New Releases by Justin Scott

Even the cozy New England town of Newbury, onnecticut, is not immune to the relentless spread of McMansions carpeting the countryside. Ben Abbott, realtor and private detective, is so incensed that he refuses to sell them. That Ben is not the only citizen of Newbury who is provoked by over - sized, ugly, wasteful houses becomes apparent when the corpse of Billy Tiller, Newbury''s greediest developer, is discovered underneath his bulldozer. The young and troubled eco - activist Jeff Kimball, who is arrested while sitting at the controls of the bulldozer, protests his innocence. Connecticut''s state''s attorney sees the opportunity to prosecute an open - and - shut TV murder trial that will vault him into the U.S. Senate. While Ira Levy, the small - town criminal defense lawyer hired by Jeff''s hip - hop mogul father, longs to impress movers and shakers in New York City. Ben Abbott, deep in debt to Attorney Levy for an expensive horse he gave to 12 - year - old Alison, is forced to pay off the debt by trying to prove Jeff Kimball innocent of a crime that State Police Major Crime Squad Lieutenant Marian Boyce styles ''''perpetrator on bulldozer on victim.'''' It looks that way, says Ben Abbott. But in what order did they really stack up?

"Best friends Sage Carrington and Isabel Flores are making the most of their summer break when they discover an antique treasure map near the Washington Monument. But when faced with difficult clues and a bully in the form of Edwin Hooser, the tween girls must use every bit of imagination, drive, and intellect to outsmart Edwin and decipher the map."--Amazon.com.

The Race is the fourth turn of the century thriller by Clive Cussler. 1910, and America''s first ever cross-country flying race has been sabotaged . . . Newspaper magnate Preston Whiteway is offering a big prize for the first aviator to cross America in under fifty days. He wants Josephine Frost - the country''s leading as well as most glamorous pilot - to win. Which is why he''s hired Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Josephine saw her husband Harry Frost kill a man. Now he wants her dead. And with underworld contacts ready to help in every city en route, he''ll do anything, go after anyone who gets in his way - including Whiteway and Bell. Packed with brilliant twists and turns, The Race sees the intrepid Private Investigator locked in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a killer whose resources are matched only by his willingness to cause mayhem during the race of a lifetime . . . Clive Cussler''s The Race is the international bestselling author''s follow up to The Spy and The Wrecker, the first two novels in the Isaac Bell series. The Race is a nerve-shredding historical thriller, set at the dawn of flight. Praise for Clive Cussler: ''Frightening and full of suspense . . . unquestionably entertaining'' Daily Express ''All-action, narrow escapes and the kind of unrelenting plot tension that has won Cussler hundreds of millions of fans worldwide'' Observer

This study explored how unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) define success. The population of URMs consists of individuals who, through forced migration from their country of origin, were resettled in the United States through the URM program. Little is known about the ways in which refugee adolescents view the resettlement process once they have left the URM program. Through a traditional grounded theory method, 15 interviews with former URMs were conducted with the aim of laying the groundwork for a theory that would explain how success is defined, the unique challenges URMs face, the mechanisms for overcoming challenges, and the role that culture plays in the resettlement process.

This dissertation explores the combined effects of biofuel mandates and terrestrial greenhouse gas GHG mitigation incentives on land use, management intensity, commodity markets, welfare, and the full costs of GHG abatement through conceptual and empirical modeling. First, a simple conceptual model of land allocation and management is used to illustrate how bioenergy policies and GHG mitigation incentives could influence market prices, shift the land supply between alternative uses, alter management intensity, and boost equilibrium commodity prices. Later a major empirical modeling section uses the U.S. Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model with Greenhouse Gases (FASOMGHG) to simulate land use and production responses to various biofuel and climate policy scenarios. Simulations are performed to assess the effects of imposing biofuel mandates in the U.S. consistent with the Renewable Fuels Standard of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (RFS2). Simulations are run for several climate mitigation policy scenarios (with varying GHG (CO2) prices and eligibility restrictions for GHG offset activities) with and without conservation land recultivation. Important simulation outputs include time trajectories for land use, GHG emissions and mitigation, commodity prices, production, net exports, sectoral economic welfare, and shifts in management practices and intensity. Direct and indirect consequences of RFS2 and carbon policy are highlighted, including regional production shifts that can influence water consumption and nutrient use in regions already plagued by water scarcity and quality concerns. Results suggest that the potential magnitude of climate mitigation on commodity markets and exports is substantially higher than under biofuel expansion in isolation, raising concerns of international leakage and stimulating the "Food vs. Carbon" debate. Finally, a reduced-form dynamic emissions trading model of the U.S. economy is developed using simulation output from FASOMGHG and the National Energy Modeling System to test the effect of biofuel mandate expansion and domestic offset eligibility restrictions on total economy-wide GHG abatement costs. Findings are that while the RFS2 raises the marginal costs of offsets, full abatement costs depend on a number of policy factors. GHG payment incentives for forest management and non-CO2 agricultural offsets can increase full abatement costs by more than 20%.

Twentieth century detective Isaac Bell takes on the world of warfare when America’s naval research and development experts begin to die one by one in this #1 New York Times-bestselling historical action adventure. 1908 marks a year of ever-escalating international tension as the world plunges toward war. And with America on the brink, it comes as a devastating blow to learn of the apparent suicide of one of the United States’ most brilliant battleship-gun designers. The death becomes a media sensation, and the man’s grief-stricken daughter turns to the legendary Van Dorn Detective Agency to clear her father’s name. Van Dorn puts his chief investigator on the case, and Isaac Bell soon sees that the clues point not to suicide, but to murder. As Bell notices more suspicious deaths among the nation’s sharpest technological minds, he begins to suspect the work of an elusive spy somehow connected to a top-secret project called Hull 44. But that is just the beginning. As the intrigue deepens, Bell will find himself pitted against German, Japanese, and British spies, in a mission that encompasses dreadnought battleships, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, Chinatown, Hell’s Kitchen, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Isaac Bell has certainly faced perilous situations before, but this time it is more than the future of his country that’s at stake—it’s the fate of the world.

When Newbury Connecticuts three hundred year old village cemetery is invaded by a gaudy, half-million dollar mausoleum, Ben Abbott is not happy. Newcomer Brian Grosess tall, wide, mirror-polished eruption of eternal ego sticks out in the peaceful burying ground like a McMansion in an apple orchard. Bens fellow drinkers at the bar have nicknamed the monstrosity, McTomb. But no one expected to find Brians body locked in his mausoleum, fifty years ahead of schedule. Then Homeland Security Immigration Criminal Enforcement agents descend on Newbury hunting for Charlie Cubrero, an illegal immigrant farm handand supposed gang leaderwho bought a gun after he was stiffed for fifty bucks by Brian Grose. Ben Abbott doesnt buy it. Half the town was in the graveyard celebrating Newburys tercentennial when Brian was shot and most of them were mad at him. Besides, Ben admires the hard working Charlie. And he fears that the news that the illegal worked for the Village Cemetery Association will destroy the venerable society already torn asunder by suing and counter-suing anti-mausoleum traditionalists and pro-mausoleum insurgents.

Detective Isaac Bell travels the early-twentieth-century American railways, driven by a sense of justice and a determination to stop a new mastermind reigning terror on a crucial express line in this #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A year of financial panic and labor unrest, 1907 sees train wrecks, fires, and explosions sabotage the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Cascades express line. Desperate for help the railroad hires the fabled Van Dorn Detective Agency. Van Dorn’s best man, Isaac Bell, quickly discovers a mysterious saboteur haunting the hobo jungles of the West. Known only as the Wrecker, he recruits vulnerable accomplices from the down-and-out to attack the railroad, and then kills them afterward. The Wrecker traverses the vast spaces of the American West as if he had wings, striking wherever he pleases, causing untold damage and loss of human life. Who is he? What does he want? Is he a striker? An anarchist? A revolutionary determined to displace the “privileged few”? A criminal mastermind engineering some as yet unexplained scheme? Whoever he is, whatever his motives, the Wrecker knows how to create maximum havoc, and Bell senses that he is far from done—that, in fact, the Wrecker is building up to a grand act unlike anything he has committed before. If Bell doesn’t stop him in time, more than a railroad could be at risk—it could be the future of the entire country.

In this dissertation, I examine the determinants of presidential responsiveness to public opinion, employing a theory of context and venue that explains why presidents are more responsive at some times and in certain policy making venues than at other times and in other venues. To test this theory, I create a new direct measure of presidential responsiveness to public opinion, a measure that quantifies the ideological distance between presidential policy positions and public policy preferences. I develop versions of this measure in four important venues of the modern presidency: relations with the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, the unilateral administrative presidency, and the president''s rhetoric. Using time-series regression techniques, I analyze the influence that factors such as political context, electoral context, institutional context, and venue visibility have on the dynamics of presidential responsiveness scores. The results indicate that although the president''s policy position taking responds to public opinion dynamics, there is no clear contextual factor that conditions this responsiveness.

Keywords: performance, pigs, birth weight.

No-till producers can manage weeds by including cover crops during the fallow phase as part of an integrated weed management plan. Field experiments were conducted between 2007 and 2009 to quantify the influence of cover crops on weed emergence, biomass accumulation, and seed production. Field experiments were established near Garden City, KS with winter wheat or fallow as main plots and cover crop treatments as subplots including five spring- and five fall-sown individual or mixtures of crop species and a no-cover chemical fallow. Separate1-m2 quadrats were seeded with kochia or downy brome at 500 seed/m2. Kochia density was reduced by 75% and biomass reduced by 88% in fall-sown cover crops compared to chemical fallow across growing seasons. Spring-sown cover crop mixtures reduced kochia biomass in 2009 when kochia emergence was delayed. Downy brome biomass decreased exponentially as cover crop biomass increased. A second field experiment was established near Manhattan, KS with soybean, winter wheat, or grain sorghum phases of the rotation as main plots and six cover crop treatments as subplots sown after winter wheat harvest. Paired Palmer amaranth 1-m2 quadrats were seeded with 500 seed/m2 in each cover crop subplot. One quadrat was protected from any herbicide application made to the cover crop or to the grain sorghum. Combining burndown application with high biomass-producing cover crops reduced Palmer amaranth emergence and biomass. Influence of cover crop presence reduced early season Palmer amaranth emergence in the subsequent grain sorghum phase. Optimal seeding rate of forage soybean sown in winter wheat stubble and its impact on Palmer amaranth and downy brome emergence and growth were evaluated in field studies established near Manhattan and Hesston, KS in 2008 and 2009. Soybean was no-till drilled after wheat harvest at five rates ranging from 100,000 to 600,000 seeds/ha. A no-cover chemical fallow treatment was included. Separate 0.5-m2 quadrats were seeded with Palmer amaranth at 100 seed/0.5 m2 or with downy brome at 250 seed/0.5 m2. Three termination methods evaluated were killing frost, glyphosate application, or crop rolling. Palmer amaranth density was not affected by treatments but biomass decreased as soybean seeding rate and crop biomass increased. Downy brome emergence was less with rolled or sprayed termination methods in one site year as timing of termination was optimal. High biomass producing cover crops sown during the fallow phase of a crop rotation reduced weed emergence, density, and biomass accumulation. Cover crops can be part of an integrated weed management plan in Kansas.

This book provides anyone intersted in learning to play drums with all the information they need to get started. Packed with useful tips and simple illustrated lessons that are easy to understand, you''ll be jamming in no time.

This book is an easy and accessible guide that provides all the information and advice that any budding drummer needs to get started.

Scott''s satisfying fourth installment of his Ben Abbott series hinges on the murder of Billy Tiller, a greedy developer determined to ruin the small town charm of Newbury, Conn., with a string of tacky starter palaces. When he''s found dead the police arrest a young environmental activist, Jeff Kimball. Ira Levy, Kimball''s lawyer, asks Abbott, realtor-cum-PI, to dig around. Abbott doesn''t want to take the case he despised everything Tiller stood for and worries that his loathing might hamper his investigation, but Levy twists his arm. Abbott determines pretty quickly that Kimball could not have committed the crime, but figuring out who did is a tad trickier.

This thesis sets out to confront drug and alcohol abuse by American servicemen during the Vietnam War, previously defying in depth historical analysis. New oral histories available within the last few years have shed new light on a previously elusive subject. Harnessing medical literature, government documents, oral histories and secondary sources this work seeks to explain the widespread alcohol and drug abuse the Vietnam War became famous for. Factors contributing to abuse and elaborated upon include widespread availability of drugs and alcohol, military machismo, the inability of military leadership to cope with the burgeoning substance abuse problems and the rise of the domestic drug scene domestically.

Ben Abbott, just returned to his small Connecticut hometown, is hired by a New York City private eye to videotape the activities in newcomer Rita Long''s bedroom--where the ravishing Rita cheats on her husband. But murder wasn''t part of the deal. And now Ben is embroiled in a mystery that will take a decidedly sinister turn.

When her Russian-born husband is murdered by a mysterious young woman, Natalie Nevsky travels to Russia to investigate his past