“Bellamy once again masterfully brings to life decades-old tales that won’t let you look away.” ― Cleveland Magazine
Women who murder . . . why are they so much more fascinating than their male counterparts? For evidence, dip into any of the sixteen strange-but-true tales collected in this anthology by Cleveland’s leading historical crime writer. You’ll meet:
• Ill-fated Catherine Manz, the “Bad Cinderella” who poisoned her step-sister in revenge for years of mistreatment, then made her getaway wearing her victim’s most fetching outfit, a red dress and an enormous feathered hat . . .
• Velma West, the big-city girl who scandalized rural Lake County in the 1920s with her “unnatural passions”―and ended her marriage-made-in-hell with a swift hammer’s blow to the skull of her dull husband, Eddie . . .
• Eva Kaber, “Lakewood’s Lady Borgia,” who, along with her mother and daughter, conspired to dispose of an inconvenient husband with arsenic and knife-wielding hired killers . . .
• Martha Wise, Medina’s not-so-merry widow, who poisoned a dozen relatives―including her husband, mother, and brother―because she enjoyed going to funerals . . .
And a cast of other, equally fascinating women who behaved very, very badly. This is wickedly entertaining reading!

Women Behaving Badly: True Tales of Cleveland's Most Ferocious Female Killers: An Anthology

Biographies & Memoirs

Bellamy II, John

Community & Culture

Gray & Company, Publishers

#3 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . . 
No one is as loyal to old friends as Cleveland private investigator Milan Jacovich (it’s pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich). So when a grade school chum worries his son Paulie might be selling drugs, Milan has no choice but to help. 
Milan turn up Paulie’s connection, a handsome Jamaican named Deshon who pals around with two baseball-bat wielding thugs and a German shepherd dog who looks like he’s all business. 
The narcotics business makes curious bedfellows, as Milan discovers during his investigation of a particularly brutal murder; he butts heads with a wily realtor named Christmas, a flamboyant automobile dealer with lofty political ambitions, an edgy street pusher, and his old friends from the Little Italy mob, Don Giancarlo D’Allessandro and Victor Gaimari. 
Milan also encounters a drug gang unparalleled in their savagery, and unearths a relic from every Clevelander’s childhood that proves to be deadly.

Deep Shaker: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (Milan Jacovich Mysteries)

Literature & Fiction

Roberts, Les

Genre Fiction

Private investigator Milan Jacovich (MY-lan YOCK-ovich), a Slovenian-American, is familiar with the wide variety of ethnic groups that make up the city of Cleveland ― especially those in his old neighborhood. When an elderly Serbian goes missing and his granddaughter suspects foul play, Milan takes up the search. In the meantime, Milan’s good friend, Plain Dealer reporter Ed Stahl, has written a column critical of the gangster element on Cleveland’s Murray Hill, and is now being threatened and harassed, which brings Milan into direct conflict with a millionaire garbage hauler and an out-of-town muscle punk named Nello Trinetti. The Serbs and the Slovenians traditionally don’t get along too well, but Milan makes inroads into Cleveland’s Serbian community after a shocking murder, eventually coming face-to-face with its unofficial mayor, Lazo Samarzic, an angry and militant man who runs a produce stand in the historic old West Side Market. Hatreds that have simmered for fifty years eventually explode as Milan Jacovich takes on one of his most challenging cases.

The Cleveland Connection: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (Milan Jacovich Mysteries, 4)

United States

#5 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . . 
Every Clevelander understands the lake effect, a weather condition that brings plenty of snow, especially in November when election time rolls around. 
Milan Jacovich (it’s pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich), the genial Cleveland private eye, has never been a political animal. But he owes a favor to mobster Victor Gaimari, and Milan always pays his debts. So he agrees to play watchdog over a mayoral election in suburban Lake Erie Shores in which dowdy housewife Barbara Corns is challenging incumbent Gayton True. 
Everything seems calm on the surface―until True’s wife, Princess, is run down in the street just outside downtown Cleveland’s Tower City. It becomes obvious that there is more at stake than the mayor’s chair in a quiet suburban city hall. And when he discovers that the True campaign has employed his old nemesis, disgraced ex-cop Al Drago, who carries a grudge a mile wide, Milan knows he’s in for a lot rougher time of it than simply poll-watching.

The Lake Effect: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (Milan Jacovich Mysteries)

#7 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . . Private investigator Milan Jacovich (it’s pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich) goes behind the scenes to uncover scandal, ambition, and intrigue at one of Cleveland’s top TV stations as he hunts down the stalker and murderer of a beautiful local television anchor. Milan has just moved his offices to an old building on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in an area called the Flats. There, he receives a surprise visit from a former love interest, Mary Soderberg, who left him for her influential boss, TV executive Steve Cirini. One of their newscasters, the beautiful Virginia Carville, has been murdered, and Cirini, who was having an affair with her, is the chief suspect. Mary wants Milan to bail her cheating boyfriend out of the jam—for old times’ sake. Milan doesn’t like Cirini at all, but takes the case even though he’s unsure of the man’s innocence. Or is the culprit the obsessive station-manager Nicky Scandalios, the longtime anchorwoman Vivian Truscott, or a survivor of child abuse named Violet Grba? For that matter, could it be Milan’s old flame Mary Soderberg herself?

Collision Bend: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (Milan Jacovich Mysteries)

Everyone has secrets. But college freshman Jason Crowell is especially guarded when an anonymous feminist organization on campus publicly accuses him of date rape. Jason proclaims his innocence but has no idea who the “Women Warriors” are―or even who his supposed victim is. Jason’s former high school principal, Reginald Parker, believes in the kid and asks private investigator Milan Jacovich (MY-lan YOCK-ovitch) to uncover the identities of the secret accusers. Milan would rather steer clear of this unpleasant case, but Reggie Parker once saved his life (see Deep Shaker), so Milan agrees to investigate. What he finds surprises him―and eventually leads to murder. Milan tangles with Jason’s rigid and unfeeling parents, a mean-spirited campus police chief, and an extremely dangerous gang of youths that wants him dead. He quickly finds himself in more trouble than he ever imagined.

The Best-Kept Secret: A Milan Jacovich Mystery

“A warm, loving portrait of a city and the surrounding area―smoothly and sincerely written.” ― Ohioana Quarterly
In this memoir, novelist Les Roberts tells how he discovered the heart and soul of a city while fictionalizing it for a series of mysteries. 
When Roberts, a TV producer at the time, arrived in Cleveland from L.A. for a short-term consulting job in 1986, he never dreamed that, just months later, he’d find himself so completely won over by the place that he’d give up the glitz of Hollywood and put down roots in this rustbelt city. It took only a few weeks in Cleveland to convince Roberts that the city was a ripe setting for his next private-eye novel. Then, a chance meeting on an airplane led him to the inspiration for his new character: Milan Jacovich. The combination proved very successful. Thirteen Milan Jacovich novels resulted, and with each book Roberts drew more heavily on real Cleveland places and people. 
Roberts writes about his favorite locations and his favorite people (and at least one person who was not happy to find himself in a novel). It will appeal to fans of the series, fans of the city, and aspiring novelists who want to learn how one writer took a city and made it his own through fiction.

We'll Always Have Cleveland: A Memoir of a Novelist and a City (Milan Jacovich Mysteries, 14)

Arts & Literature

“Sometimes I wish my minister would read his column instead of the sermon!” 
That’s the kind of response Plain Dealer columnist Terry Pluto draws from devoted readers of his faith column. Although best known as an award-winning sportswriter, Pluto has also earned a reputation—and a growing audience—for his down-to-earth musings on more spiritual subjects. 
This followup to his first collection, “Everyday Faith,” offers 28 all-new thoughtful essays on faith in everyday life—practical topics such as choosing a church, lending money to friends, dealing with jerks, sharing your faith, visiting the sick, even planning a funeral. 
Perhaps it’s because Pluto doesn’t claim to have the answers that so many readers are drawn to his writing. 
“Real faith writing should be about real life,” Pluto says. “I write as much about my failures as my triumphs, because that is what a life of faith is about. It’s often as much suffering as celebration, with lots of mundane, everyday stuff in between. I write for people who may have been hurt by someone in church, people who have been discouraged by one who claimed to speak for God . . . I write for people who have found contentment in their faith but want a deeper relationship with God.”

Faith and You: 28 Short Essays on Faith in Everyday Life

Parenting & Relationships

Pluto, Terry

Parenting

“Utterly fascinating . . . highly recommended anyone curious about heyday of newspapers.” — Library Book Watch
Listen in as dozens of veteran newspaper men and women share their favorite stories about life on the job at Cleveland’s newspapers during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s—when spirited competition between the Cleveland Press and the Plain Dealer made the newspaper business the most exciting business in town. 
Their stories are funny, tragic, human and sometimes outrageous. Read them and find out why reporters in those days knew they had the world’s best job. Back then, the door to the city room was wide open and you never knew who might walk in—strippers, mental patients, circus clowns, the mayor . . . It was an amazing parade. 
The best stories rarely just walked in, though. Reporters wore out shoe leather, jamming dimes into pay phones, pressing their ears to closed doors. Photographers recorded the action, whether a murder victim or a murderer or the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies. 
Now, here are the stories behind the stories, told by the men and women who covered them. Includes eye-opening stories from investigative reporters, society writers, theater critics, sportswriters, photographers, editors, and many others.

Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales From the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers—Told By The Men and Women Who Reported the News

Tidyman, John

Historical

“Poignant and wonderfully well-written.” — Richard North Patterson, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Witness
“I fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic not long before her body was discovered lying facedown in an Ashland County wheat field. I fell for her the first time I saw that school photo TV stations flashed at the beginning of every newscast in the weeks following her kidnapping in the autumn of 1989—the photo with the side-saddle ponytail . . .”
So begins this strange and compelling memoir in which a young journalist investigates the cold case that has haunted him since childhood. 
It’s one of Northeast Ohio’s most frustrating unsolved crimes. Ten-year-old Amy Mihaljevic (Muh-ha-luh-vick) disappeared from the comfortable Cleveland suburb of Bay Village. Thousands of volunteers, police officers, and FBI agents searched for the girl, who was tragically found dead a few months later. Her killer was never found. 
Fifteen years later, journalist James Renner picks up the leads. Filled with mysterious riddles, incredible coincidences, and a cast of odd but very real characters, his investigation quickly becomes a riveting journey in search of the truth.

Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets and Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic

Renner, James

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