A group of glamorous English socialites spend the summer of 1930 holidaying on the Italian Riviera where the poet Shelley died in a sailing accident in 1822. To pass the time, they tell amusing stories, much as Shelley, Byron and their friends had done a century earlier. For their theme they choose the death of Shelley and the stories progress towards a solution to the "murder mystery". Yet is that truly what the stories are about? Or, despite their witty surface, are they a code for dark and dangerous secrets hidden behind an urbane façade? Guy Parrot, a naive young doctor, finds himself falling in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Julia, the truth of whose past flickers between the lines of the stories, tantalising both Guy and the Reader. Guy discovers that truth, and its terrible reality leads to two murders and the destruction of his happiness and sanity. In 1945, in the aftermath of war, Guy returns to Italy with the army and is given an opportunity to re-examine the events of fifteen years before. This time will he understand what happened and finally redeem himself? The Strange Death of a Romantic offers the Reader romance, comedy, suspense, and an intriguing solution to a historical Whodunit - but without the inconvenience of a crime.

Vietnam veteran Dominick Candiotti has been long estranged from his family. His late parents were close to the ruling mob clan in Youngstown, his sister was a bad-tempered and dissatisfied nag, and his middle brother was a corruptible police lieutenant. But in 1985, their oldest brother Richard Candiotti---beloved by every Italian Catholic in Youngstown as "Father Candy"---dies, and Dominick returns home for the funeral. Dominick is greatly disturbed by Richard's death, which has been ruled a suicide. Dissatisfied with this answer, he sets out to find the truth, revealing secrets and coming face-to-face with brutality and violence. Award-winning author Les Roberts pens a riveting and moving tale about walking the fragile tightrope between love and hatred.

While incarcerated in the Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1924 for larceny, conspiracy and some 100 violations of the Prohibition Act, Gaston B. Means, a former Harding Administration official and private investigator, met May Dixon Thacker, the sister of novelist Thomas Dixon, whose The Clansman (1905) had been transformed by D. W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation for the big screen in 1915. Mrs. Thacker, the author of True Confessions, promised to help Means tell his story. After his release, Means spent day after day dictating to her. The resulting publication, The Strange Death of President Harding, raises some interesting points surrounding the circumstances of the President’s death during a nationwide speaking tour, and went on to become one of the bestselling books of 1930.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2022! The New York Times Bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club Pick! "I LOVED this book! ...Funny, breathtaking, hopeful, and dreamy.”—Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston. Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father. For ten years, she's run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it. Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is. Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories. "One of the Summer's Hottest Reads"—Entertainment Weekly

Her lips burn with chillies and she smokes a cigar. Her breath is my narcotic. Her scent is of cloves, of night fevers and spent seed. What man could resist the Argentinian Virgin? What woman could bear her horror? Summer 1941. France is occupied by the Germans but the United States is not at war. Four glamorous young Americans find themselves whiling away the hot days in the boredom of a small Riviera town, while in a half-abandoned mansion nearby, Teresa and Katerina Malipiero, a mother and daughter, wait for Señor Malipiero to complete his business in the Reich and take them home to Argentina. The plight of the women attracts the sympathy of 'Lucky' Tom Rensselaer and he is seduced by the beauty of Katerina. Tom has perfect faith in their innocence, yet they cannot explain why a sinister Spaniard has been murdered in their home and why Tom must help them dispose of the body without informing the police. Watching over events is Pat Byrne, a young Irish writer. Twenty years later, when Tom has been reduced from the most handsome, admired and talented man of his generation to a derelict alcoholic, Pat sets out to discover the facts of that fateful summer: the secrets that were hidden and the lies that were told. It is a shocking truth: a tale of murder unpunished and a good man destroyed by those who loved him most. The Argentinian Virgin is a sensuous novel of erotic fantasy, obsession, jealousy and betrayal set in the dreamlike atmosphere of a Riviera summer in wartime.

Awesome inside-track from the diaries of Gaston B. Means and his the Department of Justice Investigations. Means asserts that Harding was poisoned. Mrs. Harding employed Gaston Means as a private detective in 1921. Teapot Dome was breaking. The scandal took its toll, and by the spring of 1923, Harding was visibly distraught at what he regarded as the betrayal of his friends who were taking advantage of his kindliness and lax administration. He sought escape from Washington in mid-June by taking a trip to Alaska with his wife and a large entourage. On his way home at the end of July, the president complained of abdominal pain, but he seemed to rally as he rested at a San Francisco hotel. On the evening of August 2, however, as his wife read to him from a magazine, Harding suddenly died from either a heart attack or stroke. This book is full of cool, insider and conspiracy "stuff" (for lack of a better word). The appendix lists a number of deaths, suicides, investigation notes, a request by Mrs. Harding that no death mask be made, a few details on the death of General Sawyer ("died in the same mysterious manner" as Harding) who may or may not have been in Harding's death room, etc. The Teapot Dome Scandal (also called The Oil Reserves, or Elk Hills Scandal) in American history, was a scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall. After President Warren G. Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve lands from the Navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, Fall secretly granted to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome (Wyoming) reserves (April 7, 1922). He granted similar rights to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum Company for the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves in California (1921-22). In return for the leases, Fall received large cash gifts and no-interest "loans." When the affair became known, Congress directed President Harding to cancel the leases; the Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled illegal Harding's transfer of authority to Fall. Although the president himself was not implicated in the transactions that had followed the transfer, the revelations of his associates' misconduct took a severe toll on his health; disillusioned and exhausted, he died before the full extent of the wrongdoing had been determined. In 1920 Harding won the presidency by the greatest popular vote margin to that time. He died during his third year in office and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. His brief administration accomplished little of lasting value, however, and soon after his death a series of scandals doomed the Harding presidency to be judged among the worst in American history.