Off Boulder Highway

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Fiction. Within the pages of OFF BOULDER HIGHWAY--a hybrid work of poetry; memoir; and surrealistic prose--we encounter Vegas landmarks that act as characters; Reagan era disasters; the loss of a father. Jennifer Battisti--an '80s latchkey kid; now mother--transforms narrative into a pop-culture artifact filled with people as beautiful as they are broken; unexpected heroes like L.L. Cool J and Hulk Hogan; trauma; addiction; disaster; and ritualistic paths to redemption.

In the appropriately titled Mean, Colette LaBouff Atkinson’s speakers confront a series of cruel lovers, estranged ex-husbands and ex-ex-wives, neglectful parents, disrespectful children, menacing drunks, would-be rapists, well-meaning but ineffectual teachers, and that annoying kid in first grade who wouldn’t leave you alone. Managing to “say” what most of us would only think but never dare speak out loud, this stunning debut collection reveals that the horrors and cruelty we experience in everyday life can turn out to be very real indeed. But Atkinson does not merely rake her subjects across the coals: she deftly exposes, instead, how the world mirrors back to us our own meanness, lending it a truth and a history. In forty-three deadpan, often merciless prose poems that are masterpieces of the form, Mean lays bare the darkness within the narrator’s heart as well as in ours. "Colette Labouff Atkinson’s artful laconicism attains the force of a shout, without ever raising its voice. The intelligent, merciless narrative cool arrays a sad comedy, with an unemphatic but penetrating 'and then . . . and then': accounts of love pursued far more often than it is glimpsed or realized."—Robert Pinsky

An unexplained mid-air explosion takes the lives of Reggie Nutsbagh's parents, causing him to forsake a promising career as a police pathologist in Las Vegas to search for an answer to their untimely deaths. Teaming with a new friend, Toby Preston, who leaves his position as a Lieutenant on the police force in the Northwest city Bremerton, Washington they travel to Israel to search for clues as to what happened to the his parents. In doing so, they uncover information concerning a subversive organization called DONE. Attempts on their lives, as well as their loved ones and friends cause the team to dig deeper and they discover a plot to undermine the government of the United States led by an elusive criminal they now only as Mr. Big. Their continued investigation reveals corruption in the FBI, the State Department and local governments. The book ends with a battle at an abandoned Air Force Base in northern Montana and a confrontation with Mr. Big.

Beyond the bright lights and casinos lies the real Las Vegas where four lives will be brought together by one split-second choice.

It is a story of a young man growing up in the suburbs of East Los Angeles, Ca. A story of what all young gamblers dream of and few will experience, and perhaps, survive. Frankie Santos started gambling at the age of 10 years by pitching pennies and shooting marbles for money with the older kids in the neighborhood. He learned the games of poker and horse racing at the age of 11 years. At 12 he shared his new devotion with his fellow classmates by getting them involved in poker games on the school grounds. In high school, he continued to live in the envioronment of trying to make a fast buck playing the horses. As a young man in his 20s, he enters into a journey of big money, greed, drugs, and becoming the target of the Mexican Mafia. He is on the run and in hiding, and discovers another hard fast-paced journey. By nature, he is a compassionate man, and a protector of family and friends that maybe in harms way. From the age of innocence to manhood and the commencement of rise to power, Frankie Santos did not know what was in his destiny.

Deputy Derik Paulson’s sixteen years of service was suddenly derailed when he was arrested for murdering his wife’s lover. When he is attacked in jail, the staff punish him by putting him in the hole. How will he ever be able to prove his innocence?

Kevin Guilfoile’s riveting follow-up to Cast of Shadows (“spellbinding”—Chicago Tribune; “a masterpiece of intelligent plotting”—Salon) centers on an extraordinary young woman’s race to find her father’s killer and to free herself from the cross fire of a centuries-old civil war in which she has unknowingly become ensnared. In 530 B.C., a mysterious ship appeared off the rainy shores of Croton, in what is now Italy. After three days the skies finally cleared and a man disembarked to address the curious and frightened crowd that had gathered along the wet sands. He called himself Pythagoras. Exactly what he said that day is unknown, but a thousand men and women abandoned their lives and families to follow him. They became a community. A school. A cult dedicated to the search for a mathematical theory of everything. Although Pythagoras would die years later, following a bloody purge, his disciples would influence Western philosophy, science, and mathematics for all time. Chicago, the present day. Canada Gold, a girl both gifted and burdened by uncanny mental abilities, is putting her skills to questionable use in the casinos and courthouses of Las Vegas when she finds herself drawn back to the city in which her father, the renowned composer Solomon Gold, was killed while composing his magnum opus. Beautiful, brilliant, troubled, Canada has never heard of the Thousand, a clandestine group of powerful individuals safeguarding and exploiting the secret teachings of Pythagoras. But as she struggles to understand her father’s unsolved murder, she finds herself caught in the violence erupting between members of the fractured ancient cult while she is relentlessly pursued by those who want to use her, those who want to kill her, and the one person who wants to save her. In an irresistibly ambitious novel that fuses historical fact with contemporary suspense, Kevin Guilfoile delivers an erudite, propulsively entertaining thriller that seamlessly traverses the realms of math, science, music, and philosophy. The Thousand is ringing confirmation of Guilfoile’s enormous talent. From the Hardcover edition.

The Deal: Jake Morgan, ex-cop, gambler, and casino dealer, reluctantly agrees to keep an eye on his boss’s great-niece during her visit to Vegas. When someone keeps trying to accost them and the bruises escalate with each encounter, Jake realizes that it isn’t a simple case of mistaken identity. To make things worse, his precocious Britney look-a-like charge has a crush on him, leaving Jake in a quandary as he tries to unravel a mystery that began fifty years earlier . . . Back in the ‘50s, Chicago mobster Carmine Bonello embezzled funds from his mob’s Vegas operations to plan for his family’s future. When he suddenly vanished and his wife Olivia found her every move monitored, she realized that Chi-Town not only wanted answers, but also their money back. Fifty years later, Olivia is still worried — and wondering. Did she misjudge Carmine? Did he leave his family for a mistress and the stash as rumour suggested, or did he die a lonely death? When she falls ill, Olivia calls her only granddaughter to her side. Those watching think a family secret will soon be passed on to the last of the Bonellos . . . Bullets fly, bodies fall, and Jake soon discovers the final piece of the puzzle: a cache worth millions. But is it worth his life?

A 150-year-old mage, now a Vegas PI, is immersed in otherworldly adventure by trying to help the three Fates regain their magical powers while falling in love with their handsome friend. Original.

When Private Investigator Tina Munroe agrees to help out an old friend she soon finds herself being stalked by a murderous psychopath. When her assistant and friend, Megan is kidnapped she blames herself and knows time is running out. Can she find and save Megan in time? Is the killer setting her up to be his next victim?