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Hard town / by Plantinga, Adam,author.;
"When a plea for help sends retired Detroit cop Kurt Argento to the small desert town of Fenton, Arizona things immediately don't appear to be as they seem, and he finds himself unraveling secrets that want to stay hidden and questioning his own moral compass. After having survived a deadly prison break, ex-Detroit cop Kurt Argento is ready for some quiet. Still working through his grief over the passing of his wife, Argento finds himself house-sitting for a friend with his loyal companion, Hudson, a Chow Chow-Shepard mix. It's a simple life, picking up odd jobs here and there, but it's one that Argento is content to live. Then Kristin Reed shows up with her young son, Ethan, and begs Argento to help find her missing husband ... and Argento tells her he'd just be in the way. He's no investigator, not anymore. He's a handyman who fixes fences. But he's not one to ignore his gut feeling when something is wrong. After an attempt to talk with Kristin more in the next town over, just to find her and her son missing as well, Argento starts to notice that Fenton, Arizona is more than meets the eye. First there's the large, overly equipped public safety team complete with specialized tactics and sophisticated weaponry. Then there's the unusual financial boosting of failing small businesses by the U.S. government. And finally, there's one man with no name who seems to have control over this town in an unprecedented way. Argento finds himself unraveling not just the truth behind the disappearance of a family, but a conspiracy that's taken a whole town to cover up. But Fenton, Arizona is going to push him further than he's ever had to go. And along the way, he may just lose a part of himself as well. Because justice isn't as black and white as Argento would like to believe"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Conspiracies; Ex-police officers; Missing persons; Secrecy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Clark and Division / by Hirahara, Naomi,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, the California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide, in part because the coroner's examination revealed Rose had recently had an abortion. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life-nor can she imagine Rose carelessly getting pregnant. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Based on a true crime that terrorized the resettled Japanese American community in Chicago, and inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime fiction plot with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Japanese Americans; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Bitten : the secret history of lyme disease and biological weapons / by Newby, Kris,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A riveting thriller reminiscent of The Hot Zone, this true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time--Lyme disease--and of Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today. While on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Kris Newby was bitten by an unseen tick. That one bite changed her life forever, pulling her into the abyss of a devastating illness that took ten doctors to diagnose and years to recover: Newby had become one of the 300,000 Americans who are afflicted with Lyme disease each year. As a science writer, she was driven to understand why this disease is so misunderstood, and its patients so mistreated. This quest led her to Willy Burgdorfer, the Lyme microbe's discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War, and believed that the Lyme epidemic was started by a military experiment gone wrong. In a superb, meticulous work of narrative journalism, Bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy. It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease. A gripping, infectious page-turner, Bitten will shed a terrifying new light on an epidemic that is exacting an incalculable toll on us, upending much of what we believe we know about it"--
Subjects: Lyme disease; Lyme disease; Lyme disease;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The measure of our age : navigating care, safety, money, and meaning in later life / by Connolly, M. T.(Marie-Therese),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An elder justice expert uncovers the failures in the systems that are supposed to protect us as we age, and provides a battle plan for families and policy-makers to counter the greed and incompetence. Between 1900 and 2000, Americans gained, on average, thirty years of life. That dazzling feat allowed tens of millions of Americans to reach the once-rare age of 85, now the fastest-growing age group. The bad news: For millions of Americans, the Golden Years are appallingly tarnished, leaving them and those who love them at a loss for what to do. More than 34 million family members care for an older relative for "free," but with costs to them in time, money, jobs, and health. Countless seniors are targeted by scammers and make riskier decisions about care, housing, money, and driving due to cognitive decline. And epidemics of isolation and loneliness make older people unnecessarily vulnerable to all sorts of harm. These problems touch millions of families regardless of class, race or gender. Today, one in ten older Americans is neglected or exploited with devastating results. And the systems supposed to safeguard them-like nursing homes, guardianship, Adult Protective Services, and criminal prosecution-often make problems worse. Weaving first-person accounts, her own unrivaled experience, and shocking investigative reporting across the worlds of medicine, law, finance, social services, caregiving, and policy, MT Connolly exposes a reality that has been long hidden-and sometimes actively covered up. But things are not hopeless. Along with diagnosing the ailments, she gives readers better tools to navigate the many challenges of aging-whether adult children caring for aging parents, policy-makers trying to do the right thing, or, should we be so lucky to live to old age, all of us"--
Subjects: Aging; Older people; Older people; Older people;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Jack Reacher. [videorecording] / by Zwick, Edward,film director,screenwriter.; Wenk, Richard,screenwriter.; Herskovitz, Marshall,screenwriter.; Granger, Don(Producer),film producer.; McQuarrie, Christopher,film producer.; Cruise, Tom,1962-actor,film producer.; Hodge, Aldis,actor.; Knepper, Robert,1959-actor.; Smulders, Cobie,1982-actor.; Yarosh, Danika,actor.; motion picture adaptation of (work):Child, Lee.Never go back.; Paramount Pictures Corporation,publisher,presenter.; Skydance Productions,production company.;
Music, Henry Jackman ; editor, Billy Weber ; director of photography, Oliver Wood.Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Robert Knepper, Danika Yarosh, Aldis Hodge.When Army Major Susan Turner is framed for treason, Jack Reacher discovers she's the target of a massive government conspiracy. Together, they will risk everything to take down a powerful organization that will stop at nothing to protect its secrets.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.MPAA rating: PG-13.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Action and adventure films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Child, Lee.; Reacher, Jack (Fictitious character); Military police; Murder; Retired military personnel;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Razzmatazz [text (large print)] : a novel / by Moore, Christopher,1957-author.;
San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie's Coffee Irregulars--a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir--are on the hustle: they're trying to open a driving school; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad; all while Sammy's girlfriend, Stilton (a.k.a. the Cheese), and her "Wendy the Welder" gal pals are using their wartime shipbuilding skills on a secret project that might be attracting the attention of some government Men in Black. And, oh yeah, someone is murdering the city's drag kings and club owner Jimmy Vasco is sure she's next on the list and wants Sammy to find the killer. Meanwhile, Eddie "Moo Shoes" Shu has been summoned by his Uncle Ho to help save his opium den from Squid Kid Tang, a vicious gangster who is determined to retrieve a priceless relic: an ancient statue of the powerful Rain Dragon that Ho stole from one of the fighting tongs forty years earlier. And if Eddie blows it, he just might call down the wrath of that powerful magical creature on all of Fog City. Strap yourselves in for a bit of the old razzmatazz, ladies and gentlemen. It's Christopher Moore time.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Noir fiction.; Large type books.; Novels.; Bartenders; Chinese; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Metropolis / by Kerr, Philip,author.;
"New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad. A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He's young, but he's seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he's not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he's not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption. It's 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society's most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets. As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to inflitrate the Alex, Berlin's central office, just as the shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich. It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theater and Bernie's no exception. As he gets deeper into the city's sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world. But even this space can't remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you're man enough to kill for it"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character); Detectives; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sideways : the city Google couldn't buy / by O'Kane, Josh,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs' pitch for the long-forsaken property--with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO--Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood--and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech's digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech"--
Subjects: Google (Firm); City planning; Data privacy; Privacy, Right of; Technology; Waterfronts; Technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The metaverse : and how it will revolutionize everything / by Ball, Matthew,author.;
The term "Metaverse" is suddenly everywhere, from the front pages of national newspapers and the latest fashion trends to the plans of the most powerful companies in history. It is already shaping the policy platforms of the US government, the European Union, and the Chinese Communist Party. But what, exactly, is the Metaverse? As pioneering theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball explains, it is a persistent and interconnected network of 3D virtual worlds that will eventually serve as the gateway to most online experiences, and also underpin much of the physical world. For decades, these ideas have been limited to science fiction and video games, but they are now poised to revolutionize every industry and function, from finance and healthcare to education, consumer products, city planning, dating, and well beyond. Taking us on an expansive tour of the "next internet," Ball demonstrates that many proto-Metaverses are already here, such as Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox. Yet these offer only a glimpse of what is to come. Ball presents a comprehensive definition of the Metaverse before explaining the technologies that will power it and the breakthroughs that will be necessary to fully realize it. He addresses the governance challenges the Metaverse entails; investigates the role of Web3, blockchains, and NFTs; and predicts Metaverse winners and losers. Most importantly, he examines many of the Metaverse's almost unlimited applications. The internet will no longer be at arm's length; instead, it will surround us, with much of our lives, labor, and leisure taking place inside the Metaverse. Bringing clarity and authority to a frequently misunderstood concept, Ball foresees trillions of dollars in new value and the radical reshaping of society.
Subjects: Computers and civilization.; Human-computer interaction.; Mixed reality.; Science; Shared virtual environments.; Virtual reality.; Internet;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Pegasus : how a spy in your pocket threatens the end of privacy, dignity, and democracy / by Richard, Laurent(Journalist),author.; Maddow, Rachel,writer of introduction.; Rigaud, Sandrine,author.;
"Pegasus is widely regarded as the most effective and sought-after cyber-surveillance system on the market. The system's creator, the NSO Group, a private corporation headquartered in Israel, is not shy about proclaiming its ability to thwart terrorists and criminals. "Thousands of people in Europe owe their lives to hundreds of our company employees," NSO's cofounder declared in 2019. This bold assertion may be true, at least in part, but it's by no means the whole story. NSO's Pegasus system has not been limited to catching bad guys. It's also been used to spy on hundreds, and maybe thousands, of innocent people around the world: heads of state, diplomats, human rights defenders, political opponents, and journalists. This spyware is as insidious as it is invasive, capable of infecting a private cell phone without alerting the owner, and of doing its work in the background, in silence, virtually undetectable. Pegasus can track a person's daily movement in real time, gain control of the device's microphones and cameras at will, and capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords-encrypted or not. This data can be exfiltrated, stored on outside servers, and then leveraged to blackmail, intimidate, and silence the victims. Its full reach is not yet known. "If they've found a way to hack one iPhone," says Edward Snowden, "they've found a way to hack all iPhones." Pegasus is a look inside the monthslong worldwide investigation, triggered by a single spectacular leak of data, and a look at how an international consortium of reporters and editors revealed that cyber intrusion and cyber surveillance are happening with exponentially increasing frequency across the globe, at a scale that astounds. Meticulously reported and masterfully written, Pegasus shines a light on the lives that have been turned upside down by this unprecedented threat and exposes the chilling new ways authoritarian regimes are eroding key pillars of democracy: privacy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech"--
Subjects: Pegasus (Spyware); Cell phone systems; Electronic surveillance; Mobile apps.; Political corruption.; Privacy, Right of.; Spyware (Computer software);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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