Dying For Gold

On September 18, 1992, nine men died in the labyrinthine drifts of Yellowknife's Giant gold mine, after four months of a painful labor dispute. Six of the dead were Giant employees; three were "replacement workers". All were husbands, fathers, sons, lovers, friends, firefighters, draegermen. Their deaths brought squadrons of police, investigators and the eye of the national media to Yellowknife. Roger Warren, a longtime Giant employee, was convicted on nine counts of second-degree murder. A multi-million dollar civil suit is ongoing. Those were the headlines reported in the nightly news, but as Yellowknife journalists Lee Selleck and Francis Thompson note, the real story of the Giant Mine tragedy was, up until now, untold. In a meticulously researched expose that unfolds like a compelling murder mystery, the two journalists peet back the complex layers of the events leading up to the unraveling of a close-knit community. They reveal a large and fascinating cast of players: Peggy Witte, the mine owner, whose belligerent strikebreaking tactics were unprecedented in the Canadian mining industry; an inexperienced and stubborn union whose members sometimes resorted to criminal acts; a paramilitary corporate security force; police who often seemed to act as agents of Giant Mine management; and an absentee federal government with close ties to the mining industry. They take you into the lives of miners and their families struggling to come to grips with issues that pitted relatives and friends against each other and saw homes, businesses, dignity and eventually, lives, tumble into the black abyss. And, in a mesmerizing recreation of the mine blast and subsequent trial of Roger Warren, theyraise serious and far-reaching doubts about the guilt of the man convicted of killing his co-workers. Utterly compelling and controversial, Dying for Gold is a masterful work of investigative journalism.

The first novel in the fun Gold Strike Mystery Series by USA Today Bestselling Author, Diana Orgain In the historic town of Golden, not everything that glitters is gold… Frannie Peterson is on the verge of getting everything she's always wanted. A promotion at her beloved family's souvenir shop, a proposal from the love of her life, and most importantly her mother's approval. All this in time to celebrate Living History day. But....when the festival organizer is found murdered at her soon-to-be fiance's apartment everything hangs in the balance. Can Frannie find the murderer before he strikes again?

Assisted Dying is an ethnographically-based murder mystery that uses the unexplained deaths of elderly people on Florida's Gold Coast to examine American cultural values. Diversity, immigration and the American Dream, and aging, retirement, death, and dying are just some of the issues illuminated. The novel skillfully draws readers in, teaching students key concepts in the social sciences as they follow cultural anthropologist Julie Norman in her quest to solve the dark mystery.

Slumach’s Gold chronicles what is possibly Canada’s greatest lost-mine story. It searches out the truth behind a Salish man’s hanging for murder in 1891 and tracks the intriguing legend about him that grew after his death. It was a legend that turned into a drama of international fascination when Slumach—the hanged criminal—was mysteriously linked to gold nuggets “the size of walnuts.” The stories claimed that Slumach had placed a curse on a hidden motherlode to protect it from interlopers and trespassers just before he plunged to his death “at the wrong end of a five-strand rope.” Although many have attempted to find Slumach’s gold over the past 100 years, following tantalizing clues that are part of the legend itself, none have succeeded—or have they? Rick Antonson, Mary Trainer and Brian Antonson have diligently sifted through history and myth, separating fact from fiction, but leaving the legend intact—along with the promise of gold yet to be found by some future gold seeker.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2020 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE WINNER OF THE ROSENTHAL FAMILY FOUNDATION AWARD, FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Belongs on a shelf all of its own.” —NPR “Outstanding.” —The Washington Post “Revolutionary . . . A visionary addition to American literature.” —Star Tribune An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

“John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King With an Introduction by Lee Child When Travis McGee picks up the phone and hears a voice from his past, he can’t help it: He has to meddle. Especially when he has the chance to reunite Sam Taggart, a reckless, restless man like himself, with the woman who’s still waiting for him. But what begins as a simple matchmaking scheme soon becomes a bloody chase that takes McGee to Mexico, a beautiful country from which he hopes to return alive. Deception. Betrayal. Heartbreak. When Sam left his girlfriend, Nora, and vanished from Fort Lauderdale, no one was surprised. But when he shows up three years later lying in a pool of his own blood, people start to ask questions. And his old friend Travis McGee is left to find answers. But all he has to go on are a gold Aztec idol and a very angry ex-girlfriend. Is that enough to find his friend’s killer? And when the truth is as terrifying as this, does he really want answers after all? Praise for A Deadly Shade of Gold “Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I can’t think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare.”—Donald Westlake “John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field.”—Mary Higgins Clark

An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuries In My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four-hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world’s most vibrant cultures of death. He explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. Parker reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, from the era of the slave trade to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation. With an array of written and oral sources, In My Time of Dying richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living.