Motel Of The Mysteries

A future archeologist finds the remnants of a mysterious ancient people—us—in a wry satire that is “a marvel of imagination and . . . wonderfully illustrated” (The New York Times). It is the year 4022, and the entire ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist, is crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site when he feels the ground give way beneath him. Suddenly, he finds himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, is clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one laid to rest on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber. These dramatic discoveries give Carson all the clues he needs to piece together the entire civilization—which he gets utterly wrong. The acclaimed author and illustrator of Castle and Pyramid, David Macaulay presents a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek satire of both historical presumption and American self-importance.

Someone is trying to put Aunt Jane's motel out of business, but the Alden children aren't going to let that happen.

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The "Motel Murder" is a murder mystery set in the imaginary small town of Seminole Pines, North Florida, a rural farming community surrounded by cornfields, tobacco plantations, and tens of thousands of acres of Southern pines and palmettos. Deputy sheriff Denise "Midge" Sumpter, a young African-American sleuth who has a keen eye for detail and a knack for stitching together the details of a crime, tries to solve a murder that occurred in her grandmother's motel. The victim was both clubbed on the head, strangled, and stabbed. But no murder weapon can be found, and the only man seen earlier at the scene of the crime swears he didn't do it. Among other confusing clues are an unfired snub-nose revolver left in the motel room, a motel safe full of crystal methamphetamine, a torn piece of motel stationery with three mysterious numbers written on it, a bloody footprint belonging to an unidentified man, and a missing girl who checked into the motel with the victim but seems to have vanished into thin air. Among other characters Midge meets or works with are her partner Jake, who is gay, the sheriff of Wassahatchka County, a six-foot seven inch giant she calls Pee-Wee, a barbecue cook who cuts his meat with a machete and keeps a Confederate flag pinned to the wall of his restaurant, a meth-producer who has his works, and a still, out in the woods, and a local addict who proves to be far more articulate and helpful than one would think. A host of other characters you will not easily forget populate the novel. Midge, who loves Cajun food and fast cars, makes do with a ten-year-old Crown Victoria patrol car cast off from the Florida Highway Patrol, while her partner Jake, who usually mans a speed trap and has been in the department several years longer than Midge, drives a brand new Dodge Challenger Hellcat-the department's newest piece of "technology." The Hellcat, which Midge drools over, becomes the nearest mechanical thing to a character in the story, and by the end of the tale, it proves its worth. Adding to the charm of the novel, Midge, who grew up in Seminole Pines and speaks in the local dialect, tells the story in first person. The dialect is very easy to read, but it's authentic spoken English as you would hear it were you to visit Northern Florida. At times, the language gets a little salty, but Midge tells the tale accurately and honestly in the real language of the place. Coming soon is the second novel in the Midge Sumpter series, "The Indian Mound Murder." A professor of anthropology at a nearby university who is an expert in Florida's Paleo-Indians, is found dead in an exploratory trench dug into a local mound that is perhaps twelve to thirteen thousand years old-dating to the earliest era of human habitation. Only, the dead professor was supposed to be at another dig site 250 miles south, and no one can account for how he got where he has been found. None of the people working at the mound, neither the site manager, another local paleontologist, nor any of the four graduate students working with her, know how he got there-or who killed him. The site has some curious features, including cigarette butts stuck filter-end-first into the mound, empty beer cans strewn around, and local legends about spirits that inhabit the place. Once again, Midge, her partner Jake, and Sheriff Pee-Wee Marion, have their hands full trying to figure out who killed the victim. This time, the characters include an ex-Army Ranger Captain who is a woman, two ex-Army Special Ops personnel, a local hermit who lives in a shack entirely made out of abandoned or recycled lumber, a local hardware store clerk who was a schoolmate of Denise, and the dead professor's lover, another anthropologist who was supposed to be with the dead man the night he died. Midge's Crown Vic is back, as is Jake's Challenger Hellcat, and Pee-Wee's Chevy Suburban.

Stella “Granny” Reid’s youth wasn’t the only thing changed by time in tiny, nondescript McGill, Georgia. Except even back in the 1980s, the Southern town still had a way of attracting downright dubious characters—some with a talent for murder. As quirky as McGill’s residents can be, they usually welcome society’s oddballs and outcasts into the community with open arms. But the three members of the Lone White Wolf Pack are a different story. Townsfolk aren’t feeling the least bit neighborly toward the gang widely believed to have orchestrated several hate crimes in the area. When the group’s leader Billy Ray Sonner is found dead in an abandoned motel, most assume it was the result of an accidental overdose. An unfortunate yet predictable end for a man who lived the way Billy did. Only Stella and the sheriff have witnessed the crime scene in person, and suspect something more disturbing happened in that ramshackle room . . . While Stella wades through a flood of potential culprits, one thing becomes clear—this wasn’t an impulsive act of revenge. There’s a sophisticated killer on the loose, and Stella must expose deep-rooted fears and dark pasts if she wants to crack a carefully planned murder and stop McGill from descending into chaos.

In this innovative book Dr Morris seeks to show the many ways in which the excavated remains of burials can and should be a major source of evidence for social historians of the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Burials have a far wider geographical and social range than the surviving literary texts, which were mainly written for a small elite. They provide us with unique insights into how Greeks and Romans constituted and interpreted their own communities. In particular, burials enable the historian to study social change. Ian Morris illustrates the great potential of the material in these respects with examples drawn from societies as diverse in time, space and political context as archaic Rhodes, classical Athens, early imperial Rome and the last days of the western Roman empire.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls. Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary. Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

Elvis has left the building, but he's forever memorialized at the Heartache Motel. Filled with drag queens, Rock-a-Hula coctails, and a vibrating velveteen bed, these three novellas tell the tales fo three amateur sleuths who spend their holidays at the King's veloved home.