" I had a dream a few years ago which became the premise of my book. This is my first attempt at writing, and was begun and completed in the first 36 days of the year 2002. When my kid brother was killed in an auto accident I slipped away for a while to process his departure as well as that of my son's accidental death. The time has come for me to honor their Dreams." Dreams can come true. So can nightmares. For anyone at anytime. For people, for countries. Harbingers can be good or bad. So can people and countries.

A dark, edgy novel from a master of Irish crime fiction who “is threatening to become a mass cult figure in the U.S. as well as a critical favorite” (The Atlantic). An elderly priest is nearly beaten to death. A special-needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises, and private investigator Jack Taylor has encountered most of them. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts a group calling itself Headstone, responsible for a series of random violent crimes in Galway, Ireland. As Headstone barrels along its deadly path right to the center of Taylor’s life, he will need to call upon his own capacity for brutality in order to stop them, in this suspenseful novel from a writer called “a Celtic Dashiell Hammett” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “A nonstop rampage of intrigue, mayhem, lunacy and dark-dark-dark humor.” —Shelf Awareness

A “throwback” series, John Headston is a 21st century P.I. with 20th century sensibilities. John Headston is a private detective who, early in his career, was very successful, running a 12-man operation called THE HEADSTONE DETECTIVE AGENCY, mainly because the guy who painted the name on the door added the “e” at the end without realizing it was wrong. As the book opens, however, Headston is now 50, and the agency is down to just him. In his past he had run-ins with not only the law, but with the New York State Agency who had licensed him. As a result he spent some time in jail, and had his license revoked. Now he has it back, and is trying to get started again. His first case is a missing persons case, a wealthy woman whose husband just seems to have vanished from his Wall Street stockbroker job. Headston finds the man, who is now living under very odd circumstances, but the missing persons case quickly turns to murder. Aided by a tattooed young lady who decides she should work for him, Headston decides to work on the murder case, while attempting to avoid running afoul of the law and having his licensed revoked again—and possibly for good, this time.

The graveyards of old New England hold an incredible range of poetic messages in the epitaphs etched into the gravestones, each a profound expression of emotion, culture, religion, and literature. These epitaphs are old, but their themes are timeless: mourning and faith, grief and hope, loss, and memory. This book tells the story of a years-long walk among gravestones and shares insights gained along the way. It identifies the source texts and authors chosen for these stones; interprets something of the tastes and beliefs of the people who did the choosing; offers some hypotheses on the various ways these texts were accessible to readers in remote towns and villages; gives a brief summary of the religious context of the times; and reflects on how the language and literature chosen for these epitaphs express these peoples' conflicted and evolving attitudes towards life, death, and eternity.

With every step, the Tomb Guards pay homage to America’s fallen. Discover their story, and that of the unknown soldiers they honor, through resonant words and illustrations. Keeping vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Arlington National Cemetery, are the sentinel guards, whose every step, every turn, honors and remembers America’s fallen. They protect fellow soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, making sure they are never alone. To stand there—with absolute precision, in every type of weather, at every moment of the day, one in a line uninterrupted since midnight July 2, 1937—is the ultimate privilege and the most difficult post to earn in the army. Everything these men and women do is in service to the Unknowns. Their standard is perfection. Exactly how the unnamed men came to be entombed at Arlington, and exactly how their fellow soldiers have come to keep vigil over them, is a sobering and powerful tale, told by Jeff Gottesfeld and luminously illustrated by Matt Tavares—a tale that honors the soldiers who honor the fallen.