Spanish Harlem Mystery

Spanish Harlem Mystery PDF Author: Michael Boccia
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 9781469107592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A death bed request, hauntings and murder lead Maria into a journey of self discovery. To please Adrianna, her dying mother, Maria promises to seek her father, whom she believes long dead. But she never intends to keep this promise. Until her mother starts haunting her dreams. Dreams, memories and visions entice her. Night after night, Adrianna visits Maria's dreams and nags her into fulfilling the deathbed request. Nightmares and visions force her on a quest to Spanish Harlem. She delves into her family history, only to find herself embroiled in a series of mysteries. Among the prostitutes and the crooked police, her family and the street people, she discovers her father was a terrible man: a pimp, thief and drug dealer. Until he is murdered. And more, there is some dark family secret no one discusses. Memories mingle with dreams and visions as she discovers her own past. Failure after failure meets each attempt she makes at solving the mysterious death of her father, who died when she was only nine. With each new discovery, things look worse. She discovers he was murdered by an unknown assailant, his throat cut from ear to ear. The family's dark secret: he was a an incestuous child molester. She learns her father was murdered by a sexual abuse victim. When things become as bad as they can be, Mare discovers that she herself was molested and may even be her father's killer. Dreams tell her she killed him because he was raping her at the age of nine. For comfort, Maria falls back on her childhood religion, Catholicism. At the Feast of Saint Anthony, she goes to Saint Anthony's, the local church, and confesses to the murder. But to her amazement, an old priest tells her that she did not commit the murder. She learns her father is not her father, but a stepfather, who married her mother in a business deal. Adrianna was an unwed girl, pregnant by a handsome young priest. She needed a "father" for the unborn Maria; he needed to marry a US citizen to remain in America. So he married his brother's pregnant girlfriend. He was killed by her biological father, the priest, who caught his brother sexually abusing her. Maria unable to believe this story, wonders who is her real father, and demands to know why she should believe him. The old priest confesses that he is her biological father and cut his own brother's throat in a fit of rage.

Spanish Harlem Mystery

Spanish Harlem Mystery PDF Author: Michael Boccia
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1413435297
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
A death bed request, hauntings and murder lead Maria into a journey of self discovery. To please Adrianna, her dying mother, Maria promises to seek her father, whom she believes long dead. But she never intends to keep this promise. Until her mother starts haunting her dreams. Dreams, memories and visions entice her. Night after night, Adrianna visits Maria's dreams and nags her into fulfilling the deathbed request. Nightmares and visions force her on a quest to Spanish Harlem. She delves into her family history, only to find herself embroiled in a series of mysteries. Among the prostitutes and the crooked police, her family and the street people, she discovers her father was a terrible man: a pimp, thief and drug dealer. Until he is murdered. And more, there is some dark family secret no one discusses. Memories mingle with dreams and visions as she discovers her own past. Failure after failure meets each attempt she makes at solving the mysterious death of her father, who died when she was only nine. With each new discovery, things look worse. She discovers he was murdered by an unknown assailant, his throat cut from ear to ear. The family's dark secret: he was a an incestuous child molester. She learns her father was murdered by a sexual abuse victim. When things become as bad as they can be, Mare discovers that she herself was molested and may even be her father's killer. Dreams tell her she killed him because he was raping her at the age of nine. For comfort, Maria falls back on her childhood religion, Catholicism. At the Feast of Saint Anthony, she goes to Saint Anthony's, the local church, and confesses to the murder. But to her amazement, an old priest tells her that she did not commit the murder. She learns her father is not her father, but a stepfather, who married her mother in a business deal. Adrianna was an unwed girl, pregnant by a handsome young priest. She needed a "father" for the unborn Maria; he needed to marry a US citizen to remain in America. So he married his brother's pregnant girlfriend. He was killed by her biological father, the priest, who caught his brother sexually abusing her. Maria unable to believe this story, wonders who is her real father, and demands to know why she should believe him. The old priest confesses that he is her biological father and cut his own brother's throat in a fit of rage.

Harlem Sunset

Harlem Sunset PDF Author: Nekesa Afia
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593199138
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Named a 2022 People Magazine best book of the summer! A riveting Harlem Renaissance Mystery featuring Louise Lloyd, a young Black woman working in a hot new speakeasy when she gets caught up in a murder that hits too close to home... Harlem, 1927. Twenty-seven-year-old Louise Lloyd has found the perfect job! She is the new manager of the Dove, a club owned by her close friend Rafael Moreno. There Louise meets Nora Davies, one of the girls she was kidnapped with a decade ago. The two women—along with Rafael and his sister, Louise’s girlfriend, Rosa Maria—spend the night at the Dove, drinking and talking. The next morning, Rosa Maria wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the previous night. Nora is lying dead in the middle of the dance floor. Louise knows Rosa Maria couldn’t have killed Nora, but the police have a hard time believing that no one can remember anything at all about what happened. When Louise and Rosa Maria return to their apartment after being questioned by the police, they find the word GUILTY written across the living room wall in paint that looks a lot like blood. Someone has gone to great lengths to frame and terrify Rosa Maria, and Louise will stop at nothing to clear the woman she loves.

Dead Dead Girls

Dead Dead Girls PDF Author: Nekesa Afia
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593199111
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
“In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist.”--The New York Times The start of an exciting new historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance from debut author Nekesa Afia Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead. Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights at the Zodiac, Harlem’s hottest speakeasy. Louise’s friends, especially her girlfriend, Rosa Maria Moreno, might say she’s running from her past and the notoriety that still stalks her, but don’t tell her that. When a girl turns up dead in front of the café, Louise is forced to confront something she’s been trying to ignore—two other local Black girls have been murdered in the past few weeks. After an altercation with a police officer gets her arrested, Louise is given an ultimatum: She can either help solve the case or wind up in a jail cell. Louise has no choice but to investigate and soon finds herself toe-to-toe with a murderous mastermind hell-bent on taking more lives, maybe even her own....

Harlem Shuffle

Harlem Shuffle PDF Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385545142
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle). "Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!

The Conjure-man Dies : a Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem

The Conjure-man Dies : a Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
An African king with a degree from Harvard who set himself up as a "conjure-man", a fortune teller, is murdered in 1930s Harlem. This is the first known mystery novel written by an African American.

Dummy's Murder Between Hands and Other Mystery Short Stories

Dummy's Murder Between Hands and Other Mystery Short Stories PDF Author: Charles E. Schwarz
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595238564
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A collection of 12, some new, some previously published satirical, and/or politically incorrect mysteries which will challenge your mind, tickle your funnybone, and shock your sensibilities. The judges of World Wide Writers' Contest comments as appearing in Writers' Forum regarding Dummy's Murder Between Hands, "A marvelously funny murder mystery in the classic Agatha Christie mold. The narrator is a kind of Lord Peter Wimsey who solves the murder and has his readers in stitches on the way a take-off of the classic murder mystery."

Cotton Comes to Harlem

Cotton Comes to Harlem PDF Author: Chester Himes
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307803244
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
From “the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler” (San Francisco Chronicle) comes a hard-hitting, entertaining entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series about two NYPD detectives who must piece together the clues of the scam of a lifetime. Flim-flam man Deke O’Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta’s state penitentiary than he’s back on the streets working a big scam. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement, he’s counting on a big Harlem rally to produce a massive collection—for his own private charity. But the take is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. As NYPD detectives “Coffin Ed” Johnson and “Grave Digger” Jones face the complexity of the scheme, we are treated to Himes’s brand of hard-boiled crime fiction at its very best.

Spanish Harlem

Spanish Harlem PDF Author: Joseph Rodriguez
Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers (DAP)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
Each year, former residents of Spanish Harlem return for "Old Timer's Day," a celebration of the flamboyance and the gritty self-reliance of the neighborhood.".

Bodega Dreams

Bodega Dreams PDF Author: Ernesto Quiñonez
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804154058
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In this "thriller with literary merit" (Time Out New York), a stunning narrative combines the gritty rhythms of Junot Diaz with the noir genius of Walter Mosley. Bodega Dreams pulls us into Spanish Harlem, where the word is out: Willie Bodega is king. Need college tuition for your daughter? Start-up funds for your fruit stand? Bodega can help. He gives everyone a leg up, in exchange only for loyalty—and a steady income from the drugs he pushes. Lyrical, inspired, and darkly funny, this powerful debut novel brilliantly evokes the trial of Chino, a smart, promising young man to whom Bodega turns for a favor. Chino is drawn to Bodega's street-smart idealism, but soon finds himself over his head, navigating an underworld of switchblade tempers, turncoat morality, and murder. "Bodega is a fascinating character. . . . The story [Quiñonez] tells has energy and verve." —The New York Times Book Review

All That Is Secret

All That Is Secret PDF Author: Patricia Raybon
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1496458400
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Stephen Curry’s March 2022 Literati Book Club Pick Parade Magazine pick for Fall 2021 “Mysteries We Love” PBS Masterpiece’s “Best Mystery Books of 2021: As Recommended by Bestselling Authors” CrimeReads “Best Debut Novels” pick for October 2021 BookBub’s “16 Best Historical Mysteries of 2021” From award-winning author Patricia Raybon comes a compelling new historical mystery series about a young Black theologian—and Sherlock fan—seeking to solve her father’s cold case murder in a city ruled by the KKK. Can an amateur detective solve the cold case mystery of her lost father’s murder? In the winter of 1923, Professor Annalee Spain―a clever but overworked theologian at a small Chicago Bible college―receives a cryptic telegram calling her home to Denver to solve the mystery of the murder of her beloved but estranged father. For a young Black woman, searching for answers in a city ruled by the KKK could mean real danger. Still, with her literary hero Sherlock Holmes as inspiration, Annalee launches her hunt for clues, attracting two surprising allies: Eddie, a relentless young white boy searching for his missing father, and Jack, a handsome Black pastor who loves nightclub dancing and rides in his sporty car, awakening Annalee’s heart to the surprising highs and lows of romantic love. With their help, Annalee follows clues that land her among Denver’s powerful elite. But when their sleuthing unravels sinister motives and deep secrets, Annalee confronts the dangerous truths and beliefs that could make her a victim too.