Motor City Shakedown
Title | Motor City Shakedown PDF eBook |
Author | D. E. Johnson |
Publisher | Minotaur Books |
Pages | 349 |
Release | 2011-09-13 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1429973730 |
Detroit, 1911. Seven months have passed since Will Anderson's friend Wesley McRae was brutally murdered and Will and the woman he loves, Elizabeth Hume, barely escaped with their lives. Will's hand, horribly disfigured from the sulfuric acid he used to help save them, causes him constant pain, forcing him into a morphine addiction. He lives for nothing except revenge against the people who contributed to Wesley's murder—first among them crime boss Vito Adamo. When Will stumbles upon the bloody body of Adamo's driver, he knows he'll be a suspect, particularly since he was spotted outside the dead man's apartment that same night. He sets out to find the killer, and the trail leads him to a vast conspiracy in an underworld populated by gangsters, union organizers, crooked cops, and lawyers. Worse, it places him directly in the middle of Detroit's first mob war. The Teamsters want a piece of Will's father's car company, Detroit Electric, and the Gianolla gang is there to be sure they get it. To save their families, Will and his ex-fiancée Elizabeth Hume enlist the help of Detroit Police Detective Riordan, the teenage members of what will one day be known as the Purple Gang, and Vito Adamo himself. They careen from one danger to the next, surviving shootouts, kidnappings, and police brutality, while barreling toward a devastating climax readers won't soon forget.
Detroit Shuffle
Title | Detroit Shuffle PDF eBook |
Author | D. E. Johnson |
Publisher | Macmillan |
Pages | 338 |
Release | 2013-09-03 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1250036488 |
Will Anderson and Elizabeth Hume get caught up in the political turmoil over women's suffrage in Detroit Shuffle, the fourth book in D. E. Johnson's critically acclaimed 1910s Detroit series Will Anderson inadvertently breaks up a key suffrage rally when he thwarts a gunman set on killing his lover, Elizabeth Hume. No one else saw the man, and Elizabeth believes he hallucinated the entire incident, a side effect of the radium "treatment" he received at Eloise Hospital. She asks him to sit on the sidelines while she and her companions try to get the women's suffrage amendment passed by Michigan voters. Instead, Will sets out to protect Elizabeth and prove his sanity. Will's nemesis, Sapphira Xanakis, contacts him with news of a conspiracy to defeat the amendment, led by Andrew Murphy, head of the Michigan Licensed Beverage Association. Against his better judgment, Will believes she is trying to help. The man she directs him to dies under suspicious circumstances. An old acquaintance of Will's, who is working for the MLBA, is shot and killed in front of him. Still, no one believes Will, including his former ally, Detective Riordan, who not only is unwilling to help, but seems to have secrets of his own. With new death threats against Elizabeth and the next rally only a few days away, Will has to unravel a complicated tapestry of blackmail, double-dealing, conspiracy, and murder—before the killer has his next chance to strike. Johnson's immaculate plotting and high-tension writing make for a spellbinding read set in early twentieth-century Detroit.
The Detroit Electric Scheme
Title | The Detroit Electric Scheme PDF eBook |
Author | D. E. Johnson |
Publisher | Minotaur Books |
Pages | 321 |
Release | 2010-09-14 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 142994028X |
Will Anderson is a drunk, heartbroken over the breakup with his fiancée, Elizabeth. He's barely kept his job at his father's company---Detroit Electric, 1910's leading electric automobile manufacturer. Late one night, Elizabeth's new fiancé and Will's one-time friend, John Cooper, asks Will to meet him at the car factory. He finds Cooper dead, crushed in a huge hydraulic roof press. Surprised by the police, Will panics and runs, leaving behind his cap and automobile, and buries his blood-spattered clothing in a garbage can. What follows is a fast-paced, detail-filled ride through early-1900s Detroit, involving murder, blackmail, organized crime, the development of a wonderful friendship, and the inside story on early electric automobiles. Through it all, Will learns that clearing himself of the crime he was framed for is only the beginning. To survive, and for his loved ones to survive, he must also become a man. The Detroit Electric Scheme is populated with fascinating characters, both real and fictional, from a then-flourishing Detroit: The Dodge brothers and Edsel Ford come to life, interacting with denizens of the sordid underbelly of the Motor City, such as Vito Adamo, Detroit's first Mob boss, and Big Boy, the bouncer at a saloon so notorious the newspapers called it "The Bucket of Blood." This expertly plotted debut delivers with great research, wonderfully flawed yet likable characters, and a shattering climax.
Vinnitta: The Birth of the Detroit Mafia
Title | Vinnitta: The Birth of the Detroit Mafia PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Waugh |
Publisher | Lulu.com |
Pages | 512 |
Release | 2019-04-04 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1483496279 |
From the Author of Off Color: The Violent History of Detroit's Notorious Purple Gang It was the winter of 1919, and it was the height of a gang war the Motor City hadn't seen before. Detroit's Mafia family had split into two factions, both vying to not only avenge ancient wrongs but also gain control of the city's lucrative illegal alcohol trade at the dawn of Prohibition. In Vìnnitta, author Daniel Waugh offers an in-depth account of the formation of the Detroit Mafia and how they grew from a small band of Sicilian immigrants into one of the most powerful criminal sects. He shares how the mafia infiltrated the Detroit business community and established themselves in illegal rackets ranging from extortion, auto theft, bootlegging, burglary, and construction racketeering. The story is told through the eyes of not only the gangsters themselves, but also those of an undertaker forced to prepare many of his friends for burial after their murders.
Hope for the City
Title | Hope for the City PDF eBook |
Author | Jack Kresnak |
Publisher | Cass Community Publishing House |
Pages | 376 |
Release | 2015-11-27 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1942011172 |
That Time of Year
Title | That Time of Year PDF eBook |
Author | Garrison Keillor |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Pages | 398 |
Release | 2020-12-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1951627709 |
With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”
The Keillor Reader
Title | The Keillor Reader PDF eBook |
Author | Garrison Keillor |
Publisher | Penguin |
Pages | 392 |
Release | 2014-05-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1101517778 |
Stories, essays, poems, and personal reminiscences from the sage of Lake Wobegon When, at thirteen, he caught on as a sportswriter for the Anoka Herald, Garrison Keillor set out to become a professional writer, and so he has done—a storyteller, sometime comedian, essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, poet. Now a single volume brings together the full range of his work: monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, stories from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, excerpts from novels, newspaper columns. With an extensive introduction and headnotes, photographs, and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader also presents pieces never before published, including the essays “Cheerfulness” and “What We Have Learned So Far.” Keillor is the founder and host of A Prairie Home Companion, celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2014. He is the author of nineteen books of fiction and humor, the editor of the Good Poems collections, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.