Frank Owen

A stunning high-concept post-apocalyptic debut novel in the vein of The Passageby Justin Cronin.

South

North

Guardian's Book of the Month, 2018 '[With] echoes of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Stephen King's The Stand...' Guardian on South If a virus doesn't kill you, the South will... The USA has been ravaged by Civil War. It's been thirty years since the first wind-borne viruses ended the war between North and South. While the South has been devastated by disease - the North has emerged victorious, but terrified of reprisals. Both territories remain at the mercy of the vicious Northern dictator, Renard. Two survivors, Dyce and Vida, journeyed deep into the Southern terrains in search of a Cure for Renard's chemical warfare. Now they find themselves scouring the Northern territories on a new and far deadlier pursuit; to eliminate Renard himself. Could Dyce and Vida unite a fractured America - and at what cost? This is the story of Dyce and Vida. This is the story of the Resistance and its last, desperate, stand. This is the story of North.

This thrilling sequel to South is perfect for fans of Hugh Howie's Wool

Fireside Mystery Book

Outrageous parties. Brazen drug use. Fantastical costumes. Celebrities. Wannabes. Gender-bending club kids. Pulse-pounding beats. Sinful orgies. Botched police raids. Depraved criminals. Murder. Welcome to the decadent nineties club scene. In 1995, journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on Special K, a designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally notorious Limelight, a crumbling church converted into a Manhattan disco, where mesmerizing music, ecstatic dancers, and uninhibited sideshows attracted long lines of hopeful onlookers. Owen discovered a world where reckless hedonism was elevated to an art form, and where the ever-accelerating party finally spun out of control in the hands of notorious club owner Peter Gatien and his minions. In Clubland, Owen reveals how a lethal drug ring operated in a lawless, black-lit realm of fantasy, and how, when the lights came up, their excesses left countless victims in their wake. Praised for his risk-taking and exhilarating writing style, Frank Owen has spawned a hybrid of literary nonfiction and true crime, capturing the zeitgeist of a world that emerged in the spirit of “peace, love, unity and respect,” and ended in tragedy.

The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture

Clubland

In 1995, journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on "Special K," a new designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally-notorious Limelight, a decrepit church converted into a Manhattan disco, where pulse-pounding music, gender-bending dancers, and uninhibited sideshows attracted long lines of hopeful onlookers. Clubland is the story of Owen's six year journey behind the velvet ropes, into the cavernous clubs where any transformation was possible, every extreme permissible--even murder. At first, Owen found an unexpected common ground between very different people: stockbrokers danced with transvestites, pacifier-sucking "club kids" with celebrities, thick-necked jocks with misfits. But as money flowed into the clubs, the music darkened, the drugs intensified, and the carnival spiraled out of control. Four men defined the scene, all of them outsiders, who saw in clubland the chance to escape their pasts and reinvent themselves by making their own rules. Peter Gatien rose from a small Canadian milltown to become the most powerful club operator in America; Michael Alig, a gay misfit from the midwest, escaped to Manhattan where he won a legion of fashion-and-drug enamored followers; Lord Michael Caruso left Staten Island's bars for the rave parties of England, returning as clubland's leading drug dealer and techno music pioneer; and Chris Paciello began as a brutal Bensonhurst gang member, then recast himself as the glamorous prince of Miami Beach, partying with Madonna and Jennifer Lopez at the exclusive nightspots he created. Each of them had secrets that led them over the edge, and when when clubland fell, it left behind tragic human consequences: the disillusioned, the strung out, and the dead. A tour de force of investigative and participatory journalism, Clubland offers a dramatic exposé of a world built on illusion, where morality is ambiguous, identity changeable, and money the root of both ecstasy and evil.

Hells Angels and fallen televangelist Ted Haggard. Cross-country truckers and suburban mothers. Trailer parks, gay sex clubs, college campuses, and military battlefields. In this fascinating book, Frank Owen traces the spread of methamphetamine—meth—from its origins as a cold and asthma remedy to the stimulant wiring every corner of American culture. Meth is the latest "epidemic" to attract the attention of law enforcement and the media, but like cocaine and heroin its roots are medicinal. It was first synthesized in the late nineteenth century and applied in treatment of a wide range of ailments; by the 1940s meth had become a wonder drug, used to treat depression, hyperactivity, obesity, epilepsy, and addictions to other drugs and alcohol. Allied, Nazi, and Japanese soldiers used it throughout World War II, and the returning waves of veterans drove demand for meth into the burgeoning postwar suburbs, where it became the "mother's helper" for a bored and lonely generation. But meth truly exploded in the 1960s and '70s, when biker gang cooks using burners, beakers, and plastic tubes brought their expertise from California to the Ozarks, the Southwest, and other remote rural areas where the drug could be manufactured in kitchen labs. Since then, meth has been the target of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local anti-drug wars. Murders, violent assaults, thefts, fires, premature births, and AIDS—rises in all of these have been blamed on the drug that crosses classes and subcultures like no other. Acclaimed journalist Frank Owen follows the users, cooks, dealers, and law enforcers to uncover a dramatic story being played out in cities, small towns, and farm communities across America. No Speed Limit is a panoramic, high-octane investigation by a journalist who knows firsthand the powerful highs and frightening lows of meth.

The Highs and Lows of Meth

No Speed Limit

Michael Foot

Cato

Peter Howard

A polemic against Chamberlain, MacDonald, and Baldwin whom the author Cato, a pseudonym for Michael Foot, Frank Owen, and Peter Howard, regarded as having brought the country to the brink of disaster through their policy of appeasement. First published in 1940

Frank Owen

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