A Checkered Past

Winning came naturally for Al Unser, Jr. He had a gift for finding the fast line on the track and he possessed a boisterous and lovable personality. Fans and the press adored him. Behind this affable persona, an appetite for drugs and alcohol was destroying his private life. Unser's battle to climb out of that cave is one of the great stories in motorsports. A Checkered Past is an unblinking story of triumph, tragedy, and the road to recovery.

Cataclysmic events set the stage for the formation of an unlikely partnership that will bend the course of history. In China a brutal attack by a rampaging warlord sends a rich young couple on a desperate voyage where they become targets of the Tong Of The Black Hand. Meanwhile, a half-dead Yankee officer escapes from a notorious Confederate prison and returns to his ranch and the arms of his raven haired wife, a beauty in bootpants. Fate, destiny, or maybe just pure accident will soon bring Malcolm and Steffi Frazier and Ben Wang and Su Chang together. Events unfold rapidly when copper prices skyrocket. Bank stock in an Arizona mining venture becomes available to Ben and his banker when the mine owners are gunned down. The bankers wife is murdered during a kidnapping in which Su Chang is captured by the Tong and taken to Colorado. Malcolm leads a high mountain rescue attempt and Steffi gains heroine status when forced into a gunbattle with rustlers, actions which endear them to Ben Wang who now controls the mining stock. In this fast paced thinking person's thriller, the reader is swept up in blazing action occurring in China, Kansas, Colorado, Mexico, and Arizona, and is treated to a rare look into the financial pressures and strategies to be dealt with as our heroes prepare to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: The quest for the untold riches of the Rose Pit Mine. It all welds a colorful cast of never-to-be-forgotten characters together in a saga which will enrich the reader from beginning to end. BLACK HAND OVER KANSAS-the first in a series of three books-stands alone. It can be enjoyed singly, or, if the reader is caught up in the adventure, THE JOURNADA DEL MUERTO and THE VICTORS will be available for publication soon.

NASCAR team owner Chad Matheson is most comfortable when he's in control. But his control took a time-out during a few days in Las Vegas—and he impulsively wed hotel heiress Brianna Hudson. The marriage lasted only one night, though, before they both had second thoughts…. Two years later Brianna holds the keys to a much-needed sponsorship for Chad's team, and Chad is determined to keep things between them strictly business. But he knows he's fighting a losing battle. Because where Brianna is concerned, the atmosphere is anything but professional. And the last thing he needs is anyone finding out that, legally, they're still Mr. and Mrs.!

"Fascinated with the rich tradition and youthful creativity of London in the 1960s and longing to leave suburban America, a wide-eyed twenty-year-old Californian named Peter Schlesinger arrived in 1968 with his partner, David Hockney, to study painting at the Slade School of Art. He stayed on for ten years and moved in some of the city's most intriguing social and artistic circles. Manolo Blahnik, Paloma Picasso, Ossie Clark, Cecil Beaton, Bianca Jagger, Christopher Isherwood, and Bryan Ferry - all became friends of the bright and talented Schlesinger, along with other prominent figures in the worlds of art, ballet, music, photography, film, and society." "Schlesinger was one of Hockney's favorite models and he appears in many of his most important paintings of this period, but he was a gifted artist in his own right, with a tireless interest in documenting the amazing world of London bohemia in which he found himself. His privileged position during these extraordinary years resulted in literally thousands of intimate photographs of friends and acquaintances in everyday situations, taken both at home in London and on numerous trips to continental Europe. Featuring 180 of the most artful and revealing images, Checkered Past guides us with a wry eye through the artists' studios, fashion shows, grand country houses, and gay discos that made London such a magnet during the late 1960s and early 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.

Weaving together stories from elite science, cutting-edge technology, and popular culture, Fleming examines issues of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s.

A personal portrait by the legendary "Driver of the Century" racing car figure outlines his four-decade career, twelve national title wins, and numerous records while sharing descriptions about the odds that challenged his career and his opinions about the current generation's stars. 50,000 first printing.

Philippa Levine is the Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, and The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset. --