Stealth Glasses

by Christopher Church

Psychic investigator Mason is suspicious when Ortiz, a shady Navy operative from the desert, asks for his help, claiming he’s looking for his runaway teenage son, Owen. There’s more to it, he soon realizes, digging into Owen’s life, and Mason finds himself going to extreme lengths to stay off Ortiz’s radar. And who exactly is the hippie, visible in old photos but without a name, just beyond the reach of memory? With help from his talented roommate, Peggy, and his boyfriend, Ned, the scruffy flatfoot tangles with drag queens, religious extremists, a protest march, and maybe even aliens in this latest mystery in the Mason Braithwaite series.

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“Church vividly constructs a world peopled with characters I did not want to leave behind when I finished the book.”  —an Amazon reader

Sales Value Propositions: The Cutting Edge

by Terry Barge

Sales Value Propositions are among the most effective sales tools available to business-business salespeople when it comes to building and sustaining credibility and rapport with customers and prospects. At the same time, they are frequently overlooked and consequently underutilised at every level of the organisation, especially by sales and marketing professionals. This book explains and positions the powerful role and proven effectiveness of Sales Value Propositions in advancing customer relationships and winning sales opportunities.

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“Now more than ever is there a need to have a salesforce that thinks beyond the immediate need to sell. To create an interaction with your customer that provides mutual value is imperative on the commercial stage. Being able to shift the customer’s mind-set to one of value creation is the key to long term repeat trading based on trust, accountability, and knowledge. Having ‘Sales Value Propositions: The Cutting Edge’ as a reference guide with intelligent insight and examples is a fabulous way to repeat and practice this vital commercial strategy.”  —Rob Glasper, UK National Customer Service Manager

The Psychic Vegan Cookbook

by Henrietta Flores

It has never been easier to cook vegan, and you don’t even need to be psychic to do it. This all-plant-based cookbook is a tie-in with the Mason Braithwaite paranormal mystery series and contains some of the plucky LA psychic’s favorite dishes.

The sixty recipes are straightforward and focus on everyday Southwestern cooking. Simple and whole foods are the rule, and few nonstandard ingredients are involved—and when they do appear, they’re explained in detail. You won’t need to make a special trip to esoteric grocery suppliers, however, as this book is ideal for cooks just diving into plant-based home cooking.

Whether your motivation is eating healthier or the welfare of other sentient creatures, Henrietta Flores guides you through some plant-based versions of familiar dishes as well as some that might be new. Many are sure to become household favorites.

“Thank you, Henrietta, for pulling together an amazing collection of vegan grub from Mason’s world. Bon appétit!”  —Christopher Church, author of the Mason Braithwaite Paranormal Mystery Series

When the Contralto Sings

by Chester Henry

When Celeste runs into Angel, one of the city’s growing homeless population, in front of Truman’s building, she invites them to a street festival in Gladys Park. Angel proves to be a talented contralto at the event, and Truman meets Dyson, an outreach worker who hires him to track down some seemingly valueless stolen property. Truman’s instincts and his 1930s-era detective handbook lead him to more questions, and he’s confronted with the fact that the guy he’s crushing on may be playing him. As they dig deeper, Celeste goes undercover in a developer’s office, where she turns the head of Flint, the wealthy family’s scion. Truman follows the clues in an old book about flying saucers, traveling around Los Angeles and subsequently uncovering local government corruption and a nest of old-time white supremacists.

Join the bar-hopping, booze-swilling duo as Celeste has to decide whether Flint’s social status is compatible with her worldview, Truman confronts the paranoia of conspiracy theorists, and the pair enlist their new Skid Row friend to join the battle against corruption.

“Once again Truman and Celeste solve an intractable mystery, outsmarting some nasty con artists and macking on guys all the way. Long live the booze hounds!”  —Christopher Church, author of Stealth Glasses

Glad to Be a Ladd

by Marilyn Ladd

Experience with me what life was like living with thirteen other family members in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in a typical 1950s middle-class, postwar American neighborhood. This story is an unusual combination of revealing autobiography, insightful self-help, and handy classroom teacher’s guide.

Survive rides with me and my mother and eight siblings on summer vacations to Southern California beaches and campgrounds in our 1950 two-door, two-tone green Plymouth station wagon. Join the fourteen of us for a typical family dinner in our moderate-size kitchen that was designed for six. Accompany my very pregnant mother on a bus in 1945 to Fresno to stay with the in-laws she had never met before while my dad awaited his Army discharge orders.

Anyone born between 1946 and 1960 will find a delightful nostalgic journey down the baby boomers’ memory lane. Others might use the story of my personal failures and subsequent triumphs to create value and positive changes in life. Teachers may find my suggested supplemental teaching techniques valuable to incorporate into the classroom.

Enjoy this book. I wrote it as a clear and compelling testimony describing my childhood recollections that convey to you why I am Glad to Be a Ladd.

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Brawl in Bardo

by George Bixley

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from his idiot cop ex-boyfriend, Conrad, and regular squeeze Andy.

Helping his business partner, Max, track down a bail jumper, Slater spends the night in a dusty Mojave Desert town. Things look different in the liminal space between LA and Vegas, like the bardo state between lives, and Slater soon finds himself stalking a sleazy dermatologist who’s in a custody battle with another croaker for a seemingly worthless statue. With high-tech surveillance and a late-night break-in, bouncing between the metropolis and Sin City, Slater zeroes in on the truth while navigating some irksome emotional entanglements and his own sobriety.

“I am hooked on reading about Slater Ibáñez. I read the last two as fast as they arrived. He scares me and entices me all at the same time!”  —C. Scribner

Bee-n-Bee Vacation

by C. M. Potter

Lil Bee wants you to know her story. She’s a hardworking little bee who lives with her mom and thousands of sisters and a few brothers too. Life isn’t easy being Lil Bee. She doesn’t know what the future holds for her and her family. Her mom told her that they are going to go on a vacation, but she doesn’t know when or where. She has also heard some of the older bees buzzing on about a swarm. Join Lil Bee through the seasons as she prepares for the exciting family vacation.

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“Such a charming and educational story about our friends, the bees. Bee-n-Bee Vacation will delight children while teaching them about the important role bees play in our lives. Whether young or old, we all need to support the preservation of this amazing creature!”  —Patricia Snow Ferris, author of A Most Curious Destiny

Parent Child Excursions: ADHD, Anxiety, and Autism

by Dan Shapiro, MD

Written for parents, clinicians, and educators, Parent Child Excursions is a practical book about helping children with ADHD, anxiety, and autism. In this unique approach, Dr. Dan presents ADHD as a problem with stopping, anxiety as a problem with going, and autism as difficulty balancing these competing tendencies. From the introduction: “This book is quite simply a story of red light and green light, braking and accelerating, holding back and forging ahead.” Based on this simple formulation, management of problems with self-control depends on finding the right balance between excitation and inhibition.

These five Excursions present entirely new ways to think about caring for “different drummer” children. Readers will discover an unprecedented level of detail. Based on scientific research and years of clinical experience, Dr. Dan takes you for a deep dive into: (1) effective medication for ADHD, (2) exposure therapy for anxiety, (3) combined therapies for coexisting ADHD, anxiety, and autism, and (4) social engineering for autism. The book concludes with an in-depth discussion of (5) autism, sexuality, and gender variation, cowritten by Dr. Dan and his son Dr. Aaron Shapiro.

As with his first book, Parent Child Journey: An Individualized Approach to Raising Your Challenging Child, Dr. Dan teams up again with illustrator John Watkins-Chow. Throughout the five Excursions, they weave a fun metaphorical tale. Readers are led along by an under-inhibited dog, an over-inhibited turtle, and a well-balanced bird of a different feather.

By the end of this comprehensive and original guidebook, parents and professionals will have learned how to prepare the child for the trail and the trail for the child.

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“For the first time, state-of-the-art and highly original methods are presented to address the issues that commonly co-occur in complicated children and teens.… Dr. Shapiro offers a remarkable combination of up-to-date scientific knowledge and extremely practical advice that will be of great benefit to pediatricians and mental health professionals, as well as to parents.”  —William Stixrud, PhD, clinical neuropsychologist and coauthor with Ned Johnson of The Self-Driven Child