The Bane Of Cinco De Mayo

The Bane of Cinco de Mayo follows the ill-fated career of a Mexican immigrant who enters the U. S. illegally, becomes naturalized, and joins the Central Intelligence Agency. He distinguishes himself on black missions that involve international intrigue and assassinations. He becomes disillusioned with the political environment and turns into a renegade (wet rogue agent – WRA). The plot thickens when he attempts to murder a governor who is campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Like the two earlier books in the trilogy, this one deals with a potpourri of unlikely characters who are drawn together by ironies and individual agendas.

The Pro Patria Project (“for one’s country”) is the sequel to the author’s The ProCon Conspiracy. It involves a dozen powerful men – six each from the federal and private sectors – who hatch a plot to assassinate a dozen of the nation’s most prominent citizens. Believing these men are undermining the country’s morals and values, the Committee of Twelve consists of the National Security Advisor, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Secretary of Defense, Directors of the CIA and FBI, and a U. S. Congressman. Pardoned men from the defunct ProCon Conspiracy are recruited by the Committee to plan and execute the plot. General Henry Mullaire and Colonel Manfred West, co-conspirators during the ProCon debacle, manage an intriguing scheme that uses desperate men to carry out the ruthless murders. No witnesses remain at the end; no stone is left unturned. pThe third book in the trilogy, The Bane of Cinco de Mayo, will follow later this year.

The story of two boys from the Deep South - one black, the other white - who form an unlikely alliance during the post-Depression era. They survive racial prejudice at home and fight side-by-side during the war in Southeast Asia. They return home heroes, still best friends, and end up depending upon one another until their deaths. The black returns as an ace combat fighter pilot with the stars of a general officer. His friend retires as a senior enlisted man. The story also chronicles the close relationship of the boys' parents at a time when it was unusual and dangerous for the races to coexist like good neighbors.

It is April and Mr. Freeze is being released from Arkham Asylum, and it is up to Batman to make sure he has really mended his ways--then on Cinco de Mayo, Robin leads his friends into battle in Gotham's seedy underworld.

Tex-Mex waitress and part-time reporter Josie Callahan serves up more Lone Star justice in this spicy mystery from the author of The Good, the Bad, and the Guacamole. It's fiesta time in Broken Boot, Texas, and tourists are pouring into town faster than free beer at a bull roping for the mouthwatering Cinco de Mayo festivities. Tex-Mex waitress Josie Callahan, her feisty abuela, and even her spunky Chihuahua Lenny are polishing their folklórico dances for Saturday's big parade, while Uncle Eddie is adding his own spicy event to the fiesta menu: Broken Boot's First Annual Charity Chili Cook-off. But Uncle Eddie's hopes of impressing the town council go up in smoke when cantankerous chili cook Lucky Straw is found dead in his tent. And when Josie's beloved uncle is accused of fatal negligence, she, Lenny, and the steadfast Detective Lightfoot must uncover who ended the ambitious chilihead's life--before another cook kicks the bucket.

What really happened on the first Thanksgiving? How did a British drinking song become the US national anthem? And what makes Superman so darned American? Every tradition, even the noblest and most cherished, has a history, none more so than in the United States—a nation born with relative indifference, if not hostility, to the past. Most Americans would be surprised to learn just how recent (and controversial) the origins of their traditions are, as well as how those origins are often related to such divisive forces as the trauma of the Civil War or fears for American identity stemming from immigration and socialism. In pithy, entertaining chapters, Inventing American Tradition explores a set of beloved traditions spanning political symbols, holidays, lifestyles, and fictional characters—everything from the anthem to the American flag, blue jeans, and Mickey Mouse. Shedding light on the individuals who created these traditions and their motivations for promoting them, Jack David Eller reveals the murky, conflicted, confused, and contradictory history of emblems and institutions we very often take to be the bedrock of America. What emerges from this sideways take on our most celebrated Americanisms is the realization that all traditions are invented by particular people at particular times for particular reasons, and that the process of “traditioning” is forever ongoing—especially in the land of the free.