Showing results by author "Nick Russell" in All Categories

Big Lake's first annual Snowdaze celebration to kick off the winter season was off to a good start. Mother Nature cooperated with the event planners with a cold front that brought a heavy snowfall to the White Mountains of Arizona, dumping over a foot of the white stuff at the higher elevations just two days before Snowdaze weekend began in early December. The little mountain town looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with Christmas decorations strung from the light poles on Main Street, kids building snowmen in their yards, and smoke rising from chimneys all over Big ...

Life has been difficult lately for Somerton County Deputy Sheriff John Lee Quarrels. He's on the trail of a sexual predator, his love life is in turmoil, his soon-to-be ex-wife just served him with divorce papers, someone has stolen his police car and is using its radio to broadcast offensive jokes, a 350-pound redneck named Baby Bubba just tried to brain him with a shovel, and all of that happened before John Lee shot the dead guy.

Tongues are wagging all over town about Big Lake's newest business, the Black Stocking Brewpub, where the scantily clad waitresses are drawing crowds of men and the ire of local churchgoers. And that's before the arrogant womanizer who owns the brewpub is found murdered! Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies have plenty of suspects to choose from as they begin to navigate the treacherous currents left in the wake of the murder, because the dead man, a person who seemingly knew no limits, possessed no humanity, and cared for nothing apart from his own greed and twisted desires, has left behind ...

It’s a hot, dry summer in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, and the heat and the drought have old-timers fearing a wildfire could break out at any time, as they had in other parts of the state. But the shops and restaurants are filled with seasonal residents and tourists who are in town to escape even worse temperatures in the desert cities of Tucson and Phoenix. Locals and tourists alike are thrilled when the Rim Country Renegades came to town for the annual Pioneer Days celebration, recalling the days of the Wild West with cowboy poetry and putting on their trick roping and...

Life is good in Elmhurst, Ohio. The war is over, the economy is booming, and the future looks bright. But just across the deep ravine known as Dog's Run is a different life, one where times are always hard and dreams seldom come true. When Wanda Jean Reider, a beautiful young woman from the wrong side of town, is found dead in Dog's Run secrets begin to come out. Secrets that will expose hidden sins and a dark side of life carried on behind the manicured lawns and inside the back rooms of the stores along Main Street.

At first it seemed like a routine death in a run of the mill house on a residential street that could be anywhere in small town America. An elderly woman who sat down in her recliner to take a nap and never woke up. But Sheriff Weber would soon learn there was nothing routine about this case at all. When an autopsy revealed that she had been murdered, things take a bizarre turn. The sheriff discovers that there were many people who had reason to want Edna Knowles dead, among them relatives she had cheated out of an inheritance, two adult stepchildren she had treated cruelly, and a high ...

Everyone in Big Lake was surprised when hard-drinking good old boy Levi Bischoff left town and went to a rehab clinic to dry out. No one thought it would be long before he fell back into his old ways, but Levi proved them wrong, moving to the college town of Flagstaff, meeting a nice girl, enrolling in classes at Northern Arizona University, and following the straight and narrow path. But how long could that last? Apparently not long, because late one night Levi hit a young woman with his truck, and when deputies responded to the fatal accident scene, it was obvious that he was intoxicated....

Big Lake High School’s star quarterback seems to have it all. Handsome, popular with the girls, adored by the fans, and with a talent that his coach is convinced will take him to the big time in professional football. So when Gary Gunkel goes missing a week before the homecoming game, some people in town believe he's just a typical young man sowing his wild oats. But when the missing boy's mother shows Sheriff Weber a series of gruesome threatening letters he has received the sheriff agrees that there might be something more sinister happening. Even more startling, his investigation soon ...

The phone call to the Big Lake Sheriff's office was no more than a curiosity to begin with. A couple calling to check on the welfare of a bruised and battered young man they had found stranded along the highway. A young man who claimed to be Sheriff Weber's son. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town soon afterward and is evasive about his reasons for being there, the sheriff's instincts tell him the man has come looking for trouble. Little does Weber know that those two events will set in motion a series of accusations, crimes, and confrontations that will have two experienced ...

A simple trip to town, a chance meeting with a pretty young woman, and a few words was all it took for Lucas Wirtz to flee his family farm and the abusive father who dominated it. Following Rachel McNally to the big city, he had no idea how much his life and the world around him would change. Chronicling the days leading up to World War I and the events that followed, Tinder Street is the first book in a saga that will take readers from rural farms to a major industrial city in the Midwest, across an ocean where German U-boats lurk waiting for a target to come within range of their deadly ...

The 1930s are the darkest days of the Great Depression. Factories are closing their doors, millions of people are out of work, men are riding the rails searching for elusive jobs that seldom exist, and a thriving way of life that has been cherished is disappearing. Desperate people are doing desperate things just to survive, while labor strikes and veterans’ protests are turning violent. Roving gangs of outlaws have become celebrities to many people, who asked themselves why a man robbing a bank with a gun is any worse than a banker in a suit stealing someone’s life savings, home, or ...

The Roaring 20s are in full swing and people are living the good life, making money, and having fun. Henry Ford just introduced the forty-hour work week and there is plenty to celebrate. Nobody seems to have a care in the world, except for Elizabeth McNally, who can’t shake the feeling that there are things to fear just over the horizon, even though she can’t explain why. The McNally family is prospering; Thomas, the oldest McNally son, is still being a thorn in the side of Toledo's gangster element with his fearless newspaper coverage of their crimes, while his brother Peter’s garage...

The Roaring Twenties. A prosperous era of flappers, bootleggers, speakeasies, bathtub gin, and women pushing the conventions of society. These are the things the newspapers are talking about. But that is only a small part of what is happening. Not everyone is celebrating the good times. For most people, life goes on as it always has, though maybe with a few new conveniences. With the Great War behind him, Lucas Morgan is content to return to Tinder Street and start raising a family with his wife. Still haunted by nightmares of things that happened on the bloody battlefields of France, Lucas...

In the summer of 1951, Elmhurst, Ohio was shocked when the small town's war hero police chief, Lester Smeal, was killed putting an end to the bloody rampage of a rogue cop. It was the last violent act in a chain of events that began with the discovery of the body of Wanda Jean Reider, a beautiful young woman from the wrong side of the tracks. Fifteen years later the chief's son and daughter, and the sister of the murdered woman, are young adults, each living with the legacy of the past as they try to make their own way in a world torn by war and social change. Nick Russell, New York Times ...

We all know a person like Raymond Winters. He is Everyman. You see him daily on your commute to work. He sits in the cubicle next to yours. He's the guy plodding through life, just going through the motions. He's not happy. His work is not fulfilling. But he never expected anything more. At 41, he's stuck in a rut, without the energy to climb out. Sure, he dreams of a different life. He dreams about it a lot. But Raymond knows the difference between dreams and reality. Then Raymond's life takes an unexpected sharp turn after a chance encounter with a strange woman. Overnight he finds ...

Just as people all over America in the second-half of the 1930s, the people of Tinder Street are struggling to survive. They have their triumphs and their challenges, their joys and their heartbreaks, but the McNallys and their extended family never give up and continue to help their neighbors and even strangers in need. Hardworking family men who once brought home steady paychecks stand in long lines trying to find any kind of day labor that might earn them enough to put food on the table. Even those who find steady work earn pennies on the dollar compared to what they had before the Great...

"A fine book for self-publishers set to take advantage of today's best entry to self- publishing." Aaron Shepard, author of Aiming at Amazon. This book cuts through all the hype that surrounds the publishing industry. Learn how to register your own publishing imprint and reap the benefits of passive income that successful writing provides. This book shows you, step-by-step, how to set up your own publishing company and self-publish your own nonfiction book WITHOUT the expense of inventory or pricey "writing services" that bogus vanity publishers sell to authors. Using CreateSpace, an Amazon...

Jack Witney served 25 years in prison although he shot no one and was released on appeal, only to be murdered in his Bristol flat a few years later. John Duddy died in Parkhurst after 15 years. But Harry Roberts, by his own admission the instigator of the crime and the most notorious, was released from prison after 48 years in 2015, making national front page news. What could possess an apparently rational and sane man, albeit a habitual criminal, to commit such a callous and ruthless act? How can an ordinary person understand what he did? Should he be forgiven?

Nick and Jason set out to simplify modern and recent data within the worlds of health, fitness, nutrition, and any other topic that they think they can contribute to. The two chiropractors don't have your average approach to medicine but do have a passion to make people better in all aspects of life.