Motorcity Girl

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A study of how the film industry came to flourish in Detroit in the early years as locals were lured into the new picture theaters. Motor City Movie Culture, 1916–1925 is a broad textured look at Hollywood coming of age in a city with a burgeoning population and complex demographics. Richard Abel investigates the role of local Detroit organizations in producing, distributing, exhibiting, and publicizing films in an effort to make moviegoing part of everyday life. Tapping a wealth of primary source material—from newspapers, spatiotemporal maps, and city directories to rare trade journals, theater programs, and local newsreels—Abel shows how entrepreneurs worked to lure moviegoers from Detroit’s diverse ethnic neighborhoods into the theaters. Covering topics such as distribution, programming practices, nonfiction film, and movie coverage in local newspapers, with entr’actes that dive deeper into the roles of key individuals and organizations, this book examines how efforts in regional metropolitan cities like Detroit worked alongside California studios and New York head offices to bolster a mass culture of moviegoing in the United States.

Kai Lewis is a TV reporter with the inside scoop on Detroit's juiciest corruption scandals. Years ago, her affair with Frank Anderson, the very handsome but very married lead news anchor, had taken her body, soul, and career to new heights. But Kai's thrill ride with Frank ended in an unspeakable tragedy. Now, she avoids his advances, despite the deep feelings for him that still undeniably linger within her. Anxious to move on, Kai initiates a summer fling with Deandre Grant, a sexy NBA player with mind-blowing bedroom skills. Soon, Kai finds herself hungering for more than a casual relationship, and she's overjoyed when Deandre confesses that he feels the same way. Unfortunately, their beautiful beginning is tainted when their relationship hits two major roadblocks: Kai's sister, LaNaya, a video vixen and exotic dancer, who gets caught up in a sexy webcam operation with dangerous consequences just as Kai is trying to sort out her own love life; and Janice, Deandre's deranged baby-mama. On a business trip to Atlanta, Kai discovers something about Frank, her former flame, that changes her perspective on the past. Will this new information open the door for reconciliation with him, or will she go all the way with Deandre? Kai reports the news every day, but there is much more drama off the air, when it comes to her own life. This novel is a tale of fate, desire and the unexpected.

The first book in the long-running Amos Walker Mysteries introduces the hard-boiled Detroit detective as he searches for an aging mobster’s missing adopted daughter Private eye Amos Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was thrown out of the Police Academy for punching a fellow cadet. He’s a hard man in a ruined city, scratching out a living looking for lost things. Walker’s latest case comes by way of ex-mobster Ben Morningstar, who’s been living out his retirement in Phoenix while raising Maria, the daughter of a long-ago murdered friend. Only now, Maria is missing and the gangster needs Walker’s help. But the trail has gone cold—the only clue is a faded pornographic snapshot. Never one to give up, Walker witnesses the kidnapping of a former Vietnam friend and solves the murder of a young black labor leader while slugging his way to a solution. Fans of Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction will find Estleman’s lean prose, retro style, and tough-guy hero irresistible. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

When Kai takes a trip to Costa Rica with Santiago to attend his sister’s wedding, she can’t help but fantasize about her own happily-ever-after, but her excursion in paradise is interrupted by someone from Santiago’s past, someone who makes Kai question the man she longs to open her heart to. Is Santiago worthy of her love, or is he harboring a destructive secret? Back in Detroit, at the Channel 5 news desk, Kai is excited to hold the coveted spot as lead anchor. The fact that she is filling in for her trifling ex, Frank, definitely doesn’t diminish her resolve to advance her career. Unfortunately, someone at the TV station has a sinister plan. For Kai Lewis, danger is never too far away. Meanwhile, Kai is invited to interview for the job of a lifetime. As badly as she wants to seize the opportunity, she is reluctant to leave her family and the love of her life behind to move across the country. While she struggles with the difficult decision, a trial gets underway to decide the fate of her nemesis, Tisha. Despite Tisha’s laundry list of dirty deeds, her clever defense attorney has concocted a brilliant strategy, and Kai is concerned that the jury will acquit her instead of throwing her salty behind under the jail where she belongs. After the unnerving and shocking display of that lawyer’s slick courtroom antics, Kai finds herself confronted by her second nemesis, Madison, in the most disrespectful way. Kai’s life as a single mother and her work schedule allow her limited free time to spend with her man, but she tries her best to make every minute count, and her fantasies of a brighter future bring a smile to her face. With the love and support of her family, Kai feels nothing can stop her. But just as she’s on the verge of realizing a dream-come-true, she makes a devastating mistake that could cost her everything. Can Kai and her sister, LaNaya, undo the damage before it’s too late? Kai has already endured years of unspeakable drama from outsiders, but this time, she is responsible for a situation that could be the cause of her own downfall. In this final installment of The Motor City Drama Series, sex, witness testimony, and videotape distort reality.

Willie Bledsoe, only in his twenties, is totally burned out. After leaving behind a snug berth at Tuskegee Institute to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Detroit to try to change the world, Willie quickly grows disenchanted and returns home to Alabama to try to come to grips about his time in the cultural whirlwind. But the surprise return of his Vietnam veteran brother in the spring of 1967 gives him a chance to drive a load of stolen guns back up to the Motor City, which would give him enough money to jump-start his dream of moving to New York. There, on the opening day of the 1968 baseball season—postponed two days in deference to the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.—Willie learns some terrifying news: the Detroit police are still investigating the last unsolved murder from the bloody, apocalyptic race riot of the previous summer, and a Detroit cop named Frank Doyle will not rest until the case is solved. And Willie is his prime suspect. Bill Morris' rich and thrilling new novel sets Doyle's hunt against the tumultuous history of one of America's most fascinating cities, as Doyle and Willie struggle with disillusionment, revenge, and forgiveness—and the realization that justice is rarely attainable, and rarely just.

This is the first-ever historical study across all musical genres in any American metropolis. Detroit in the 1940s-60s was not just "the capital of the twentieth century" for industry and the war effort, but also for the quantity and extremely high quality of its musicians, from jazz to classical to ethnic. The author, a Detroiter from 1943, begins with a reflection of his early life with his family and others, then weaves through the music traffic of all the sectors of a dynamic and volatile city. Looking first at the crucial role of the public schools in fostering talent, Motor City Music surveys the neighborhoods of older European immigrants and of the later huge waves of black and white southerners who migrated to Detroit to serve the auto and defense industries. Jazz stars, polka band leaders, Jewish violinists, and figures like Lily Tomlin emerge in the spotlight. Shaping institutions, from the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers through radio stations and Motown, all deployed music to bring together a city rent by relentless segregation, policing, and spasms of violence. The voices of Detroit's poets, writers, and artists round out the chorus.