The Fitzgerald Ruse

The Fitzgerald Ruse
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2011-09-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1615950389

"An excellent regional mystery, full of local color and historical detail." —Library Journal Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future. But when he solved a series of local murders, Sam found new meaning for his life. Now he and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a steady stream of cases. Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed more than 70 years ago. Her victim: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime: stealing a manuscript. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs. But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby. Then a security guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has this investigation triggered a murder, but Sam's final military case has followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe....

The Fitzgerald Ruse

The Fitzgerald Ruse
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2011-05-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781590586297

Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future. But when he solved a series of local murders, Sam not only brought the guilty to justice but found meaning for his life. Now he and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a steady stream of cases. Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed more than 70 years ago. Her victim was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime was stealing a manuscript. Sam’s task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman’s lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald’s heirs. But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby. Then a security guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has this investigation triggered a murder, but Sam’s final military case has followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe. Are the mysteries connected? Or is one a ruse luring him into the crosshairs of his enemies?

The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author: Michael Nowlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2023-11-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108871410

This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald offers both new and familiar readers an authoritative guide to the full scope of Fitzgerald's literary legacy. Gathering the critical insights of leading Fitzgerald specialists, it includes newly commissioned essays on The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, Zelda Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald's judgment of his peers, and Fitzgerald's screenwriting and Hollywood years, alongside updated and revised versions of four of the best essays from the first edition on such topics as youth, maturity, and sexuality; the short stories and autobiographical essays; and Americans in Europe. It also includes an essay on Fitzgerald's critical and cultural reputation in the first decades of the 21st century, and an up-to-date bibliography of the best Fitzgerald scholarship and criticism for further reading.

The Legend of Anne Southern

The Legend of Anne Southern
Author: Brenda Hodge
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 555
Release: 2013-01-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1475945981

The year is 1860. In Evanston, Illinois, a young, unassuming butcher, Ruse Blackburn, wants what every man wants, to earn a decent living and marry a lovely wife. With these goals almost in his grasp, the privileged stomp on his ambitions. Ruse, rightly accused of murder and tortured, sells his soul and ends up as General William T. Shermans aidecharged with keeping the general drunk enough to do evil but sober enough to conduct war. As Shermans troops pillage Georgia, Ruse sinks deeper and deeper into madness. In the meantime, beautiful Anne Southern lives a life of lonely luxury with her two young sons at Meridian Plantation. Her husband, Allen, fires the mortar that begins the Civil War and abandons his family to fight for the Confederacy. Swept with her dependents to Atlanta by the winds of war, Anne must deal with a society in decline and a diminishing food supply. To feed her children, in an act of desperation and desire, she gives dearly to a suitor for ten pounds of jerky. Evicted from Atlanta, Anne returns to the plantation. There, she encounters Major Ruse Blackburn and his skinning knifea man with a grudge to settle and a proclivity for cutting pretty flesh. Anne finds herself completely without resources and must make difficult decisions. A very entertaining, mile-a-minute style, and remarkably vivid characters. Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling author of the award winning Outlander novels.

Dangerous Women

Dangerous Women
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1728258340

"A bewitching political thriller."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Ethel looks like Marple but acts like Marlow." —Kirkus Reviews? In a case deciding the future of clean energy, everything hinges on how the chief justice of Supreme Court will lean. DANGEROUS WOMEN stirs up the perfect cocktail of ingenious spy-craft and political intrigue of Thomas Perry's The Old Man brightened with the charming, uncanny energy of Killers of a Certain Age. This urgent, cleverly plotted high stakes thriller is set in motion by botched attack on two law clerks leaving one dead and the other in a coma. The ensuing cover up leaves a string of bodies and too many players at cross-purposes. It also leaves Chief Justice Clarissa Baxter with a target on her back. We'll need an off the grid hero with friends in high places: enter retired FBI agent-turned-boardinghouse landlady, Ethel Fiona Crestwater (legend) and her double-first-cousin-twice-removed Jesse Cooper (sidekick). Although in her mid-seventies, Ethel is no bumbling amateur sleuth; she's a seasoned pro with razor-sharp instincts and Bond-worthy skills. College-aged Jesse brings tech savvy and boundless enthusiasm, along with an innate talent for intrigue. Together, the unlikely duo will face malicious back-stabbing political sycophants, conniving lobbyists, and a motivated assassin bent on removing the Chief Justice from the equation—along with Ethel, who stands defiantly between the hitman and his payday.

Fatal Scores

Fatal Scores
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1464213178

A river gives up its dead, but not its secrets... Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson, private investigators in Asheville, North Carolina, are hired when a local environmentalist dies while monitoring water quality in the nearby Pigeon River. With no soil or water samples found near the body, his widow doesn't believe his death was an accident. In fact, witnesses reported a public altercation between the environmentalist and local mill heir Luke Kirkpatrick just two days prior. Could Luke or his father, Ted, have committed murder to secure their proposed business expansion? Meanwhile, preparations for a local festival suffer violent setbacks, and the investigators worry the events are related. Can Sam and Nakayla identify the killer and serve justice before Asheville is threatened once again? The eighth book featuring Private Investigators Blackman and Robertson, Fatal Scores, is a timely mystery perfect for fans private eyes and anyone with a taste for regional history. Blackman Agency Investigations: Blackman's Coffin The Fitzgerald Ruse? The Sandburg Connection Murder in Passing

The Sandburg Connection

The Sandburg Connection
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2011-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1615953388

"[A] marvelous blend of history and mystery..." —Publishers Weekly STARRED review It should have been routine, a simple assignment for PI Sam Blackman and his partner Nakayla Robertson. Follow a history professor who's suing a spinal surgeon for malpractice and catch her in physical activities that undercut her claim. When professor Janice Wainwright visits Connemara, Carl Sandburg's home in Flat Rock, N.C., and climbs the arduous trail to the top of Glassy Mountain, Sam believes he has the evidence needed to expose her—until he finds the woman semiconscious and bleeding on the mountain's granite outcropping. Her final words: "It's the Sandburg verses. The Sandburg verses." As the person to discover the dying woman, Sam becomes the first suspect. An autopsy reveals painkillers in her blood and solid proof of the surgeon's errors. Why did this suffering woman attempt to climb the mountain? Did she stumble and fall? Did someone cause her death? A break-in at the Wainwright farmhouse and the theft of Sandburg volumes convince Sam someone is seeking potentially deadly information. But what did Pulitzer Prize winner Sandburg have in his literary collection that inspires multiple murders? And who will be targeted next?

Murder in Rat Alley

Murder in Rat Alley
Author: Mark de Castrique
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-12-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1492699411

In this unusual spin on the classic spy novel, murder strikes from our wartime pasts... Iraq War veteran Sam Blackman with his prosthetic leg and his no-nonsense private eye partner Nakayla Robertson love their investigations which always carry a thread from the past—and they love each other. An interracial couple in the new South, the Asheville, NC, pair has surrounded themselves with a terrific support team including an unorthodox lawyer and a veteran cop. They deploy humor both to bind them together and to deflect insults. Plus, it helps deal with the tragedies their work uncovers. Such a tragedy interrupts a meeting between the PIs and the neighboring law office when a body is unearthed from the grounds of the nearby Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. During the Cold War it monitored developing space programs. Today it plays a vital role gathering weather and climate data. The body has been in the ground a long time. Why would its discovery spark off a new murder in Asheville's mountain music scene, the victim found amid the garbage of dark, dank Rat Alley? She was the fiancée of the man murdered long ago. But surely this case is more than a domestic drama playing out over time.... The Blackman Agency Investigations excel at merging past and present, bringing little-known history to light, and are perfect for fans of James Lee Burke, Stephen Mack Jones, Margaret Maron, and Robert B. Parker.

Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald
Author: Andrew Turnbull
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780802138507

Revealing and unusual, Scott Fitzgerald follows the fascinating life of one of America's most enduring authors, from his early years in St. Paul and at Princeton to New York in the twenties, the French Riviera, Baltimore, and finally Hollywood. Andrew Turnbull tells the story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, revised and finally published when he was twenty-four, making him instantly famous, and his tender love affair with Zelda Sayre, from their glittering early life to the years Zelda spent in and out of sanatoriums. A literary generation, too, comes alive, including Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson, the Murphys, and Edith Wharton. Fitzgerald lived on Turnbull's family estate in Baltimore in the early 1930s and there befriended young Andrew, then age eleven. Turnbull's personal relationship with Fitzgerald and the hundreds of interviews with those who knew him elegantly capture the dramatic, tragic story of F. Scott and the glow and pathos of his flamboyant life.