Tangled Vines, Island Crimes

Tangled Vines, Island Crimes
Author: Isabella Stewart
Publisher:
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2021-04-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781648019494

Isabella Stewart's Tangled Vines, Island Crimes is set in the quintessential seaport town of Edgartown on the island of Martha's Vineyard, seven miles off the coast of Cape Cod. In the summer, 120 thousand descend on the island, including many notable celebrities: Jackie Onassis, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton. But come September, the island shrinks to its year-round population of seventeen thousand hardy souls...some of whom abound in criminal activities. Her first book in a series features Maria, the island's leading real estate broker, who is determined at all costs to get accepted into the prestigious Yacht Club despite her Portuguese working-class background; and Rick, an attorney who takes advantage of Maria's greed and makes himself all-knowing. But when the pressures of her new marriage to a handsome off-islander make it more-than-necessary to keep her real estate sales flowing in, will it also make living life on the island - and keeping him interested enough in her increasing wealth and lifestyle- impossible? This is not a beach novel taking place in the soft summer winds; it is the flip side taking place in the off-season when the wild vines take hold of vacant summer properties and weaken their foundations, climb and strangle trees, and weave a cloth of deception that is stronger than twine. Written by someone who lives year-round in this place that only is accessed by boat or airplane, Stewart's accounts of island corruption and crimes are intense and ... truer than fiction ... that lead to death. She gives an insight into the dichotomy between the wealthy summer residents and the domestic- and working-class lives of islanders-the good, the bad, and the (almost) unbelievable.

Tangled Vines

Tangled Vines
Author: John Glatt
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2023-08-08
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1250283493

In Tangled Vines, bestselling true crime author John Glatt reconstructs the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh. Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity—but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight. On June 7th, 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside. But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light. The Murdaughs, it turned out, were feared as much as they were loved. And they wouldn’t hesitate to wield their influence to protect one of their own; two years before he was killed, a highly intoxicated Paul Murdaugh was at the helm of a boat when it crashed and killed a teenage girl, and his light treatment by police led to speculation that privilege had come into play. As bombshells of financial fraud were revealed and more suspicious deaths were linked to the Murdaughs, a new portrait of Alex Murdaugh emerged: a desperate man on the brink of ruin who would do anything, even plan his own death, to save his family’s reputation.

Tangled Vines

Tangled Vines
Author: Frances Dinkelspiel
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 1250033225

Noted California historian rips the oh-so-laid-back label off the California wine trade to show the violent and obsessive world underneath

Tangled Vines

Tangled Vines
Author: Frances Dinkelspiel
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1250033217

On October 12, 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Wines Central wine warehouse in Vallejo, California. Within hours, the flames had destroyed 4.5 million bottles of California's finest wine worth more than $250 million, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. The fire had been deliberately set by a passionate oenophile named Mark Anderson, a skilled con man and thief with storage space at the warehouse who needed to cover his tracks. With a propane torch and a bucket of gasoline-soaked rags, Anderson annihilated entire California vineyard libraries as well as bottles of some of the most sought-after wines in the world. Among the priceless bottles destroyed were 175 bottles of Port and Angelica from one of the oldest vineyards in California made by Frances Dinkelspiel's great-great grandfather, Isaias Hellman, in 1875. Sadly, Mark Anderson was not the first to harm the industry. The history of the California wine trade, dating back to the 19th Century, is a story of vineyards with dark and bloody pasts, tales of rich men, strangling monopolies, the brutal enslavement of vineyard workers and murder. Five of the wine trade murders were associated with Isaias Hellman's vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga beginning with the killing of John Rains who owned the land at the time. He was shot several times, dragged from a wagon and left off the main road for the coyotes to feed on. In her new book, Frances Dinkelspiel looks beneath the casually elegant veneer of California's wine regions to find the obsession, greed and violence lying in wait. Few people sipping a fine California Cabernet can even guess at the Tangled Vines where its life began.

Jackpot

Jackpot
Author: Jason Ryan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2012-08-07
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0762767995

In the late 1970s and early '80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country’s most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial Drug Wars. “The adventures, the long-gone economy, and the sting that ultimately brought them down and changed US drug policy are meticulously documented and lucidly spun…. Part New Yorker feature-part Jimmy Buffet song. . . . The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun.” —GQ “[A] rollicking story, Ryan manages to pack in one amusing tale after another.... Jackpot is a rip-roaring good read.” —Charleston City Paper “High times on the high seas: Investigative reporter Ryan recounts the glory days of dope smuggling and their terrible denouement.... A well-told tale of true crime that provides a few good arguments for why it should not be a crime at all.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reads like an international thriller. . . . chock-a-block with hilarious and hair-raising anecdotes of fast times.” —New York Journal of Books “[A] thoroughly researched account of Operation Jackpot, the drug investigation that ended the reign of South Carolina’s ‘gentlemen smugglers,’.... Ryan recreates the era with a vivid, sun-drenched intensity.” —Publishers Weekly

Towers of Gold

Towers of Gold
Author: Frances Dinkelspiel
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2010-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429959592

Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought California into modernity. Ripe with great historical events that filled the early days of California such as the Gold Rush and the San Francisco earthquake, Towers of Gold brings to life the transformation of California from a frontier society whose economy was driven by the barter of hides and exchange of gold dust into a vibrant state with the strongest economy in the nation.

Killer Listing

Killer Listing
Author: Vicki Doudera
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Detective and mystery stories
ISBN: 9780738719795

Darby Farr investigates the murder of female Real Estate agent Kyle Cameron and discovers a shocking secret and a host of suspects, including Kyle's estranged suicidal husband, her billionaire-developer ex-lover and his politically ambitious wife.

California Fire and Life

California Fire and Life
Author: Don Winslow
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2007-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307279855

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE CARTEL. When Jack Wade is called in to examine a suspicious arson claim, he follows the evidence into the crime infested inferno of the California underworld. Jack Wade was the rising star of the Orange County Sheriffs Department’s arson unit, but a minor scandal cost him everything, except his encyclopedic knowledge of fire. Now working as an insurance claims investigator, Jack is called in to examine a suspicious claim: within hours of a disastrous blaze tearing through a wing of real estate mogul Nicky Vale’s house— causing the horrific death of his young wife—he filed a 3 million-dollar insurance claim. The tracks of the fire tell Jack that something's wrong, and as he follows the evidence the case grows to involve the Russian mob, Vietnamese gangs, real estate scams, counterfeiting and corporate corruption. Things get so hot and deadly that Jack might not make it out alive . . . that is until he decides to fight fire with fire.

Trial by Fire

Trial by Fire
Author: Scott James
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1250131278

In only 90 seconds, a fire in the Station nightclub killed 100 people and injured hundreds more. It would take nearly 20 years to find out why—and who was really at fault. All it took for a hundred people to die during a show by the hair metal band Great White was a sudden burst from two giant sparklers that ignited the acoustical foam lining the Station nightclub. But who was at fault? And who would pay? This being Rhode Island, the two questions wouldn't necessarily have the same answer. Within 24 hours the governor of Rhode Island and the local police commissioner were calling for criminal charges, although the investigation had barely begun, no real evidence had been gathered, and many of the victims hadn't been identified. Though many parties could be held responsible, fingers pointed quickly at the two brothers who owned the club. But were they really to blame? Bestselling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning reporter Scott James investigates all the central figures, including the band's manager and lead singer, the fire inspector, the maker of the acoustical foam, as well as the brothers. Drawing on firsthand accounts, interviews with many involved, and court documents, James explores the rush to judgment about what happened that left the victims and their families, whose stories he also tells, desperate for justice. Trial By Fire is the heart-wrenching story of the fire's aftermath because while the fire, one of America's deadliest, lasted fewer than two minutes, the search for the truth would take twenty years.

Tear Me Apart

Tear Me Apart
Author: J.T. Ellison
Publisher: MIRA
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2018-08-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1460396715

The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them. One moment will change their lives forever… Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter. Who knows the answers? The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets. With vivid movement through time, Tear Me Apart examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within. Don’t miss It's One of Us, the next page-turning thriller from New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison!