Driving along the freeway, Shane Scully glances over and sees Jody Dean, his oldest friend and LAPD colleague, at the wheel of an adjacent car. Why is Scully so surprised? Because it's been two years since Jody committed suicide in the Rampart Division parking lot by blowing his brains out with a service revolver. Shane served as a pallbearer at the funeral. What Scully will discover is that Jody and five other cops who are supposed to be dead are anything but; originally sent deep undercover to bust an extremely violent criminal network, they have become the LAPD's worst nightmare. Calling themselves the Vikings, they are rogue cops who know how the system works. In order to penetrate the group and set his cover, Scully is supposed to shoot his fiancée, Alexa. The setup goes awry and Shane finds himself looking down at his future wife's body. He is soon driven into the corridors of near-madness and into the bed of an extremely beautiful and utterly ruthless corporate seductress who threatens to destroy his soul. Shane's desperate and deadly undercover journey takes him from the embrace of Alexa and his teenage son, Chooch, to the Caribbean island of Aruba--to the decadence of Columbia's opulent palaces and the desperation of its deadly streets. In Viking Funeral, an electrifying thriller from Stephen J. Cannell, Sergeant Scully is driven to the psychological brink, his life in the hands of the most dangerous killer he's ever known--his closest childhood friend.

The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.

In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

The bestselling novelist and award-winning Hollywood producer weaves a high-tension novel of suspense around a chilling conspiracy of corruption within the LAPD, reminiscent of the classic movie "Chinatown." Inside the department, they're called Tin Collectors: Internal Affairs Agents, the police of the police. If they catch you breaking the rules, they'll come after your badge. If they want you badly enough, they'll collect more than just your tin. LAPD Detective Shane Scully is startled awake in the middle of the night by a call from his ex-partner's wife, who is being beaten by her abusive husband. Racing to their house to stop the fight, Scully ends up killing his ex-partner, a cop who is beloved within the department. Suddenly, Scully finds himself an outcast, shunned by his fellow cops who intend to exact vengeance no matter what the cost. Internal Affairs zeroes in on the "renegade" cop with their sharpest young prosecutor, the ice queen Alexa Hamilton, who has her own reasons for taking revenge on Scully. Desperate to save his career, Scully starts kicking over rocks within the LAPD. What he uncovers is pure evil: a conspiracy going to the very top that ultimately threatens not just his own life but that of a young teenage boy, Chooch, entrusted to Scully's care by his mother - Sandy Sandoval. Known as the Black Widow, Sandy is a beautiful and courageous woman who also happens to be the LAPD's most important undercover informant, and Scully will do anything to keep her son safe. Stephen J. Cannell combines mystery and violence, loyalty and passion in a tale with an ending as unpredictable as LA itself.

If Detective Shane Scully's best friend, Jody Dean, committed suicide three years ago, then who did Shane just see for one fleeting moment on the Ventura Freeway? He's convinced it was his former colleague. Or was his mind playing tricks? Shane's lover, Alexa Hamilton, herself a lauded LAPD officer, happens to think so. But Shane knows what he saw. And for a rogue cop with nothing left to lose, the search for Dean has become more than an investigation. It's become an obsession. The first clue to Dean's secret lifeand suspicious deathis murder. The victim is Dean's former commanding officer. The connection taps into a corrupt, high-level conspiracy among L.A.'s finest that will put Shane and everyone he loves in harm's way. It will cut deep into the heart of betrayal and the meaning of friendship. And it will dare one cop already on the brink of madness to take on step further into darkness...

This unique reference provides a primary source for osteologists and the medical/legal community for the understanding of burned bone remains in forensic or archaeological contexts. It describes in detail the changes in human bone and soft tissues as a body burns at both the chemical and gross levels and provides an overview of the current procedures in burned bone study. Case studies in forensic and archaeological settings aid those interested in the analysis of burned human bodies, from death scene investigators, to biological anthropologists looking at the recent or ancient dead. Includes the diagnostic patterning of color changes that give insight to the severity of burning, the positioning of the body, and presence (or absence) of soft tissues during the burning event Chapters on bones and teeth give step-by-step recommendations for how to study and recognize burned hard tissues

In this extensively revised third edition of The Viking Age: A Reader, Somerville and McDonald successfully bring the Vikings and their world to life for twenty-first-century students and instructors. The diversity of the Viking era is revealed through the remarkable range and variety of sources presented as well as the geographical and chronological coverage of the readings. The third edition has been reorganized into fifteen chapters. Many sources have been added, including material on gender and warrior women, and a completely new final chapter traces the continuing cultural influence of the Vikings to the present day. The use of visual material has been expanded, and updated maps illustrate historical developments throughout the Viking Age. The English translations of Norse texts, many of them new to this collection, are straightforward and easily accessible, while chapter introductions contextualize the readings.