CUT HAIR - READ MINDS - SOLVE A MURDER Make your appointment for a fun amateur sleuth story that's one part "The Long Goodbye," a dab of "Blanche on the Lam" and "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie," with just a little X-Men mixed in, too. DANICA LUMAN has used her secret psychic abilities to squeeze by in the San Fernando Valley. Her powers help her give great haircuts - she sees into customers' minds and knows exactly what styles they want. Things are steady until one day, while giving a strange man a high-and-tight, the image Danica sees is of a dead body. What Danica lacks in detective training, she makes up for in stubbornness. She takes on the role of amateur detective only to sink deeper into the muddy mystery, with each clue dragging her further into the weird underbelly of Los Angeles. Fighting off unpaid bills, attempts on her life and dangerous family squabbles, Danica gets tangled up trying to solve the murder and discover how it connects to the cops, a student newspaper, and an old man who calls himself "the Mayor of Bel Air." Read the book, and sign up for the newsletter at phillipmottaz.com to learn more about this intrepid woman detective!

Like. Share. Kidnap! THE HOMICIDAL HAIRSTYLE OF THE VIRAL VIDEO VIXEN is the second PSYCHIC BARBER MYSTERY, the series that's one part "Long Goodbye," a healthy portion of "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie," with just a dash of the X-Men. If you ever wished one of the messed-up characters from a Lucy Foley novel had psychic abilities, these are the books for you. "THE HOMICIDAL HAIRSTYLE OF THE VIRAL VIDEO VIXEN finds DANICA LUMAN - professional hairstylist/amateur detective/secret psychic - back in Los Angeles and back in danger. After surviving her first case by the skin of her teeth, she has sworn off adventure to focus on simply earning a living. Her new source of income? Doing hair and makeup for an internet video crew. But just when Danica sees a distressing vision about viral sensation Sofi Starr, the web celeb goes missing. Danica's only chance to join the search party and secure a substantial reward is to collaborate with her worst enemy: the tarot-card-reading, crystal-ball-gazing 'psychic' Madame Lorena. With just three days to forage for clues in Sofi Starr's strange house, Danica must navigate bitter in-fighting, fake friendships, over-eager super fans and first-time sleuths with more enthusiasm than brains. Read the book, enjoy this amateur sleuth adventure, and sign up for the newsletters to learn more!

You loved to hate him as Danica Luman's foil in Murderous Haircut of the Mayor of Bel Air. Now Gene the sassy stylist is back in his own dramatic mystery adventure... The Sequins of Events! Set concurrent to the events of the first Psychic Barber Mystery story, Gene arrives late for a gig MC'ing a karaoke birthday party where he will be performing his own unique brand of entertainment, complete with bedazzled outfits. But when he arrives at the club, the party has already gone sour when the birthday girl's purse has gone missing -- and they accuse the DJ! So it's up to Gene to play amateur sleuth for once. Can Gene figure out who really stole the purse? Will the party be saved? And will he really sing a tribute to TLC? Find out in this hilarious short cozy mystery. Readers loved the full novel The Murderous Haircut of the Mayor of Bel Air, saying, "I. Am. HERE FOR IT!" (Anchal at Libro Book Review) and "Five stars" (Michele at Books Cause Insomnia). Professional haircutter, amateur sleuth and secret psychic DANICA LUMAN reads the minds of her customers by touching their heads. Mostly she sees their ideal hairstyles, but one day she touches the head of a new customer and sees a dead body. For lovers of Flavia de Luce from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Long Goodbye and even X-Men, too. Make your appointment to cut hair, read minds and solve a murder. Find out more at www.phillipmottaz.com.

A short mystery about veteran private eye Malcolm Fine, one of the colorful side characters featured in the novel The Murderous Haircut of the Mayor of Bel Air. Set almost a month before the events of that book, here Malcolm faces his greatest challenge yet: trying to appear as a legitimate private investigator to fulfill a legal, taxable obligation. He considers bailing on the PI game entirely, but gets pulled back in by an old colleague who offers what sounds like a simple stakeout job. Few things go simply in Malcolm's world, and he's pushed to the brink of giving up the life entirely. Maybe he's not cut out for this kind of work. (This also contains a teaser "clip" from the full novel, The Murderous Haircut of the Mayor of Bel Air, the first in the Psychic Barber Mystery series, and a fun amateur sleuth story that's one part "The Long Goodbye," dabs of "Blanche on the Lam" and "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" with just a little X-Men mixed in, too.)

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from “the good fight,” For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. “If the function of a writer is to reveal reality,” Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, “no one ever so completely performed it.” Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

On a trip to Scotland, bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright gets caught up in case involving a forbidden masterpiece in the second novel in the New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series. Book restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright is happy to be attending the world-renowned Edinburgh Book Fair. But then her ex, Kyle McVee, shows up with a bombshell. He has an original copy of a scandalous text that could change history—and humiliate the beloved British monarchy. Trying to get Kyle’s story out of her mind, Brooklyn takes a nighttime tour of the city. Unfortunately, the first landmark contains a real dead body—Kyle’s. The police are convinced Brooklyn’s the culprit, but with an entire convention of suspects, Brooklyn’s conducting her own investigation. Before she can crack the case, she’ll have to find out if the motive for murder was a 200-year-old secret—or something much more personal...