Mercedes Ice

In the beginning, Shadow Point was the tallest, most magnificent tower block anyone had ever seen. But soon the shining concrete began to crack and the gleaming windows became grimy and dull. Into this colourless decay comes Mercedes Ice, Crown Prince of Shadow Point, with an impossible demand: colour.

Award-winning actor, rapper, and producer Ice-T unveils a compelling memoir of his early life robbing jewelry stores until he found fame and fortune—while a handful of bad choices sent his former crime partner down an incredibly different path. Ice-T rose to fame in the late 1980s, earning acclaim for his music before going on to enthrall television audiences as Odafin “Fin” Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But it could have gone much differently. In this “poignant and powerful” (Library Journal, starred review) memoir, Ice-T and Spike, his former crime partner—collaborating with New York Times bestselling author Douglas Century—relate the shocking stories of their shared pasts, and how just a handful of decisions led to their incredibly different lives. Both grew up in violent, gang-controlled Los Angeles neighborhoods and worked together to orchestrate a series of jewelry heists. But while Ice-T was discovered rapping in a club and got his first record deal, Spike was caught for a jewelry robbery and did three years in prison. As his music career began to take off, Ice made the decision to abandon the criminal life; Spike continued to plan increasingly ingenious and risky jewel heists. And in 1992, after one of Spike’s robberies ended tragically, he was sentenced to thirty-five years to life. While he sat behind bars, he watched his former partner rise to fame in music, movies, and television. “Propulsive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), timely, and thoughtful, two men with two very different lives reveal how their paths might have very well been reversed if they made different choices. All it took was a split decision.

An anthropological memoir with a romantic twist. A Harvard student and an ex-cannibal may seem like an unlikely pair, but on a dance floor in Ecuador, their steps matched. Author Carla Seidl met Amazon-Jungle-born surfer Fredy Andi while teaching on the Galapagos Islands at age nineteen, and her life has never been the same since. Several years later, thinking that perhaps simple living was the key to happiness, Seidl returned to the islands to unearth more about Fredy's story and see if their connection, and his seemingly carefree lifestyle, were for real. The duo ended up traveling to the Amazon Jungle to try to find Fredy's family, and Seidl survived to tell the tale.

South Africa and the Global Hydrogen Economy is the publication of a MISTRA research project on the use of strategic minerals in the global putative hydrogen economy. The book highlights the global significance of platinum group metals (PGM) and explores the strategic opportunities that arise out of South Africa's endowment of these strategic resources. From their extraction to their applications in fuel cells, what options are available for the country, the region and the world to better leverage this endowment towards supporting growth and development objectives? In view of their expanding range of applications, do PGM need the hydrogen economy? Conversely, does the hydrogen economy need PGM? Addressed to all industry stakeholders, including those in the public and private sectors, the options explored in this book are based on a thorough analysis of the global dynamics that should inform policy and business models related to PGM.

When serial-killing local Florida historian Serge A. Storms is off his meds, no one is safe -- not Russian hoods, Jamaican mobsters, spoiled frat boys, women's book clubs, drug dealers, bad Vegas-rejected local lounge acts -- especially when $5 million in cash in a bugged suitcase is still racing up and down the Eastern Seaboard. But in the oddball circus known as the Sunshine State, little things like astronomical body counts tend to get lost in the shuffle.

Winner of the 3rd Annual Miguel Mármol Prize from Curbstone Press, Mary Helen Lagasse's The Fifth Sun is an inspiring story of an immigrant who struggles valiantly for a better life for herself and her family. The young Mexican woman, Mercedes, leaves her village to work as a housemaid in New Orleans. This fast-paced novel takes her through her adventures in New Orleans, her marriage, her struggle to raise her children, her deportation, and her attempt to re-cross the river and be reunited with her children.