Showing results by publisher "WildBlue Press" in Politics & Social Sciences

Terrifying things are happening to Kay Weden, a 40-something single mom and high school teacher in Salisbury, North Carolina. Despite having no known enemies, Kay's home, car, and peace of mind are under attack throughout 1993. Most chilling of all are the senseless attacks on her only son and the shot fired in the night through a wall of her house, which narrowly misses his head as he sleeps.

In the early morning of March 6, 1993, an intense fire broke out in a tiny nursery. Sixteen minutes later, firefighters had extinguished the blaze, only to reveal a room burned so severely, everything was virtually unrecognizable. Then, they were told to look for a baby. What they discovered looked more like a monster from a horror film; the small skull had been incinerated, and the legs and arms were nothing more than charred stumps. The only identifiable human feature was the baby's genitals, covered in what remained of his diaper.

Mothers & Murderers: A True Story of Love, Lies, Obsession...and Second Chances takes listeners on a wild tragicomic ride from the criminal courtrooms of California’s Silicon Valley to the Himalayan mountains of Pakistan to the deserts of Ethiopia. In delightful, insightful prose, Ellison reflects on her mistakes and her triumphs as she weaves together the stories of how her Pulitzer Prize-winning career almost ended before it began, how she nearly missed marrying the love of her life, and how she unwittingly got drawn into a stranger-than-fiction murder case.

On a cold Southern night in 2013 under a full moon, 20-year-old Heather Elvis parked her car at a boat ramp along the Intracoastal Waterway and was never seen again. A series of sensational trials involving a handsome restaurant coworker and his Disneyland-obsessed wife resulted in shocking verdicts - but no body - as her family desperately sought closure and fought for justice, and a resort town struggled to regain calm.

The four-year-old Brandon Sims had not been seen since July 3, 1992, when he attended a birthday party with his 20-year-old mother, Michelle Jones. For years, Jones lied to her friends about Brandon, telling some that he was living with his father and others that he was staying with his grandmother in another state. When Brandon’s father, who had been in jail, came looking for Brandon, Michelle’s shocked friends confronted her. She confessed that Brandon was dead. She repeated her story of how Brandon died to a detective. The detective didn’t believe her story. 

Ejaz Ahmad was handsome, charismatic, and a self-made businessman. He arrived in the United States from Pakistan determined to fulfill his mother's dying wish: to come to America, complete his education, and make his mark in the world. Settling in Memphis, Tennessee, Ejaz became owner of several businesses, father to a handsome boy, and a devout Muslim. The only thing missing in his life was a wife, someone special to protect, honor, and love. Leah Ward was a pretty girl, but a prison parolee with a questionable past.

As the sun rises over the quiet city of Kingston, New York, on July 12, 1988, a local transient discovers the remains of 19-year-old Anna Kithcart. She was strangled and beaten to death, with the letters "KKK" carved into her thighs. While her heartbroken family mourns, and the police work around the clock to uncover the truth, the investigation is complicated by the entrance of the Reverend Al Sharpton who insists that a racist killer is responsible. Only solving the crime can quell the chaos that threatens to ignite a powder keg of racial tension to catch the real killer.

Born in 1960, Jesus Ruiz Henao grew up poor, but wanted to be rich like the drug dealers he saw growing up in the cocaine-producing region of Colombia’s Valle of the Cauca. To realize his ambition, Ruiz Henao moved to London, United Kingdom, in 1985. There, he and his wife settled in the quiet suburb of Hendon, where he held down mundane but respectable cleaning and bus driving jobs. At least to outward appearances....

Sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years, Underwood has no intention of staying in prison, and vows not to stop until he exacts revenge on those he blames for his current predicament. His thirst for revenge will not be quenched until more blood is shed. Underwood rages on, plotting his next move, enlisting others to perform the evil deeds he imagines. Wreaking havoc in the lives of Kay, Jason, Detective May, and others, he sends them all on an emotional roller coaster ride that never seems to end.

Early in the evening on July 18, 1959, Dr. Bernard Finch and his girlfriend, Carole Ann Tregoff, drove from their Las Vegas love-nest to the Finch home in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina to speak to his wife Barbara about obtaining a speedy divorce in Nevada. But the plan went awry and the conversation turned deadly with Barbara’s lifeless body ending up in her in-laws’ backyard next door.

On June 1, 1981, two young activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, were murdered in Seattle in what was made to appear like a gang slaying. But the victims' families and friends suspected they were considered a threat to the dictatorship of Phillippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his regime's relationship to the United States. But how could they prove it up against such powerful and ruthless adversaries?

In 1968, a budding New York City entrepreneur who provided immigrants with jobs takes a Florida vacation with his family. Meanwhile, his relative, an employee, is murdered on Long Island. Upon returning to New York, Sam Sommer learns the fate of his wife’s uncle, Irving Silver, when he doesn’t show up to carpool to work. Three days pass with no clues about his death. Then Sam is kidnapped by detectives with the engine still running. While held in custody, he is beaten and allegedly confesses to the murder.

This is the refugee story behind the headlines and political posturing. This is what coming to America has meant to refugees in America, as represented by various refugees communities that over the years have come to think of Denver, Colorado, as home.

On a frigid winter night in early 1963, Rocco Anthony Balliro and a pair of associates stormed a darkened apartment on the outskirts of Boston and were immediately embroiled in a deadly shootout with several unseen assailants. Unbeknownst to Rocco at the time, the men who returned his fire were several Boston police officers, waiting in ambush for him. It was, as Rocco later described it, a hastily planned rescue mission that went downhill in a hurry. In the aftermath, his beloved girlfriend and her toddler son lay dead.

It was a dreary winter afternoon in Ayer, Massachusetts, a quintessential New England town, the type that is romanticized in Robert Frost’s poems. But on January 30, 1979, a woman’s scream was heard piercing the northeast tempest wind. In an unassuming apartment building on Washington Street, Elaine Tyree, a mother, wife, and US Army soldier, had her life brutally ripped from her. Her husband, William Tyree, a Special Forces soldier, was convicted of this heinous murder, which he has always vehemently denied.