Hog Wild Dead

Owning a haunted bed and breakfast is great for Holly Davis’s business. But calming the ghosts of her own past could be deadly . . . To Louisiana locals, the prime sliver of land that butts up to St. Agnes Bayou has become just another tourist trap. Not so for Holly Davis. Her ancestors are still buried on the land and sinking ever deeper into the swamp with each passing hurricane season. Now that old man Dubois’s go-to shack for live crawfish is on the market, Holly’s ready to hock everything to buy it. As the owner of a haunted B&B, Holly knows for a fact that the spirits won’t be settled until she does. But before Holly can close the deal, Dubois’s body disappears into the swamp after a deadly boating accident. Holly and her boyfriend Jack McCann have good reason to suspect Jarvis, one of the rightful heirs to the property. With Dubois’s body missing, and a murderer working the bayou, the cemetery and all its mossy ghosts are in limbo. And until Holly finds the killer, not a soul—including hers—is going to rest in peace.

"...features plenty of action, a bold plot, and weird characters—including one mean pet chicken." ~Library Journal Thea Barlow has quit her Chicago job and returned to Wyoming—with her fiancé Max Holman—to work as a freelance writer. In Hog Heaven to investigate the ruins of an old rural brothel, Thea stumbles upon a woman's body and is fingered for the murder. Now, Thea and Max must ferret out Hog Heaven's secrets and expose the person attempting to frame Thea before she and Max become the next victims...if the town's mean-spirited chicken doesn't get them first. "Fast-paced action and snappy dialog." ~Publisher's Weekly THE THEA BARLOW WYOMING MYSTERIES, in order All the Old Lions Frogskin and Muttonfat Dead in Hog Heaven Death by Doodlebug

"A master of both distilled insight and utter nonsense" (The Believer), Ian Frazier is one of the most gifted chroniclers of contemporary America. Hogs Wild assembles a decade's worth of his finest essays and reportage, and demonstrates the irrepressible passions and artful digressions that distinguish his enduring body of work. Part muckraker, part adventurer, and part raconteur, Frazier beholds, captures, and occasionally reimagines the spirit of the American experience. He travels down South to examine feral hogs, and learns that their presence in any county is a strong indicator that it votes Republican. He introduces us to a man who, when his house is hit by a supposed meteorite, hopes to "leverage" the space object into opportunity for his family, and a New York City police detective who is fascinated with rap-music-related crimes. Alongside Frazier's delight in the absurdities of contemporary life is his sense of social responsibility: there's an echo of the great reform-minded writers in his pieces on a soup kitchen, opioid overdose deaths on Staten Island, and the rise in homelessness in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg. In each dizzying discovery, Hogs Wild unearths the joys of inquiry without agenda, curiosity without calculation. To read Frazier is to become a kind of social and political anthropologist--astute and deeply engaged.

When Smithfield Foods opened its pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, in 1992, workers in the rural area were thrilled to have jobs at what was billed as “the largest slaughterhouse in the world.” However, they soon left in droves because of the fast, unrelenting line speed and high rate of injury. Those who stayed wanted higher wages and safer working conditions, but every time they tried to form a union, the company quickly cracked down, firing union leaders, assaulting organizers, and setting minority groups against each other. Author and journalist Lynn Waltz reveals how these aggressive tactics went unchecked for years until Sherri Buffkin, a higher-up manager at Smithfield, blew the lid off the company’s corrupt practices. Through meticulous reporting, in-depth interviews with key players, and a mind for labor and environmental histories, Waltz weaves a fascinating tale of the nearly two-decade struggle that eventually brought justice to the workers and accountability to the food giant, pitting the world’s largest slaughterhouse against the world’s largest meatpacking union. Following in a long tradition of books that expose the horrors of the meatpacking industry—from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation—Hog Wild uncovers rampant corporate environmental hooliganism, labor exploitation, and union-busting by one of the nation’s largest meat producers. Waltz’s eye-opening examination sheds new light on the challenges workers face not just in meatpacking, but everywhere workers have lost their power to collectively bargain with powerful corporations.

A runaway pig is about as explosive a piece of news as there is to be found in Dacus at the moment. But shortly after Avery Andrews has returned to her hometown, all hell breaks loose. Her new office is still in disorder when Maggy Avinger arrives, clutching a copy of her dead husband's letter to his lawyer. He's made arrangements for an enormous stone angel to be erected at his grave and for the angel's plaque to read that Maggy murdered him. His doctor says Harden died of lung cancer, so he's really got some nerve. Plus—and what really bothers Maggy—the garish angel is in such bad taste! Avery promises to look into it. In the meantime, Maggy invites her to a native plant rescue at the site of a new development. A dead body is found crammed into an abandoned mine hole and a series of gruesome deaths follow. Avery discovers that the victims had received anonymous letters accusing them of various ethical shortcomings. With the help of an attractive reporter who seems too good for her father's humble paper, Avery seeks to find a connection between the disasters and nab a killer. This is the third in a distinctly charming series that keeps getting stronger and funnier with every book. Pickens's voice is nothing short of delightful as she develops these characters, all the more endearing for their eccentricities. Whether moonpies are a staple of one's diet or not, readers will feel right at home. In the best of ways.

A VAMPIRE IN ZOMBIELAND You wouldn’t like Coburn. People don’t, as a rule. And that’s okay, because he doesn’t like people much either. People are food. Five years ago, Coburn went to sleep – wasn’t exactly planned – and he’s just woken up to find most everybody in the world dead. Not dead like him; he looks human, drinks blood. He’s smart. They’re... none of those things. They outnumber him by about a million to one, and their clotted blood cannot sustain him. Now he’s starving, and on the run. He has to find blood, soon, and – like it or not – he’s gonna have to keep an eye on the frail flesh-bags he finds it in. Time for the wolf to turn shepherd. No, Coburn doesn’t like people. But he’ll have to learn to.

There’s a lot of noir surrounding this rare pinot. As the vineyards in Seneca Lake, New York, prepare for the seasonal “Deck the Halls Around the Lake” festivities, someone is determined to keep pinot noir off the wine list. Hijacked trucks and sabotaged ingredients have made it a hard-to-acquire vintage for the six local wineries—including Norrie Ellington’s Two Witches Winery. The case of the stolen and spoiled wines gets stranger when Arnold Mowen, owner of the company distributing the wine, is found dead, the apparent victim of a hunting accident. As Norrie tries to find the connections between the pinot’s problems and Arnold’s death, she uncovers a conspiracy among many locals whose hatred for the wine distributor was bottled up for far too long . . .

If there’s one good thing about the end of the world, it’s that Jillian wasn’t alone when it happened. Her neighborhood is still populated and more importantly, no one is trying to eat anyone else. The rest of the world isn’t so lucky. Where the Awakened roam, terror follows. A medical miracle turned bad is the cause of it all. What’s worse, almost everyone has some form of the medicine in their system. Medical nanites changed the landscape is wonderful ways, but when those medical miracles went haywire, it was the end of the world. Within the safety of their small waterfront neighborhood, Jillian and her neighbors must forge a new path, one that will keep them safe...keep them alive. Within each of them lies the seeds of destruction, but also the will to survive. Dead Woman’s Journal is a prequel to the thrilling Between Life and Death series. This full-length novel stands alone and is without cliffhangers. While there are some descriptions of violence, the novel is appropriate for ages 16 and up.