"A reader's delight. a story with nostalgia, history, lost love, suspense and a touch of American Graffiti." Maxine Paetro, New York Times bestselling author "First-time novelist Bob Williams' the Eastside of Town is a cracking good mystery and an even more compelling coming-of-age story. Set in Central Florida in the eventful 1960's, this rapidly paced novel uses the biggest issues of the day-Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Kennedy assassination as a catalyst in the life of youthful protagonist Tommy Smith. Readers with a taste for mystery and fine fiction will love it." Mary Stanton ( Claudia Bishop ) author of THE BEAUFORT & COMPANY MYSTERIES "Even if you didn't grow up in Central Florida during the 1960's, the Eastside of Town offers a gripping tale of friendship, lost love, coming to terms with coming-of-age...and murder. Bob Williams knows how to tell a tale, but he also knows how to instill a deep sense of place in his writing. Those who remember Orlando as it used to be will enjoy nostalgic references to such favorite old hangouts as Ronnie's Restaurant and the Orlando Youth Center. Along the way, Williams does a masterful job of creating characters who seem like old friends and plotting a story that keeps us riveted until the end." Bob Morris, (Baja Florida, Bahamarama, Jamaica Dead) Five friends who grew up on the eastside of Orlando who experienced fathers returning from WWII, the mysteries of girls, Friday night lights, prom, integration, civil rights, assassinations of President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., the draft, and the Vietnam War are reunited when Jackie, the girl who taught all of them about passion and compassion, is brutally murdered. Tommy Smith convinces his friends they need to find out what happened to Jackie. This may not have been a good idea.

Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's Toolkit explores the application of systems ideas to investigate, evaluate, and intervene in complex and messy situations. The text serves as a field guide, with each chapter representing a method for describing and analyzing; learning about; or changing and managing a challenge or set of problems. The book is the first to cover in detail such a wide range of methods from so many different parts of the systems field. The book's Introduction gives an overview of systems thinking, its origins, and its major subfields. In addition, the introductory text to each of the book's three parts provides background information on the selected methods. Systems Concepts in Action may serve as a workbook, offering a selection of tools that readers can use immediately. The approaches presented can also be investigated more profoundly, using the recommended readings provided. While these methods are not intended to serve as "recipes," they do serve as a menu of options from which to choose. Readers are invited to combine these instruments in a creative manner in order to assemble a mix that is appropriate for their own strategic needs.

Who exactly — them or me — first came up with the idea, I'm not certain. No matter. The Institute for Southern Studies staff asked if I would take out six months to travel the South as a reporter for the Institute's then-new syndicated weekly column, Facing South. Captive to Southern fondness for poking about the region and to that larger American myth about freedom deriving from travel, I claimed the job before any list of applicants could be gotten up. A new van was purchased and fitted out with a bed, typing stand, CB and regular AM-FM radio, specially cut mosquito netting, and a fan. The Institute's charge dictated that I'd see the rural South, not too much of the Interstate/urbanized South. Places like Ville Platte, Louisiana; Ink, Arkansas; Ripley, Mississippi; Pickens, South Carolina; and Fincastle, Virginia. The blessings of this constraint came vividly to mind when my path intersected an Interstate cloverleaf in Georgia — typically crammed with service stations, motels and fast food franchises. Over the door of one eatery hung a banner proclaiming "Join the Fun — Eat and Run." All told, I logged nearly 28,000 miles between May and October, 7977. I kept an eye out for the little things. Graffiti, for example. In the rest room of a Charlottesville, Virginia, vegetarian restaurant I found: "Mother made me a homosexual." Below, in another's writing, "Fantastic! If I bought her the yarn, would she make me one?" Or signs, like one on a New Orleans building: Straight Business College. And listened for larger themes, not at all certain I could hear them — but knowing that these, too, were a Southern tradition going back at least to the days of Fannie Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, the powerful attack on slavery, and William Byrd 's History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, the travel log some assert first described "the good ol' boy."

The compelling biography of former British Columbia cabinet minister Bob Williams weaves his political and economical insights with the story of his unconventional life. In Using Power Well, former provincial politician Bob Williams tells his atypical life story: beginning with his childhood in the working-class east end of Vancouver, Williams goes on to describe his early years as a planner in Delta, BC, his political life on Vancouver City Council and in the BC Legislature—including a major impact on the first NDP government in the 1970s—and his more recent contributions in the world of business and co-operative economics. Williams’s legacy is dotted across the physical and political landscape of BC—from the Whistler Town Centre and Robson Square to the Agricultural Land Reserve, the Insurance Corporation of BC and many projects in between. A straight shooter who refuses to mince words, Williams advocates in this highly readable and colourful book for a bottom-up approach to politics and public policy, bypassing bureaucracy in order to use power well.

Cousins Hudson, Colt, Jackson, Griffin, and Jude are helping Pop Pop with some duties out on the property. The goats need their yearly vaccinations and tagging. But nothing out on the property is ever uninteresting. Snakes and dark forests are only precursors to what Jack Jack faces. While the other four cousins and Pop Pop are herding up the goats for vaccinations, Jack Jack pursues a lost kid only to find himself up against one of the more dangerous predators on the ranch. Jack Jack is determined to save the baby goat even when he has to battle darkness, injury, buzzards and bobcats. Can Jack Jack make it through a vicious Texas thunderstorm, a night in an old barn infested with several creatures of the night, and an attack by an angry mother bobcat all while being lost and alone?

The cousins are headed to the sandy beaches off the Gulf Coast for their yearly family vacation. The four older boys, Hudson, Jackson, Colt, and Griffin join Addie on a large float in the ocean having fun in the sun and surf. They are unaware, however, that the riptide is carrying them further out to sea. Far from the beach the cousins find themselves surrounded by several large ocean predators. Their hopes are sinking fast.

Nominated in the P & E Readers' Poll for Best Fiction e-zine published in 2016! This Omnibus edition of Tales from the Canyons of the Damned consists of Eighteen sharp, suspenseful, thought provoking short stories - from Nine of todays top speculative fiction writers. Tales from the Canyons of the Damned (canyonsofthedamned.com) is a dark science fiction, horror, & slipstream magazine we've been working on since 2015. What is Dark Science Fiction and Horror? Think of it as a literary Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, or Outer Limits, it's Netflix's Black Mirror in the short story format. And it's a bargain. Each monthly issue has three-to-five sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales from today's top speculative fiction writers. These are Dark Sci Fi Slipstream Tales like you've never read before.

The book written in free style includes poems and short stories and reflects the authors experiences as he worked as an engineering consultant/manager in London, Jamaica and the USA over a period of fifty years. The book is not about engineering, but rather about people, events and circumstances observed and or experienced as he navigated his way through diverse places and situations over that period of time. The writings include romantic, cultural, sociological and political subjects. Each poem or story has its own natural emotional dynamics ranging from hate, love, lust, abysmal ignorance or arrogance, beauty of nature, beauty of the soul. Like in the case of movies that embellish books of authors so as to capture the imagination of the viewer, so does this book in embellishing those poems and short stories to peak the interest of the reader. As in the case of broadcasting or voice over work, this book should be read with emphasis to reflect the emotion embedded in the words.