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.

Spanish Harlem Mystery

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

Get Book Here

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: 059319912X
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.

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

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....

Taína

Taína PDF Author: Ernesto Quiñonez
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984897489
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
A uniquely dark, coming-of-age novel rife with urban magical realism, love, and redemption, from the author of Bodega Dreams When Julio, a teenager living in Spanish Harlem, hears that Taina, a pregnant fifteen-year-old from his high school claims to be a virgin, he decides to believe her. Julio has a history of strange visions and his blind and unrequited love for Taina will unleash a whirlpool of emotions that will bring him to question his hard-working Puerto Rican mother and his communist Ecuadorian father, his beliefs and even the building blocks of modern science (after seeing the conception of Taina’s baby as a revolution in nature). After meeting Taína's uncle, "El Vejigante", an ex-con with a dark past, he accepts his proposal to support her during her pregnancy and becomes entangled in a web of crime that, while taking him closer to Taína, ultimately reveals a family secret that will not leave him unscathed.

Down These Mean Streets

Down These Mean Streets PDF Author: Piri Thomas
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780679732389
Category : Harlem (New York, N.Y.)
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
"A linguistic event. Gutter language, Spanish imagery and personal poetics . . . mingle into a kind of individual statement that has very much its own sound." --The New York Times Book Review Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery--a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri was sent to prison for shooting a cop. As he recounts the journey that took him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence, Piri Thomas gives us a book that is as exultant as it is harrowing and whose every page bears the irrepressible rhythm of its author's voice. Thirty years after its first appearance, this classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence is available in an anniversary edition with a new Introduction by the author.

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."

Hitmen

Hitmen PDF Author: Scott M. Deitche
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538153572
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
From the author of the star reviewed Garden State Gangland comes an in-depth exposé on East Harlem's notorious Purple Gang whose murderous exploits became a media obsession and Mafia lynchpin. In the late 1970s, a string of seemingly unconnected murders had Harlem police and federal authorities at their wits’ end until they realized several commonalities. The victims were all either Mafia members or potential witnesses of Mafia activity and they’d all been shot from .22 pistols traced back to a single private sale in Florida. From these details, the FBI and police were able to build a profile of a rogue sect of Mafia hitmen known as the East Harlem Purple Gang. Starting on the fringes of Mafia families, the Purple Gang members became indispensable and installed members in the highest ranks of the Genovese, Bonanno, and Lucchese families. Often serving as freelance hitmen, kidnappers, and drug traffickers, the Purple Gang’s exploits quickly crossed into mythology as media outlets scrambled to keep up with new murders and the law’s crusade to bring the gang members to justice. Sifting through the mystery and mythos, author Scott M. Deitche brings readers into Harlem’s gritty streets to experience the Purple Gang’s reign of terror, the investigators who tried to bring them down, and the gang members who either suffered violent ends or are still at large today.

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.

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.