One Tuesday Down By The River

Part of a series for young African students and consisting of stories from all over Africa. The "JAWS" starters, which are at three levels, are intended to encourage children who are learning to read. This story is about the environment and how people's thoughtless actions can destroy it.

In the peaceful town of Grace Valley, neighbors are like family—and just as meddlesome, too. June Hudson is the town's doctor, a caring, capable woman who now has a bit of explaining to do. People are beginning to notice the bloom in her cheeks—and the swell of her belly. Happily, DEA agent Jim Post is back in June's arms for good, newly retired from undercover work and ready for new beginnings here in Grace Valley. Expecting the unexpected is a way of life in Grace Valley, and the community is overflowing with gossip right now. Who is the secret paramour June's aunt Myrna is hiding? Does the town's poker-playing pastor have too many aces up his sleeve? But when dangers, from man and nature, rise up with a vengeance to threaten June and the town, this community pulls together and shows what it's made of. And Jim discovers the true meaning of happiness here in Grace Valley: there really is no place like home.

Lionel Bruno Jordan was murdered on January 20, 1995, in an El Paso parking lot, but he keeps coming back as the key to a multibillion-dollar drug industry, two corrupt governments -- one called the United States and the other Mexico -- and a self-styled War on Drugs that is a fraud. Beneath all the policy statements and bluster of politicians is a real world of lies, pain, and big money. Down by the River is the true narrative of how a murder led one American family into this world and how it all but destroyed them. It is the story of how one Mexican drug leader outfought and outthought the U.S. government, of how major financial institutions were fattened on the drug industry, and how the governments of the U.S. and Mexico buried everything that happened. All this happens down by the river, where the public fictions finally end and the facts read like fiction. This is a remarkable American story about drugs, money, murder, and family.

Complex, densely textured literary novel, constructed somewhat loosely around a tornado, a mountain lion attack, and several alternative potentialities, set in Cathar County, Nebraska sometime in the recent past, or perhaps the present, or perhaps the future, rich in biblical allusions and many a pop-cultural reference not to mention the scientific method. Alternatively humorous, heartbreaking, and profound. Featuring characters named Faith and Arch and A. Jacks and Parrish and May and Hanratty and Helen and Horton, and others too numerous to mention, none of whom are less real than any other reality. Faith seeks recovery of a twin son apparently captured by a big cat. Arch seeks to tune in an elusive frequency. A. Jacks seeks to re-construct a Valhalla collapsed by a cyclone. Parish seeks spiritual deliverance in a coming apocalypse. A two-million dollar accidental death insurance policy hands in the balance. Stream of consciousness constructs a beginning, a middle and an end.

"You already been a punk. Least you can do is go out like a man." Then a dull popping sound and a quiet splash. In his third appearance in George Pelecanos's acclaimed series, Nick Stefanos has been spending too much time with bad women and bad booze. Which is why he wakes up one blurry morning on the banks of the Anacostia River, hungover and miserable -- and now a witness to a murder. With the help of a partner as straight-arrow as Nick is bent, Nick decides to track down the killer, an investigation that leads them through the roughest part of the nation's capital, and into the blackest parts of the human soul.

Winner of the RBA Prize for Crime Writing Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault, a charge that lands him in the notorious Rikers Island prison. A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid by someone in the NYPD to frame him all those years ago, King realises that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of - and why. At the same time, King must investigate the case of black radical journalist Leonard Compton, aka A Free Man, accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic drugs and women into the city's poorest neighbourhoods. In pursuit of justice, our hero must beat dirty cops and even dirtier bankers. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: Compton's, and King's own.

One beautiful autumn day, Art sets out with his mother and grandfather for a fishing trip. Fishing days are Art’s favorite. He loves learning the ropes from Grandpa—the different kinds of flies and tackle and the trout that frequent their favorite river. Art especially appreciates Grandpa’s stories. But, this time, hearing the story about Mom’s big catch on her first cast ever makes Art feel insecure about his own fishing skills. But, as Art hooks a beautiful brown trout, he finds reassurance in Grandpa’s stories and marvels in the sport and a day spent with family, promising to continue the tradition with his own grandkids generations later. Illustrated with lush imagery by rising star April Chu, Down by the River celebrates fishing, family, and fun.

Down River is the winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Novel. Everything that shaped him happened near that river.... Now its banks are filled with lies and greed, shame, and murder.... John Hart's debut, The King of Lies, was compelling and lyrical, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "There hasn't been a thriller as showily literate since Scott Turow came along." Now, in Down River, Hart makes a scorching return to Rowan County, where he drives his characters to the edge, explores the dark side of human nature, and questions the fundamental power of forgiveness. Adam hase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred thin. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood---a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he's ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fades into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he's back and nobody knows why, not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind. But Adam has his reasons. Within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family and the women he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam's return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life, not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he's ever wanted. Bestselling author John Hart holds nothing back as he strips his characters bare. Secrets explode, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink into deadly behavior as he examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge. A powerful, heart-pounding thriller, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned. Praise for John Hart and The King of Lies "Treat yourself to something new and truly out of the ordinary." ---Rocky Mountain News "A top-notch debut. Hart's prose is like Raymond Chandler's, angular and hard." --Entertainment Weekly (grade A) "A gripping performance." ---People magazine "A marriage of carefully crafted prose alongside have-to-keep-reading suspense." ---The Denver Post "A masterful piece of writing." ---The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) "A gripping mystery/thriller and a fully fleshed, thoughtful work of literature." ---Winston-Salem Journal "The King of Lies moves and reads like a book on fire." ---Pat Conroy "John Hart's debut . . . is that most engrossing of rarities, a well-plotted mystery novel that is written in a beautifully poetic style." ---Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama "Grisham-style intrigue and Turow-style brooding." ---The New York Times Now with an excerpt from John Hart's next book The Hush, available in February 2018.