Showing results by author "C. Line" in All Categories

The American Revolution did not just happen. It was the culmination of two centuries of Enlightenment ideas that entered men's minds and were refined and honed until they expressed themselves in an unprecedented rejection of tyranny in the name of individual rights and political freedom from the whims of arrogant monarchs and conniving, power-lusting politicians.

Cyrus Skeen is hired by Edgar Freund, the defense attorney of Enoch Paige, a notorious lecturer charged with the savage murder of his ex-wife, to find evidence that will exonerate his client of the crime. Skeen soon finds himself at odds with Freund, as well as with Detective Sergeant Robert Hoile of the San Francisco police, who is determined to send Paige to the electric chair, and with Reverend Oswald Hoxley, the pastor of a popular church. More murders are committed.

After having some breathing room from his last case, which brought him up against Islamic operatives in San Francisco in The Black Stone, Cyrus Skeen and his wife take a short vacation on a luxury bus, the Pickwick Stage. But the bus is held up by gangsters. Skeen goes into action and foils the hijacking. But his heroism engenders even more problems and perils.

Islam's Reign of Terror chronicles the war waged against the U.S. and the West, resulting in over 24,000 acts of terror and tens of thousands of deaths in a campaign to force the world to submit unconditionally to Islam and Sharia Law. It also discusses the West's anemic, evasive response to the war declared against it, and how that insipid response only encourages terrorists and states that sponsor terrorism and other Islam-dominated nations to continue to attack the West.

Rational Scrutiny: Paradoxes and Contradictions in Detective Fiction discusses why Chess Hanrahan and Cyrus Skeen, the author's premier heroes and the chief subjects of this volume, are not only extraordinary men of action, but “intellectuals” of the first rank, as well. As Cline writes in the Preface, detective fiction, as a rule, employs both "intellectuals" and "doers".

In Part One, Cyrus Skeen, private detective in 1929 San Francisco, is asked by Charles Gilchrest, chairman of The Daedàlus Society, an exclusive men-only club, to go to the The Daedàlus Grove, a private enclave north of the city, to determine the nature of some trouble he has been warned about in a cryptic note written by an anonymous member. The note alludes to a controversial Senator from Nebraska and a tariff bill in Congress. It may the overture to a prank or it may be a serious threat to the man's life.

A woman working undercover for the FBI is dead as Russian agents make a grab for a seemingly obscure computer company. Hanrahan, who believes no observable phenomenon is beyond rational scrutiny, plays a high-stakes game with a cabal of social scientists who want to reshape public thought - knowing that ideas can kill.

In this new case, Skeen confronts a new kind of nemesis that has been gestating in the Middle East for centuries and is now being enabled by oil companies and careless foreign policies: Islam. While investigating three murders whose savagery is unprecedented in the annals of San Francisco crime, he begins to understand that nemesis and the threat it holds.

During a Nob Hill society party, Skeen and his painter wife, Dilys, befriend a beautiful sculptress who turns out to be a British spy carrying important information about the extent of that infiltration in American and British governments. In A Crimson Overture, one thing leads to another, and soon Skeen is enmeshed in a conspiracy to silence him and anyone else with knowledge of the scale of espionage and treason in both countries.

It is November, 1929. The stock market has crashed. The Roaring Twenties are about to end. But Cyrus Skeen, private detective, is not too concerned. He never bought on margin or gambled on "sure things" to make a quick buck; his wealth is secure. But many businessmen and investors made that mistake and have been bankrupted. Ruined, some have committed suicide. But not all have jumped from their office windows to end it all. Lucian Maxey, president of Maxey Motors in San Francisco, seems to have committed suicide by putting a gun to his head.

Hanrahan solves what he calls "moral paradoxes" that have precipitated or caused murders. Honors Due takes Hanrahan to Hollywood - or rather to the Astoria production studies in New York. After seeing a movie about Galileo that is touted as a drama, he sees that it is a farce, and that a respected historian's name is credited with the screenplay. Hanrahan cannot believe the man had anything to do with the script, because the historian wrote the defining biography of Galileo.

Chess Hanrahan is the chief of police of Auberley, a university town in Massachusetts. He is a former New York City police detective who resigned after being blamed by a district attorney for the "unnecessary" death of a criminal in a gun fight. Auberley seemed to be a sanctuary from the politics and irrationality of the big city. Hanrahan admits to himself that he accepted the job in Auberley to lick his wounds. It was quiet, sedate, not much of a challenge. But then a philosophy professor is murdered.

When Merritt Fury, a fiercely independent American entrepreneur, returns to Hong Kong on business, little does he know that he has become enmeshed in a conspiracy to confiscate his investment and render the Crown colony a dependency on the Mainland dictatorship to the north. While he suspects foul play by some of his business partners in Bluelist TungstenTrading, he also learns that he is the object of scrutiny by an underground group combating the conspiracy. He meets Amber Lee.

Cyrus Skeen, private detective, scours 1928 San Francisco in search of the man who stole a priceless medieval artifact. The thief, who is also a pathological killer, is not Skeen's only obstacle. The exquisite Frenchwoman and retured British colonel who are searching for the artifact also prove to be obstructions. Helping him in his search is his loyal and adoring secretary, Dilys Jones. Complicating the search are two Yale classmates, one of whom has penned a hit play that is headed for Broadway, but who has a secret about its true authorship. This is the other side of Sam Spade's San Francisco.

A brilliant young novelist wins a literary award and disappears. Detective Chess Hanrahan turns up more than murder in this sharp-edged, provocative tale by the author of the popular Sparrowhawk novels. With a new preface by the author.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws were in place in the early 1950s, Katherine worked analyzing data at the NACA (later NASA) Langley laboratory. 

Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share a love of music, spending late summer nights playing the guitar. But Lymon's world as he knows it is about to dissolve. He will be sent on a journey to two Northern cities far from the country life he loves - and the version of himself he knows.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius compared children to tender sprouts, shaped by soil, sunlight, water, and, importantly, the efforts of patient farmers and gardeners. At times, children require our protection, other times we must take a step back and allow them to grow. A practical parenting manual, philosophical reflection on the relationship between parent and child, and necessary response to modern stereotypes of Eastern parenting, Little Sprouts and the Dao of Parenting reconsiders cultural definitions of success....

Clem can make anybody, even his grumpy older sisters, smile with his jokes. But when his family receives news that his father has died in the infamous Port Chicago disaster, everything begins to fall apart. Clem's mother is forced to work long, tough hours as a maid for a wealthy White family. Soon Clem can barely recognize his home - and himself. Can he live up to his father's legacy?

From the award-winning author and illustrator of Before She Was Harriet comes an original and moving perspective of the Great Migration, as seen through the eyes of the young girl Ruth Ellen, whose family journeys from North Carolina to New York City.