All the stories in Malice In Memphis: Bluff City Mysteries are pure fiction, even if the locations in which they take place aren't. Our mystery writers group, Malice in Memphis, is always looking for interesting local landmarks to use as settings for great mysteries. The characters who inhabit these places in our stories are also fictional, as are the things they do, both good and bad. Mystery writers walk into a room for the first time and consider where we could most efficiently kill somebody in an interesting way. We discuss untraceable poisons in restaurants-and terrify the poor people who wait on us. We wonder whether the beam that runs across the ceiling in church would hold up a hanging corpse, and how long a dagger would have to be to puncture a heart. We are essentially peaceful. We can always bump off unpleasant people in our writing. No reason to do it in actuality. So don't blame the blameless landmarks we've used. Remember, it's all fiction...

An assistant curator of Munich's National Museum, Vicky Bliss is no expert on Egypt, but she does have a Ph.D. in solving crimes. So when an intelligence agency offers her a luxury Nile cruise if she'll help solve a murder and stop a heist of Egyptian antiquities, all 5'11" of her takes the plunge. Vicky suspects the authorities really want her to lead them to her missing lover, the art thief and master of disguises she knows only as "Sir John Smythe." And right in the shadow of the Sphinx she spots him. . . with his new flame. Vicky is so furious at this romantic stab-in-the-back, not to mention the sudden arrival of her meddling boss, Herr Dr. Schmidt, that she may overlook a danger as old as the pharaohs and as unchanging. . . a criminal who hides behind a mask of charm while moving in for the kill.

Memphis gave birth to music that changed the world — Memphis Mayhem is a fascinating history of how music and culture collided to change the state of music forever “David Less has captured the essence of the Memphis music experience on these pages in no uncertain terms. There's truly no place like Memphis and this is the story of why that is. HAVE MERCY!” — Billy F Gibbons, ZZ Top Memphis Mayhem weaves the tale of the racial collision that led to a cultural, sociological, and musical revolution. David Less constructs a fascinating narrative of the city that has produced a startling array of talent, including Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Al Green, Otis Redding, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Justin Timberlake, and so many more. Beginning with the 1870s yellow fever epidemics that created racial imbalance as wealthy whites fled the city, David Less moves from W.C. Handy’s codification of blues in 1909 to the mid-century advent of interracial musical acts like Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the birth of punk, and finally to the growth of a music tourism industry. Memphis Mayhem explores the city’s entire musical ecosystem, which includes studios, high school band instructors, clubs, record companies, family bands, pressing plants, instrument factories, and retail record outlets. Lively and comprehensive, this is a provocative story of finding common ground through music and creating a sound that would change the world.

Can I Play with my Food? is an early-reader picture book that explores food and science through the eyes of two sisters. Nema and Lexi let their imaginations run wild as they discover where food comes from and how a simple experiment can shape their dreams. This story shows children that playing with food can be fun, but it also highlights the importance of acceptance. While others might think a disability like Down's Syndrome is a hindrance, Nema and Lexi show us that the ingredients of compassion, acceptance, and love make anything possible.

In this fifth anthology, members of the award-winning Malice in Memphis writers group relate tales about the Mississippi River and its denizens. The people who live and work and love and die on her banks or in her muddy current recognize she is nobody's water park. There is something for every reader. Meet the characters whose lives are defined by secrets, barbecue, blues, ghosts, killers and rescuers, lovers and haters, crime and-sometimes-punishment. All are touched by the river for good or more frequently by evil. The characters and the stories are fiction-the river is not.

"Pate McMichael not only puts to rest the legend of a conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr. but, in lucid, compelling prose, he also demonstrates how that legend was constructed, and why it persists. Anyone interested in civil rights history, the 1960s, King, or conspiracy theories—or just a great story—should grab this book and hold on tight." —Clay Risen, author of The Bill of the Century Unanswered questions surround the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and many still wonder whether justice was served. After all, only one man, an escaped convict named James Earl Ray, was punished for the crime, and he did not seem to fit the caricature of a hangdog racist thirsty for blood. Had he been paid by clandestine forces? After his arrest, Ray forged a partnership with two very strange bedfellows: a slick lawyer named Arthur J. Hanes, the de facto "Klonsel" for the United Klans of America, and journalist William Bradford Huie, the darling of Look magazine. Despite polar opposite views on race, Hanes and Huie found common cause in the world of conspiracy. Together, they thought they could make Memphis the new Dallas. Relying on a trove of newly released documents and dusty files, Klandestine takes readers deep inside Ray's Memphis jail cell and Alabama's violent Klaverns, showing how a legacy of unpunished racial killings provided the perfect exigency to sell a lucrative conspiracy to a suspicious and outraged nation. Pate McMichael is an award-winning journalist. His stories have been published in Zócalo Public Square, Atlanta magazine, St. Louis magazine, and elsewhere.