Why Are High Schools Graduating Illiterate Seniors? If you really want to know what is happening in America's schools, do not ask the students. Do not speak with the teachers. Do not eavesdrop on the principals. Do not believe the bureaucrats at the District Education Office. Listen to the substitutes. They are where the rubber meets the road, and they have no loyalty to any one school. In 2:45 Fever, thirty-five substitute teachers tell you what they see. A gifted fifth-grader gets every ...

"The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state." So ordered Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri on October 27, 1838—issuing one of the only government-sanctioned religious extermination orders in American history. Executive Order 44 remained legally valid until 1976. But this isn't a story about religion. It's a story about money. Through twenty-five voices—Mormon farmers and political advisors, slave owners and abolitionists, land speculators and...

That the Alaska Railroad was ever built is astonishing. It was constructed over the most treacherous terrain in the world during the most violent political era in US history. The workforce included anarchists, Bolsheviks, socialists, syndicalists, and labor union organizers against the backdrops of the First World War, Spanish Influenza, the Russian Revolution, American troops in Siberia to keep Russian Socialism from our shore, Japan's relentless gobbling of colonies from Southeast Asia t...

When Detective Heinz Noonan arrives in Spokane to investigate a simple case of double obituaries, he has no idea he's about to uncover the largest legal theft in American history. The "Bearded Holmes" of North Carolina finds himself caught between two seemingly unrelated mysteries: elderly cancer patients dying in Switzerland with their fortunes mysteriously vanished, and a sophisticated mortgage scheme that's somehow completely legal. But when lawyer Pietro Gretler begins targeting Noonan...

Detective Heinz Noonan, the Bearded Homes, is sent to Virginia Beach, North Carolina, to find 30 antique Christian crosses that have vanished. The crosses could not have been stolen because they had no value. So why did they disappear? Who wants them gone and why? There must be a back story that involves money. But what is it? It did not take long for Heinz Noonan to realize he had to solve the back story in less than 24 hours. Can he do it? Follow the breadcrumbs with Detective Heinz Noon...

Step into Cedar Valley, a town once vibrant with unity, now splintered by fear, whispers of prejudice, and the thunder of division. In this quiet yet emotionally charged narrative, Quiet Echo invites readers to witness the transformation of a fractured community—where loud voices threaten to overshadow the gentle acts of courage and kindness that spark true change. As the lives of six unforgettable characters entwine, you'll feel the weight of their struggles: Meet Teresa, a teacher strivi...

The Alaska Gold Rush is the least studied era of United States history. If you pull up Alaska Gold Rush on Wikipedia, you will get the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike Gold Rush was centered around Dawson in Canada's Yukon Territory and lasted 14 months. The Alaska Gold Rush lasted 40 years, from 1880 to the end of the First World War, and covered an area one-fifth that of the Lower 48 states. Bonfire Saloon is not a work of narrative poetry. It is a book of history disguised as literature...

How can a man drown in a hot air balloon? Can a boxcar disappear off a moving train, and is it possible for flying horses on a merry-go-round to fly away? These are just some of the impossible crimes Detective Heinz Noonan, the Bearded Holmes, is called upon to solve. Every story has all the clues necessary to see if you can solve the impossible crime as fast as the detective! (And if you can't, you'll have to read to the end of the story!) Want more! Then there's the mystery of why anyone...

Impossible Crime Detective Heinz Noonan, the "Bearded Holmes," is ordered to East St. Louis, where a criminal mastermind has made a train with 70 passengers and crew disappear. As the search is on for the hostage, the mastermind loads a railway boxcar with a massive explosive device and abandons it on the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Lewis, Illinois. Now the mastermind wants $50 million, or the bridge and portions of both cities of St. Lew...

Archie Ferguson is the last of the original fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants Alaska bush pilots to be the subject of a biography. Dubbed Alaska's Clown Prince," he added many hilarious chapters to Alaska's history. He is also the originator of the "Arctic Bump," current practice of airline pilots who give a blast of power as they fly over the Arctic Circle to provide gullible tourists the impression that the air north of the Arctic Circle is different than air south of the Arctic Circle. His ...

It is the land of the Alaska Gold Rush, where nuggets were said to be the size of goose eggs, where men froze to death in search of the elusive yellow metal, and dancehall girls lured overnight millionaire sourdoughs into marriage. Honky-tonk pianos punctuated the howl of the north wind in towns that were half-tent and half-ramshackle collections of driftwood, whalebone, and packing cases. It was a time of whiskey and gold and long, lonely trails behind a dogsled. It was, in a word, ALASKA...

Captain Heinz Noonan, "Master of the Impossible Crime," is called upon to solve the most puzzling of riddles. If it's odd, you call Noonan. Why, for instance, would someone steal 200 garden gnomes and then leave them in a pattern across a city? Better yet, how can air cargo increase in weight as it flies and how can a century old Tong highbinder warrior appear in a locked warehouse and then disappear in a cloud of smoke? And why would anyone want to steal anything from a garbage dump? See ...