Almost Dead

In an atmospheric, chilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson, a string of murders points to a terrifying secret within a wealthy San Francisco family... Shock and grief play tricks on the mind. Cissy Cahill has been telling herself that a lot lately. Even if Cissy wasn’t particularly close to her grandmother, Eugenia Cahill’s sudden death was bound to take a toll. That would explain the footsteps Cissy hears when there’s no one around, the scent of another woman’s perfume, the unnerving shadows outside her son’s bedroom window. She doesn’t want to panic—or give her estranged husband, Jack, more reason to try and move back in. After all, why would anyone choose to target her? For generations, the Cahills have been one of San Francisco’s most affluent families, with a splendid manor perched high above the Bay. Money like theirs offers not just privilege, but protection. Yet something has changed. One by one, Cahills are dying in brutal ways. Uncertain who to trust, Cissy is desperate to keep her young son safe. And the only way is to delve into her family’s past and uncover the twisted truth...before a killer finds them.

Beginning in the late seventeenth century and concluding with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, Almost Dead reveals how the thousands of captives who lived, bled, and resisted in the Black Urban Atlantic survived to form dynamic communities. Michael Lawrence Dickinson uses cities with close commercial ties to shed light on similarities, variations, and linkages between urban Atlantic slave communities in mainland America and the Caribbean. The study adopts the perspectives of those enslaved to reveal that, in the eyes of the enslaved, the distinctions were often of degree rather than kind as cities throughout the Black Urban Atlantic remained spaces for Black oppression and resilience. The tenets of subjugation remained all too similar, as did captives’ need to stave off social death and hold on to their humanity. Almost Dead argues that urban environments provided unique barriers to and avenues for social rebirth: the process by which African-descended peoples reconstructed their lives individually and collectively after forced exportation from West Africa. This was an active process of cultural remembrance, continued resistance, and communal survival. It was in these urban slave communities—within the connections between neighbors and kinfolk—that the enslaved found the physical and psychological resources necessary to endure the seemingly unendurable. Whether sites of first arrival, commodification, sale, short-term captivity, or lifetime enslavement, the urban Atlantic shaped and was shaped by Black lives.

Seventeen-year-old Flora Mackey is not exactly thrilled to wake up from a car accident and find out she’s a ghost. Making this lifelike hell even worse is being trapped with her arch enemy and collision partner, Laney Tipps. The two normally couldn’t get along if their lives depended on it, but now they have no choice. After recovering from the initial shock of seeing their lifeless bodies—and that they can’t escape each other—Flora and Laney have to find a way out of the twisted, gray realm. But they quickly learn that the farther they stray from their motionless corpses, the weaker they become. Luckily Sara, a spirit guide, shows up to help. Sara informs them they’ll have to wait for someone in their city to die so they can take their place in the land of the living. What’s scarier than waiting in purgatory? Time. If Flora and Laney don’t return to the physical world and leave clues for their families that they’re still alive, they’ll never be found. Which sucks, because once their bodies give out, their souls will be permanently stuck in the afterlife.

The acclaimed, bestselling rock-and-roll biographer delivers the first complete, unexpurgated history of the world’s greatest band. The saga of the Rolling Stones is the central epic in rock mythology. From their debut as the intermission band at London’s Marquee Club in 1962 through their latest record—setting Bridges to Babylon world tour, the Rolling Stones have defined a musical genre and experienced godlike adulation, quarrels, addiction, legal traumas, and descents into madness and death_while steadfastly refusing to fade away. Now Stephen Davis, the New York Times bestselling author of Hammer of the Gods and Walk This Way, who has followed the Stones for three decades, presents their whole story, replete with vivid details of the Stones’ musical successes_and personal excesses. Born into the wartime England of air-raid sirens, bombing raids, and strict rationing, the Rolling Stones came of age in the 1950s, as American blues and pop arrived in Europe. Among London’s most ardent blues fans in the early 1960s was a short blond teenage guitar player named Brian Jones, who hooked up with a lorry driver’s only son, Charlie Watts, a jazz drummer. At the same time, popular and studious Michael Philip Jagger–who, as a boy, bawled out a phonetic version of “La Bamba” with an eye-popping intensity that scared his parents–began sharing blues records with a primary school classmate, Keith “Ricky” Richards, a shy underachiever, whose idol was Chuck Berry. In 1962 the four young men, joined by Bill Perks (later Wyman) on bass, formed a band rhythm and blues band, which Brian Jones named the “the Rollin’ Stones” in honor of the Muddy Waters blues classic. Using the biography of the Rolling Stones as a narrative spine, Old God Almost Dead builds a new, multilayered version of the Stones’ story, locating the band beyond the musical world they dominated and showing how they influenced, and were influenced by, the other artistic movements of their era: the blues revival, Swinging London, the Beats, Bob Dylan’s Stones-inspired shift from protest to pop, Pop Art and Andy Warhol’s New York, the “Underground” politics of the 1960s, Moroccan energy and European orientalism, Jamaican reggae, the Glam and Punk subcultures, and the technologic advances of the video and digital revolution. At the same time, Old Gods Almost Dead documents the intense backstage lives of the Stones: the feuds, the drugs, the marriages, and the affairs that inspired and informed their songs; and the business of making records and putting on shows. The first new biography of the Rolling Stones since the early 1980s, Old Gods Almost Dead is the most comprehensive book to date, and one of the few to cover all the band’s members. Illustrated throughout with photos of pivotal moments, it is a celebration of the Rolling Stones as an often courageous, often foolish gang of artists who not only showed us new worlds, but new ways of living in them. It is a saga as raunchily, vibrantly entertaining as the Stones themselves.

“When you think that life cannot get better, Blake Pierce comes up with another masterpiece of thriller and mystery! This book is full of twists and the end brings a surprising revelation. I strongly recommend this book to the permanent library of any reader that enjoys a very well written thriller.” --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Almost Gone) ALMOST DEAD is book #3 in a new psychological thriller series by USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone (Book #1) (a free download) has received over 1,000 five star reviews. After the disastrous fallout from her last placement in England, all 23-year-old Cassandra Vale wants is a chance to pick up the pieces. A high-society, divorced mother in sunny Italy seems to be the answer. But is she? With a new family come new children, new rules, and new expectations. Cassandra’s determined to make this one last - until a horrifying discovery pushes her to a breaking point. And when the unimaginable occurs, will it be too late to pull herself back from the brink? Who, she wonders, is she becoming? A riveting mystery replete with complex characters, layers of secrets, dramatic twists and turns and heart-pounding suspense, ALMOST DEAD is book #3 in a psychological suspense series that will have you turning pages late into the night. Book #4 in the series will be available soon.

A bundle of books #2 (ALMOST LOST) and #3 (ALMOST DEAD) in Blake Pierce’s Au Pair Psychological Suspense Mystery series! This bundle offers books two and three in one convenient file, with over 100,000 words of reading. In ALMOST LOST, when a divorcee vacationing in the British countryside puts out an ad for an au pair, Cassandra Vale, 23, broke, still reeling from the ruins of her last placement in France, takes the job without hesitation. Wealthy, handsome and generous, with two sweet children, she feels nothing can go wrong. But can it? Treated to the best England has to offer, and with France out of sight, Cassandra dares to believe she finally has a moment to catch her breath—until a startling revelation forces her to question the truths of her tumultuous past, her employer, and her very own sanity. In ALMOST DEAD, after the disastrous fallout from her last placement in England, all 23-year-old Cassandra Vale wants is a chance to pick up the pieces. A high-society, divorced mother in sunny Italy seems to be the answer. But is she? With a new family come new children, new rules, and new expectations. Cassandra’s determined to make this one last - until a horrifying discovery pushes her to a breaking point. And when the unimaginable occurs, will it be too late to pull herself back from the brink? Who, she wonders, is she becoming? A riveting mystery replete with complex characters, layers of secrets, dramatic twists and turns and heart-pounding suspense, The Au Pair psychological suspense series will have you turning pages late into the night.

The healthcare industry is under privacy attack. The book discusses the issues from the healthcare organization and individual perspectives. Someone hacking into a medical device and changing it is life-threatening. Personal information is available on the black market. And there are increased medical costs, erroneous medical record data that could lead to wrong diagnoses, insurance companies or the government data-mining healthcare information to formulate a medical ‘FICO’ score that could lead to increased insurance costs or restrictions of insurance. Experts discuss these issues and provide solutions and recommendations so that we can change course before a Healthcare Armageddon occurs.

Ive always been trapped in what seemed to be two different realities. Feeling like I lived in two different bodies, I constantly felt stuck between the two. I knew one was who I wanted to be and the other was what I was becoming. Its difficult to know exactly who you are and who you want to be but not being able to become that person because youve become comfortable in the skin that has evolved around the person you no longer want to become. My depression became an alternate persona, and I, to this day, have trouble explaining it to people who havent been in a similar situation. People who have never experienced this will never know all the suffering that was attached to living like this. The person I wanted to be was active and outgoing; she had a passion for making the world hers, and she wasnt afraid of anything. But who I was for the majority of my life wanted to be alone, didnt see a future for myself, and thought Id be gone before my sixteenth birthday. The difference between these two people was like night and day, but internally, it felt like I was living two separate lives. I was in desperate need of help and needed to speak up before time ran out.