This dark historical adventure captures the beginnings of the Hollywood studio system and the blue movie industry that grows up alongside it.

Los Angeles, 1916: Photographer Bill Ogden has opened a portrait studio in the seedy noir world of early Hollywood, where he is joined by his granddaughter, Flavia--a woman in need of a fresh start after bludgeoning her drunken, abusive husband to death in Wichita. Though his business is mainly legit, Bill finds himself brushing up against the blue movie porn industry growing in the shadows of the motion picture mainstream.

When a series of grisly murders take place across the city, Bill and his capable granddaughter are pulled into events as tricky and tangled as anything this side of The Big Sleep. We meet dreamers, opportunists, washed-up former stars and starry-eyed newcomers, a cast of unforgettable characters living on the margins looking to make a quick buck, launch a career, or just keep their family together. The Devil Raises His Own is at once a stripped-down noir thriller and a panoramic look at Los Angeles at the beginning of motion pictures--a Boogie Nights set in the era of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin from one of the best crime novelists working today.

Introducing photographer and saloon owner Bill Ogden. Perfect for fans of Deadwood and Justified

In 1872, Cottonwood, Kansas, is a one-horse speck on the map; a community of run-down farms, dusty roads, and two-bit crooks. Self-educated saloon owner and photographer Bill Ogden looks on his adopted town with an eye to making a profit or getting out. His brains and ambition bring him to the attention of one Marc Leval, a wealthy Chicago developer with big plans for the small town. The advent of the railroad and rumors of a cattle trail turn Cottonwood into a wild and wooly boomtown--and with Leval as a partner, Ogden dreams of bringing civilization to the prairie.

But civilizing the Great Plains was never that simple. While many in Cottonwood distrust Leval's motives, and mob violence threatens to derail the town's dreams of greatness, Ogden finds himself dangerously obsessed with Leval's stunningly beautiful wife. Meanwhile, plying its sinister trade unnoticed, an apparently ordinary local farm family quietly butchers traveling salesmen, weary travelers, and other unsuspecting wanderers.

In his own inimitable brand of narrative wizardry, Scott Phillips traces the metamorphosis of a frontier town that becomes a lightning rod for sin, corruption, and murder. He also brings to life actual crimes that befell Kansas in the 1870s and 1880s, carried out by a strange clan who popularly became known as the Bloody Benders. Brilliantly written, maliciously fun, and full of many surprises, Cottonwood is historical fiction at its finest.

A DARKLY COMIC, SOMETIMES BRUTAL PIECE OF NOIR FICTION.
-The Denver Post

Finalist for the Hammett Prize

As a ten-year-old boy inspired by fellow Ohioan, Neil Armstrong, when he landed on the moon in 1969, Scott dreamed of someday becoming part of something larger than himself. Ten years later, through a series of serendipitous life events, Scott Phillips embarked on a career with NASA's groundbreaking Space Shuttle Program. He was the last team member to exit the first External Tank prior to its maiden flight on April 12, 1981, and saved the Remove Before Flight ribbon as a memento. What followed was an extraordinary thirty-three-year adventure, encompassing the entire span of the program--from the depths of tragedy to the exclusive never-before-seen photos and first-hand stories. Remove Before Flight takes the reader on a historical and personal journey that will enlighten and entertain.

Legal decisions continue to mystify: why was this person sentenced to 20 years in prison, but that person to just 10 years for the same crime? Why did one person sue for civil damages, but another let the matter drop? Legal rules are supposed to answer these questions, but their answers are radically incomplete. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a theory that predicted and explained legal decisions?

Drawing on Donald Black's theoretical ideas, Geometrical Justice: The Death Penalty in America addresses these issues, focusing specifi cally on who is sentenced to death and executed in the United States. The book explains why some murders are more serious than others and how the social characteristics of defendants, victims, and jurors aff ect case outcomes. Building on the most rigorous data in the field, the authors reveal wide discrepancies in capital punishment - why one person lives, but another person dies.

Geometrical Justice will be of interest to those engaged in criminal justice, criminology, and socio- legal studies, as well as students taking courses on sentencing, corrections, and capital punishment.

Are you frustrated your middle school science students can't write?

Whether you call them Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) or Conclusions Based on Data (CBDs), seemingly all science teachers struggle with student writing. This simple six-sentence, step-by-step, one-day lesson allows students to produce fantastic work in minutes. You'll grade each paper in seconds and truly know who understands the material and who does not.

Students will write them in minutes and you'll learn to grade them in seconds! The author went from using them three times per year to more than sixty times per year because they are the most effective method to guage student understanding.

But what happened to him in those missing years? What happened to Maggie, to Bill, and their escape from the murderous Bender family?

Hop Alley answers all those questions as we return to the Wild West and discover Bill Ogden, now living as Bill Sadlaw, running a photo studio near the Chinese part of town know as Hop Alley in the frontier town of Denver in 1878. Left by Maggie, Bill enjoys an erotic affair with Priscilla, a fallen singer addicted to laudanum, who is also seeing his friend Ralph Banbury, the editor of the local Denver Bulletin (neither man minds sharing). Bill's peaceful time away from Cottonwood turns anything but as he must confront the mysterious murder of his housekeeper's brother-in-law, the increasing instability of Priscilla as both men try to ease out of her clutches, and an all out-riot across Hop Alley. And when the body count starts rising, Bill will soon start wishing he had never left Cottonwood at all.

Hop Alley proves that no one does the Wild West like noir master Scott Phillips.

Dr. Crandall Taylor--or rather the actor who plays him--is enjoying a cushy new life in the City of the Lights where his now-cancelled American soap opera has become a prime time retro cult hit. This newfound stardom isn't wasted on him. Anxious to keep his brutal past a secret from fans, he's enjoying all the fruits that fame has to offer: adulation, entrée into the trendiest clubs, and sex. What he really wants is to fund a feature film.

Crandall uses his charm and intellect to draw into his narcissistic web four women: a horny network executive; an internet porn star; a bookish university student with a nasty bent; and the fetching starlet wife of an arms dealer. Crandall accepts both the crime lord's cash and his beautiful wife's advances. Big mistake. Now Crandall must channel his violent, megalomaniacal dark side just to stay alive--and on the run.

From the national bestselling author of The Ice Harvest comes an ingeniously twisty old-school noir along the lines of James M. Cain (Spinetingler Magazine). With it, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know . . . quintessential American huckster . . . and in Phillip's sly, deft hands we find ourselves sinking down eagerly with him, glorying in the beautiful muck (Edgar Award-winning author Megan Abbott).

Legal decisions continue to mystify: why was this person sentenced to 20 years in prison, but that person to just 10 years for the same crime? Why did one person sue for civil damages, but another let the matter drop? Legal rules are supposed to answer these questions, but their answers are radically incomplete. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a theory that predicted and explained legal decisions?

Drawing on Donald Black's theoretical ideas, Geometrical Justice: The Death Penalty in America addresses these issues, focusing specifi cally on who is sentenced to death and executed in the United States. The book explains why some murders are more serious than others and how the social characteristics of defendants, victims, and jurors aff ect case outcomes. Building on the most rigorous data in the field, the authors reveal wide discrepancies in capital punishment - why one person lives, but another person dies.

Geometrical Justice will be of interest to those engaged in criminal justice, criminology, and socio- legal studies, as well as students taking courses on sentencing, corrections, and capital punishment.

Joining Seattle, Memphis, Phoenix, and other noir outposts, St. Louis gets a turn to show its dark side in Phillips' collection of 13 dark tales and a poetic interlude . . . [A] spirited, black-hearted collection. --Kirkus Reviews

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Brand-new stories by: Calvin Wilson, LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, John Lutz, Paul D. Marks, Colleen J. McElroy, Jason Makansi, S.L. Coney, Michael Castro, Laura Benedict, Jedidiah Ayres, Umar Lee, Chris Barsanti, L.J. Smith, and Scott Phillips.

From the introduction by Scott Phillips:

The St. Louis region has had a rough time over the past few years. A number of our school districts are unaccredited. A large section of a North St. Louis County landfill is burning uncontrolled--yes, it's on fire--and said fire is only yards away from a World War II-era radioactive waste dump. There's the matter of the region's de facto segregation, a persistent pox on the city and county decades after the explicit, institutional variety became illegal. A number of our suburban municipalities have lately been exposed in the act of strong-arming their poorest citizens, running what amount to debtors' prisons. In recent years one of those cities, Ferguson, has become a national synonym for police misconduct and institutional racism . . .

Amid all this is a rich, multicultural history of art and literature both high and low, stemming from conflict and passions running hot . . . This collection strives for some of that same energy that the collision of high and low can produce . . . All these writers come at their work with different perspectives and styles but all with a connection to and a passion for our troubled city and its surroundings.

Do your students struggle to remember lessons just days after you taught them?

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Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He's just sunk his last $200,000--a clandestine loan from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill--into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn's priceless paintings, a victimless crime. But for Rigby to pull this one off, he'll need to negotiate a whole cast of players with their own agendas, including his wife, his girlfriend, an embittered art forger, Glenn's resentful nurse, and the man's money-hungry nephew. One misstep, and it all falls apart--will he be able to save his skin?

Written with hard-knock sensibility and wicked humor, Scott Phillips's newest novel will cement him as one of the great crime writers of the 21st century.

• Minimum wage jobs that pay $250/hour or more, come with a 5-year contract, and end with $1M in savings.
• An economy in space that operates at an exponentially higher level of prices and wages (an Economic Conjugate) than our current domestic economy on Earth, which RESULTS in:
• A massive public return on investment (ROI) on public funds invested in space and collected via taxes and fees on that space economy, which then DELIVERS:
• A Trifecta Economy on Earth of low taxes, high benefits, and no public debt, which then FINANCES:
• The cost of a full transition to a carbon-free, net-zero economy, the elimination of all poverty, and the creation of modern institutions and services from higher education to healthcare that are accessible to everyone and the pride of all.

This is a fantastic future if you can get it and The New Frontier Playbook proposes a roadmap to get it. It offers a new vision and framework focused on the practical political and economic building blocks that must align to create a more powerful case for betting big on our own future: Growth, jobs, and economic prosperity.

The New Frontier Playbook offers a vision for a future where America is coming together, not racing apart, and one in which families can be confident that their children will have a future that is bolder and more prosperous than their own.