“Vivid and unnerving . . . Eliot Conte is an instant original.” —The Washington Post Someone's shooting dogs in Utica . . . Ex-PI Eliot Conte (“part Mike Hammer and part William S. Burroughs,” according to The Washington Post) thought he’d escaped the sordid underworld of long-established Mafia networks, unsolved crimes, and the specter of his political kingmaker father that make up the background in his gritty hometown of Utica, New York. He’s returned to his old love, teaching American literature, and a new love, policewoman Catherine Cruz. But the peace doesn’t last long. First, one of Eliot’s students, a Bosnian Muslim, disappears, leaving a trail of texts and e-mails that suggest a terrorism plot underway. Meanwhile, the tightknit community is disturbed by a series of brutal murders of dogs. And no matter where he looks, the trail seems to lead back to secrets Conte hoped he’d buried forever.

Since its first edition, in 1964, Dixon and Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records has been dubbed 'the bible' for collectors of pre-war African-American music. It provides an exhaustive listing of all recordings made up to the end of 1943 in a distinctively African-American musical style,excluding those customarily classed as jazz (which are the subject of separate discographies). The book covers recordings made for the commercial market (whether issued at the time or not) and also recordings made for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song and similar bodies -- about 20,000titles in all, by more than 3,000 artists. For each recording session, full details are given of: artist credit, accompaniment, place and date of recording, titles, issuing company and catalogue numbers, matrix numbers and alternate takes. There are also short accounts of the major 'race labels',which recorded blues and gospel material, and a complete list of field trips to the south by travelling recording units. Howard Rye has joined the original compilers for this thoroughly revised fourth edition. The scope has been enlarged by the addition of about 150 new artists, in addition tonewly discovered recordings by other artists. Early cylinder recordings of gospel music, from the 1890s, are also included for the first time. Previous editions of this work were applauded for their completeness, accuracy, and reliability. This has now been enhanced by the addition of newinformation from record labels and from record company files, and by listening to a wide selection of titles, and detailed cross-checking.