Bøker utgitt av Outskirts Press

An Albania emerging from a repressive past is the setting for an expatriate family's road trip to the southern port of Saranda to see the multi-civilization ruin at nearby Butrint. It is two months after 9/11 in the only Muslim country in Europe. Despite its location at the crossroads between Italy and Greece, Albania is still largely avoided by the rest of Europe-a Stalinist past and reputation for money laundering in support of terrorism limits interest, but there are growing investment opportunities for multinationals. Tony is working as a manager for a Vienna-based company that is experiencing threats in one of its contract areas. The location is near the Kosovo border, where drug and weapon trafficking persists despite a peace settlement having been reached in the former Yugoslavian province. While finalizing plans for his upcoming family trip, Tony receives an informal diplomatic request to note illegalities on his excursion. He hopes the weekend outing will help heal his problematic relationship with his daughter, who is visiting from a Vienna boarding school. The trip will be their first overnight stay outside the capital, and unbeknownst to him, Saranda is now a regional Albanian mafia centre. His "diplomatic" contact arrives for a meeting in Saranda and quickly becomes a mafia target. In the ensuing struggle, the organisation hires a former Yugoslav Cobra sniper to eliminate their problem, but the American target has a resilient local backup. As Tony tries to deal with family and work issues while travelling across classic ruins and remnants of Albania's heritage as a Christian bastion prior to four hundred years of Ottoman rule, the conflict to control the growing underground economy heats up. He and his family witness the nearly unknown Mediterranean coast road's natural beauty, but the remains of an ancient past, and the consequences of the more recent brutal military dictatorship, continue to confront them; it's evident that the state's

A large fish, a member of an ancient species called Bowfin, is trapped in a water hole beside a river running through a country farm. Two boys, ages 14 and 18, want to free the fish before it starves. The story begins with the younger boy, Christopher, groping his way through the night toward a barn on the farm. He is recovering from a violent beating at his school the day before. He is seized and dragged into the barn by the older boy, Jesse, and the two boys get to know each other in the barn that night. Jesse has made a dip net from tree branches and scraps of clothing from his grandmother's childhood. Christopher comes back at sunrise the next morning and the two follow the creek down to the river and try to rescue the Bowfin. After a desperate struggle to get the powerful fish in the river, the boys climb back up the creek. They join Jesse's grandmother in the farmhouse kitchen. The story ends in the country road by the farm's mailbox. Jesse straddles the dusty ruts in the road. He speaks one line that pulls together the story's threads-the trapped Bowfin, the fresh lumber at the kitchen door, a little girl in her grave, a school bus driver and a Beagle-and makes it plain there is more than one kind of trap in our lives, and the boys want to set free much more than a fish in a water hole.

Money is weird stuff. We cannot avoid it but it terrifies and mystifies. Most folks need help relating to it--and lots of it. Most especially, they need their own financial planner, someone who thoroughly understands money, what it is and how it works. Hence Financial Planning 3.0. Written eclectically, Financial Planning 3.0 looks at money and the financial planning profession from both the "outside in" and, perhaps more importantly, from the "inside out". It makes the case for looking at money from the perspectives of individuals and families. This is in stark contrast to money''s public persona grounded in macroeconomics and investment theory. It suggests useful resources and tools for working with money helpfully, healthfully and joyfully. Finally, treating money as the most powerful and pervasive secular force on the planet and financial planning as the most important profession of the 21st century, it posits the new "liberal arts" based academic discipline of "Finology". Financial Planning 3.0 includes a proposed curriculum for an education in Finology including a "Finology Major''s Handbook" together with portions of articles the author has written over the past 25 years. This book takes money out of the closet, applies a liberal arts approach to the financial planning profession and its garden of knowledge. It advances the evolution of this profession''s work with money, the money forces and individuals with an eye to the future and respect for the past.

STRATEGIC STEPS TOWARD A SUCCESSFUL CAREER. . .This book is about career strategies and techniques to assist readers on how to "play the career game." It demystifies how one succeeds in their careers by changing their beliefs and attitudes about what is possible. All of us can have a clearer vision when we have a career game plan to guide us. Dr. Butler and Dr. Thomas present simple and practical material in a game or sport mode that will enable you to immediately take steps toward your career goals. Inside the book are questions to help you focus on the steps to a successful career. The book is filled with real life career success stories, which demonstrate the power of strategies and processes which enable us to be successful in whatever career endeavor we aspire. Readers will learn that true career success is built upon the same foundation as other games or sports where the objective is to win.

A Quiet Village Is Keeping Secrets... When NYPD Detective Lieutenant Walter Hudson's wife, Sarah, unexpectedly inherits a family farm in the tiny upstate village of Dutch River, New York, their first thought is to sell it as soon as possible. But they are immediately charmed by the village and its residents, and Sarah's great-uncle, Armin Jaeger, leaves them a letter too puzzling to ignore. They are soon stunned to find that Sarah has been left more than a simple farmhouse in a quaint village; and matters turn even more intriguing when Walter discovers a mysterious connection between Dutch River and the murder of a prominent Boston philanthropist, Charles Martin Sewall. And matters take an even more deadly turn when Walter's family is threatened. Walter will need all his skills and all the help he can get from his good friend, Leviticus Welles, as he desperately races against time not just to solve a hideous crime but to save his family as well. It's a race he can't afford to lose.

RALPH'S JOURNEY, a fascinating and riveting adventure novel that offers social commentary and political opinions while dispensing philosophical advice, is written in the tradition of "Oklahoma Tough" by Ron Padgett and "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. It chronicles the life of Angel Raphael Johnson (AKA Ralph Johnson) from the time he is born in remote, rural Oklahoma through his young adulthood as he becomes associated with organized crime figures in Tulsa. It follows him as he leaves town one step ahead of the police and travels to California and Oregon. This is a forceful and enchanting book about a rebellious young man with violent tendencies and his exploits on the outskirts of the law. Characters include bootleggers, mafia figures, police investigators, and adult mentors. In the end, it is a story about how redemption is possible if a young person can accept mentoring and make the right choices in life. This gripping story is an absolute must read for all fans of a tale well told.

Washed Away: From Darkness to LightNikki DuBose was a successful model in the high-glam, high-stakes fashion industry. She seemed to have it all-while in actuality she wanted nothing but to kill herself. For more than seventeen years, she battled with issues of abuse, eating and body dysmorphic disorders, psychosis, addictions, and depression. More than once, she attempted suicide.And then, in 2012, while her career was flying higher than ever, her mother died from addiction. This tragedy shook DuBose to her core, and she could do nothing but reevaluate her life and work to get better.Washed Away: From Darkness to Light chronicles her road to recovery with a raw narrative and a deeply spiritual perspective. Providing insight into mental health issues and the long, sometimes scary, often frustrating path people walk to find light in the darkness, DuBose's memoir ultimately is one of hope and inspiration. Through self-reflection, the support of professional counselors, doctors, friends and family, and the shedding of shame, all things, including recovery, are possible.

Father Flanagan Laments: A Satirical NovelFather Flanagan Laments, a Rabelaisian satire of religious and sexual mores, follows the hilarious struggles of an all-too-human man of the cloth as he grapples with his inner demons and the hypocrisies of church and community. He is sustained, through all his many moral failures and struggles, by his absolute belief in a future where he sits through eternity at God's feet.Denny Goetz's writing has been compared to that of Joseph Heller, Evelyn Waugh, Lenny Bruce, and John Kennedy Toole, and it would serve readers well to approach his novel with a healthy impatience with hypocrisy, a well-developed sense of humor, and an appreciation of the contrary forces tugging at Flanagan. Father Flanagan Laments finds humor in the disparities between church teachings and social reality. Read this lampoon. You too will finally laugh.

Jake "Under" Underman and his best friend Paulie were hooked on old black-and-white movies as kids, acting out the parts of hardboiled detectives and punks, cool bums and even cooler cops. Before long it became habit, and the boys grew up to be modern throwbacks to the 30s and 40s. When a mystery unfolds in the weary old town of WillowPoint, Under and Paulie deliver tight dialogue to accompany a string of unsettling discoveries involving teenagers, heroin, and dead bodies. Soon Under finds himself wondering who to trust and even begins to doubt his pal Paulie, the copper who brought him into the case. Of course there's also a broad in the picture-the lovely Maggie. She and the other characters are as important to the story as the plot of this crisp, funny, fast-paced novel. After all, they're the ones who line up the shots while jazz plays softly in the background and Under says, "Hey, kid, look-it's the money shot!"

What drives a public school nurse to become a clown? Can one person influence us to pursue our dreams? Learn about life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Central America in the late 1970s. Laugh and commiserate with Barbara as she works as a public school nurse in Denver. What madness drove her to become a clown, known as Nurse Patch-It? But mostly, this book asks us how we can help our children.