Based on eye-witness accounts, Robert Pike's moving book vividly depicts the lives of the villagers who were caught up in the tragedy of Oradour-sur-Glane and brings their experiences to our attention for the first time.' - Hanna Diamond, author of Fleeing Hitler On 10 June 1944, four days after Allied forces landed in Normandy, the picturesque village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the rural heart of France was destroyed by an armoured SS Panzer division. Six hundred and forty-three men, women and children were murdered in the nation's worst wartime atrocity. Today, Oradour is remembered as a 'martyred village' and its ruins are preserved, but the stories of its inhabitants lie buried under the rubble of the intervening decades. Silent Village gathers the powerful testimonies of survivors in the first account of Oradour as it was both before the tragedy and in its aftermath. A lost way of life is vividly recollected in this unique insight into the traditions, loves and rivalries of a typical village in occupied France. Why this peaceful community was chosen for extermination has remained a mystery. Putting aside contemporary hearsay, Nazi rhetoric and revisionist theories, in this updated third edition Robert Pike returns to the archival evidence to narrate the tragedy as it truly happened – and give voice to the anguish of those left behind.
Joe Pike--the ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-mercenary from Crais's superb Elvis Cole novels--headlines the explosive action of this page-turning "New York Times" bestseller, now available in a tall Premium Edition. Reissue.
The #1 New York Times–bestselling author invites you into a conversation with his two most popular characters—one well-liked and the other, not so much. In this short piece, Robert Crais brings us into the world of quirky and likable Los Angeles PI Elvis Cole and his friend Joe Pike, a survivor and an enigmatic man of few words. The discussion revolves around the choices they’ve made, the obstacles they’ve overcome, the things that drive them to be who they are, and the hope that keeps them persevering through the darkness. It’s a fresh look at this “superb series” (Kirkus Reviews), and a fascinating visit with its “whip-smart” author (Booklist), who has also written for such television classics as Cagney and Lacey and Hill Street Blues. “Cole and Pike make a terrific pair.” —Seattle Times
Universally popular, checkers is one of the world s oldest and most elegantly structured board games and on a high level, it can demand real strategic thought. Put your skill to the test with these puzzles all based on the Standard American game. (Federation rules appear in their entirety.) Each is solvable in no more than six-and-a-half moves, and sometimes, the winner even seems at a serious disadvantage at the start. Quite a few of the solutions list alternative patterns of play.
Joe Pike and his partner Elvis Cole must solve the murder of an old friend and his entire family in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais. When Frank Meyer and his family are executed during a home invasion, the police begin investigating the secret life they're sure Meyer had. Joe Pike's on a hunt of his own: to clear his friend's name, and to punish the people who murdered him. What starts out as a simple trail gets twisted fast by old grudges, double crosses, blood vengeance, and a crime so terrible even Pike and his partner Elvis Cole have no way to measure it.
This key resource for all training professionals has been carefully revised and updated. The focus is on delivering results, not just training. All the basics are covered, including how to tap into learners motivation, customizing for your audience, great presentation techniques, and creative activities that you can use. Techniques include instrumented learning, participant centered techniques, classroom management and the myths and methods of e-learning.
Defying Vichy takes us into the heart of the French Resistance: the Dordogne region (in) this moving account of the darkest and brightest period in French history.' – Matthew Cobb, author of The Resistance Vichy France under Marshal Pétain was an authoritarian regime that sought to perpetuate a powerful place for France in the world alongside Germany. It echoed the right-wing ideals of other fascist states and was a perfect instrument for Hitler, who drew more and more power and resources from a beaten France whose people suffered. Resistance was an unknown until a small number sought to make a stand in whatever way they could. Each would play their part in destabilising the Vichy state, all the while rejecting the Nazi occupation of their eternal France. The Dordogne was one of many hotbeds of early refusal and its dramatic stories are here told against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Vichy France. These stories, like so many others of often ordinary people – men and women, young and old – tell of a period of betrayal, refusal and heroism.
In this robust, informal book, Robert E. Pike tells the colorful story of logging and log-driving in New England. The New England loggers and river drivers were a unique breed of men. Working with their axes and peaveys through Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, they contributed mightily to the development of the United States. The daily life of the loggers was hard — working in deep icy water fourteen hours a day, sleeping in wet blankets, eating coarse food, and constantly risking their lives. Their pay was very low, yet they were proud to call themselves loggers. When they came out of the woods after the spring drives, they ebulliently spent their pay carousing in the staid New England towns. Robert E. Pike, who as a youth worked in the woods and on the rivers, writes affectionately and knowingly, with humorous anecdotes, of every detail of lumbering. He describes the daily life of the logging camps, giving a picture of the different specialist jobs: the camp boss, the choppers, the sawyers and filers, the scaler, the teamsters, the river men, the railroaders, and the lumber kings. His descriptions bring the reader vividly into the woods, smelling the tangy, newly cut timber, hearing the boom of the falling trees. "The author's lively prose matches the temper of his subject. . . . This is basic history, geography, psychology, economics, and folklore all rolled into one top-quality volume." — R. S. Monahan, New York Times Book Review
Private investigators Joe Pike and Elvis Cole get double-crossed in this twisty, gripping New York Times bestseller that will have readers on the edge of their seats. When gangbangers shake down the modest owner of a Los Angeles eatery, Joe Pike intervenes. For all intents and purposes, Pike saved Wilson Smith's life. But for reasons of their own, Smith and his lovely niece, Dru, are curiously resentful. It's only when Pike's feelings for the woman deepen that he and his partner, Elvis Cole, discover that Dru and her uncle are not at all who they seem, and everything Pike has learned about them is a lie. But it's much more than a deception. It's a trap. And with every new twist it's proving to be a killer.
This book is about a prominent white family in Mt. Juliet that adopts an African American baby at the beginning of the 1900’s. The child’s mother is a young field hand that under duress got into trouble with a white man that lived on Central Pike. She was afraid of her family finding about this unfortunate incident. She gave birth to the child alone, during a rainstorm, and took the baby to her friend Albert, a worker employed by Perry Quartermain, who lived on Central Pike. The Quartermains, who ran a dairy, and were very prosperous were considered the upper crust of the community. This community was located almost midway between Lebanon on the East, and the Stones River Bridge on the West. The families in this community were somewhat different from each other, although in some ways they were much alike. They were hard-working, kind, gentle, and church-goers. The Quartermains were pillars of the community, and were looked on with great, warmth and respect. It was baffling to many families as to why the Quartermains would adopt a black child and raise it as one of their own. Out of respect this kind of talk was always behind closed doors. There were those who said they knew why, but would not say. This story follows the growth of the black child along with the other Quartermain children, as well as the lives of many neighbors, and friends as they lived through the Great Depression, and the Great Wars, while coping with the many problems and mishaps that they encountered in their daily lives. The glaring question that remains unanswered until the very end, was, “Who was the white man that took advantage of Lucy, a young black woman, and fathered this black baby that was raised as a son by the Quartermains?”
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are joined by Suspect heroes LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his German shepherd, Maggie, in this heart-stopping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike keep their promises. Even if it could get them killed... Elvis Cole is hired to find a woman who’s disappeared, a seemingly ordinary case, until he learns the missing woman is an explosives expert and worked for a Defense Department contractor. Meanwhile, LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, track a fugitive to a house filled with explosives—and a dead body. As the two cases intertwine, they all find themselves up against shadowy arms dealers and corrupt officials, and the very woman they promised to save may be the cause of their own deaths.
The search for a missing girl leads private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike into the nightmarish world of human trafficking in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Robert Crais. When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing daughter, she's sure it's a ruse orchestrated by the girl and her boyfriend. She's wrong. They've been taken by bajadores—border bandits who prey on the innocent by buying, selling, and disposing of victims like commodities. Cole and Joe Pike start an undercover investigation to find the couple, but their plan derails when Cole disappears, leaving Pike to burn through the murderous world of human traffickers to find his friend as well as the missing young people. But he may already be too late...
“Stunning . . . Shrewdly written and sharply plotted . . . The Last Detective is a rare treat.”—The Washington Post Book World “Fast-moving . . . a page-turning thriller.”—Chicago Tribune P.I. Elvis Cole’s relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained, but it becomes even more tense when the unthinkable happens: While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, the boy vanishes without a trace. When the kidnappers call, it’s not for ransom, but for a promise to punish Cole for past sins he claims he didn’t commit. With LAPD wrestling over the case and the boy’s estranged father attempting to take control of the investigation, Cole vows to find Ben first. But Cole’s partner, Joe Pike, knows more about this case than he has said. Pike lives in a world where dangerous men commit crimes beyond all reckoning. Now, one of those men is alive and well in L.A.—and calling Elvis Cole to war.
“A thoughtful and powerful page turner.”—People Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiancé, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer's sure he's in trouble—the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves his office, Elvis and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip-deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops, and conspiracies of silence. And before the case is through, every copy in the LAPD will be gunning for a pair of escaped armed-and-dangerous killers—Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. “Elvis Cole provides more fun for the reader than any L.A. private eye to come along in years.”—Joseph Wambaugh “Elvis lives, and he's on his way to being crowned the king of detectives.”—Booklist
Prominent restaurateur Teddy Martin is facing charges in his wife’s brutal murder. But he’s not going down without spending a bundle of cash on his defense. So his hotshot attorney hires P.I. Elvis Cole to find proof that Detective Angela Rossi tampered with the evidence. Rossi needs a way back to the fast track after falling hard during an internal investigation five years ago. But Cole needs to know if she’s desperate enough to falsify the case against Martin in order to secure her own position. As Cole and his partner Joe Pike work their way through a tangle of witnesses and an even greater tangle of media, they begin to suspect that it’s not the police who are behind the setup.
“Quick, cutting wit . . . a keen ear.”—The New York Times Book Review Hollywood’s newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelsen, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure. His films make billions, but his manners make enemies. What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelsen wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third-biggest filmmaker in America. It’s the kind of case Cole can handle in his sleep—until it turns out to be a nightmare. For when Cole finds Nelsen’s ex-wife in a small Connecticut town, she’s nothing like he expects. She has some unwanted—and very nasty—mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening an East Coast branch of his P.I. office...at the bottom of the Hudson River. “Elvis [Cole] is the greatest . . . [ he is] perhaps the best detective to come along since Travis McGee.”—San Diego Tribune “[Crais is] far better at the private-eye-novel racket than most writers.”—Newsweek
Filling in a key chapter in communications history, Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike offer an in-depth examination of the rise of the “global media” between 1860 and 1930. They analyze the connections between the development of a global communication infrastructure, the creation of national telegraph and wireless systems, and news agencies and the content they provided. Conventional histories suggest that the growth of global communications correlated with imperial expansion: an increasing number of cables were laid as colonial powers competed for control of resources. Winseck and Pike argue that the role of the imperial contest, while significant, has been exaggerated. They emphasize how much of the global media system was in place before the high tide of imperialism in the early twentieth century, and they point to other factors that drove the proliferation of global media links, including economic booms and busts, initial steps toward multilateralism and international law, and the formation of corporate cartels. Drawing on extensive research in corporate and government archives, Winseck and Pike illuminate the actions of companies and cartels during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, in many different parts of the globe, including Africa, Asia, and Central and South America as well as Europe and North America. The complex history they relate shows how cable companies exploited or transcended national policies in the creation of the global cable network, how private corporations and government agencies interacted, and how individual reformers fought to eliminate cartels and harmonize the regulation of world communications. In Communication and Empire, the multinational conglomerates, regulations, and the politics of imperialism and anti-imperialism as well as the cries for reform of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth emerge as the obvious forerunners of today’s global media.
I've lived by the motto, `Find something you love to do, and you'll never have to work a day in your life.' The Fun Minute Manager takes that concept to a whole new level in showing the boss how to help employees love what they do and enjoy going to work. If you don't have a `fun epiphany' reading this book, go back and read it again!"---Harvey Mackay, Author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive "Successful organizations have a clear vision of where they are headed. They understand what business they are really in. And, most importantly, they develop a culture that supports the vision and business, just as Southwest Airlines did. We hired attitudes that contained a humor and fun component and developed their skills. The Fun Minute Manager endorses that concept and gives you a flight plan on how to build a fun, productive and profitable culture."---Howard Putnam, former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Speaker and Author "Rare indeed is a book a `perfect fit' for the time it is birthed. The authors have managed such a glove-to-hand fit with their thoughtful, penetrating, relevant invitation for every manager to fold in fun when work environments so need to find fun."---Bob Danzig, former CEO of Hearst Newspapers, and Author "In these tough and difficult times, The Fun Minute Manager is a perfect response to build staff morale and effectiveness. Bob Pike is the master of creative solutions that organizations can implement today! He, along with John and Robert, has put that creativity and more into this book. This is a must-read.'---Elliott Masie, Chairman of The Learning Consortium Meet Bob Workman. Bob likes his job. Bob likes his employees. Bob considers himself a good manager but senses low morale among his immediate staff members. In this easy-to-read business fable, a chance encounter transforms Bob's work life as he sets out to discover how fun can revolutionize a worksite and pay big dividends both in morale and return on investment. Bob discovers that a fun work environment---one which lifts people's spirits and reminds them of their value to their managers, their organization, and to each other---is a primary need among employees. He sets off on a quest to find ways to create a fun environment and develops a method to produce convincing evidence that creating a fun work environment is worth the time and effort for the company. While "fun" has not been viewed as a traditional responsibility of the manager, managers who care about their employees and their bottom line will find The Fun Minute Manager a great tool for actively engaging their employees and positively transforming their workplace. This book is concise, timely, and a rich resource of practical ideas.
“[A] riveting novel with a vivid sense of place . . . Anyone who enjoys a well-written, fast-paced, noirish thriller with a great aha! moment shouldn’t miss The Forgotten Man.”—The Boston Globe In an alleyway in Los Angeles, an old man, clutching faded newspaper clippings and gasping his last words to a cop, lies dying of a gunshot wound. The victim claims to be P.I. Elvis Cole’s long-lost father—a stranger who has always haunted his son. As a teenager, Cole searched desperately for his father. As a man, he faces the frightening possibility that this murder victim was himself a killer. Caught in limbo between a broken love affair and way too much publicity over his last case, Cole at first resists getting involved with this new case. Then it consumes him. Now a stranger’s terrifying secrets—and a hunt for his killer—give Cole a frightening glimpse into his own past. And he can’t tell if it’s forgiveness or a bullet that’s coming next. . . . “Robert Crais is a crime writer of incredible talent—his novels are not only suspenseful and deeply atmospheric but very hard to put down.”—Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code “A brutal but exhilarating climax.”—USA Today
“Elvis Cole provides more fun for the reader than any L.A. private eye to come along in years.”—Joseph Wambaugh WINNER OF THE ANTHONY AND MACAVITY AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL • NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AND SHAMUS AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. Private Eye. . . . He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He’s a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined to never grow up. When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole’s Disney-Deco office, she’s lost something very valuable—her husband and her young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn’t thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower, Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood’s studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs, sex—and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it’s also turned ugly. Because everybody, from cops to starlets to crooks, has declared war on Ellen and Elvis. For Ellen, it isn’t Funtown anymore. For Elvis, it’s just a living . . . He hopes. Praise for The Monkey's Raincoat “Outstanding characters, tight plot, and scintillating prose style. . . . This fast-paced story speeds Elvis Cole to a chilling, heart-stopping ending.”—Mystery Scene “Is Bob Crais good? Put it this way: if they're taking you out to put you against the firing squad wall, and you want to enjoy your last moments on earth, pass on the last cigarette and ask for an Elvis Cole novel.”—Harlan Ellison “Far and away the most satisfying private eye novel in years. Grab this one—it's a winner!”—Lawrence Block “The best private eye novel of the year . . . lots of action; bright, crisp dialogue; and sharply drawn characters.”—The Denver Post “Robert B. Parker has some competition on his hands. . . . Elvis Cole is an appealing character and Crais's style is fresh and funny.”—Sue Grafton “In Crais, a new star has appeared on the private eye scene—a dazzling first novel.”—Tony Hillerman
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