Böcker av Jim Murphy

Blacky has been an ocean-rescue lifeguard on the Atlantic Ocean at Jones Beach State Park for 15 years, and his job means everything to him. The summer of 1971 changes Blacky's life when a new love awakens his hardened heart and a lover from his past comes crashing back into his life. All this, while New York State and the Jones Beach lifeguards are engaged in a deadly standoff during a lifeguard strike. Jones Beach State Park, located on the south shore of New York's Long Island, is the largest, oceanfront public bathing facility in the history of the world. The park, founded in 1929, attracts more than 15 million visitors every summer. The Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps. consists of approximately 350 elite ocean-rescue lifeguards, men and women who watch over and protect thousands of swimmers in the rough ocean. The lifeguards make 500 rescues on any given weekend and thousands of rescues over the course of the summer season. In 1971, The Jones Beach lifeguards went on an eight-week strike in a bitter dispute with New York State involving workforce size, pay raises, continued employment for older lifeguards, and multiple safety issues. The result of the strike had deadly consequences.

The story of Gil, a two-bit purse snatcher who gets recruited by a Mexican drug cartel in Miami. Gil moves rapidly up the ranks of the cartel until he is made the mayor of a small but strategic town just across the Mexican border from Arizona. Here, Gil encounters an unusual individual who convinces him to turn against the cartel, resulting in an adventure beyond his imaginings.

Without seeming to at first glance, Jim Murphy's Versions of May succeeds in speaking to the anxieties that move beneath the surface waters of our times. It is a collection of tremendous depth and breadth, piercing insight and tenderness. Global, and yet attentive to particulars of nature and human spirit, these poems artfully blend elements of elegy, Zen, jazz, and popular music. In line after line that resonate with echoes of terror and loss, but simultaneously with stunning celebrations of beauty, they sweep us off center, in the traditions of Zen or jazz masters, leaving us almost breathless, startled by the silence and light. "No truths / but this bright and noble moment," Murphy writes, and elsewhere, "We vanished. We left in total silence." These are poems to be savored, ones that will stay with us long after our reading. -Anand Prahlad, Curators Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri-Columbia

Gold...silver...precious gems...the stuff dreams are made of. This is the story of a hoard of just such valuable metals and stones, whose journey begins in the year 1311, when the Knights Templar were prosecuted. A small band of valiant knights escape with the hoard and the turbulent journey begins. It's 2525, and enter Mary and James McGoldenck, a young couple from Laramie, Wyoming, who fall in love with metal detecting and rock hounding, and because of those activities, trek all over Wyoming seeking buried treasures. Enter a villain from Louisiana, Jean Pierre LaCroix - drug dealer, money launderer, human trafficker, murder - these are just a few of his methods of making money. Follow Mary and James as they deal with deadly encounters, ambushes, difficult terrains, a mysterious American Indian, Thomas Light Horse, who shows up out of nowhere, and an old rancher named Chester Wilcox, who owns the ranch that holds Crashed Wagon Canyon.

A unique, fast, and quirky guide to Philadelphia’s heroes and historic sites

From one of the most acclaimed writers of nonfiction for children, Invincible Microbe illuminates the seemingly unstoppable killer thats been haunting us for centuries: tuberculosis. Well-researched and including over 100 archival photos and prints, this compelling biography of a deadly germ is a must-read.

Powerful and riveting, this Newbery Honor–winning narrative describes the illness known as yellow fever, the toll it took on the nation’s capital—and the eventual triumph over the disease.Long before Covid and the West Nile virus, yellow fever was a medical mystery that forced thousands in Philadelphia, the nation’s temporary capital, to flee and brought the workings of the federal government to a virtual halt. A riveting account of this country’s first large-scale medical epidemic, An American Plague is generously illustrated with archival prints and photographs and includes a bibliography, map, and index.This is the story of how half the city’s residents fled and half of those who remained died; neighboring towns, cities and states barricaded themselves; George Washington himself fled, setting off a constitutional crisis; and bloodletting caused blood to run through the streets. It is also the story of a little known chapter in Black history in which free Blacks nursed the sick only to be later condemned for their heroic efforts.Meticulously researched, first-hand accounts, newspaper clippings, death lists, and period engravings recreate the fear and panic while exploring the political, social, cultural, medical and scientific history of the times. A final chapter explores the causes of the epidemic and provides a wake-up call about the potential for epidemics today.Newbery Honor Book * National Book Award Finalist * Winner of the Sibert Medal