The Monsters of Chavez Ravine


Book Description

Los Angeles, 1952. When her father is attacked under mysterious circumstances, 22-year-old Trini Duran must return home to Chavez Ravine, a neighborhood mostly abandoned after the government sent letters to residents demanding that they leave.Only two hundred stubborn holdouts remain.While the Mexican American community fights to save their homes, they face a new threat that is even harder to combat than the politicians who want them gone.Trini discovers the city and the supernatural have joined forces against her old neighborhood-monstrous creatures emerge at night, terrorizing the holdouts.Trini, a handsome community organizer, a healer with dubious skills and a ragtag group of fighters, take up arms against the elusive enemy.But to stop the demon invasion, Trini must decide how far she's willing to go to save the place she once left behind.




Escape Book


Book Description

Solve strange puzzles and riddles with scary monsters in order to escape the book, in the third installment of The Escape Book series! Beware brave souls, you’re trapped! In the middle of a carnival, you discover a mysterious building and you're in for the fright of your life! Locked in this strange place inhabited by vampires, dancing ghosts, and even Frankenstein, you must now find a way to escape. Will you be able to solve the bizarre puzzles and rise to the challenge? It will take everything you’ve got to make it out safely. Bring the excitement of the popular escape room activity with you everywhere you go in this third book, Madam Mortell's Haunted House. You will need to keep your cool to free yourself because who knows what terrifying monsters you'll encounter along the way!




Bleeding Dodger Blue


Book Description




Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever


Book Description

NEW ENTRY IN THE MONSTER HUNTER MEMOIRS SERIES: Chloe Mendoza and her team from Monster Hunter International must seek out and destroy an ancient evil threatening Los Angeles at the height of Disco Fever. Los Angeles: the 1970s. Disco is king and the nightclubs are full of young, beautiful people with Saturday night fever. From the Sunset Strip to Hollywood Boulevard, a new era is dawning. But below the glitz and glamor, a darkness lurks. Chloe Mendoza knows darkness. She is a nagualii, a half-demon created by the gods of Central and South America, a daughter of the Court of Feathers, a group of demigods who ruled Mesoamerica before the Spanish arrived. Now, she is a member of Monster Hunter International’s latest team, based in the L.A. Basin. Business is good in the City of Angels, but soon Chloe gets a message from the Court of Feathers, warning her of a Dark Master who is building up its power in the region. Whatever it is, it brings death and carnage with it. Time to boogie. At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). The Monster Hunter Memoirs: Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever The Monster Hunter series: Monster Hunter International Monster Hunter Vendetta Monster Hunter Alpha Monster Hunter Legion Monster Hunter Nemesis Monster Hunter Siege Monster Hunter Guardian Monster Hunter Bloodlines Praise for Monster Hunter Guardian: “Once you open the cover, be prepared for an evening to disappear like a werewolf with a portal ring.” —New York Journal of Books Praise for Larry Correia and the Monster Hunter International series: “[E]verything I like in fantasy: intense action scenes, evil in horrifying array, good struggling against the darkness, and most of all people—gorgeously flawed human beings faced with horrible moral choices that force them to question and change and grow.” —Jim Butcher “[A] no-holds-barred all-out page turner that is part science fiction, part horror, and an absolute blast to read.” —BookReporter.com “If you love monsters and action, you’ll love this book. If you love guns, you’ll love this book. If you love fantasy, and especially horror fantasy, you’ll love this book.” —Knotclan.com “A gun person who likes science fiction—or, heck, anyone who likes science fiction—will enjoy [these books] . . . The plotting is excellent, and Correia makes you care about the characters . . . I read both books without putting them down except for work . . . so whaddaya waitin’ for? Go and buy some . . . for yourself and for stocking stuffers.” —Massad Ayoob “This lighthearted, testosterone-soaked sequel to 2009’s Monster Hunter International will delight fans of action horror with elaborate weaponry, hand-to-hand combat, disgusting monsters, and an endless stream of blood and body parts.” —Publishers Weekly on Monster Hunter Vendetta




Stealing Home


Book Description

A story about baseball, family, the American Dream, and the fight to turn Los Angeles into a big league city. Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now LA would be getting a different sort of utopian fantasy -- a glittering, ultra-modern stadium. But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood's families -- including one, the Aréchigas, who refused to yield their home. The ensuing confrontation captivated the nation - and the divisive outcome still echoes through Los Angeles today.




Scarface and the Untouchable


Book Description

The new definitive history of gangster-era Chicago–a landmark work that is as riveting as a thriller. Now featuring a new preface, plus 115 photographs and a map of gangland Chicago. A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year “Gripping. ... Reads like a novel.” —Chicago “Revolutionizes our understanding of Al Capone and Eliot Ness." —Matthew Pearl In 1929, thirty-year-old gangster Al Capone ruled both Chicago's underworld and its corrupt government. To a public who scorned Prohibition, "Scarface" became a local hero and national celebrity. But after the brutal St. Valentine's Day Massacre transformed Capone into "Public Enemy Number One," the federal government found an unlikely new hero in a twenty-seven-year-old Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. Chosen to head the legendary law enforcement team known as "The Untouchables," Ness set his sights on crippling Capone's criminal empire. Today, no underworld figure is more iconic than Al Capone and no lawman as renowned as Eliot Ness. Yet in 2016 the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Al Capone still awaits the biographer who can fully untangle, and balance, the complexities of his life," while revisionist historians have continued to misrepresent Ness and his remarkable career. Enter Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, a unique and vibrant writing team combining the narrative skill of a master novelist with the scholarly rigor of a trained historian. Collins is the New York Times bestselling author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition. Schwartz is a rising-star historian whose work anticipated the fake-news phenomenon. Scarface and the Untouchable draws upon decades of primary source research—including the personal papers of Ness and his associates, newly released federal files, and long-forgotten crime magazines containing interviews with the gangsters and G-men themselves. Collins and Schwartz have recaptured a bygone bullet-ridden era while uncovering the previously unrevealed truth behind Scarface's downfall. Together they have crafted the definitive work on Capone, Ness, and the battle for Chicago.




Lizard in a Zoot Suit


Book Description

Los Angeles, 1943. It's the era of the Zoot Suit Riots, and Flaca and Cuata have a problem. It's bigger than being grounded by their strict mother. It's bigger than tensions with the soldiers stationed nearby. And it's shaped like a five-foot-tall lizard. When a lost member of an unknown underground species needs help, the sisters must scramble to keep their new friend away from a corrupt military scientist—but they'll do it in style. Cartoonist Marco Finnegan presents Lizard in a Zoot Suit, an outrageous, historical, sci-fi graphic novel.




Conquest of the Useless


Book Description

“Hypnotic….It is ever tempting to try to fathom his restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain , Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle. With fascinating observations about crew and players—including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski—and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.




Graffiti Palace


Book Description

It's August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching - and when white police officers arrest an ordinary black Angeleno named Marquette Frye, they light the touchpaper on six days of rioting. Graffiti Palace follows young African-American graffiti expert Americo Monk as he tries to get home through the chaos, telling the secret history of the riots - and the unfolding story of Los Angeles and black America - along the way. As Monk travels through the streets of South Central LA, he orients himself by gang tags and more intricate and mysterious graffiti symbols towards home. But the cops and the gangs are after the notebook where Monk records the city's graffiti, and which might just be the key to the secret tides of power ebbing below the surface of the city... Bursting at the seams with memorable characters - including Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, sewer-dwelling crack dealers and a legendary Mexican graffiti artist no-one's even sure exists - Graffiti Palace conjures into being a fantastical, living, breathing portrait of Los Angeles in 1965.




Mysterious California


Book Description

Filled with stories of strange phenomena, odd places, and weird beings in the Golden State, Eerie California tells of haunted houses, unexplained events, and creepy characters from the Dark Watchers and ghostly women-in-white to bizarre beasts like Bigfoot and the Billewhack monster. Discover painted caves, petroglyphs drawings, rocks that move on their own, and odd drawings of human figures in the desert sand only visible from the air. Eerie California poses many questions to muse upon. Who built the Lizard People Tunnels below Los Angeles? Is it really Al Capone's banjo-playing ghost haunting Alcatraz's shower room? Whose ghost haunts Nob Hill? Eerie California is a fanciful introduction to little known, often inexplicable, historical events, and curious phenomena in the Golden State. A wonderful, fun book for parents to read with their kids or to curled up with in a comfy chair. A great gift and welcome addition to any library.