Legend has it that a fortune in gold lies hidden somewhere in the Money Hill area of southeastern Louisiana, left behind by pirates and Confederate bankers-fair game for anyone persistent enough to find it.Oilfield attorney Randall Oliver is well aware of the Money Hill legend...but he also knows that even a ton of gold is small potatoes compared to the fortune in natural gas that might underlie the property.Shortly after joining the Dallas law firm of Bensen & Hotard in October 1976, Randall impresses oil wildcatter Buck Townsend with his prolific knowledge of Louisiana oil law. When founding partner Fred Hotard is murdered in an apparent mugging gone wrong, Buck puts Randall to work on a project Hotard had been handling for him: the sprawling Money Hill Prospect, a 12,000-acre tract centered on the antebellum Bolivar Plantation in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. With the help of the law firm's paralegal Colleen Rawlings, Randall begins the years-long process of putting together the "play." In her spare time, Colleen starts pursuing the Money Hill treasure itself; first idly, then with increasing earnestness. The key to both the Money Hill gas deposits and the treasure seems to lie with the Devereauxs, a tight-knit local "Redbone" clan descended from Bolivar's original owner, Alan Devereaux, and his freed slaves. The modern Devereauxs own nearly all the parcels making up the Money Hill Prospect, with the exception of the old plantation. That 2,000-acre tract is tightly controlled by Bolivar Land and Timber Ltd., an obscure corporation established shortly before the Civil War. Bolivar's attorney, Zach Bettencourt, blocks their efforts to lease the old plantation site at every turn-until Buck agrees to contribute substantial sums to the presidential campaign of Senator Robert Chandler, Bettencourt's handpicked candidate for the 1980 election. Even then, Bettencourt makes Buck swear he won't negotiate any leases with the Devereauxs. Chandler's campaign soon crashes and burns, the victim of a scandalous affair involving illegal campaign contributions, Vegas call girls-and Zach Bettencourt.People close to Randall are murdered. Randall suspects that the true motivation for the murders has very little to do with either gold or oil. But the only way to prove it to himself, and to the authorities, is to put his own life on the line...

The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

Track pirate gold and misplaced riches across 168 counties in this comprehensive guide to the lost treasures of Texas. Countless fortunes have disappeared into the vast expanse of the Lone Star State. The history of the coast is cluttered with shipwrecks like that of the 1554 Spanish fleet. Even when pirates such as Jean Laffite managed to get their ill-gotten gains ashore, their loot vanished just as completely as if it had sunk beneath the waves. Entire mines, including the ventures of Jim Bowie and San Saba Presidio, have been reclaimed by the earth. The unmarked caches of bandits like Jesse James and Pancho Villa still bedevil the dreams of treasure seekers today. W. Craig Gaines reveals what has been lost, what has been found and what remains to be recovered.

The patchwork of beach towns, villages and hamlets that make up Islip Town represents some of the most historic communities on the whole of Long Island. Local Secatogue Native Americans harrowingly saved the Dutch survivors of one of New York's first shipwrecks in 1657. New York City's infamous Tammany Hall leased an entire summer resort island in Islip Town for decades. In 1912, a young woman from Sayville sacrificed her own life for another on the RMS Titanic. Islip Town's founding father, William Nicoll, owned the largest parcel on Long Island's South Shore but was blocked from owning even a grain of sand on Fire Island. A penniless Dutch immigrant to Islip Town became the world's "Oyster King." Join author and historian Jack Whitehouse as he reveals buried stories from Islip Town's past.

The most trustworthy source of information available today on savings and investments, taxes, money management, home ownership and many other personal finance topics.

A collection of strange occurences, this book brings to light tangible evidence and first-hand testimony to validate a wide range of ghostly tales. Whether they haunt the place of their death or a place they loved in their lives, these spirits are found up and down the Texas coast. Author Docia Williams brings us the best of these stories, where they happen, and provides some of the history surrounding these spooky spots.

Renowned storyteller Docia Williams gathers a medley of some of the best haunting stories from her four previous books-Spirits of San Antonio and South Texas, Phantoms of the Plains, Ghosts Along the Texas Coast, and When Darkness Falls-then she adds a hundred pages of new ghostly tales from the Piney Woods of East Texas and from North Central Texas, including the Dallas area. Once again Mrs. Williams brings to light tangible evidence and eyewitness testimony in Best Tales of Texas Ghosts to validate an illusive world without dimension, one filled with bizarre and disturbing accounts of unexplained presences. After interviewing hundreds of people with firsthand experiences and personally witnessing eerie manifestations, she has concluded, "There are things happening all around us that can only be labeled as supernatural."