Mariachi Murder

Andy Veracruz is content with his life as the leader of a mariachi band, but when his lover is accused of murder, he has no choice but to defend her. In the process he faces the loss of his strongest loyalties as well as his entire career. arly Readers Say.... What do you get when you mix warm sultry days, late nights filled with Mariachi music, a jealous husband and a beautiful seductive wife? D.R. Ransdell's new book, Mariachi Murder will plunge you into the smoky and seamy world of machismo, musicians, and the women who love them. Pour a cool drink, sit back and enjoy a glimpse into a world few people will experience outside the pages of this book. You will learn about the music and people that make it, and find out that sometimes there are no neat answers. --I.C. Enger, Author of BLUE ICE "It's mystery, music, and murder, Southern California style. Andy Veracruz just wants to play his music, but when his girlfriend wants a baby, his boss goes on a trip and the boss' sexy wife gets involved with murder, Andy just can't keep from jumping into the thick of it. Ransdell burns up the nightclub scene with a slick and saucy story to keep your feet moving to the tunes and your mind guessing till the end." -- Stephen L. Brayton, author of Alpha Mariachi Murders is set near LA, in the fictional Squid Bay. It's summer with long, stifling nights and no air conditioning. The heroine Yiolanda is a sensuous temptress with a murky past. The hero Andy Veracruz is a thirtyish man, who although he refuses to be tied down by anyone or anything but his music, is drawn deeper and deeper into Yiolanda's web....So get a copy quick and feel the heat of summer begin. --J. L Greger, Author of COMING FLU About the Author: D.R. Ransdell teaches writing in Tucson, Arizona, where she moonlights as a mariachi player. Travel is her passion, so she spends vacations traipsing around new countries, experimenting with new languages, and dancing to new music. She shares her house with five cats, whose bird-chasing and lizard-eating activities add color to her stories.

A popular mariachi singer is found shot and buried south of Santa Fe near Cerrillos, putting him in the jurisdiction of Detective Rick Romero and Forensic Psychologist Jemimah Hodge. Eduardo Sanchez had a massive ego that could well have gotten him killed, considering his penchant for reckless womanizing. However, as the weeks pass, the trail grows cold, increasing the pressure on law enforcement. Was the mariachi killed by a spurned girlfriend or an angry husband? Why was he traveling back and forth between Santa Fe and Mexico? Although Rick and Jemimah have been dating for two years, they have yet to commit. So when Rick's beautiful ex-wife breezes into town and makes a play for him, she stirs up trouble all around. Meanwhile Jemimah receives her own unwelcome visitor: a friend of her FLDS family who's tracked her down and wants to dredge up the past. To add to the drama, Detective Romero's wayward ex-con brother Carlos lands in deep trouble when he hooks up with a woman hiding her checkered past. When the clues come together, they intersect in volatile ways no one could have foreseen. Book 4 of the Jemimah Hodge Mystery series.

Frederick Aldama's The Cinema of Robert Rodriguez (2014) was the first full-scale study of one of the most prolific and significant Latino directors making films today. In this companion volume, Aldama enlists a corps of experts to analyze a majority of Rodriguez's feature films, from his first break-out success El Mariachi in 1992 to Machete in 2010. The essays explore the formal and thematic features present in his films from the perspectives of industry (context, convention, and distribution), the film blueprint (auditory and visual ingredients), and consumption (ideal and real audiences). The authors illuminate the manifold ways in which Rodriguez's films operate internally (plot, character, and event) and externally (audience perception, thought, and feeling). The volume is divided into three parts: "Matters of Mind and Media" includes essays that use psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology to shed light on how Rodriguez's films complicate Latino identity, as well as how they succeed in remaking audiences' preconceptions of the world. "Narrative Theory, Cognitive Science, and Sin City: A Case Study" offers tools and models of analysis for the study of Rodriguez's film re-creation of a comic book (on which Frank Miller was credited as codirector). "Aesthetic and Ontological Border Crossings and Borderlands" considers how Rodriguez's films innovatively critique fixed notions of Latino identity and experience, as well as open eyes to racial injustices. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how Rodriguez's career offers critical insights into the filmmaking industry, the creative process, and the consuming and reception of contemporary film.

When the death of a fellow musician threatens his mariachi band, Andy Veracruz must risk everything to find the killer even if evidence points to Yiolanda, the boss's flirtatious wife. The more Andy learns, the more trouble he gets into.

Pop Goes the Decade: The 2000s comprehensively examines popular culture in the 2000s, placing the culture of the decade in historical context and showing how it not only reflected but also influenced its times. Pop Goes the Decade: The 2000s starts with a timeline of major historical pop culture events of the 2000s, followed by an introduction describing what the U.S. was like at the beginning of the new millennium and how it would change throughout the decade. Next come chapters broken down by medium: television, sports, music, movies, literature, technology, media, and fashion and art. A chapter on controversies in popular culture is followed by a chapter on game-changers, featuring 20 individuals who made a major impact on the U.S. in the 2000s. Finally, a conclusion shows the impact that pop culture in the 2000s has had on the U.S. in the years since. This volume serves as a comprehensive resource for high school and college students studying popular culture in the 2000s. It provides a summary of total impact, plus specific insights into each individual topic. It also includes a wide swath of the scholarship produced on the subject to date.

Forgotten Peace examines Colombian society’s attempt to move beyond the Western Hemisphere’s worst mid-century conflict and shows how that effort molded notions of belonging and understandings of the past. Robert A. Karl reconstructs encounters between government officials, rural peoples, provincial elites, and urban intellectuals during a crucial conjuncture that saw reformist optimism transform into alienation. In addition to offering a sweeping reinterpretation of Colombian history—including the most detailed account of the origins of the FARC insurgency in any language—Karl provides a Colombian vantage on global processes of democratic transition, development, and memory formation in the 1950s and 1960s. Broad in scope, Forgotten Peace challenges contemporary theories of violence in Latin America.

Lorsque, dix ans après les faits, le mariachi Orlando Merced succombe à ses blessures, l'inspecteur Harry Bosch hérite d'un vrai cas d'école à enseigner à la jeune inspectrice Lucia Soto. Hormis une balle retrouvée à l'autopsie, les pistes sont inexistantes. Plus ennuyeux, et dangereux pour Bosch, Lucia semble beaucoup s'intéresser à un autre dossier, et mettre son nez là où il ne faut pas. Très ébranlé par la nature de cette deuxième affaire, Bosch décide de passer outre au règlement et de mener les deux enquêtes de front, malgré les risques encourus dans une ville où la passion politique l'emporte sur tout.

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants-a beauty queen who was raped, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life-with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juarez's culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north. Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, Murder City was written at the height of his powers and established Bowden as one of America's leading journalists.