Just After Midnight

"Originally published in the United States by Amazon Publishing, 2018"--Title page verso.

When Jimi Hendrix died, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet ten years earlier, Chuck Berry had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become white? Jack Hamilton challenges the racial categories that distort standard histories of rock music and the 60s revolution.

Book 1 in the "Lords of Midnight" series. Paranormal Vampire Romance set in the Regency time period. "Our sister is marrying a vampire." When the ever practical Caroline Cabot first hears those words from the lips of her fanciful youngest sister, she accuses Portia of having a wild imagination. But when she discovers their sister Vivienne is actually being courted by Adrian Kane, the mysterious viscount rumored to be a vampire, she decides to accept his invitation to a midnight supper and do some sleuthing of her own. To both her delight and her dismay, she soon finds herself falling under Kane's bewitching spell. After all, what's a proper young lady to do when her sister's suitor arouses more than just her suspicions?

On June 6, 1996, a mother named Darlie Routier did the unthinkable: she murdered her two sons, Damon aged 5, and Devon just one week shy of his 7th birthday, in cold blood while they slept in their luxurious home in Rowlett, Texas. This capital murder case, built on detailed, abundant, and damning circumstantial evidence, continues to generate national publicity, roil people's emotions, and raise lingering doubts of her guilt.Meanwhile, Darlie awaits death by lethal injection in a Dallas prison.And many are left wondering if Darlie Routier is truly the murderer she is believed to be, or if an innocent woman is being put to death for crimes she didn't commit.Many of Darlie's supporters claim that she never had enough time to stab her two boys, stage the crime scene, and inflict her own wounds before calling 911.But what if Darlie started her crime spree..."Just After Midnight"

Felicia Pearson, who starred of the acclaimed television series The Wire, reveals her incredible, hard-knock life story, one that dramatically parallels her television character. While Felicia is a brilliant actor who played a truly chilling role, what's most remarkable about "Snoop" is what she has overcome in her life. Snoop was born a three-pound cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. Those streets are among the toughest in the world, but Snoop was tougher. The runt of the ghetto showed an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence and thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup state penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defense. There she rebelled violently against the system, and it was only through the cosmic intervention of her mentor, Uncle Loney, that she turned her life around. Eventually, Snoop was discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire's cast members and quickly recruited to be one of television's most frightening and intriguing villains. While the story of coming up from the hood has been told by Antwone Fisher and Chris Gardner, among others, Snoop's tale goes far deeper into The Life than any previous books. And like Mary Karr's story, Snoop's is a woman's story from a fresh point of view. She defied traditional conventions of gender and sexual preference on the hardest streets in America and in front of millions of viewers on TV.

Many people who have been harmed or wronged often feel that to respond with non-violence and forgiveness is to be weak. As Katy Hutchison reveals here, to forgive and seek reconciliation not only requires even more strength than a resort to force or retaliation, but also ensures deeper, more far-reaching beneficial consequences for all concerned. I am sure her remarkable story will serve as an inspiration to others by beset by grief and loss as she was. -The Dalai Lama On New Year's Eve, 1997, Bob McIntosh left his family and friends at the dinner table to check on a disturbance at a neighbor's house. He never came home. Savagely beaten by an unknown assailant, McIntosh died that night at a local hospital, leaving behind his wife and twin four-year olds. While authorities searched for McIntosh's killer, his wife, author Katy Hutchison, began the slow process of rebuilding a life for her children and herself. Refusing to be defined by her husband's murder, she moved to a different town, pursued a new career, and eventually remarried--but, with questions about her husband's death still unanswered, the healing Hutchison longed for was slow in coming. In the spring of 2002, authorities arrested a young man named Ryan Aldrigde for the murder of Bob McIntosh. On hearing the news, Hutchison startled investigators by asking to meet the man who had killed her husband. She didn't take satisfaction in seeing Aldridge in custody, nor did she want to rail against him for the harm he had inflicted on her and her family. Instead, she wanted to learn from him why he had attacked McIntosh and what she could do to help stop incidents like it from happening again. In a letter she sent to Aldridge after his arrest, Hutchison offered this remarkable sentiment: All I want for you is what you took from Bob--a happy and productive life. Walking After Midnight tells a story at turns devastating and triumphant, a unique exploration of one woman's courageous response to tragedy that challenges our expectations about grief and loss. It's an inspiring account of the power of forgiveness, compassion, and a different kind of justice. An excellent primer for handling loss with intelligence and dignity…an antidote to the endless cycles of violence that consume too many lives and too many countries. -Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., author of Forgive for Good and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects A remarkable story of tragedy and transcendence. Not everyone who walks this road will make the choices Hutchison did, but all will recognize the intersections and obstacles she encounters along the way. And no one who reads this story can dismiss the authenticity and passion with which it is told. -Howard Zehr, founding theorist of restorative justice, professor of restorative justice at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding of Eastern Mennonite University and author of Changing Lenses

Sanna and her ravishing friend Gerti would rather speak of love than politics, but in 1930s Frankfurt, politics cannot be escaped--even in the lady's bathroom. Crossing town one evening to meet up with Gerti's Jewish lover, a blockade cuts off the girls' path--it is the Fürher in a motorcade procession, and the crowd goes mad striving to catch a glimpse of Hitler's raised "empty hand." Then the parade is over, and in the long hours after midnight Sanna and Gerti will face betrayal, death, and the heartbreaking reality of being young in an era devoid of innocence or romance. In 1937, German author Irmgard Keun had only recently fled Nazi Germany with her lover Joseph Roth when she wrote this slim, exquisite, and devastating book. It captures the unbearable tension, contradictions, and hysteria of pre-war Germany like no other novel. Yet even as it exposes human folly, the book exudes a hopeful humanism. It is full of humor and light, even as it describes the first moments of a nightmare. After Midnight is a masterpiece that deserves to be read and remembered anew.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?