The Boys from Santa Cruz

The Boys from Santa Cruz
Author: Jonathan Nasaw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2010-02-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439100721

In his four previous novels of suspense, Jonathan Nasaw gave readers a charming and unlikely hero against the forces of evil in former FBI agent E.L. Pender. Now, in The Boys from Santa Cruz, Pender faces his most terrifying foe to date. Like James Patterson and John Connolly, Jonathan Nasaw has proven time and again that he has an uncanny, almost eerie, knack for getting inside the labyrinthine and horrifying minds of the most deranged serial killers. In Fear Itself, Nasaw first introduced Pender, a rumpled, endearingly flawed investigator who immediately won readers’ hearts. In The Girls He Adored, Pender defeated a perverted psycho named Max, then went on to face The Machete Man in Twenty-Seven Bones, called a “skin-crawling, gory psycho-thriller” by the Scottish Daily Record. When last we left Pender, in Nasaw’s sexually charged thriller When She Was Bad, he took on a pair of mentally insane killers and nearly lost himself in the dark and blood-drenched recesses of their two twisted psyches. With his lust for terror and a frightening talent for getting deep under his readers’ skins, Nasaw promises to deliver more gripping action and unimaginably gruesome detail as he introduces readers to the bloodthirsty The Boys from Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz Noir

Santa Cruz Noir
Author: Tommy Moore
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1617756474

“A new collection of short fiction stories explores a seedier side of this beach town filled with murder and mystery.”—KAZU FM In Akashic Books’ award-winning series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles Noir, San Francisco Noir, San Diego Noir, Orange County Noir, and Oakland Noir, “we get a series of crime stories rich with surf culture in a town loaded with itinerant spirits, typifying Santa Cruz as a place to be lost, or get lost, or lose yourself. That ethos permeates the stories in the collection, granting them an intriguing grittiness that might otherwise be missing. Concluding with a serious gutpunch of a story, Santa Cruz Noir is a worthy addition to the series” (San Francisco Book Review). This anthology features Elizabeth McKenzie’s “The Big Creep,” a Shamus Award finalist, and Lou Mathews’s “Crab Dinners” and Dillon Kaiser’s “It Follows as it Leads,” which have been included in the Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2018 list in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. It also includes brand-new stories by Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine. “A thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction.”—Good Times Santa Cruz “There are intricate plots, sketchier plots, dubious motives, inscrutable motives, downright creepiness, edgy stuff, and wonderful humor. Something for everyone’s taste in noir.”—Escape into Life

Kickflip Boys

Kickflip Boys
Author: Neal Thompson
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0062394355

“Thompson captures the ache, fizz, yearning and frustration of being the father of adolescent boys.” —Michael Chabon “What a riveting, touching, and painful read!” —Maria Semple “Fun, moving, raw, and relatable.” —Tony Hawk What makes a good father, and what makes one a failure? Does less-is-more parenting inspire independence and strength, or does it encourage defiance and trouble? Kickflip Boys is the story of a father’s struggle to understand his willful skateboarder sons, challengers of authority and convention, to accept his role as a vulnerable “skate dad,” and to confront his fears that the boys are destined for an unconventional and potentially fraught future. With searing honesty, Neal Thompson traces his sons’ progression through all the stages of skateboarding: splurging on skate shoes and boards, having run-ins with security guards, skipping classes and defying teachers, painting graffiti, drinking and smoking, and more. As the story veers from funny to treacherous and back, from skateparks to the streets, Thompson must confront his complicity and fallibility. He also reflects on his upbringing in rural New Jersey, and his own adventures with skateboards, drugs, danger, and defiance. A story of thrill-seeking teens, of hope and love, freedom and failure, Kickflip Boys reveals a sport and a community that have become a refuge for adolescent boys who don’t fit in. Ultimately, it’s the survival story of a loving modern American family, of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go.

Santa Cruz Weird

Santa Cruz Weird
Author: Nancy Lynn Jarvis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2013
Genre: Santa Cruz (Calif.)
ISBN: 9780997366747

"If you travel anywhere in the world and are asked where you’re from, people smile when you say Santa Cruz. They know us. We are famous: land of The Lost Boys, the Mystery Spot, home to the Bigfoot Museum, and the Giant Dipper. Tourists flock to us, sometimes on their way from San Francisco or Big Sur, but more often just to experience Santa Cruz. Our unofficial motto is “Keep Santa Cruz Weird;” we have bumper stickers proclaiming that’s our intent. Santa Cruz Weird just seemed like a good fit for our County with its long interesting history, colorful residents, sunny beaches, fog-shrouded mornings, and lush forests" -- https://www.amazon.com/Santa-Cruz-Weird-Nancy-Jarvis/dp/0997366745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548292665&sr=8-1&keywords=97809973667473

Good Night Santa Cruz

Good Night Santa Cruz
Author: Roxanne Sher Olson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2016-11-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781539923510

A bedtime story about a child's gratitude for the wonders and beauty of Santa Cruz, California.

The Leftmost City: Power and Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz

The Leftmost City: Power and Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz
Author: Richard Gendron
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2010-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1458781704

Almost all US cities are controlled by real estate and development interests, but Santa Cruz, California, is a deviant case. An unusual coalition of socialist-feminists, environmentalists, social-welfare liberals, and neighborhood activists has st...

Twenty-Seven Bones

Twenty-Seven Bones
Author: Jonathan Nasaw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847397417

The most terrifying novel you will read this year... There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. And there are three dead bodies on the island of St. Luke - each victim missing a hand. It's the strangest, most disturbing series of murders the Caribbean has ever known - and one of the few crimes that could pull FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender out of retirement. In all of his years, he's never faced such a diabolical underworld drenched in superstition. At the heart of this darkness is a husband-and-wife team with a perverse plan so powerfully consuming, so brilliantly evil, that Pender can only watch and wait...as the grisly hand of fate reaches out for its next victim. ‘Explosive’ San Francisco Chronicle ‘Move over, Hannibal Lecter’ Scottish Daily Record ‘A first-rate thriller’ Boston Globe

Fear Itself

Fear Itself
Author: Jonathan Nasaw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2008-12-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847396968

The most terrifying novel you will read this year... Just as he's celebrating his last day on the job, FBI agent E L Pender receives a letter from Dorie Bell. Dorie is afraid. Last year she attended a convention for Persons with Specific Phobia Disorder. Since then, a couple of the delegates have died in suspicious circumstances. Carl Polander had acrophobia. Fear of heights. So what would he be doing on the 12th floor of the building the police say he jumped from? Mara Agajanian had haemophobia. Fear of blood. So how could she have cut her own wrists in the bathtub? Dorie, who suffers from an irrational fear of masks, wants Pender to look into these cases. She suspects there may be a twisted serial killer on the loose. Someone, who quite literally, enjoys scaring his victims to death. Dorie's right. But she has no idea just how close to her the killer is...

Murder Capital of the World

Murder Capital of the World
Author: Emerson Murray
Publisher:
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2022-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781736481332

The Santa Cruz community looks back at the Frazier, Mullin, and Kemper murder sprees of the early 1970s.

When She Was Bad

When She Was Bad
Author: Jonathan Nasaw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1471105423

The most terrifying novel you will read this year... Two hot young lovers who also happen to be cold-blooded killers . . . Lily deVries suffers from DVD, a psychiatric condition known as dissociative identity disorder. Triggered by a devastating childhood trauma, her mind has fragmented into different personalities known as 'alters'. There's the gentle, child-like Lily; the sexually insatiable Lilah; and Lilith - the violent psychopath. Now Lily has found herself in the Reed-Chase mental institution where they're hoping to find a cure. But there's another patient undergoing treatment at the Institute. Fellow DID sufferer Ulysses Maxwell faces life imprisonment following the rape and murder of a dozen women. When Lilith and Max - Maxwell's psychopathic alter - meet, the reaction is dynamite. And when the ingenious lovers engineer a bloody escape, it's only ex-FBI Agent Pender who has any chance of stopping the ensuing carnage. Teaming up with Dr Irene Cogan, a brilliant psychiatrist, he must take on a pair of killers who win hearts as easily as they slit throats.