Joseph Covino

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S SAN FRANCISCO: MORE TERROR TALES OF THE CITY, is the long-awaited sequel to those terror tales previously conceived. A gothic horror suspense thriller, perfectly faithful to the style and spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, still set in contemporary San Francisco, but derived more from Poe's more esoteric flights of fancy, fantasy, and satire. Once a berserk hypnotic subject precipitates the destruction of a hot air balloon hovering over Napa Valley, it is soon revealed that a Satanist, Docktor Anton Vankirk, has continued the hypnotic experiments of Dr. Vincent Valdemar, his former mesmeric partner killed previously at the city's celebrated Coit Tower. At a memorial service for Dr. Valdemar, conducted at the city's solemn Columbarium, Valdemar's sole direct descendant and heir-his crippled daughter, Elenora-vows revenge against Nicolino by threatening to paint his beloved, Lenore, to death in a bewitched portrait. Elenora seduces Nicolino to retrieve her father's bequest, a hidden parchment likewise coveted by the avaricious Vankirk. From the soaring crown jewel of the Transamerica Pyramid to the lofty belfry of the San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower, this compact but potent tale of Poe takes terror to untried and untrodden heights

Something is terribly amiss in the city of Dallas, Texas in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. Witnesses are systematically dying suspicious deaths in mysterious circumstances. Necks are being broken. Witnesses are murdered. A serial killer could be the culprit responsible. Brett Grimes, a detective for the Dallas Police Department, is assigned by police chief, Jesse E. Curry, to investigate these crimes. Grimes is a no-nonsense, old-school cop who believes in the rule of law, and he's determined to track down and bring the killer, or killers, to justice. Told in flashback after a plane carrying Congressman Hale Boggs mysteriously disappears over Alaska, Detective Grimes is your guide to meeting these real-life witnesses and personally experiencing their fates: Betty Mooney, hung to death in her jail cell; Warren Reynolds, shot in the head; Edwin Walker, right-wing general; reporter Jim Koethe, karate-chopped in his bath; George Senator, Jack Ruby's roommate; George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald's benefactor; Yaeko Okui, beautiful Japanese Oswald acquaintance; Mary Pinchot Meyer, the JFK mistress who knew too much. Numerous others, some you've never heard of before. And a covert assassin code-named Mitchell. All-real, except for Grimes himself, meticulously researched and detailed, you will meet the actual witnesses in their actual homes or offices like you've never met them before, hear them speak in their own words, visit their actual locales and settings. Told in the format of a police procedural, with a climactic confrontation with CIA spooks in Washington, D.C., JFK: LOOSE ENDS is the truest of fact-based True Crime fiction and one of the most remarkable and intriguing books related to the JFK assassination you will ever read anyplace.

Mark Hazard is BACK And he's reclaiming his name World Without Want is, unabashedly, a James Bond novel-in-disguise. In Ian Fleming's twelfth and final novel, James Bond co-opted the name, Mark Hazard, as an alias. In this novel, Hazard reclaims his name and picks up where he left off in that preceding story. A secret agent for the British Secret Service and a member of its Zero-Zero Department, Hazard is now assigned a new number-008-and is Licenced to Liquidate. His superior officer, EM(Executive Minister)sends him out on the most dangerous and deadly assignment of his career: to directly confront the terroristic Islamic State network After an American-launched Tomahawk cruise missile, targeting suspected terrorist sites in Syria, is mysteriously diverted and re-routed to destroy a naval command center in Turkey, certain clues lead the West to believe that a terroristic organization has acquired the capability to turn their own missiles against it by resorting to a highly sophisticated, high-tech homing device apparatus. Hazard is dispatched first to war-torn Syria to track down the source of his only lead: a seductive Trinidadian courtesan spirited on-site by a high-level naval commander just before the base command center was destroyed. In Raqqa, Syria, Hazard gets abducted by female members of the notorious Khansa Brigade, interrogated by an Islamist militant at a ruined castle, and nearly drowned at Tabqa Dam. Hazard's hazardous investigation takes him next to Romania, where he discovers an even more shocking secret: a bevy of beautiful Brides of the Islamic State, who are being recruited to act as live homing devices for deliberately deflected enemy missiles-taking the horrific concept of suicide bombing to a new and more lethal level. Even more shocking than the inventor of this innovative new threat, discovered in Sweden, is the startling revelation of its unpredictable sponsor-with whom Hazard has his most climactic and chilling confrontation. True to Bond creator, Ian Fleming's original style and spirit, this is no artificially-contrived, hyper-pretentious, revisionist novel. Translation: it's wholly without any politically correct RUBBISH Replacing the rubbish is real Bond-ian drama It is, without doubt, a Bond-like adventure like no other-unlike any you've ever read; or likely ever will read. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the cinematic James Bond film franchise, this unforgettable thriller pays special tribute-first and foremost-to the incomparable life and legacy of James Bond creator, Ian Lancaster Fleming

Inspired by the classic 1960s TV series, the Wild, Wild West, Night of the Nobility Cult: A Wild, Wild Western is a faithful and reverent send-up, yet creatively a completely original story pilot with fresh characters set in an updated time period, populated by actual persons and events in history: the year's 1886, during America's Reconstruction Era, under President Grover Cleveland. With the violent labor unrest of the notorious Haymarket Affair in Chicago, Illinois as the backdrop, a labor-friendly Congressman is murdered by a strange, skull-faced assassin. The only lead to the killer is an invitation to an initiation ceremony for a sinister secret society called the Order of the Skulls, also known as the Brotherhood of Death. United States Secret Service agent, Ernest Jordan, recruits to the service a Pinkerton detective, James T. Justice, to investigate the initiation site based at the Melrose Castle in Virginia. Change-through-Chaos is the society's stated threat to the nation. After escaping incineration in a crematory, the new partnership team of Justice and Jordan are sent on a cross-country trek to witness three demonstrations of the society's power to create conflict and chaos in a bid to shadow the government, not by overt takeover, but through outright extortion, manipulation, domination, and control: first to a lighthouse to witness an artificially triggered tidal wave in Texas; next to an artificially triggered earthquake in South Carolina; and, finally, to an undisclosed demonstration in New York City. On their way, the agents encounter President Cleveland, and his lovely young wife, Frances Clara Folsom; the Red-Shirt Riders of South Carolina; a beautiful young suffragist named Kitty; and an assortment of other mysterious and menacing characters. Their expedition ends with a climactic confrontation at the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty For this new government agent duo--as well as for the reader--it's a spectacular, unforgettable, and completely surprising first mission worthy of its original inspiration.

Francesco Ferrari Mines the Mission, a reverent send-up of Alfred Hitchcock's major motion picture masterpiece, VERTIGO(1958), is the third and most epic entry in this crime suspense thriller series. Francesco Ferrari, San Francisco's new iconic private detective for the times(not the dated Sam Spade past), a former Franciscan seminarian-turned-shamus, drives a Ferrari California T sports car, packs a .357 magnum and operates out of a flat in the historic Buena Vista Cafe on the city's northern waterfront. And he covers only those cases affecting the city he loves--his namesake City of Saint Francis. This time out, Ferrari's hired by the president and CEO of an internet pornography company, located in the city's largely Latin Mission district, to watch and follow his young and enigmatic Catalonian wife, whom he claims is obsessed with a once celebrated but dead Spanish dancer known as Senorita Carmelita. A feminist anti-pornography activist plummets to her death from the Mission Dolores basilica bell-tower and Ferrari's quickly implicated in her demise. Creatively adapting essential elements from both the classic Vertigo novel and movie, this complex, erotic, romantic, and wholly original detective/love story is neither a copycat imitation nor a make-over of the Vertigo story. This is, make no mistake, most definitely not your parents' Vertigo--nor even your grandparents' Just when you think this story is traversing familiar territory it will deviate drastically into fresh, unfamiliar, and even surreal realms, which will both startle and surprise. Once Ferrari falls--and falls hard he does--for the sultry and seductive subject of his surveillance, becoming obsessed with solving the secret mystery she lures him into, he's forced to follow a haunted trail that turns as emotionally daunting as it does deadly--leading, dizzyingly, to a shocking, climactic conclusion from which the tough and tenacious detective may never fully recover. One you won't see coming. One you won't ever forget. Listen to soundtrack music composed by Bernard Herrmann while reading this book, and you'll believe you're reading a Hitchcock film

MOMMIE DEAREST REBOOTED, no relation to the Joan Crawford expose, is the all-factual, all-true autobiographical account of the seven long, hellish and horrendous years an extremely sensitive and unassuming kid was forced to mis-spend(in Pensacola, Florida)with two of the sickest, and most evil and malevolent non-"parents" ever to inhabit the planet--by name: PEGGY B. SILLS and CLESTER(CLES)ROLAN CHEETHAM, rightly referred to throughout as the Bitch Mother and the Fat Bastard step-father. This depraved and perverse pair subjected this kid to every outrageous atrocity thinkable. Spanning the period from the fourth through the eleventh grade, this true memoir recounts, in frequently graphic detail, every insidious incident, every vile event: foul animal abuse, brutal beatings, maliciously cruel pranks, drunken rampages, sexual perversities, slavish involuntary servitude, savage whippings and wicked mis-treatment of the harshest and severest kind. All told, it's the true story of the broken home, child abuse, the dys-functional family and family violence. Beyond that, it's the long overdue exposure--and outing--of the two disgustingly degenerate instigators of all the grievous and grueling adversity they forced this kid to inexcusably, and undeservedly, suffer and endure. Most importantly, it's the story of how this resilient and resourceful kid tenaciously resolved to not only survive and persevere, but even to triumphantly prevail over even the most coercive, domineering, intimidating, menacing and threatening tactics of these two violent and vulgar individuals. Ultimately, it's the inspirational story of how this unpardonably abused and bullied kid resolved to be not the victim--but the victor