This book explores the increasing use of Constituency Development Funds (CDFs) in emerging democratic governments in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Oceania. CDFs dedicate public money to benefit parliamentary constituencies through allocations and/or spending decisions influenced by Members of Parliament (MPs). The contributors employ the term CDF as a generic term although such funds have a different names, such as electoral development funds (Papua New Guinea), constituency development...

Nearly every time he visited the Outer Banks, the author heard a new tale or another version of an old one and gets "that itch" to write it down for everyone to enjoy. That itch produced the seventeen stories in this fourth volume. There are tales of Indians and trappers, ghosts and firebirds, sea horses and sand dollars, romance and heartache. Some of the stories tell of eerie and frightening events. Some chronicle the history of the coast and its early inhabitants. Others tease us with t...

Every September, on the first night of the new moon, there are those who vow they see a flaming ship sail three times past the coast of Ocracoke. No matter the direction or velocity of the wind, this fiery vessel moves swiftly toward the northeast, they say, always accompanied by an eerie wailing sound. The story of this ship is but one of the colorful legends intrinsic to the charm of North Carolina's historic coastland. From the northern tip of the Outer Banks to the lower end of the swe...

In 1963, Judge Charles Whedbee was asked to substitute on a Greenville, NC, morning show called Carolina Today while one of the program's regulars was in the hospital. Whedbee took the opportunity to tell some of the Outer Banks stories he'd heard during his many summers at Nags Head. The station received such a volume of mail in praise of his tale-telling that he was invited to remain even after the man he was substituting for returned to the air. "He had a way of telling a story...

One August night, two young law students knocked three times on the huge door to Blackbeard's castle, spoke the secret password, and gained admission to a ceremony steeped in local legend. Judge Charles Harry Whedbee was one of those students, and he waited for over fifty years to tell the story of the night he drank from Blackbeard's cup—the legendary silver-plated skull of Blackbeard the Pirate. For centuries, the people of eastern North Carolina have spun tales to explain local phenomen...

From Blackbeard's den at Ocracoke, to the Hills of the Seven Sisters at Nags Head, to the misty swamps of Shallote, there is hardly an inch of territory along North Carolina's coast without a legend attached to it. Inlanders may be skeptical regarding the sometimes miraculous, often horror-filled tales that make up coastal folklore, but Outer Bankers accept the incredible as fact. But this book is more than a collection of coastal legends. It is an affectionate portrait of the people who d...

Whedbee's collections of legends and folklore have become regional classics. The continuing popularity of these books stems from the author's intimate knowledge of the places, people, and events of which he writes. He gathers the mysteries, tales, legends, and lore that have been handed down for generations on the North Carolina coast and recounts them with a sensitivity for tradition that makes him a master at what he does.For decades, the folk tales of Charles Harry Whedbee have ...

She hung beneath the bridge like a ghost from the past.When dancer Marina Liang’s body is discovered suspended from the Market Street Bridge during Chattanooga’s Riverbend Festival, posed in silk ribbons, and illuminated by a hijacked drone.Private investigator Harry Starke, called in as a consultant by Captain Kate Gazzara, realizes this is no ordinary murder. It’s a performance.The staging mirrors a century-old photograph of Marina’s great-grandmother, a Chinese a...

An elite Iranian military unit. A missing tactical nuclear weapon. An aging Vietnam vet with a taste for violence.It began when an FBI informant was brutally gunned down outside a soccer stadium.A tactical nuclear weapon has gone missing somewhere in the Middle East and is thought to have been smuggled into the United States by a small group of Iranian terrorists intent on chaos and destruction. The target? Unknown, but the FBI’s local director is convinced that it’s the Se...

Why was she on the bridge that terrible night?Who was she running away from?Why did she leap to her death in the murky waters below?Tabitha Willard was a beautiful, wealthy young woman with everything to live for, so why did she take her own life?What did powerful US Congressman Gordon “little Billy” Harper have to do with it?And then there’s Lester, “Shady” Tree, a crooked entrepreneur and a man wit...

What would you do if someone murdered your best friend and mentor?Private investigator Harry Starke owes his career to Frank Callahan, the tough-as-nails detective who trained him as a young cop. But when Frank is found brutally murdered in his own home, Harry can’t let it go.The crime scene reveals a chilling connection: photos from the unsolved Riverside Strangler case—ten women killed along the Tennessee River a decade a...

“Stand absolutely still, Amanda,” she read, “and you won’t get hurt.” Two seconds later a bullet from a sniper’s rifle shattered the driver’s side window of her Lexus SUV.That’s how it began, early on a Friday morning when Amanda, Harry’s wife, found the note tucked under her windshield wiper. The incident was quickly followed by a series of events that would put his family and friends in deadly danger and test Harry to his limits.