Brun Campbell, a 15-year-old piano fool, gets to play Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" one 1898 afternoon in Oklahoma City. It's destiny calling. Though he tries for ragtime lessons, he's told no— "Ragtime is colored music." So Brun runs away from the family home in El Reno, Oklahoma, to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn't expect is to trip over the body of a young woman—he thinks at first she's a log and thoughtlessly picks up a couple of item...

1976: Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician practicing in the Pacific Northwest, resolves to become the first to produce a baby by in vitro fertilization, despite the controversy raging over the ethics of artificially-assisted human reproduction. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the University who's frustrated by the ultra-conservative policies of her department chairman. Working secretly, they set out to put their names i...

"We called it THE VUE, and without a doubt, that was the most complimentary nickname Bellevue Hospital ever had." So begins The View from the Vue, an "entertaining, colorful recall" (Publishers Weekly) of life a half-century ago at New York City's medical court of last resort.Between 1959 and 1965, Dr. Larry Karp served as medical student, intern, and resident physician at Bellevue. During these six years, he came to know and understand the people who wended their way thro...

It's 1916, and time's running out for Scott Joplin. Before he dies, he wants to provide for his wife and to secure his place in musical history. He's written a musical drama. His young piano student, Martin Niederhoffer, who works as a bookkeeper at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder Music Publishers, convinces him to try to get Irving Berlin to publish and produce the work.The next day, Niederhoffer walks into his office and finds Joplin crouched over the blood-soaked body of a young ma...

It's 1951, and ragtime is making a comeback. In Sedalia, Missouri, plans are underway for a ceremony to honor Scott Joplin. Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, learns of a journal Joplin kept and wants to show it to Sedalia's movers and shakers, hoping to persuade them to set up a ragtime museum.Unfortunately for Brun, author/historian Rudi Blesh is determined to publish the journal. But Joplin's old friend wants to suppress the material. Even worse, two Sedalia Klansmen are hot af...

The past comes rearing up to bite the next generation when a son digs too deep into his family's past.... Martin Firestone can't figure why his father, the eccentric painter Leo Firestone, is throwing a fit. All Martin did was tell his dad he'd been accepted to medical school.Then, Leo tells Martin a story about his own father, Dr. Samuel Firestone, an extraordinarily gifted doctor and a living legend in the small city of Hobart, NJ, but a man with a serious character flaw. During ...

"The fourth Ragtime Mystery is filled with warmth and wonder and interesting music trivia, buoyed by the relationship between the two sleuths, which may well echo that between the late Larry Karp and his son, who finished this final installment after his death." — Kirkus ReviewsIt takes one moment in 2016 for ragtime music expert Alan Chandler to go from sitting in his hotel room in Sedalia, Missouri, to standing beside the King of Ragtime—Scott Joplin—at ...

An introduction to the concepts and tools of natural resource economics, including dynamic models, market failures, and institutional remedies.This introduction to natural resource economics treats resources as a type of capital; their management is an investment problem requiring forward-looking behavior within a dynamic setting. Market failures are widespread, often associated with incomplete or nonexistent property rights, complicated by policy failures. The boo...

At fifteen, Sanford Brunson Campbell (1884-1952) became enchanted with the new sounds of ragtime and ran away from his rural Kansas home, hopping a train to Sedalia, Missouri, determined to take piano lessons from a black musician he had never met. Scott Joplin nicknamed his white protege "The Ragtime Kid." A composer and entertainer at the dawn of the ragtime era, "Brun" was a prime mover in the ragtime revival of the 1940s and helped establish Joplin's prominence as one of America's most...

It’s 1976. Despite fierce international controversy over whether in vitro fertilization (IVF) should ever be performed in humans, doctors around the world race to be first to produce a baby through this procedure.Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her departm...

It’s 1916, and time’s running out for Scott Joplin. Before he dies, he wants to provide for his wife and secure his place in musical history.Joplin has written a musical drama, and his young piano student, Martin Niederhoffer, convinces him to try to get Irving Berlin to publish and produce the work. The next day, Niederhoffer walks into his office and finds Joplin crouched over the blood-soaked body of a young man. He hustles his teacher away, but the two are seen...

It’s 1951 in Sedalia, Missouri, and ragtime is making a comeback. When Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, learns of a journal kept by Scott Joplin, he hopes he can use it to convince Sedalia’s movers and shakers to set up a ragtime museum. But plenty of other people also want that journal, including a historian who wants to publish it, an old friend of Joplin’s who wants to suppress it, and two Klansmen who don’t care if they have to kill someone to get it. What’s one murder, compared to ...