Marc Bartoli is born to a Corsican mother, a celebrated rising opera singer and a French American attorney, the result of a brief affair at the turn of the 20th century. Raised largely apart from both parents, he spends his formative years in Paris, moving through boarding school and university. His life is irrevocably altered by a sequence of violent events. Bartoli is Corsican by blood, as are those involved in the violence. Corsican tradition of vendetta seeking personal justice remains...

On January 30, 1972, elite troops of the British Army's Parachute Regiment killed 14 unarmed civilians in Derry, Northern Ireland. That Bloody Sunday set forth what became known as the Troubles. The beginning of decades of sectarian violence with ethnic Irish Catholics suffering oppression by a partisan British loyalist regional government.Terence Kelly, born in Belfast lived his life in Boston hearing stories of his legendary IRA grandfather that fought with Mich...

In 1978, Italian journalist Emma Nicoletti comes into possession of confidential documents stolen from the Vatican Secret Archive by an activist whistleblowing priest. The dying priest has entrusted her with material that incriminates the Vatican Bank in a years-long international banking scandal.Italy is awash in widespread violence. Political terrorism parallels increasing violent actions by organized crime competing for control of drug trafficking making Italy arguably the most ...

The coalfields of West Virginia in 1920-1921 were a place of extraordinary labor violence between striking miners facing off against armed mercenaries employed by mining corporations. In the remote mountain valleys of Appalachia, a region made infamous by the Hatfield-McCoy feud, coal miners and their families lived at the margins. Coal mining was a poorly paid brutal and dangerous occupation. Mining companies controlled corrupt local government, exerting a form of institutionalized oppres...

Southland Noir takes the reader back to the Jazz Age. No place is more evocative of the period than Los Angeles and Hollywood in 1926. Egan Walsh is an IRA veteran of the Irish War of Independence fought against centuries of British rule. Hostilities end by an unsatisfactory treaty threatening civil war. Walsh refuses to take up arms against former IRA comrades and leaves Ireland for Boston.As a former Irish newspaper journalist, he finds work at the Boston Globe. Writing ...

The early years of the Cold War found the United States struggling to compete in the espionage war against the Soviet Union. With no history of a peacetime intelligence service, the newly created U.S. Central Intelligence Agency lacked the experience for conducting high-level espionage against the USSR.Viktor Neiman, a senior officer in the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence & Research, returns to Europe after serving in the wartime OSS. Teamed with an independent grou...

Havana, Cuba in 1957 was the original gambling sin city. The haunt of the wealthy and famous offering gambling, sex, and drugs in an exotic Caribbean setting only 90 miles from Florida. Luxury casinos with five-star hotels, fine dining, and elaborate floorshows with scantily clad beautiful women. A corrupt dictatorship inviting investment by the American Mafia fuels Havana's hospitality industry success.Cuban-American Bart Landeira resigns from the CIA in disgust after working as a...

Strategies for protecting wolves, mountain lions, and more—by taking the human species into account as well: "Very valuable."— Journal of Wildlife ManagementDrawing on six case studies of wolf, grizzly bear, and mountain lion conservation in habitats stretching from the Yukon to Arizona, Large Carnivore Conservation argues that conserving and coexisting with large carnivores is as much a problem of people and governance—of reconciling diverse and ...

Element 115 by Bruce Douglas Clark takes readers on a thrilling journey through the depths of human ambition and the unknown. The story begins with Grant McAllister, a brilliant inventor, as he finds himself stranded on a ship wreckage over the Mariana Trench after a catastrophic mission to extract a mysterious substance known as Element 115. As Grant battles despair and dwindling supplies, he reflects on his past, revealing a childhood filled with curiosity and mechanical dreams. Driven b...

Time's Edge tells the story of the lingering aftermath of the CyberShock War, where most humans are augmented and have thirteen seconds of future predictions delivered to their implanted enhanced reality. A hero of the war, Adrian Rogers, stands poised on the brink of a breakthrough technology to extend Time's Edge even further. As Adrian readies to introduce the world to his discovery, he finds himself in a labyrinth of intrigue, surrounded by a team of shadowy operatives and a mysterious...

Douglas Clark reveals how moments of willing and will-making pervade English Renaissance drama and play a crucial role in the depiction of selfhood, sin, sociality, and succession. This wide-ranging study synthesizes concepts from historical, legal, philosophical, and theological studies to examine the dramatic performance of the will as both an internal faculty and a legal document. Clark establishes the diverse connections that Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and a range of overlooked pl...

Finding Ideas explores a new frontier in business management: the organization and use of ideas as actionable assets. Moving beyond traditional resource management, this book explores the power of an idea inventory, a revolutionary approach that catalogs, connects, and elevates ideas within an organization. From developing a semantic infrastructure to ensure AI adoption across all levels to using advanced natural language processing techniques, Finding Ideas provides a roadmap for transfor...