Theft, extortion, embezzlement, mafia ties, drunk driving and even murder - these are the true stories of priests gone bad.
It's a dark and windy Easter in Toledo, Ohio when Sister Margaret is found murdered in the chapel, the victim of a Satanic ritual. Twenty years later her murderer is revealed to be the parish priest Father Gerald. Monsignor Skehan and Father Guinan embezzled 8.1 million dollars from their affluent Palm Beach, Florida, church, Guinan fleeing to Ireland and leaving Skehan to face the music. Father Fink of Texas crashed his car into a restaurant while driving drunk, injuring ten people. The civil lawsuits that ensued featured innovative - and shady - defense tactics.
Radic dramatically retells these stories and many others, drawing on his personal trials as a pastor convicted of embezzlement, forgery, and fraud.
Chicago Folk includes over 200 of Raeburn Flerlages's photographs of folk musicians during the 1960s. No other book has presented a portrait of such a vibrant urban folk milieu, featuring popular performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, and so many others, but also a large number of traditional musicians, old and new, such as the New Lost City Ramblers, the Reverend Gary Davis, Booker White, Son House, Dock Boggs, the Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Mother Maybelle Carter, and many other blues, bluegrass, old-time, Cajun, and gospel performers who appeared in Chicago and at the University of Chicago Folk Festival. These images capture the broad scope of folk musicians who were part and parcel of the 1960s folk music revival in Chicago and throughout the country.
Raeburn Flerlage was well known as Chicago's foremost blues photographer. The concert performances, studio sessions, interviews and club shows he shot through the 1960s captured some of America's greatest blues artists at the pinnacle of their careers. While these images are now famous, the rest of his thousands of images are virtually unknown, and Chicago Folk brings these photos to light.
Chicago Folk is a follow-up to Chicago Blues (ECW Press, 2000), the first published collection of Flerlage's photographs.
"Living in jail is like living in a foreign country. The customs and culture are different, almost alien, and so is the language."
A Priest in Hell is the compelling true story of life in the U.S. prison system. The book takes fodder for popular reality shows (like Cops) to a new level, giving the reader a frighteningly real sense of the tastes, sounds, smells, culture and lifestyle of jail.
On November 5, 2005, Randall Radic was arrested and charged with ten felonies. Desperation for a monied lifestyle led Radic, a pastor in the northern California community of Ripon, to first mortgage the home provided to him by his church, before selling off the church itself. His crime is exposed when a large bank deposit catches the attention of the authorities. Radic is subsequently convicted of embezzlement, forgery, and fraud, and he spends six months in a California jail before a plea bargain facilitates his release.
At 54, Radic is well above the average age of the prison population, and his background as a priest makes him both a target and a confidante within the prison walls. Through the book, Radic introduces the stories of several of his fellow inmates, detailing their crimes, cases, and struggles. He eventually earns his plea bargain by sharing confessions of a fellow inmate with the district attorney.
Radic considers his time in jail Dante's version of Hell. This is the gritty, painful reality of crime and consequence.
