Showing results by narrator "Tom Weiner" in All Categories

No one really notices that a certain horse race might have been fixed until Matt O’Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellman’s question for Matt: Was the death of 92-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago’s oldest active bookie, suicide or murder? Glockner was Kellman’s late uncle, and Kellman, a man familiar with the Chicago mob, wants Matt to check it out.

Jack Doyle, former advertising man, amateur boxer, and Chicago racetrack publicist, undertakes a new job in the world of Thoroughbred horse racing: jockey agent. His client is Mickey Sheehan, a seventeenyearold female riding phenomenon from Ireland, who has decided to try her luck in the States. She and Doyle prove an effective team, until someone secretly begins administering dangerous illegal medications to horses.

Communist China is lying, cheating, and stealing its way into becoming a global superpower. And what’s worse, President Obama is not only letting this happen but helping China do so. So argues best-selling author William Triplett II and Washington Times editor Brett M. Decker in their shocking book, Bowing to Beijing.

The threat of terrorism in America, the Obama administration assures us, is contained and controlled. Attempted attacks like the Times Square bombing, the “underwear bombing” on a flight over Detroit, and the attack on a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Oregon were all isolated plots that failed. In the words of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, “The system worked.” Don't believe it.

Eric Klinenberg's Fighting for Air takes us into the world of preprogrammed radio shows, empty television news stations, and copycat newspapers to show how corporate ownership and control of local media has remade American political and cultural life. Klinenberg argues that the demise of truly local media stems from the federal government's malign neglect.

In 1862, Ulysses S. Grant achieved what President Lincoln had sought since the start of the War: the first decisive Union victory. Fought on the western edge of the theater, the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign was a gruesome omen of what was to come.

Al Silverman, a noted figure in American publishing, has written a wonderful chronicle of book publishing for all who cherish books. The Time of Their Lives is not only a love song to the industry's golden age, an era that began after World War II and lasted for three-plus decades, but it is also a reflection of the tastes and cultural appetites of the American public.

Was aviation pioneer and popular American hero Charles A. Lindbergh a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite? Or was he the target of a vicious personal vendetta by President Roosevelt? In Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt, author James Duffy tackles these questions head-on, by examining the conflicting personalities, aspirations, and actions of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles A. Lindbergh.

Jargan is a summer gambler wintering in the western town of Big Horn when he saves the life of Don José Cordoba and unwittingly acquires a new job. Soon he finds himself on a boat to Buenos Aires, having gained passage as the horse handler of two extraordinary horses: one called El Pantera, and a killer named Asesinato. He must use his innate wisdom and survival skills to protect himself and his charge against malignant men with a brutal love of cruelty.

When the most hated landlord in San Francisco takes an unexpected jump off the roof of his own building, it isn't too hard to find suspects. But the police want to call it a suicide, since both the mayor and the press are complaining about the dismal closure rate for homicide investigations. But ex-cop Sam McGowan knows it was murder. He also knows that anyone living on the top floor of the building should be a suspect, including himself. So Sam decides to get to know his neighbors.

CIA sleuth Roger Wagner has retired and moved to Florida with his smart, pretty wife. But his leisure is disrupted when the body of a fellow secret agent washes ashore near his beach-front house. The incident launches him on a frantic, hazardous race against time to neutralize a doomsday bomb hidden by a group of terrorists, who are holding his wife—and the entire state of Florida—hostage.

In its first appearance with a text based on the author's holographic manuscript, three cowhands working for the Springer Ranch have tried, through forging letters, to discourage a schoolteacher in the East from coming West to teach school. Their strategy has failed because of a mysterious Frank Owens whose love letters have convinced her that she must come. No one knows who he is.

Roger Wagner, CIA sleuth with a gift for wry jokes, is given 10 days to uncover an assassination plot against the President of the United States, who is scheduled to give a crucial speech in Munich. Wagner's frantic search leads him through the German underworld, neo-Nazi dens, glossy jet-set salons, and the highest levels of government.

Growing numbers of Americans are doing work that they care about and enjoy. But they're frustrated by stagnant wages, shrinking health coverage, shaky pension plans, and company polices that make it more difficult for them to do their jobs well. Corporate executives may be becoming less loyal to their employees, but those same employees still want to be loyal to their company.

The newest addition to Palgrave's Great Generals series focuses on Andrew Jackson's career including his time as a general in Tennessee and his rise up the Army ranks. Jackson's effective use of spies in wartime and of martial law in peacetime sparked a debate about the curtailing of civil liberties in the name of national security that continues to this day.

In this groundbreaking new book, best-selling author Rowan Scarborough reveals how CIA bureaucrats are undermining President Bush and the war on terror through disinformation, incompetence, and outright sabotage. Using his first-rate sources in all levels of national security, from field officers to high ranking analysts to former intelligence heads, Scarborough paints a disturbing picture of partisan politics endangering the success of our campaigns abroad and the very lives of our soldiers and agents.

Hootenville, Pennsylvania: It looks like any conventional company town, but beneath its placid surface throbs a network of violence, blackmail, and murder. It takes an ex-Army spy to coolly fit together the puzzle and expose the game of terror, intrigue, and cunning known as industrial espionage. Someone at Hooten Plastics Corporation has been selling its manufacturing secrets.

William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 - February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy and criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies that he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate states.

In Obamanomics, Timothy P. Carney shows how the economic corruption of President Obama's Washington is far beyond political business as usual. From a free-spending stimulus package that was a treasure trove for Obama-friendly corporate interests and lobbyists, to the revolving door between Wall Street and the Obama administration, to putting the unions in the driver's seat of GM and Chrysler, Obamanomics tells it all.

This entertaining collection features 13 short mystery stories from some of our finest writers, all based on a piece of music. Editors Claudia Bishop and Don Bruns present the stories with two essays, discussing the short mystery and the musical mystery.