Ace Collins

Enrich your holiday celebrations as you discover the incredible stories and the inspiration behind the Christmas songs you know and love.Jingle Bells MaryDid You Know?The First NoelO Holy NightSilver BellsWhite ChristmasThe songs that you've sung since you were a child continue to bring Christmas to life each year. Now, you'll learn how your favorite Christmas songs came to be. Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas reveals the surprising and fascinating origins of over thirty of your favorite Christmas songs and carols, both secular and religious. Along the way you will uncover spiritual insights, heartwarming stories, and tales of the humble men and women of the past who wrote what remain the most beloved Christmas songs today. Discover how:Iconic artists such as Judy Garland and Nat King Cole were influenced and inspired to record instant classics like Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and The Christmas Song.God-inspired words given to an unlikely musician became Mary, Did You Know?One of the oldest Christmas songs still sung today, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, changed from a hymn sung in Latin only in Catholic masses to a carol embraced by every Christian denomination in the world. From the rollicking appeal of Jingle Bells to the tranquil beauty of Silent Night, the great songs of Christmas contain messages of peace, hope, and truth. Each song in its own way expresses a facet of God’s heart and celebrates the birth of his greatest gift to the world—Jesus. These stories will warm your heart and bring extra significance to the carols you sing each December.

Enhance your holiday celebrations as you discover the real story behind some of your most beloved Christmas customs and how they all point to Christ.Ever wonder where some of our unique and meaningful Christmas traditions come from?Why are red and green popular colors of the season?Why is exchanging gifts a family tradition? The golden traditions of Christmas—gifts, wreaths, stockings, carols, mistletoe, and more—infuse your celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. And, in ways you may not realize, they also point you to the birth of Christ. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas reveals the people, places, and events that shaped the best-loved customs of this merriest of holidays.Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas includes insights about:Gift givingChristmas treesCarolingNativity scenesYule logsStockingsAdvent wreathsMistletoeHolly, and more! You will discover how:After eighteen centuries of all but ignoring the event, churches began to open the door for believers to commemorate Jesus’ incarnationThe evergreen tree, once a central theme in the worship practices of pagan cultures, came to represent the everlasting love of GodThe magi's three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—are filled with spiritual symbolism Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas is the perfect gift to infuse your celebration with spiritual insights, true-life tales, and captivating legends to intrigue you and your family. Bring new luster and depth to your modern traditions while you celebrate Jesus' birth. The traditions of Christmas lend beauty, awe, and hope to the holiday, causing people all over the world to anticipate it with joy. Warm your heart as you rediscover the true and eternal significance of Christmas.

My life was over I mean really over Here I was, a kid who'd placed second in the city tennis tourney, a top-scoring soccer player, lots of friends, loving my life in Chicago, and what happens? My parents were killed in an auto accident. And I was too young to live alone, so I get shipped off to Texas to live with my grandparents on a farm. A farm Here I was in Hicksville with nothing to do. Boy, was I missing my parents and my life in Chicago.Nobody here understood me. There's one girl, Satara, who's been nice, but she just doesn't get me either. So you wonder how I got from here to having the nickname, Touchdown Tommy? Well, why don't you open the book and let me tell you ...

In an adventure spanning the United States and Mexico as well as the Pacific war front, Helen Meeker and her team are on the trail of the Nazi's top spy, under attack by the forces of Imperial Japan, and asked to solve the attempted murder of one of the world's biggest movie stars. From Hollywood sound stages to a deserted island to a Colorado ghost town to a mental hospital, the action intensifies with each turn of the page. As Meeker, Bryant, and Lancelot each work different angles, their cases converge in the climatic fashion of a motion picture blockbuster. In a novel where everyone seems to be on the wrong side of the law, it is all but impossible to determine who is the target and who is the killer. Laced with a myriad of plot twists and dramatic surprises, combined with chase scenes, gun battles, inside jokes, and trips to some of World War II's most legendary venues, Set For Danger launches Helen Meeker into 1943 with an adventure that doesn't answer whodunit or who will survive until the final nerve racking page.

In these three episodes from the series In The President's Service, Helen Meeker finds herself gazing into the eyes of Hitler and meeting what she swears is the devil in the flesh. Surrounded by evil in a world gone crazy, trying to track down a scientist who believes he can turn ordinary people into supermen, and racing from Washington, DC to Mexico to New Orleans to London and even Berlin, the woman who has the confidence of the greatest leaders in the free world has to fake her death in order to accomplish a task too frightening to believe. Tracked by assassins while trying to sort out a myriad of clues, Meeker's team is constantly on the move chasing a force that could change the outcome of World War II. And the key to solving a mystery in this breathtaking adventure-trying to figure out which twin is good and which is evil. Only one woman and one team could hope to measure up to the enormity of this challenging mission, but beware, in war, the price of victory is often death, and sadly not all the heroes live to come home.

Action ... Intrigue ... Mystery ... Murder?Helen Meeker has traveled the globe fighting the world's most evil forces, but a small boy has given her a seemingly impossible case. The child believes the same people who killed his father on the Astoria during the first summer of World War II have also murdered Santa Claus.

In the President's Service is a thirteen-book series about Helen Meeker, an agent working for FDR during WWII. The series follows her assignments both in the US and in Europe during the war. This book contains the first three episodes: A Date with Death, The Dark Pool, and Blood Brother.

The Cat's Eye Has It All-- A Kidnapped Child, a Murdered Japanese Woman, A Secret Nazi ProjectHelen Meeker is immersed in a perverse game where lives are cheap, faith is in short supply, death is a constant companion and the action never stops. A kidnapped Norwegian child, a murdered Japanese-American woman, and a secret Nazi project hidden inside a mountain build into a breathless adventure that literally spans the globe. The Cat's Eye, Ace Collins's first full-length novel since The Yellow Packard, finds Helen Meeker challenged to solve the perfect crime in Chicago as well as to go behind enemy lines to destroy a German super weapon. With the help of her mysterious partner Teresa Bryant and a host of colorful teammates, Meeker confronts a hitman, a gambler, a top Nazi leader, and SS officers and escapes bomb blasts, gunfire, and lethal double agents. Along the way, she employs all her athletic skills, instincts, and intelligence when confronting the brightest mind in all of Germany and the most desperate industrialist in the United States.

The month of December is filled with joy and wonder as we anticipate the celebration of Christ's birth. For both the young and the young at heart, there is no season that can compare to the Christmas season. Celebrate this year with a countdown through the month. From December 1 to New Year's Eve, these inspirational readings of stories behind popular Christmas traditions, carols, and movies will rid you of the overpowering stress that can come with this season and reawaken the wonder, joy, and magic that is Christmas. Best-selling author Ace Collins will capture your imagination, reawaken precious traditions, revisit great traditions, and shine a light on opportunities to use the real spirit of the season to make each day of December more memorable and meaningful.

Dogs are more than just family pets or canine companions. For some, they are brave servants warding off danger and rescuing their humans from the grip of illness, danger, or even death. For some, dogs are heroes. In Service Tails: More Stories of Man's Best Hero, prolific author (and lifelong dog lover) Ace Collins returns with another collection of short, dramatic stories about dogs that have gone the extra mile in service to their owners. These inspiring true tales show how tactful training and the remarkable bond between the dog and its owner led these service animals to perform unselfish actions--and even great sacrifice--to put another's life above their own. These exceptional, fearless dogs demonstrate a courage, faith, and loyalty that every human (and especially dog lovers) can respect and admire.

As Christmas 1946 draws near, thirty-something marine officer-turned-homicide detective Lane Walker has his hands full. Three men with seemingly no relationship to each other have been murdered, including the powerful District Attorney. The only connection between the crimes? The weapons: twenty-year-old unopened fruitcake tins manufactured by a company that is no longer in business. While some foods may be to die for, fruitcake isn't one of them This heaping helping of murder will be no easy task for Walker, and he certainly doesn't need the determined and feisty Betsy Clayton, the political reporter for The Chicago Herald, getting in the way. Employing witty dialogue and historical accuracy, The Fruitcake Murders offers equal parts murder, mystery, and mayhem in a perplexing whodunit set in the days just after World War II.