Worth More Dead

From the Crime Files of New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule, the true story of a man who killed his lover's husband, his second wife, and kidnapped his own child. A cold case reopened—and solved—with dogged police work and new evidence. One of the shocking true crimes of passion and greed from Ann Rule's Crime Files. Former Marine sergeant and judo instructor Roland Pitre Jr. claimed it was all an elaborate plan to win back his wife's love—it wasn't supposed to end with her dead body in the trunk of a car. Nearly twenty years later, he acknowledged that he had hired someone to kill his estranged wife in 1988, though his alleged excuse for why a monstrous "mistake" happened is as shocking and convoluted as the crime itself. Eventually, he was charged with first-degree murder in the long-unsolved death of Cheryl Pitre, after a mysterious witness betrayed Pitre to save his own skin. Tracing back the dark and bloody path of Pitre's life, two generations of detectives found a chain of brutal and terrifying crimes by a man who manipulated the courts and prisons to walk free.

It is spring in Crescent Falls and time for the annual Thrift Store Fashion Show. Since the event will be held in the spacious social hall of the Crescent Falls United Methodist Church, amateur sleuth Adelaide McBride was acting as liaison between the church and the coordinator for the show, Gabriel, a high strung fashion buyer from out of town. But that's not all that is going on in the quaint little village. Local landlord and ousted town councilman, Lloyd Fletcher, has decided to seek his own kind of revenge against the residents by raising rents and refusing to sell a prime piece of real estate to one of three companies interested in relocating to Crescent Falls. When Lloyd is murdered, suspects abound, including a secret current lover, a past lover and just about anyone else who has had dealings with Lloyd in the past. Of course, Adelaide is on the case, helping behind the scenes, in spite of the turbulence in her personal life. Her relationship with Vernon Dexter, who runs the pharmacy that she and her late husband owned, meets a snag as Adelaide tries to sort out her conflicting feelings for her pastor, James Preston. As the investigation into Lloyd's death progresses, shocking surprises are revealed, not all of them having to do with the murder.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream A Penguin Classic Since it was first performed in 1949, Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the tragic shortcomings of an American dreamer has been recognized as a milestone of the theater. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age 63, he searches for the moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his relationship with his wife and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense of himself and of a world that once promised so much. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Christopher W. E. Bigsby. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Once you're dead, you're made for life. --Jimi Hendrix Hendrix. Janis. Morrison. Elvis. Lennon. Cobain. Garcia. Their reckless brilliance held the key to their self-destruction. Their deaths had much in common--and, surprisingly, so did their lives. From lonely childhoods marred by loss to groundbreaking music and turbulent careers that ended tragically and suspiciously, David Comfort explodes the myths as he probes: • The sinister roles of Hendrix's manager and girlfriend in his death and subsequent cover-up • The bizarre odyssey of Jim Morrison's corpse • Why Kurt Cobain was worth more dead than alive to Courtney Love • The twisted motives that caused John Lennon to sail through the Devil's Triangle to Bermuda--nearly going down in a storm--shortly before he was fatally shot • The crippling disease and "miracle" drug that drove Elvis to suicide Charismatic and gifted, but also isolated and conflicted, these are not the rock icons you thought you knew. Here are their larger-than-life stories of turmoil and excess that led to their early deaths and ultimate immortality. It's a wild ride to the other side of fame. "Fame is the soul eater." --Jerry Garcia "Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." --John Lennon Includes Rare Photos David Comfort is the author of three bestselling nonfiction books. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, including Eclectic Literary Forum, Pacific Review, Coe Review, and Belletrist Review. He has been the recipient of several literary prizes and a finalist for such prestigious awards as the Nelson Algren Award and America's Best. A former rock musician, he has spent over 30 years studying rock music, particularly the revolutionary and fatalistic pioneers of the 1960s. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.

Praise for Financial Valuation "This Second Edition addresses virtually all of the recent hot topics in business valuation, and there are many of them since the first edition. Most chapters are updated with new material, including, especially, the Duff & Phelps Risk Premium Report as an alternative to Ibbotson's risk premium data. As with the first edition, the authors are very well-known and provide incisive analysis." --Shannon Pratt, CFA, FASA, MCBA, CM&AA, CEO, Shannon Pratt Valuations, LLC "Though the first edition of Mr. Hitchner's book was excellent in all regards, this Second Edition squarely puts Hitchner and his team of authors at the top of the list of authorities in the field of business valuation. Few publications on the subject even come close to the book's thorough coverage of the topic, but equally impressive is the clarity with which Hitchner depicts and explains highly complex subject matters. So impressed with Financial Valuation Applications and Models, the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts has developed a three-day course based upon this book entitled, 'Advanced Valuation and Case Study Workshop,' which is now a cornerstone training program for our organization." --Parnell Black, MBA, CPA, CVA, Chief Executive Officer, NACVA "This book is a valuable resource for every BV library. It has material not covered in other BV books and this Second Edition has much more information than the first. Financial Valuation Applications and Models is the primary textbook for AICPA's business valuation education and it covers most of the topics on the test for the AICPA's Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) credential. Its thirty authors are nationally respected practitioners who have written this book for practitioners. Many of the authors are current or former members of the AICPA Business Valuation Committee and the AICPA BV Hall of Fame." --Michael A. Crain, CPA/ABV, ASA, CFA, CFE, Chair, AICPA Business Valuation Committee, Managing Director, The Financial Valuation Group "This book has a tremendous wealth of information that all valuation analysts must have in their libraries. From those just starting their careers to the most experienced practitioner, all valuation analysts will benefit from the invaluable information, ranging from fundamental practices to the most innovative economic and valuation ideas of today." --Scott R. Saltzman, CPA, CVA, ASA, DABFA, Managing Member, Saltzman LLC; President, National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts Coauthors: Mel H. Abraham, R. James Alerding, Terry Jacoby Allen, Larry R. Cook, Michael A. Crain, Don M. Drysdale, Robert E. Duffy, Edward J. Dupke, Nancy J. Fannon, John R. Gilbert, Chris Hamilton, Thomas E. Hilton, James R. Hitchner, Steven D. Hyden, Gregory S. Koonsman, Mark G. Kucik, Eva M. Lang, Derald L. Lyons, Michael J. Mard, Harold G. Martin Jr., Michael Mattson, Edward F. Moran Jr., Raymond E. Moran, James S. Rigby Jr., Ronald L. Seigneur, Robin E. Taylor, Linda B. Trugman, Samuel Y. Wessinger, Don Wisehart, and Kevin R. Yeanoplos

A Safe Place for Dying, the first in Jack Fredrickson's highly acclaimed Dek Elstrom mystery series, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Now, Chicago P.I. Dek Elstrom is back in an electrifying new mystery. A lawyer calls Dek with a fast, seven-hundred dollar proposition. A dead client named Dek to execute her will. No matter that Dek didn't know the woman. No matter, too, that the woman's estate was only worth a few hundred. Happens all the time, the lawyer said. To Dek Elstrom, broke and huddling in a cold stone turret in the middle of February, the sound of seven hundred falling down his chimney is louder than his voice of reason. He agrees, heads up to a hamlet ten miles north of nowhere. But instead of finding an easy-to-close estate, he finds blood and the markers of a shattered life. And something worse: links to the darkest part of his own past. He races to chase down leads to the killer, and his own ghost...before the dead woman is killed again.

Only Ann Rule, the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling true-crime author, could lend her sharp insight into these cases of the spouse, lover, family member, or helpful stranger who is totally trusted--but whose lethally violent nature, though masterfully disguised, can kill. Original.

The dark side of love is no fairy tale.... And while we may like to believe that crimes of the heart only victimize those who aren't careful, this page-turning collection of must-read accounts will convince you otherwise. America's #1 true-crime writer, Ann Rule reveals how lovers become predators, how sex and lust can push ordinary people to desperate acts, and how investigators and forensics experts work to unravel the most entangled crimes of passion. Extracting behind-the-scenes details, Rule makes these volatile relationships utterly real, and masterfully re-creates the ill-fated chains of events in such cases as the ex-Marine and martial arts master who seduced vulnerable women and then destroyed their lives...the killer whose calling card was a single bloodred rose...the faithless wife who manipulated and murdered without conscience...the blind date that set the stage for a killer's brutality...and more. In every case, the victim -- young and innocent or older and experienced -- unknowingly trusted a stranger with the sociopathic skill to hide their dark motives, until it was too late to escape a web of deadly lies, fatal promises, and homicidal possession.

A serial killer terrorizes a small California town in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag. California, 1985—Four children and young teacher Anne Navarre make a gruesome discovery: a partially buried female body, her eyes and mouth glued shut. A serial killer is at large, and the very bonds that hold their idyllic town together are about to be tested to the breaking point. Tasked with finding the killer, FBI investigator Vince Leone employs a new and controversial FBI technique called “profiling,” which plunges him into the lives of the four children—and the young teacher whose need to uncover the truth is as intense as his own. But as new victims are found and pressure from the media grows, Vince and Anne find themselves circling the same small group of local suspects, unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or those close to the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very near to them is a murderous psychopath…