Showing results by author "Nick Russell" in All Categories

It’s Fall, the special time of year the locals in the little Arizona mountain town of Big Lake call the sweet season between when the summer visitors have gone back to their homes in the crowded desert cities and when the snow has accumulated enough to draw the ski crowd. Things are moving at a slower pace for now as people draw a deep breath and recoup their energy and sanity from the hectic summer just behind them. But when three mischievous teenagers looking for adventure find the body of a murdered Forest Ranger, they get much more than they bargained for. Soon Sheriff Jim Weber and ...

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Everybody seems to have gone crazy in the little mountain community of Big Lake, Arizona. Neighbors are threatening violence, eco-protestors are on the march, flower children are camping in the nearby forest, two of Sheriff Jim Weber's deputies have gotten into a fistfight in the ButterCup Café, the grocery store manager has locked himself in his office and won't come out, bears are chasing dogs into houses, and somebody has stolen the town's mascot.

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 ...

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?

When summoned to George Duncan's farm in response to a tragic accident, Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies had no idea just how bad it was going to be. Everybody in Big Lake knew and respected Duncan. The easy-going hog farmer was a successful businessman who had made a fortune supplying restaurants from Show Low to Springerville, and all the way to Gallup, New Mexico with pork chops, hams, and sausage. Duncan always carried a big wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band in the pocket of his bib overalls, and never hesitated to help out someone in trouble. There wasn't a church social, a Boy ...

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...

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 busy summer season is drawing to a close in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, and the locals are looking forward to a relaxing interlude before the first snowfall brings carloads of skiers to the high country. That all changes when a nearly nude woman rushes into a convenience store in the middle of the night begging for help. She tells Sheriff Jim Weber that her new husband has been murdered and she was taken captive by the mysterious killer, who seems to have disappeared into the thick forests of the White Mountains.

When a young woman is brutally assaulted at the Cat Mountain Ski Resort, two of the three suspects Sheriff Jim Weber arrests come from wealthy families whose roots go deep into Arizona's history, and the third has a past shrouded in mystery. The sheriff soon finds himself involved in a sordid case that stretches from the White Mountains all the way to the governor's office and beyond. Pressured by local and state officials as well as representatives of the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service, all with their own agenda, Weber must stand firm to see justice done and send a message that in Big Lake...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

Life may seem idyllic in the small mountain town of Big Lake, but there are dark secrets here. When a small child goes missing from his dysfunctional home the clues are few, and the ones Sheriff Jim Weber and his deputies do have are confusing. The boy's playmates describe a giant with an orange head and someone else claims to have seen a spaceship. Could something that bizarre be true, or is the culprit closer to home? Is the missing boy's mother really who she says she is? And what about her live-in boyfriend, a loser with a reputation for violence? Weber calls in a crack FBI team that ...

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 ...

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...

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.