The Bridge: Murder, Intrigue and a Struggle for Justice In Nicaragua
 



American recalls time in Nicaragua jail
Jan. 10: Eric Volz, who was imprisoned in Nicaragua for 394 days,
discusses his controversial case exclusively on TODAY.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22588732#22588732

For Eric Volz, 25, a young American with a degree in Latin American Cultural Studies, Nicaragua offered unlimited opportunity. There were the beautiful wide beaches to surf, the numerous volcanic mountains to climb, the money to be made, and the chance to make a difference in a country that was in the midst of a worldwide rediscovery. Fluent in Spanish and with a thorough understanding of the history and culture of this re-emerging part of the world, Eric Volz knew he had found his paradise.

Within one year he was making over $100,000 selling real estate to American baby-boomers looking for the ideal site for their retirement homes. His social life was just as busy as Eric met attractive Nicaraguan women who enjoyed the company of a wealthy young American. One of those beautiful women was Doris Ivania Jimenez, a petite local waitress with a expressive face and perfect smile waiting on customers in one of the many new restaurants in the scenic Pacific coastal town of San Juan del Sur, where more and more foreigners were coming to soak up the warm Central American sun, enjoy the local Flor de Cana rum, and wait for the perfect sunset amidst the brightly painted houses with red metal roofs. A romance between two young people from different cultures quickly blossomed.

It was his dream of creating a bi-lingual magazine that drove Eric to give up his lucrative real estate career and start El Puente---The Bridge. The bi-lingual travel and lifestyle magazine was a success from its first issue. For Eric Volz, life was perfect. With Eric's help and encouragement, Doris Jimenez was following her dream as well by opening a clothing boutique, Sol Fashion.

It would be where Doris was later found raped and murdered on November 21, 2006, her wrists and ankles tied and her mouth gagged. With this one horrific event, Eric's paradise turned into a living hell. Her murder was brutal and savage, and the Nicaraguan people wanted someone to pay.

On the day he helped lay her body to rest, Eric was arrested for both crimes against his former girlfriend, even though he provided the police the names of seven alibi witnesses that could place him in the capital city of Managua, two hours from the scene of the crime in San Juan del Sur. The murder of Doris Jimenez would act as a catalyst to reignite a festering undercurrent of hatred toward America that would end up gripping the life of Eric Volz like a dangerous Pacific undertow. Mayors, ambassadors, and senators would become part of this story of youthful promise, romance, stolen lives and national sovereignty. There would be a convergence of cultural, political, and judicial forces that would later be characterized as "a perfect storm".

In a whirlwind investigation and prosecution by Nicaraguan authorities that culminated in a trial in February of 2007, in a case with highly questionable procedural and evidentiary components, to the horror of Eric's family in America, he was found guilty of both crimes and sentenced to 30 years in a Nicaraguan prison.

By December 2007, with no word on his appeal, the future for Eric Volz looked to be one of confinement for the next three decades in El Modelo, a maximum security prison in Nicaragua. Then just days before Christmas, a miracle---the appellate court reverses Eric's conviction and orders his release. But Nicaraguan authorities refuse to comply with the order. Only after intervention by the U.S. government including Secretary Of State Condolezza Rice is Eric spirited out of the country under armed guard on a private plane. Although free and back in the United States, the turmoil in the life of Eric Volz is not over as everyone in Nicaragua, including the newly elected president, Washington's former nemesis, Daniel Ortega, reacts to to his release, and Eric is forced to go into hiding because of death threats on his life.

At the core of the story are the facts surrounding a horrific murder and the trial that quickly followed. The Bridge is also an examination of exactly what factors contributed to the "perfect storm" as well as how a deeply religious family coped with the imprisonment of their son in a foreign land for a crime they know he did not commit. The result is a book that is part true crime, part historical review and assessment, part cultural interpretive, and part a story of faith and courage.

To fully understand the historical and cultural issues that were reignited by the brutal murder of Doris Jimenez, the story of Eric Volz starts in his hometown, the southern American city of Nashville, Tennessee. However, not in 2005 when Eric left for Nicaragua to pursue his dream of creating a bi-lingual magazine, El Puente-The Bridge---but rather in the mid-1800's. This back-story would involve the intersecting lives of another adventurous young American, the people of Nicaragua, and the richest man in America.
In the critical post 9-11 environment in which all Americans find themselves, The Bridge is also an examination about America's place in the global world, and how we are viewed by other nations and other cultures and why.

 

About the Author:

Michael Glasgow knows how to write about complex true crime. A former attorney who has been co-counsel in a first degree murder case, he is the co-author of An Unfinished Canvas: A Story of Love, Family, and Murder in Nashville a story of the ten-year investigatory saga of Janet and Perry March as featured on CBS's 48 HOURS and COURT-TV, published in October 2007 by Berkley Publishing. The Eric Volz murder case, which has already been featured in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as well as on the Today Show, Dateline, and Anderson Cooper 360 is an international story of many layers with its roots beginning as far back as 150 years ago. It requires a writer like Glasgow who loves research, and who can deliver the complete story with all its suspenseful and surprising twists and turns. .

As seen on Dateline NBC April 22, 2007


http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/21/162228.aspx

 

 
River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved - Cumberland House, Spring 2008
 

In the tradition of 'Me and My Shadows - The Judy Garland Story', and 'Haywire', the story of Leland Hayward and Margaret Sullivan, River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved - the first book written chronicling the lives and marriage of the legendary entertainer Tennessee Ernie Ford and his wife, Betty- promises to rank among the great stories of Hollywood lives told in our time.

In a sweeping, cinematic narrative, told with heartbreaking honesty, wry humor and riveting intimacy, River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved carries the reader from their first meeting on a desert airbase at the dawn of World War Two, through a brilliant, meteoric rise to the heights of Hollywood's second Golden Age, to Ford's controversial departure from Hollywood at the zenith of his career, and to their last moments together nearly half a century later. The story of Ernie and His Lovely Wife, Betty is an American love story, an American tragedy; an unforgettable portrait of an ordinary couple changed forever by an extraordinary life.

River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved is currently scheduled for publication by Cumberland House Publishing in April, 2008

http://www.jeffreybucknerford.com/


 

Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days And Nights As A Tokyo Nightclub Hostess - St. Martin’s Press, Spring 2008

 

Smashed meets the Far East in this harrowing memoir of an American woman’s sojourn in Japan’s erotic “floating world”

During daylight hours, the city of Tokyo is the quintessential image of robotic conformity. But at night, it transforms into a “floating world” of escapism, as “all-work” salary men seek a place to play.

Though fascinated by Japanese language and culture, American Lea Jacobson, had some difficulty conforming to Japan’s rigidly structured society. When she was fired from her job as an English teacher, Lea found work as a nightclub hostess on Tokyo’s Ginza strip, and transformed herself into a “Barbie doll” fantasy whose job it was to flatter, flirt and engage in mockrelationships with her middle-aged clients. A direct descendant of the geisha tradition, hostessing quickly became lucrative...

Her perceptions distorted by the alcohol she was paid to consume, her identity confused by the fake personalities she spun nightly, Jacobson began to lose herself in this fantasy culture. As she descended into self-abuse and alcoholism, she found that the seductive lifestyle she loved so much seemed impossible to escape.and addictive.

“A breathtakingly honest look at a side of Japan that few foreigners get to see. Jacobson’s experience is a relentless and insightful journey both into Japanese culture and into the destructive side of her own nature. A very compelling read.”
—KARIN MULLER, AUTHOR OF JAPANLAND

LEA JACOBSON has a M.A. in East Asian studies and a B.A. in English and Japanese. She works as a translator and a language instructor in Tokyo, Japan, where she lives with her fiancé, Trevor.

http://www.geisha-interrupted.typepad.com


 

Smotherhood™ - Skirt/Globe Pequot, Fall 2007

 

One minute television crime reporter Amanda Lamb is hot on the trail of a murder suspect or a child molester, the next minute she is signing up to time her daughter's swim meet or to bring brownies to the preschool picnic… It's in these two clashing, co-existing worlds that her humor has become her best survival tool.

"Smotherhood ™: Wickedly Funny Confessions from the Early Years (Globe Pequot Press, Skirt! Imprint, September 1, 2007) is ripe material for a television or feature film comedy. Viewers will connect with Amanda's hilarious and imperfect balancing act and relate to her bawdy sense of humor as she tries to keep too many balls in the air at one time.

From the graphic play-by-play of her husband's vasectomy experience, to the things that take a ride on the roof of her Volvo (think pizzas and cell phones) because she's too distracted to notice, to the non-working mothers who expect her to take time out of her busy day to make Play-Doh from scratch and volunteer at story time, working mothers everywhere will commiserate with Amanda's crazy life.

The backdrop of the television news world only adds to the chaos and hilarity as Amanda shares coffee and secrets with old-school cops, interviews her share of crusty rednecks and hardcore criminals, and covers breaking news that keeps her from getting to her children's dance class or swim team banquet.

And this book is just the beginning. With no shortage of material Amanda has already started her second installment of what she hopes to be a series of "Smotherhood™" books.

"Smotherhood ™" is timely and culturally relevant to today's working women who approach everything- their jobs and their parenting- passionately, without excuses, and with a lot of laughter in between.

 

 


Click Here

 


 
THE LAST NIGHTINGALE - Random House, June, 2007
 
It is April of 1906 - immediately after the Great San Francisco Earthquake and fires and much of the city has been leveled. In the chaos of the aftermath, crime spikes upward. A serial killer, presumed female, has been dubbed "The Surgeon" for her heavy-bladed knife work, and is hard at work among the ruins.

SGT. RANDALL BLACKBURN (32) is a tough beat cop who walks the "Barbary Coast" district every night on the midnight shift, sometimes tripping over The Surgeon's latest handy-work. Blackburn takes on the hunt for The Surgeon with the persistence of a compulsive man with nothing else to do - he has not had any life outside of his work since his wife and infant daughter died in childbirth years before. This one-sided existence is ordinarily very bad news for the crooks, but The Surgeon's body count continues to rise while the perpetrator somehow eludes capture. In addition, Blackburn is saddled with another major murder investigation of one of the city's major citizens. That one isn't going any better for Blackburn than the hunt for The Surgeon.

His standing with the Department is dropping by the day by the time he receives a note from a young street orphan named SHANE NIGHTINGALE (12), tipping him off to the real killer in the high society case. The clues that Shane provides actually break that case, which immediately cements Blackburn's interest in Shane. He is fascinated as to why a boy so young should posses such insight into lethal crime, involving people he has never met and a rarified social world he knows nothing about.

But Shane is sitting on a world of secrets, branded deep inside of him. The experience of spending three days and nights following the Great Earthquake hidden in a small kitchen pantry while a mysterious home invader slowly tortured and disposed of his adoptive family has shattered him. He had only been out of the orphanage for a year. Now he is fighting for scraps of his sanity, living in the tool shed of a cemetery with the broken and smoldering city stretched out all around him. He has intuitively identified the real killer in the high society case simply by reading about it in the paper. In Shane's new and broken existence, his three-day lesson into the mind of a psychopath has left him highly sensitized to the dark side of human nature and able to understand and predict various levels of criminal motive.

Shane is flabbergasted when VIGNETTE (10), a girl from his old orphanage, shows up and announces that she has learned they are brother and sister. She tells him that she has run away and wants to stay with him. She has only concocted the story in her desperation for a sense of family, but Shane believes her and takes her in. He soon learns that Vignette is like a female Huck Finn loose in the city. Her wild-child resourcefulness helps him to begin to compensate for his scalded and reticent nature, even as the memories of the Nightingale family crimes continue to haunt him.

It is when The Surgeon finds reason to target Shane Nightingale that Randall Blackburn finds himself pulled into the lives of both Shane and Vignette. When events force Blackburn to pursue The Surgeon with no help from the Department, he is guided by Shane and Vignette, who both manage to move in the adult world with a surprisingly effective array of hard-won skills in dealing with the darkest sides of human nature.


About the Author

Anthony Flacco
His first nonfiction book, A Checklist for Murder, was acquired in auction by Dell Books as a mass market paperback and sold over 50,000 copies. Anthony adapted his book as a two-hour television movie script and sold it to NBC Studios for a movie of the week. For the next several years, he worked as a freelance script doctor and story editor. He has served as an advisor for and appeared on camera in a television special about the case, for Court TV in 2006.

In 2002, Anthony was also hired by the Discovery Channel to write a two-hour documentary entitled Deadly Spree, based on another true crime story, which still airs. His true crime writing was also featured on a one-hour episode of The Prosecutors for Court TV.

In 2003, Anthony served as a national Judge for the Illinois Arts Council, writing individual evaluations for over 100 screenplays for their 2003 Writing Awards. He also worked on finishing his longest running project, the historical novel, Tesla's Best Secret.

His screenplay adaptation of that novel was a finalist in the Alfred Sloan Fellowship for Sundance in 2003.

Throughout 2004, in addition to his own writing, Anthony served as a freelance editor for books and book proposals that have recently sold to Hay House, Vanderwyck & Burnham, and Rodale Press. He also wrote book proposals for other authors who have gone on to garner publication contracts with Rodale Press, Random House, and St. Martin's Press.

During 2005, Anthony completed his nonfiction book Tiny Dancer for Thomas Dunne Books at St. Martin's Press, and the advance copy was selected by Reader's Digest as their Editor's Choice for August, 2005 -- their 1,000th Commemorative Issue.

The Kansas City Star named Tiny Dancer "one of the Top 100 Noteworthy Books of 2005." He also edited the first two manuscripts for a new series of humorous books written by gay and straight writing teams which have sold to Marabout for French translation.

In April, 2006 Anthony sold The Last Nightingale in a two-book deal to Mortalis, a new mystery imprint of Random House. The first novel of this series begins with the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and follows the development of a young boy with freakish criminal profiler insights and a tough police sergeant who befriends him. The novel will be published in Spring, 2007.



 
Deadly Dose - Berkley Publishers/Penguin Putnam
 

Chris Morgan lives for justice. He wears a white felt fedora, sports a larger-than-life personality, and espouses an old-school cop mentality. Photographs of murder victims, some yellowed and furled, are pinned haphazardly to the cork board near his desk. But there is nothing haphazard about how Morgan fights to find their killers.

 

 

Eric Miller is on the cork board. He was a pediatric AIDS researcher at a prestigious southern university when his life was cut short by arsenic poisoning. Miller suffered for months as the poison slowly ate away at him until his body finally gave out. The death of the promising young scientist stunned the local community and the scientific community at large.

 

 

Right away Morgan suspected that Ann Miller, Eric Miller's wife, was to blame. Ann Miller was also a scientist for a prominent pharmaceutical company. On the outside Ann Miller was pretty, demure, a loving mother, and a seemingly devoted wife. But Morgan saw something else in Ann Miller. He saw a woman obsessed with creating her own version of happiness at any cost- even if that meant killing someone.

 

 

Deadly Dose is a true crime book told through the eyes of Chris Morgan. In an exclusive agreement with the author, the retired homicide detective shares for the first time publicly his dogged four-year pursuit of Ann Miller. It was a crusade that consumed his every waking hour and ultimately became the swan song of his lengthy career. Readers will hang on every word, every twist, every turn, as the genteel, but shockingly candid investigator takes them inside the inner-workings of catching a killer.

 

 

About the Author:

Amanda Lamb is in her eighteenth year as a local television reporter. She covers the crime beat for one of the top CBS affiliates in the country, WRAL-TV. Besides doing daily live television reports for WRAL-TV, Amanda also writes a column for the station's website about her experiences on the street. Dispatches from a Reporter's Notebook can be viewed at www.WRAL.com.
Amanda has also appeared on network news programs recently on multiple occasions including FOX News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren and Court TV's Catherine Crier Live to talk about a high-profile murder investigation that she has been covering involving the beating death of a young pregnant mother.

Amanda also writes non-fiction humorous stories about parenting. Her first book titled Smotherhood: Wickedly Funny Confessions from the Early Years will be published in the fall under Globe Pequot's new imprint, SKIRT. Amanda has been previously published in This Day in the Life of American Women, and is a regular contributor to an award-winning parenting website, www.dot-moms.com. For more about Amanda's creative writing go to www.alambauthor.com.

For Book Trailer of Deadly Dose link here:
http://www.alambauthor.com/Books/DeadlyDose.aspx

 

 
The Good Eater: Making Peace With My Eating Disorder--New Harbinger, March, 2007
 


Size Matters is a witty 21st century fairy tale-"The Princess and the Frog" if the frog prince were a formerly hot straight male model trapped in a 300-pound body.

A successful, straight male model who sees his own face everywhere he goes nonetheless manages to destroy his career by gaining seventy pounds in six months. Not satisfied with that level of personal pressure, he then mixes desperation and optimism by launching a search for sanity and true love without bothering to get skinny first...


Growing up, Ron Saxen's only escape from the extreme religion and boot-camp discipline at home was a carefree romp through a one pound can of chocolate frosting, a half-gallon tub of Chunky Monkey, or a few of the candy bars skimmed from the school candy sale. To win love, the tubby 13-year-old stages a juvenile jewelry heist and steals a diamond ring for his eighth-grade crush. She keeps the ring, throws him back.

At 16, having eaten his way to School Fatso and becoming desperate for a date, Ron resolves to lose weight. When the new Thin Ron takes a part-time job in a nearby town he discovers a duel identity-at work, he's Mr. Cool Guy, dating the town's beauty queen. At home, he's just "the fat kid who lost weight."

 

His two worlds collide when he takes his cool girlfriend to his hometown senior prom. She finds out about Fat Ron, dumps Thin Ron, and his affair with food heats up again.

At the age of twenty, 300-pound Fat Again Ron is a waiter whose greatest achievement is to convince a friend who accidentally shot himself in the leg to hit the Burger King drive-thru on their way to the emergency room.

But the next year, a starvation diet and a cruel and unusual exercise program transform His Plumpness into a Chiseled Temporary Hottie once more, and customers startle him by asking if he's a model. He does some research and finds out that he will have to lose twenty more pounds to truly be considered model-thin, so he cranks up his exercise program and sets the level at Torture. Weeks later, a shell-shocked Skinny Ron finds himself in a situation that feels surreal-sitting in the Excel Modeling Agency lobby, waiting to be seen.

For the next magical year he's a wildly successful model with a bombshell girlfriend. His biggest problem is not passing out from hunger as he struts down the runway. He appears on TV, works with famous designers and sees his own picture everywhere. Except for the constant weakness and gnawing in the pit of his stomach, life is good.

Then a chocolate cake calls his name.

Fighting the slide back to obesity, Ron exercises feverishly, takes up smoking and tries that new methamphetamine diet he's heard so much about. But when a fashion show director says he needs to lose five more pounds, he fakes a smile and goes on an all-night binge.

Six months later, seventy pounds heavier and minus one bombshell, Ron is back working at the restaurant. His humiliation is complete when his agent tracks his fat, apron-wearing self down to ask him to sign a release for the TV commercial starring Thin Ron, which Fat Ron will get to watch on TV for the next year.

Twelve months later, Fat Ron is serving lunch to the most beautiful and nice woman he's ever met when he has a minor but undignified heart attack. He hits the dirt at her feet. When he swims back to consciousness, he finds her again; a publishing executive named Amanda Nash is standing by his hospital bed. She comes back to see him the next day, and the next.

Then Ron finds out she's engaged to a pretentious stock broker and sneaks out of the hospital without saying goodbye.

Over the next two years, Ron recovers from his eating disorder, loses weight and finally reconnects by phone with the not-yet-married Amanda. He hatches a plan to meet her in his new thin body, without telling her who he is.

But when he does, he discovers Amanda's true feelings for the man he always was, the one he is just now coming to accept.

Click Here For A Video Book-Byte

 

  

Click A Logo To See Ron's Appearances

www.RonSaxen.com


 
TRUTH AT LAST, TRUTH AT LAST:
The Real Story of James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King
- Lyons Press, March 2008
 

For the first time, the brother of James Earl Ray shares his knowledge of the murder of MLK that has never been revealed before.

James Earl Ray was inducted by the C.I.A. while still a young man in the Army and subjected to mind control experimentation - in that same era when the hallucinogenic drug LSD is known to have been administered by the armed services to unknowing recruits. The mind control work on James Earl Ray took place more than twenty years before he would become known to the world as the assassin of civil rights icon, Martin Luther King.

 

"He seems to have been highly unsettled after leaving the Army, and we would judge that some traumatic experience occurred which he does not care to tell or cannot verbalize."
Progress Report, Inmate James Earl Ray, Illinois State Prison May 1953
"…there are medical aspects involved which cannot be disassociated from any discussion of Mr. Ray's military background."
Letter in reference to James Earl Ray's US Army file from Army Major General Kenneth Wickham to Rep. Mendle Rivers

Author Lyndon Barsten was a friend of the late James Earl Ray and also an admirer of Dr. King. Thus he became obsessed with finding out the truth of the Memphis murder. In pursuit of the information presented in this book, he has submitted in excess of four thousand of Freedom of Information requests to agencies of the US government, and also made similar requests to the governments of Canada, England and Portugal. The conclusion that these documents support is obvious on the face of it - the same mix of strange CIA "coincidences" documented in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald's Kennedy assassination also crop up here. How can that be?

The case that will be laid out by this book, and by the supporting documentation, will show that there is no credible way in which James Earl Ray acted alone. To that end, we will offer the reader everything except for that one, fool-proof, courtroom-ready piece of evidence -- the kind that would trigger a federal investigation. We are dealing with the CIA, here - the Freedom of Information Act only takes you so far with them.

If you are one of those people who believe that O.J. Simpson is not guilty and that the jury's verdict was correct - you will also lack the common sense to accept the evidence offered here. However, there is an all important line of difference between what you can prove in court and what you just know by employing common sense.

About the Authors:

John Larry Ray is the eldest living brother of James Earl Ray. He was a secret witness to much of his brother's covert life, and has come forward to facilitate the revealing of how James Earl Ray was "handled" into committing his infamous crime. John has spent a quarter of a century in federal prison, mostly in solitary confinement. He reveals how he was falsely convicted in the court of Judge William H. Webster - who would later head both the FBI and CIA - in order to silence him about his brother's association with the CIA. John currently resides in his childhood home of Quincy, Illinois.

Lyndon Barsten is a lay historian who has been studying the assassination of Dr. King since the mid 1990s. For only the second time in the history, the FBI put an investigative file in a CD-Rom format, pressured to do so by Lyndon, so that concerned citizens could have access to the FBI King murder investigation file. Barsten has lectured about the murder of Dr. King before the Congressional Black Caucus' Brain Trust, at the request of Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. Several articles in regional and national publications have been based on the findings of Barsten's research. He has known and consulted with most of the surviving witnesses of the events surrounding the King assassination. He resides in Minnesota with his Jamaican born wife, Cheryl, and their three children.

 

 
The Rebel and the Rose, Cumberland House, Spring, 2007
 
It is April 1865, and the Civil War is over for most Americans. More than 600,000 soldiers, north and south, have died, either from wounds or disease. The Union army has overwhelmed the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis has fled Richmond, the Southern capital. Accompanying him, first by train and then on horseback, are most of his administration, an escort of cavalry, various hangers-on... and the remainder of the Confederate treasury.

With the Davis party is a Navy paymaster, James A. Semple. In Washington, Georgia, a small town untouched by the war, Semple is entrusted with $86,000 in gold coin and bullion (which equates to about $1 million today) and disappears into the night with the gold loaded into the false bottom of a carriage.

James Semple was one of the "shadow" people during the war, someone who reported to the highest levels of administration, but managed to escape scrutiny, then and now. He was competent and resourceful. "I have 'seen the Elephant in all its phases,' he once mused. A descendant of a prominent Virginia family, Semple was known to generals, sea captains, congressmen, and key officials of the Confederate government, including President and First Lady Jefferson and Varina Davis.

The Rebel and the Rose reveals for the first time what happened to the gold. The historically accurate book, however, is more than an accounting of a missing treasury. It is the story of a man on the run, as he stashes the gold and seeks to escape capture by fleeing through a devastated South swarming with Federal troops.

Hiding in the Okefenokee Swamp for months, he eventually reaches Nassau. Ultimately, he takes refuge in the North with Julia Gardiner Tyler, wife of former President of the United States John Tyler. Julia is the stepmother of Semple's estranged wife, Letitia, though they are about the same age. Once called the "Rose of Long Island" for an advertisement that used her image, Julia Gardiner Tyler is strikingly attractive, even at 45. She has long black hair, gray eyes, and a figure that drew dozens of suitors before she agreed to marry the President, then 30 years her senior.

An ardent Confederate, Julia had made a difficult decision late in the war to leave Virginia for her mother's home on Staten Island, New York. Union soldiers were invading the countryside around Sherwood Forest, the Tyler plantation, and the safety of her young children was paramount. Now, with both her husband and her mother deceased, Julia is alone on Staten Island with the children, surrounded by "Yankees" who are not accepting of a Southern sympathizer in their midst.

Semple is drawn to Julia, and she to him, by circumstances of war and the aftermath. Unable to accept the end of the Confederacy and Northern domination over the South, he collaborates with other disenfranchised leaders exiled in Canada, seeking to create a crisis between the U.S. and Great Britain. Drawing Britain into a war would force the North to turn to the South for military support, and ease the burden on the former Confederate states in rejoining the Union.

Over the course of the next two years, Semple travels between the U. S. and Canada in clandestine activities, often using the alias Allen S. James. In between ventures, and whenever he is able to pass through New York City, he spends as much time as he can with Julia and her family.

Through it all ? the final days of the war, the flight of the Davis government, his efforts to help the South, and the intimate interludes with Julia and her family ? Semple is the thread that binds events together… and Confederate gold plays a part in it all.


About the Authors

Wesley Millett has been a researcher and a writer for more than thirty-five years. He currently operates a marketing research business and frequently contributes articles to various national and international publications. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Millett received his initial instruction in writing from noted authors, including William Faulkner.

Gerald White, a native Texan, is a retired Air Force colonel who held senior intelligence positions and served on the faculty of the Air War College. White is a Vietnam veteran who also served in Germany. Since his retirement, he has written several studies on recent U.S. military operations. White holds degrees from Texas Christian University and the University of Utah and now resides in Williamsburg, Virginia.

www.rebelandtherose.com/

 




 

Hollywood Reader

 

Can a murder case be built without the body or any other physical evidence? That's the question at the heart of Michael Glasgow and Phyllis Gobbell's An Unfinished Canvas: The Mysterious Disappearance of Artist Janet March, on submission to publishers and producers. Sure to appeal to Court TV junkies, the manuscript explores the 1996 disappearance of a mother of two from her Nashville home and the subsequent finger-pointing at her attorney husband, Perry-who was convicted of the killing just last week. Glasgow and Gobbell are represented by Martin Literary Management's Sharlene Martin. APA's Steve Fisher is Martin's co-agent for film rights.

 


 
An Unfinished Canvas: The Mysterious Disappearance of Artist Janet March
 



Can a man be convicted of murder when the police have no body, no cause of death, no time of death, and no physical evidence of a homicide? The implications of this fascinating legal question are at the core of an electrifying new true-crime thriller, An Unfinished Canvas: The Mysterious Disappearance of Artist Janet March, written by Michael Glasgow and Phyllis Gobbell.

Janet March vanished on August 15, 1996, after an argument with her attorney-husband Perry March. He has maintained that she packed a few things, took several thousand dollars in cash and said, "See ya!" and drove away in her car, promising to be back in twelve days for their son's 6th birthday - but no one has ever seen or heard from her since that night. The case has drawn national attention, with CBS's Emmy-winning investigative show 48 Hours airing four separate episodes over the last three years, including an hour-long program on December 10, 2005. Leslie Stahl has stated, "This is as good a mystery as you will ever see-in fiction or in real life."

The setting of this compelling true-crime mystery is Nashville, Tennessee, a city of many faces: Music City USA, country music capital of the world; Athens of the South, with its full-scale replica of the Parthenon; and the new Nashville that promotes itself as the next Atlanta. This is where An Unfinished Canvas finds Perry and Janet March in 1996, living what appears to be a perfect life. An attractive young wife and doting mother of two small children, Janet is also a talented artist whose career is taking off, and Perry is a corporate lawyer to the rich and powerful. They are rising stars in a Southern city whose star is rising, as well. Having moved into a massive new dream home designed by Janet, they are at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. Life is good - really good - or so it would seem. No one knows that Janet and Perry March are keeping up an elaborate facade.

In the tradition of haunting true-crime thrillers that have captivated the literary heartbeat of America, An Unfinished Canvas is a suspense-filled tale of love, sex, greed, betrayal, and murder. As in the cases of Jeffrey MacDonald (Fatal Vision), Thomas Capano (Summer Wind), Scott Petersen (A Deadly Game), and the East Hampton murder of Ted Ammon (Almost Paradise), An Unfinished Canvas evokes the complex character and personalities of the accused and those affected by his actions.

At a time when readers and television viewers are fascinated by forensic science and cold case files, the authors paint a chilling, edgy, and tragic portrait of intersecting lives and a decade of persistent dedication to unravel the truth. Is Perry March a psychopath who murdered his wife while his children slept and almost got away with it, or a falsely accused devoted father whose life was destroyed when his wife mysteriously disappeared?

An Unfinished Canvas will chronicle the facts, the theories, and the gossip in this high-profile case, beginning with the bizarre events on the night of Janet March's disappearance and the disturbing two weeks before she was reported missing. The nine-year investigation is punctuated by Perry March's flight with his children to Mexico and the international custody battle between Perry and Janet's parents, Carolyn and Larry Levine; the wrongful death civil case by the Levines and its staggering $113 million judgment; the formation of Nashville's first Cold Case Unit; the empanelment of a secret grand jury and indictment of Perry March; the involvement of the FBI and the office of the Mexican President in the arrest and deportation of Perry March; his extradition back to Tennessee from the same California jail that once housed O.J. Simpson; and the excellent detective work that uncovered a scheme by Perry March from behind bars, while awaiting trial, to hire a hit-man to murder his former in-laws.

Nashville authors Phyllis Gobbell and Michael Glasgow bring a unique combination of talent and experience to the investigation and writing of An Unfinished Canvas. Gobbell, recipient of Tennessee's 2006 Individual Artist Literary Award, has a twenty-five year history of publication in both fiction and nonfiction. She has published two novels and more than thirty stories and articles. Among her recent writing awards are the Leslie Garrett Fiction Prize and a Pushcart nomination. Freelance writer Michael Glasgow practiced law for twenty years. He began his career as a law clerk for a Tennessee Supreme Court Justice and has served as co-defense counsel in a first-degree murder case. In addition, one of the principal participants at the heart of the case has agreed to work exclusively with the authors as a technical advisor.

     


 

A Place to Go, A Place to Grow

Rodale Press, Spring,2006
Film and Foreign Rights available

 


Pres. George Bush and Lou Dantzler
 


Colin Powell at Challenger Club


Henry Kissinger with Challengers' Club Kids



 

At a time when Americans seem to feel disenchanted with their society and its direction, A Place to Go, A Place to Grow, the compelling life story of South Central Los Angeles activist Lou Dantzler, provides a powerful, uplifting tale of triumph over adversity as well as promotes the premise that one person, through strength of character and commitment, can truly change the world for the better.


For Dantzler, a tall, burly African American father of two, April 29, 1992 began like any normal day. He drove to work in South Central Los Angeles, navigating the same route as he had every day for the past twenty-five years, carefully avoiding jaywalking mothers clutching babies, grizzled men pushing garbage-filled shopping carts, and teenage boys on bikes riding around as lookouts for the drug dealers and gangbangers clogging the street corners, alleyways and front stoops.

Twenty-four hours later, however, Dantzler found himself again driving the same familiar streets, yet recognizing next to nothing. Instead of taking care to avoid the mothers, bums and gangsters, he crept along slowly to avoid large chunks of smoldering debris clogging a burned-out and destroyed Vermont Avenue, the result of an evening of vicious and bloody violence which erupted after the infamous Rodney King verdict the previous afternoon triggered what was to become the worst race riot in our country’s history, right on Lou Dantzler’s front doorstep.

Dantzler works in the heart of gang territory, in an old, converted grocery store on the corner of 51st and Vermont Avenue, just steps away from the bullet-riddled house of a large family of Crips, the dominant gang in the area. Since 1970, the former market had been the home of Challengers Boys & Girls Club, an organization Dantzler started in 1968 in the back of his pickup truck in an effort to help many of the kids in his neighborhood who were getting into trouble because they had nothing positive to do and no fathers at home to teach them right and wrong.

Dantzler, the youngest of twenty-two children, knew what it was like to grow up without a father; his was a poor South Carolina sharecropper who died when Dantzler was just seven years old. Recalling the misery and privation he endured growing up, Dantzler could relate to these kids. He knew what it was like to not have anyone to throw a ball with you or talk to you about girls, to have no one to look up to and protect you. And now, sadly, he was seeing his own childhood despair reflected in the faces of the dozens of fatherless boys throughout his South Central neighborhood who followed him around on his gardening route like he was the Pied Piper, fighting over turns with his leaf blower. It saddened him to see how many of their lives lacked laughter, not to mention any sort of positive role models. He decided to do something.

So one sunny Saturday he took a dozen of those boys in the back of his pickup truck to the park to play. None had ever been to the park, home to drug dealers and criminals. They had so much fun playing sports and basking in the attention Dantzler showered upon them that they asked to do it again another Saturday. That day, two dozen
kids wanted to come. A month later, four dozen. By the end of the summer of 1968 there were almost two hundred kids. Dantzler, fortified by the moral upbringing of his God-fearing mother, taught them leadership, respect, honesty, and trust, all the while allowing them to escape the limits of their neighborhood -- which had been steadily spiraling downward since the 1965 Watts Riots -- and see a bit of the world beyond liquor stores and laundromats. Sensing the need for these kids to have a place to belong, Dantzler formed Challengers and set about creating productive young adults from potential juvenile delinquents.

That day in 1992, however, more than two decades later and countless lives saved (including All Star baseball player Eric Davis and Academy Award-nominated director John Singleton) Dantzler was heartbroken to see his community in ruins. Though it was dangerous to venture out on that terrible morning after the riots, Dantzler couldn’t stay away. He had to see if Challengers was still there and make sure the people of his neighborhood were OK.

Thus begins the dramatic tale of one man determined to make his community a better place. From his beginnings in a shotgun shack in South Carolina to his meetings with President Bush in the White House and on Air Force One, Dantzler's life is the type of Horatio Alger, rags-to-enrichment story that defines the American Dream.

His philosophy and success has attracted people to his cause from all walks of life. From the hundreds of parent volunteers who help him run his program to the likes of Denzel Washington and Sidney Poitier, those who recognize Dantzler’s talent for saving children reads like a who’s who of notable people. Will Smith stopped by to play foosball with the kids. Magic Johnson has been a steady supporter and frequent visitor since the early 1980s. Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters have come away from visits to the Club inspired, as have Colin Powell and Shaquille O’Neal. Richard Pryor was one of the Club’s first celebrity supporters, as was Richard Roundtree. The list goes on, along with interesting anecdotes about what it was like for a former farmhand to rub elbows with such luminaries.

So how does a man from this background find himself one day sitting in the Oval Office giving advice to the President? How does he create a haven such as Challengers out of a pickup truck? The answer, of course, lies in Lou Dantzler’s life story, and how his philosophy of caring and giving were shaped by his early hardships, his family and his faith. In order to truly get the essence of what it has taken for him to achieve what he has, one must examine his whole life, along with the circumstances and history surrounding it, to realize what an inspiration his accomplishments truly are.

Vaclav Havel once wrote, “A slight, seemingly insignificant wave of a butterfly’s wing in a single spot on this planet can unleash a typhoon thousands of miles away.” The idea that just one individual has the ability to create so much change in the world is not so inconceivable once one observes the positive effect Lou Dantzler has had on the lives of the more than 30,000 children and young adults he has kept out of gangs and off the streets. Just like that small butterfly, Lou Dantzler’s wings are constantly in motion, flapping furiously to create a hurricane of hope in the lives of children and their families. As Dantzler himself says, “I have so much more I want to do, have to do. I need to reach these kids before the gangs do.” Perhaps his story is one way he can do just that.

http://www.cbgcla.org/



 
Tesla’s Best Secret - a historical novel
 

From the 1890's through 1943, this true story follows genius NIKOLA TESLA, arguably the most influential inventor in history-and certainly the most unfairly ignored. His powerful work even exceeded that of the venerated Thomas Edison. The book's portrayal of this tall, handsome figure is historically accurate and offers a "young-to-old" portrayal of a genius' personality that explores the greatest mysteries of this brilliant creative force.

The key to his personality is that although he was handsome and charming, he lived a self-chosen life of isolation. Nikola Tesla was a self-described "monk" to his calling of electronic invention.

In America, he was supported by George Westinghouse, who funded Tesla's successful effort to design and install the first hydraulic generators under Niagara Falls, providing electricity to the entire eastern seaboard for the first time - in an era of candles and lanterns. Eventually, Westinghouse would betray Tesla by not paying him many millions of dollars in royalties he was owed.

Tesla was clandestinely betrayed by J. P. Morgan, who funded just enough of Tesla's experimentation to realize that Tesla really could succeed in building the technology to provide FREE electricity to anyone, anywhere on the planet, effectively ending world poverty. Morgan was aghast that Tesla would actually release technology to the world for which people would not be charged.

He was befriended by Mark Twain, who loved the stimulation of Tesla's far-ranging thought patterns and frequently visited Tesla's lab for physical treatments with Tesla's high-frequency generator, where the two brilliant men would talk long into the night.

He was repeatedly victimized by the Robber Barons of the day, because in his idealistic and inventive state of mind, he simply could not absorb the lesson that dishonesty in business was the absolute rule of the day during the Industrial Revolution. Throughout his life, he was known as a scrupulous man of his word. And he never set out to invent a device or a technology that was not successfully completed until the end of his career, when word of his altruistic desire to provide the world with free energy became widely known and his funding mysteriously dried up.

Thomas Alva Edison was Tesla's bitter rival for many years, and ultimately lost the battle to provide America's standard source of electrical power and technology. While Edison far surpassed Tesla in managerial skills and business sense, Tesla outshined him (and every other inventor alive) with his effortless and nonstop creative mental processes. The hatred and envy that Tesla engendered from his competitors is difficult to overstate.

Throughout his life, his battle with his father's severe condemnation follows him with imagined diatribes that condemn Nikola's visionary behavior as being either trivial or satanic. The story follows him through his death and the documented truth of having his tiny hotel room invaded by Secret Service immediately upon his demise. The Secret Service carried away all of his papers before his body was even removed by the Coroner.

The story's ending suggests what has happened to the plans for the universal power system that he claimed to have perfected-and why they have not surfaced… yet.

About the Author:

His first nonfiction book, A Checklist for Murder, was acquired in auction by Dell Books as a mass market paperback and sold over 50,000 copies. Anthony adapted his book as a two-hour television movie script and sold it to NBC Studios for a movie of the week. For the next several years, he worked as a freelance script doctor and story editor. He has served as an advisor for and appeared on camera in a television special about the case, for Court TV in 2006.

In 2002, Anthony was also hired by the Discovery Channel to write a two-hour documentary entitled Deadly Spree, based on another true crime story, which still airs. His true crime writing was also featured on a one-hour episode of The Prosecutors for Court TV.

In 2003, Anthony served as a national Judge for the Illinois Arts Council, writing individual evaluations for over 100 screenplays for their 2003 Writing Awards. He also worked on finishing his longest running project, the historical novel, Tesla's Best Secret.

His screenplay adaptation of that novel was a finalist in the Alfred Sloan Fellowship for Sundance in 2003.

Throughout 2004, in addition to his own writing, Anthony served as a freelance editor for books and book proposals that have recently sold to Hay House, Vanderwyck & Burnham, and Rodale Press. He also wrote book proposals for other authors who have gone on to garner publication contracts with Rodale Press, Random House, and St. Martin's Press.

During 2005, Anthony completed his nonfiction book Tiny Dancer for Thomas Dunne Books at St. Martin's Press, and the advance copy was selected by Reader's Digest as their Editor's Choice for August, 2005 -- their 1,000th Commemorative Issue.

The Kansas City Star named Tiny Dancer "one of the Top 100 Noteworthy Books of 2005." He also edited the first two manuscripts for a new series of humorous books written by gay and straight writing teams which have sold to Marabout for French translation.

In April, 2006 Anthony sold a series of crime novels set in early 20th Century San Francisco in a two-book deal to Ballantine/Random House. The first novel begins with the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and follows the development of a young boy with freakish criminal profiler insights and a tough police sergeant who befriends him. The first novel of this historical fiction series will be published in Spring, 2007 under B/R's new Mortalis imprint.

 


 
FRONT OF THE CLASS --VanderWyk and Burnham, Sept., 2005
 



Brad Cohen as Homer, The Atlanta Braves mascot


Brad Cohen






   


Front of the Class is an inspiring true story of incredible challenges and unwavering determination. As a child with Tourette Syndrome, Brad Cohen was ridiculed, beaten, mocked and shunned. Some people thought he was possessed by the devil. Others, including members of his own family, refused to be seen with him in public. As an adult, Brad overcame all odds to become an award-winning Teacher of the Year for the state of Georgia. The road in between was­­ at best­­ a roller coaster ride in perseverance.

Tourette Syndrome is a neurological disorder of the brain that causes the body to make strange sounds and violent twitches that can't be controlled. Brad is just one of several hundred thousand people who are afflicted. Many choose a quiet life in the shelter of their homes. But Brad Cohen is an inspiration in overcoming life's challenges. Nothing, not even Tourette Syndrome, stops him from pursuing ­­and achieving­­ his goals.

Walk with Brad as he leads you through his unbelievable life from being suspended from school for making noises he could not control to appearing in the eighth grade on the Sally Jesse Raphael show. Live with him as he grows in confidence through his high school years, only to be regularly thrown out of movie theaters and restaurants for making sounds such as "woop!" and "cha,cha." Watch Brad rise through the ranks in a youth organization to become an international leader, and then be humiliated on job searches.

From the depths of abuse that his teachers piled on him as a child, Brad Cohen became determined to become the teacher he never had. After several dozen rejection letters, Brad finally found a teaching home at Mountain View Elementary in Atlanta, where he taught second graders not only reading, writing and math, he taught them about love and acceptance of all people. His administration staff was so impressed that they chose him as their First Year Teacher of the Year, as did the state of Georgia.

Today, Brad Cohen still gets ejected from movie theaters and restaurants, but he has turned the proverbial lemon into some very sweet lemonade. Brad Cohen is one of the most outgoing and positive people you will ever meet. He is cherished by his students, chairs a Relay for Life fund-raising program for Georgia's Cobb County, and spends his few free hours as "Homer," the mascot for the Atlanta Braves baseball team. He is on a mission to encourage and inspire today's youth and in the process, Brad Cohen has become an inspiration to us all.

http://www.frontoftheclassbook.com/.



 
You'll Never Nanny in this Town Again---Crown Books, January, 2006
 





Suzanne Hansen





FILM/TELEVISION Rights Available


Hilarious and addictive, this chronicle of a small-town girl’s adventures as a celebrity nanny reveals what really happens in the diaper trenches of Hollywood.

When Oregon native Suzanne Hansen lands a job as live-in nanny to the children of Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz, she has no idea what she’s gotten into: working 24/7 to fill the roles of pseudo-mommy, nurse, playmate, referee, and chauffer, all while handling the demands of the entertainment elite and making fast friends with the household staff and the underlings at her boss’s office.

When the thankless drudgery takes its toll and Hansen finally quits, her boss blackballs her from ever nannying in Hollywood again. Befuddled but determined, Hansen manages to land gigs with Debra Winger and then Danny DeVito. Kind employers, cute kids, and the sort of insider glimpse at the entertainment world that celebrity junkies crave – looks like Hansen’s fallen into a real-life happy ending. But 24-hour workday rubs some of the glitz off LA living, and even bosses who treat her like family can’t help Hansen as she struggles with Hollywood’s lack of respect for nannies and everyone else who comes in the employee entrance – but without whom many showbiz households would grind to a halt.

Peppering her own story with tales and tantrums experienced by other nannies to the stars, Hansen offers an intriguing peek into the playrooms of the privileged. You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again is a treat for everyone who’s fascinated by the skewed priorities of Tinseltown – and for fans of “assistant-lit” like The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada who will devour this unparalleled – and unabashedly true – account of one girl’s tour of duty as Hollywood’s hired help.

SUZANNE HANSEN has been a high-risk labor and delivery nurse, lactation consultant, and childbirth educator. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

For more info see: http://www.hollywoodnanny.com/


Click to See Suzanne Hansen’s appearance on the TODAY SHOW 1/13


Click to Listen to Suzanne's Radio Interview



 
J. Frank Hickey: THE POSTCARD KILLER - Avalon Books, September, 2006
 


John Frank Hickey strangled his first victim five years before "Jack the Ripper" began his killing rampage in London. This fascinating and extensively documented story tells how a solitary Milquetoast of a man wandered the American East Coast for decades, harboring a terrifying assortment of personal demons. Many of the patterns of behavior that have long since come to be trademarks of the sociopathic killer are revealed in Hickey's long and demented life of crimes, documented in a long series of correspondence in the form of postcards, which eventually led to his capture.

From his first murder at 18 until his capture and conviction nearly 30 years later, he traveled around Mass. NJ and NY working at anonymous clerical or engineering jobs while he committed murders of breathtaking brazenness in his free time. Sometimes he even attacked in public. And yet the sheer audacity of his crimes, coupled with his harmless appearance, kept him invisible to the world for many years. Hickey was well into middle age when his need for public attention drove him to taunt the families of his victims and to mock the police who hunted him.

A captivating study of the murderer's mind and a glimpse into a dark era of American history, The Postcard Killer will hold its place among the best of the true crime genre for years to come.

See Dr. McLaughlin's website at: http://www.subjectcontrolsolutions.com

 






 
A Checklist for Murder
 





Anthony Flacco


Feature Screenplay
Adapted from the Bantam/Dell/Doubleday Book
By Anthony Flacco


Reality and paranoia blend and blur in this deep psychological thriller. In Los Angeles, pretty 18 year-old Natasha Peernock is found in wreckage of a burning car next to her mother’s body. Natasha and her mother have both been severely beaten, and Natasha barely survives. In the hospital, we see from her POV while she tells a tale of being kidnapped by her own father, blindfolded, bound, and tortured for nearly eleven hours while he waited for his wife to come home. Natasha says that he then beat her mother to death and loaded both of them into the car and rigged it to crash.

But Robert Peernock is a computer programmer for the state who has discovered government corruption in the awarding of state contracts, and he has been a victim of constant harassment from the forces he has exposed. He has already won numerous lawsuits against them, and is on the verge of releasing a detailed book that traces government corruption all the way up to the California Governor’s office.

We see from his POV that he is being framed. His daughter was drugged and brainwashed, and the murder was set up to implicate him in order to destroy his credibility. That way the government will be safe from his book even if it is published. And Peernock has an alibi, even though the police reject it.

Robert Peernock flees town, but he communicates with the police via his attorney. He is afraid to return, because the police force works for the very forces that Peernock is trying to expose and eliminate. He is sure that he will become a “jailhouse suicide” if he surrenders.

He has plastic surgery in Las Vegas and returns to L.A. to hide, where his girlfriend helps him avoid capture for months before detectives track him down.

But when civil attorney Victoria Doom enters the case pro bono to help shattered Natasha get on in life, she discovers a host of contracting facts. Doom becomes convinced that Peernock has committed a near-perfect murder. But why? He had already been granted his wife’s permission for a divorce, and even after splitting their estate, they would both be financially well off. And why would he attack his own daughter? Natasha herself talks about how she used to be the apple of his eye.

In the meantime, young Natasha suffers violent recurring nightmares about the crime, but at the same time, her jailed father suffers from nightmares about being set up and convicted for murder.

It is only because of Victoria Doom’s after-hours passion for this case that the truth finally comes out – Robert Peernock would have committed the perfect murder if he hadn’t been too obsessive to throw away his detailed checklist for murder.
His fight against the state has driven his paranoia out of control and convinced him that both his ex-wife and his daughter have been enlisted in the state’s clandestine struggle to silence him. After a fierce trial full of screaming outbursts and a bound and gagged defendant, Peernock is convicted of Murder and a host of smaller crimes.

Later, while Doom helps Natasha to quietly get on with her life in a secure, out-of-state location, word comes from the police that Peernock is in jail trying to hire a killer to go after his daughter and finish the job on her.

However, alone in his jail cell, the story ends with Peernock in his solitary cell, penning the Foreword for his book exposing state corruption. He begins: “This is the story of an innocent man…” and smiles as he glances over at the letter from the NY publisher, along with the enclosed lucrative book contract.





 
My Best Man
 


Andy Schell, author/screenwriter


Kensington Books


Based on Andy Schell's best selling novel, "MY BEST MAN" is a romantic comedy about a young man and his untamed stewardess friend who ultimately learn to be true to themselves and each other.

HARRY FORD is the son of one of the wealthiest men in Kansas, but after his father commits suicide in his beloved Cadillac, Harry learns that he must marry by his next birthday if he wants to inherit his portion of the millions. Problem is, Harry is gay. So stubbornly resisting his father's post-partum threats, Harry moves to Texas where he becomes a flight attendant and meets a vivacious, over-the-top local girl with big blond hair and legs for days who will forever change his life: AMITY STONE. Amity is part beauty queen, part party girl, and fully irresistible. She brings hew life to Harry, as well as an opportunity for him to inherit his rightful fortune. Harry agrees to Amity's proposition of marriage. But as Harry begins to learn of Amity's secret past, he stars to wonder if Amity is marrying him for his own good—or for her own private agenda. As Harry increasingly struggles with this question (and Amity increasingly struggles to portray herself as sincere), Harry meets NICOLO, a stunningly handsome but inept waiter from Argentina. Harry, Amity, and Nicolo form a complicated triangle as each is determined to do the right thing by themselves—and each other.

Even as the wedding march begins, no one is sure who will be THE BEST MAN!