Tommy McNaul is an FBI agent with twenty-five years of service, a firm sense of law and order, a beautiful Irish wife, and a passion for fine art. He risks them all one snowy night when he and his partner, Kate Bacon, lead a sting operation in Boston. Their mission is to recover Vermeer's “The Concert,” stolen from the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum in 1995. The sting erupts in a blaze of gunfire, and Tom's life spins out of control. Forced into retirement from the FBI, and pursued by elements of the Boston mob, Tom seeks refuge in his native homeland of New Mexico. He teams up with his estranged older brother, Willie, an ex-marine turned private detective living in Santa Fe. Tom and Willie plan to pursue local cases of art forgery and theft, but the murder of a young gallery worker hurls them into the dark, violent world of international art crime. Tom finds himself increasingly torn. Is he still a man of law and order, or does he belong in the darker world of justice and vengeance? In an era of cookie-cutter plots and characters, Young Blood pulses with welcome, witty originality. Combined with a setting in quirky, historic Santa Fe, the story moves to a brisk and unexpected conclusion. Action, suspense, intrigue, and a smidgeon of romance make this look at the dangerous business of art theft and counterfeiting a memorable read. It's just what I like in a mystery. William Frank has a seasoned storyteller's gift for creating memorable plot twists. I was hooked from the first page. —Anne Hillerman, author of the New York Times best-selling Leaphorn/Chee/Manuelito mysteries
A reclusive Boston widow sends her alluring daughter, Aoife O’Malley, to the Santa Fe office of veteran art-crime detective Tom McNaul. The job: to recover a Monet water lilies painting that was stolen from their family twenty years ago in a murder/burglary in Northern Ireland. Tom accepts the challenge but soon finds himself pursued by lethal elements of Boston’s Irish mob. Outgunned and stymied by the murder of his only suspect, Tom joins forces with his older brother, Willie, and agent Kate Bacon, his former partner on the FBI Art Crime Team. When the three fly to Ireland, hoping to trace the painting from the original crime scene, they are swept into a world of violent political intrigue. Their whirlwind circuit of the Emerald Isle soon turns deadly as agents of unknown organizations pursue them. Tom fears that radical elements of both the IRA and Orange paramilitaries want the painting to finance terrorism—perhaps even to reignite the Troubles. As the dangers increase, he finds himself unable to trust anyone in his struggle to fulfill his quest and untangle his complex relationships with Aoife, Kate, and the pirate queen.
For most of the last century, William F. Buckley Jr. was the leading figure in the conservative movement in America. The magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, brought together writers representing every strand of conservative thought, and refined those ideas over the decades that followed. Buckley’s own writings were a significant part of this development. He was not a theoretician but a popularizer, someone who could bring conservative ideas to a vast audience through dazzling writing and lively wit. Culled from millions of published words spanning nearly sixty years, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations offers Buckley’s commentary on the American and international scenes, in areas ranging from Kremlinology to rock music. The subjects are widely varied, but there are common threads linking them all: a love for the Western tradition and its American manifestation; the belief that human beings thrive best in a free society; the conviction that such a society is worth defending at all costs; and an appreciation for the quirky individuality that free people inevitably develop.
Like other Americans, African Americans partake of the general food offerings available in mainstream supermarket chains across the country. Food culture, however, may depend on where they live and their degree of connection to traditions passed down through generations since the time of slavery. Many African Americans celebrate a hybrid identity that incorporates African and New World foodways. The state of African American food culture today is illuminated in depth here for the first time, in the all-important context of understanding the West African origins of most African Americans of today. Like other Americans, African Americans partake of the general food offerings available in mainstream supermarket chains across the country. Food culture, however, may depend on where they live and their degree of connection to traditions passed down through generations since the time of slavery. Many African Americans celebrate a hybrid identity that incorporates African and New World foodways. The state of African American food culture today is illuminated in depth here for the first time, in the all-important context of understanding the West African origins of most African Americans of today. A historical overview discusses the beginnings of this hybrid food culture when Africans were forcibly removed from their homelands and brought to the United States. Chapter 2 on Major Foods and Ingredients details the particular favorites of what is considered classic African American food. In Chapter 3, Cooking, the African American family of today is shown to be like most other families with busy lives, preparing and eating quick meals during the week and more leisurely meals on the weekend. Special insight is also given on African American chefs. The Typical Meals chapter reflects a largely mainstream diet, with regional and traditional options. Chapter 6, Eating Out, highlights the increasing opportunities for African Americans to dine out, and the attractions of fast meals. The Special Occasions chapter discusses all the pertinent occasions for African Americans to prepare and eat symbolic dishes that reaffirm their identity and culture. Finally, the latest information in traditional African American diet and its health effects brings readers up to date in the Diet and Health chapter. Recipes, photos, chronology, resource guide, and selected bibliography round out the narrative.
Whereas poetry today is primarily concerned with social resistance, identity politics and self-therapy, The Fulgent Requiem instead explores the deeper, fundamental tourbillions of human nature, at once a celebration of and lament for all that is feral that makes us human. These are the lush poems where the brightest and the darkest, the violent and the kind, where tenderness and Schadenfreude, the lovely, the sardonic, the tragic and the comic, in the end and always, sweetly intersect.
The Vernon family had a lot of problems before their mother died. Now they're a train wreck. Reunited for the first time in years, Jeremiah and his children must face the realities of mixed ancestry, their mother's sexual past, and the history of physical and mental abuse that originally split the family apart. Told in seven different narrative voices, the family and its drama come to life with bittersweet clarity. Due to the graphic nature of some content, parental discretion is advised.
William Monroe addresses what William J. Bennett ignores in The Book of Virtues: How do readers use literature as "equipment for living"? Tackling modernism and postmodernism, Monroe outlines "virtue criticism," an alternative to current theory. Focusing on works by T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Donald Barthelme, he demonstrates that these alienistic texts are not just filled with belligerence but are also endowed with virtues, such as trust and the promise of solidarity with the reader. By considering these vital texts as responses to personal situations and institutional practices, Monroe brings literature back to the common reader and shows how it offers functional responses to the dysfunctional situations of modern life. Readers interested in literary criticism, American culture, and the relationship between ethics and literature will be fascinated by virtue criticism and this fresh look at the virtues and vices of alienation. Chosen as a Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Book for 1999.
As we look to faith and our thoughts, what comes out may be beauty. The Encolpia is a collection of poetry from William Frank as he explores poetic tradition by bending and warping it in his own way to create an original message. The Encolpia is poetry worth thinking about, recommended." Midwest Book Review, Carl Logan The Encolpia for one is a sonnet sequence that encircles and glitters and insists, like the reliquaries they inhabit, a meditation importuned.
The nationally bestselling exploration of the importance of religious faith in one's life, by the world-famed social and political commentator. In highly personal terms, and with the wit and acuity for which he is justly renowned, Buckley discusses the vital issues of Catholic doctrine and practice.
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