aeroplane radio operator, then the prison camps of Germany, the drug-fuelled London of the roaring twenties and, finally, the ancient tombs of Egypt. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

[Daveo]

Term Life: A Novel of Love, Death, and Computer Security William H. Boyd. . . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

Gus Bishop lives in a trendy downtown Austin condo. He works in computer security for a high tech Austin tech company and drives a high performance car.

Yet, something is missing. Every woman he wants eludes him, and his company is under the threat of being hacked. But after an internet search, Gus meets a strange man who represents a unique insurance company.

Through big data analysis and some computer hacking of its own, this company insures its clients, not from death, but from a life that is no longer worth living.

When Gus buys the policy, he must come to terms with his greatest fears and failures.

[Daveo]

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future by Victor Cha

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

“A meaty, fast-paced portrait of North Korean society, economy, politics and foreign policy.” -Foreign Affairs The definitive account of North Korea, its veiled past and uncertain future, from the former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council In The Impossible State, seasoned international-policy expert and lauded scholar Victor Cha pulls back the curtain on this controversial and isolated country, providing the best look yet at North Korea's history, the rise of the Kim family dynasty, and the obsessive personality cult that empowers them.

He illuminates the repressive regime complex economy and culture, its appalling record of human-rights abuses, and its belligerent relationship with the United States, and analyzes the regime's major security issues - from the seemingly endless war with its southern neighbor to its frightening nuclear ambitions - all in light of the destabilizing effects of Kim Jong-il's recent death. How this enigmatic nation-state - one that regularly violates its own citizens' inalienable rights and has suffered famine, global economic sanctions, a collapsed economy, and near total isolation from the rest of the world—has continued to survive has long been a question that preoccupies the West. Cha reveals a land of contradictions, one facing a pivotal and disquieting transition of power from tyrannical father to inexperienced son, and delves into the ideology that leads an oppressed, starving populace to cling so fiercely to its failed leadership. With rare personal anecdotes from the author's time in Pyongyang and his tenure as an adviser in the White House, this engagingly written, authoritative, and highly accessible history offers much-needed answers to the most pressing questions about North Korea and ultimately warns of a regime that might be closer to its end than many might think - a political collapse for which America and its allies may be woefully unprepared.

[Daveo]

Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease by John Heidenry...

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

In 1953, six-year-old Bobby Greenlease, the son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer and his wife, was kidnapped from his Roman Catholic elementary school by a woman named Bonnie Heady, a well-scrubbed prostitute who was posing as one of his distant aunts. 

Her accomplice, Carl Austin Hall, a former playboy who had run through his inheritance and was just out of the Missouri State Penitentiary, was waiting in the getaway car with a gun, a length of rope and a plastic tarp. 

The two grifters thought they had a plan that would put them on the road to Easy Street; but, actually, they were on a fast-track to the gas chamber. 

Shortly after they snatched the little boy, the two demanded a ransom of $600,000.00 from the Greenlease family and it was paid; but, Bobby was already dead, shot in the head by Hall and buried in a flower garden behind the couple’s house, exactly where his body was found by police shortly thereafter. 

The Greenlease ransom was the highest ransom ever paid in the US to that date and the case held the US transfixed in the same way the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby had done decades earlier. 

In a bone-chilling account of kidnapping, murder and the dogged pursuit of a child’s killers, John Heidenry crafts a haunting narrative that involves mob boss Joe Costello, a cast of unsavory grifters, hardboiled detectives and a room at the legendary, but now razed, Coral Court Motel on Route 66.

Heady and Hall were apprehended quickly, convicted and executed in a rare double execution in the State of Missouri’s gas chamber on a cold December night not long before Christmas. 

By that time, little Bobby Greenlease was stone cold in his grave and a fickle America had turned back to its Post-War boom.

However, one question has never been solved: as Hall was being pursued around Kansas City and St. Louis, half of the ransom was lost and never recovered. 

Did it end up with the mob via Joe Costello? 

To this day, no one knows and dead mob bosses tell no tales.  In a book that brings to mind films like “Chinatown” and “Double Indemnity”, John Heidenry has written a compelling work that blends true crime and American history to take a close look at one of the United States’ most notorious murders.

[Daveo]

Hollywood Confidential: How the Studios Beat the Mob at Their Own Game by Ted Schwarz

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya..

Hollywood Confidential is the first truly in-depth look at the sexy, humorous, violent, and tragic history of the mob in Hollywood from the 1920's, when Joe Kennedy decided to buy a motion picture company, to the 1980's when the last vestiges of mob influence were revealed through investigations of former Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan and his union backers.

The revelations continue into the 1980s when the major studios were no longer important, the independents were on the rise, and it was no longer possible to buy, bribe, or blackmail in a meaningful way. There were deals and bad guys, but the mob as it existed was finished in Hollywood.

[Daveo]

The End of the Dream: The Golden Boy Who Never Grew Up (Crime Files #5) by Ann Rule

Find books like this in our extensive True Crime section @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

AS SEEN ON 48 HOURS - AN EXPLOSIVE ACCOUNT OF LETHAL GREED AND TWISTED Desire, FROM THE FILES OF AMERICA'S #1 TRUE CRIME WRITER, ANN RULE
They were best friends, four talented and charismatic young men who lived charmed lives among the evergreens of Washington state: Kevin, the artist; Steve, the sculptor; Scott, the nature lover and unabashed ladies' man; and Mark, the musician and poet. With their stunning good looks, whip-sharp minds, athletic bodies and no lack of women who adored them - none of them seemed slated for disaster.
But few knew the reality behind the leafy screen that surrounded Seven Cedars, Scott's woodland dream home - a tree house equipped with every luxury. From this idyllic enclave, some of these trusted friends would become the quarry for a vigilant Seattle police detective and an FBI special agent, who unmasked clues to disturbing Secrets that spawned murder, suicide, million-dollar bank robberies, drug-dealing, and heartbreaking betrayal.

When the end came in a violent stand-off, the ringleader of the foursome - the fugitive dubbed "Hollywood" for his ingenious disguises and flawless getaways; the persuasive talker who turned his friends into accomplices - faced a final chapter no one could have predicted. In a blast of automatic gunfire, the highest and lowest motives of the human heart were, at last, revealed.
Along with four other true-crime tales, The End of the Dream is a masterful and compelling tour of the criminal mind from Ann Rule.

[Daveo]

The Capital by Robert Menasse....

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse..

The Capital is a brilliantly entertaining satire, a crime story, a comedy of manners . . . and a wild pig chase. This is the tale of a continent, a city and its inhabitants as they navigate their way through the confusing tangle of 21st-century life.

************************************* Brussels. A hive of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. No wonder the European Commission is keen to improve its image.

The fiftieth anniversary of the European Commission approaches, and the Directorate-General for Culture is tasked with organising an appropriate celebration. When Fenia Xenopoulou's assistant comes up with a plan to put Auschwitz at the very centre of the jubilee, she is delighted. But she has neglected to take the other E.U. institutions into account.

Meanwhile the city is on the lookout for a runaway pig. And what about the farmers who take to the streets to protest against restrictions blocking the export of pigs to China?

[Daveo]

The Godfather & The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo.

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange..

The Godfather - the epic tale of crime and betrayal that became a global phenomenon. Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor.

The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family - these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness. The Fortunate Pilgrim -

Before The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, and with a new preface by the author, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.