Winds whistled up the river, and winds whistled down from the hills, and they met to swirl and gather fury and rattle the city’s millions of windowpanes. They carried a mixture of sleet and fine snow, the first herald of the winter to come. In the business district they swung signs madly back and forth, and roared around the corners of high office buildings, and swept madly against struggling trolley cars. They poured through the man-made cañons; they dashed out the broad boulevards—and so they came to the attention of Mr. Roger Verbeck, at about the hour of midnight, as he turned over in his warm bed and debated whether to rise and lower the window or take a chance with the rapidly lowering temperature. “Beastly night!” Verbeck confided to himself, and put his head beneath the covers. He slept—and suddenly he awakened. A moment before he had been in the midst of a pleasant dream; now every sense was alert, and his right hand, creeping softly under the cover, reached the side of the bed and grasped an automatic pistol that hung in a rack there. From the adjoining room—his library—there came no flash of an electric torch, no footfall, no sound foreign to the apartment, nothing to indicate the presence of an intruder. Yet Verbeck sensed that an intruder was there. He slipped quietly from the bed, shivering a bit because of the cold wind, put his feet into slippers, and drew on a dressing gown over his pajamas. Then, his pistol held ready for use in case of emergency, he started across the bedroom, taking short steps and walking on his toes. A reflection entered the room from the arc light on the nearest street corner. This uncertain light was shut off for an instant, and Verbeck whirled quickly, silently, to find another man slipping up beside him. It was Muggs—a little, wiry man of uncertain age, who had been in Verbeck’s employ for several years, valet at times, comrade in arms at times, willing adventurer always. Muggs bent forward until his lips were close to Verbeck’s ear. “I heard it, too, boss,” he said. “Somebody in the library!” Verbeck nodded; they crept nearer the door. Inch by inch, Verbeck pulled aside one of the curtains, until they could peer into the other room. A gleam from the corner arc light penetrated the library, too. It revealed the interior of the room in a sort of semi-gloom, causing elusive shadows that flitted here and there in such fashion that they scarcely could be distinguished from substance. Also, it revealed an open window near the fire escape—and it showed the form of a man standing before Verbeck’s antique desk in a corner. Muggs bent beneath his master’s arm to see better. He felt Verbeck grip his shoulder, and looked up to find him indicating the open window. Like a shadow, Muggs, who also held a weapon in his hand, slipped through the curtains, crept along the wall, and advanced toward that window to cut off the intruder’s retreat.

"The Black Star" is a wonderful crime-adventure book by the creator of the famous "The Mark of Zorro." The author worked as a police reporter before becoming a prolific and successful writer for pulp magazines and Hollywood. His real-life experiences often find reflection in his novels. The book, presented here, features a villain, The Black Star, a master to escape from the police. Yet the successful amateur detective who finally captures him, discovers that sending the Black Star to the police would ruin his fiancée's family. Now, he needs to outwit the law and the Black Star to ensure a happy ending.

Westbrook Washington is a bright 14-year-old African-American boy from Mississippi. He is not worried when his 19-year-old brother, Corey, is shipped off to Iraq with the local National Guard unit "because the war is pretty much over anyway." But West is surprised when he begins receiving letters from Corey who details his experiences in Iraq and his disillusionment with the war. When Corey is killed by a roadside bomb, West is tasked with writing Corey's obituary for the local newspaper. In the meantime, he teams up with Corey's best friend Ray Ray to find the local Army recruiter who talked Corey into joining the Army so they can beat him up. Along the way, swept up in the anger and confusion over his brother's death, Westbrook steals every American flag in town and burns them at an abandoned train yard. When a WWII veteran who lives near the train yard is critically injured by the fire, both boys realize the potential consequences of their actions and come to understand that childhood is behind them. I'm a librarian and wrote this book because I could not find contemporary, meaningful books for young adult boys. I wanted to write a book that dealt with the experience many boys are facing - an older brother who joins the Army and is then immediately sent to war. One day you are a high school kid, the next day you are being shot at in a foreign country for no reason.

The Chainbreakers' War freed the norren. Won independence for Narashtovik. And drove a rift between Dante and Blays that may never be mended. After three years of wandering, Blays has returned to Gask. Blaming its king for the loss of his love, Lira, he poses as a merchant and infiltrates the enemy nobility. His goal is to bankrupt the kingdom and force its ruler from the throne. But his scheme is ruined when Dante arrives and outs him to the king. In desperation, Blays flees to the one place Dante can't follow: the forbidden Pocket Cove. There, he intends to learn whatever secrets have kept its people hidden for centuries. Meanwhile, Dante is called back to Narashtovik. Strange lights have been seen in the nearby Wodun Mountains. His investigation reveals the lights herald the return of the Black Star, a long-lost item capable of making wishes real. With it, Dante plans to make himself immortal. To find it, he must cross the Woduns into the mysterious country of Weslee. But there are others vying for the Black Star—and if they find it first, they will use it to scour Narashtovik from the earth. THE BLACK STAR is the final book in an epic fantasy trilogy.

In Between Homeland and Motherland, Alvin B. Tillery Jr. considers the history of political engagement with Africa on the part of African Americans, beginning with the birth of Paul Cuffe’s back-to-Africa movement in the Federal Period to the Congressional Black Caucus’ struggle to reach consensus on the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000. In contrast to the prevailing view that pan-Africanism has been the dominant ideology guiding black leaders in formulating foreign policy positions toward Africa, Tillery highlights the importance of domestic politics and factors within the African American community. Employing an innovative multimethod approach that combines archival research, statistical modeling, and interviews, Tillery argues that among African American elites—activists, intellectuals, and politicians—factors internal to the community played a large role in shaping their approach to African issues, and that shaping U.S. policy toward Africa was often secondary to winning political battles in the domestic arena. At the same time, Africa and its interests were important to America’s black elite, and Tillery’s analysis reveals that many black leaders have strong attachments to the "motherland." Spanning two centuries of African American engagement with Africa, this book shows how black leaders continuously balanced national, transnational, and community impulses, whether distancing themselves from Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement, supporting the anticolonialism movements of the 1950s, or opposing South African apartheid in the 1980s.