TOP PRESS RELEASES

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Top Publications announced today its plans to publish Tricia Allen's debut novel, Texas Weather.  The 40's mystery-legal thriller will be published as a trade paperback. An extensive promotional tour is in the planning stages. The story is about a Dallas prosecutor, David Weather.

On the eve of the trial of a rich, remorseless killer, Dallas County prosecutor David Weather ducks a deluge of personal problems. A newspaper publisher insists the death of the last DA (Weather’s father) was no accident. Weather’s spurned mistress gets revenge by confessing to her husband. Hubby wants Weather dead. But both men work for the DA, so they declare an uneasy truce to keep Boss Man from finding out. A beautiful young reporter arrives and the action heats up. Then a stalker prowls, bodies turn up and David Weather must face the biggest trial of his life in this mystery set in 1947.

Tricia Allen was born in Indianola, Mississippi, and began inventing
stories at age five. At age eight, she discovered some true crime magazines under her grandmother's bed. She was hooked. Ever since, Tricia has been an avid mystery fan, and now puts her love of a dark thrill to good use in Texas Weather.

Tricia has a BA and an MA in English from Mississippi State University, and is currently a marketing copywriter in Dallas. She is a member of the DFW Writers' Workshop and of Sisters in Crime. Texas Weather is her first book.

Texas Weather, Top Publications, Ltd.Co., Trade Paperback, ISBN#1-929976-00-3, $14.95, May 2000.

For more information contact Lisa Korth, (972) 320-8041 or accaccts@swbell.net

Hooked on History, former award winning newspaper editor, Lynnette Baughman's first novel, A Spy Within, to be released.

Dallas, Texas, August 25, 1999. The novel, A Spy Within, is an intriguing fictional look inside Los Alamos, the "Atomic City," but the author says the actual history of atomic espionage is hard to surpass for twists, chills and terror.

     "The true story has to include Joseph Stalin and the head of his
intelligence services, Lavrenty Beria," says Lynnette Baughman. "What a piece of work those killers were! I like the dedication in the book Seeds of Treason written in 1950 by Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky. They wrote, 'To Joseph Stalin, without whose help this book would never have been written.'"

     "Stalin and Beria pulled off the biggest surprise in the world when
the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in August 1949," Baughman continues. "Now, you might think the first atomic bomb, the one exploded in the New Mexico desert July 16, 1945, was the biggest surprise. But, heck, there were so many spies in the United States, Canada and Britain telling the Soviets every step of our progress, that Stalin knew more about it than our own president, Harry Truman."

     In a talk she gave first for the Los Alamos Historical Society and
looks forward to giving to any interested civic groups, at libraries, and to students, Baughman outlined the four channels through which atomic secrets flowed to Moscow.

     "The Russians planted the seeds of treason in this country during the Great Depression. Many educated and intelligent people joined the Communist Party in one form or another, or they were what was called 'fellow travelers,' people who endorsed the fine-sounding ideals of communism. Graduates of top universities were urged by their contacts in the Party to get government jobs, and they did - by the dozens. Naturally, their number and influence in the federal government grew - who would they recommend be hired but more of their friends, people who shared their world view?" Baughman says.

     "There were so many spies in the Departments of State and Justice that in 1936 Alger Hiss, who worked for Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, caused a stir by trying to recruit a man he knew to agree with the Soviet agenda, Noel Field. But Field already worked for the other Soviet intelligence branch, the NKVD. Cables, which have now been deciphered, demonstrate how their Soviet contacts had to deal with the breach of spy security."

     The important point here, Baughman says, is that people like Alger Hiss had risen within the government to have access to every secret the United States thought it had. Every night, all over Washington, documents were photographed, then returned in the morning to the offices. The film went to Moscow.

     Sometimes film wasn't needed. The Soviets sent tons of blueprints, patents, maps, government documents, catalogues of industrial and military products, and much more out of the United States through Great Falls, Montana. Under the guise of "diplomatic mail," 50 black suitcases at a time were loaded aboard U.S. bombers en route to Russia (via Fairbanks, Alaska) under the extravagantly generous Lend-Lease program.

     So Lend-Lease was the second channel. The U.S. Army major in charge of expediting Lend-Lease in Montana opened some suitcases and saw maps and documents relating to the "Manhattan Engineering District," "Oak Ridge," "uranium," "cyclotron," and other words he didn't understand until they became public knowledge after the war.

     Public knowledge in the United States, that is. Stalin and a busy band of Russian scientists knew all about it years earlier. The third channel was the Soviet spies inside British intelligence. The Cambridge Five (probably Six) were in positions to know everything the United States shared with Winston Churchill, and they served as a quick conduit to Stalin. Donald Maclean served as first Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington from 1944 to 1948. He read and shared with the Soviets all cable traffic between Roosevelt and Churchill and later between Truman and Churchill. He knew when the top secret VENONA program cracked the Soviet's wartime code, and tipped off the Soviets to every message which was deciphered. In 1947 Maclean was appointed as Britain's Secretary on the Combined Policy Committee on Atomic Development.

     Another of the Cambridge spies, Kim Philby, was British liaison to the top levels of the FBI and CIA. When the FBI got close to figuring out that Maclean was a Soviet agent, Philby told him in time. Maclean and Guy Burgess disappeared and showed up in Moscow in 1951. Several years later Philby did the same thing.

     And the fourth channel of information was the scientists in the center of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos and on its fringes, at the Metallurgical Lab in Chicago, the Radiation Lab at Berkeley, Chalk River atomic power plant at Ottowa, Canada, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, where plutonium was produced. Almost without exception, the scientists handed over top secret papers to Soviet couriers because they had tremendous respect for communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. They all said they "shared" the secret of atomic fission (and later, the secret of atomic fusion, the hydrogen bomb) because the world would be safer if Russia didn't feel threatened.

     The most famous of these spies is Klaus Fuchs, who was arrested and convicted of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act. After serving a few years, he moved behind the Iron Curtain. David Greenglass, a machinist at Los Alamos, gave a courier a drawing of the implosion lens molds he was working on. He did it because his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, asked him to, and for money. Physicist Theodore Hall was revealed in 1995 (in a deciphered KGB message sent in 1945) to be an agent code-named "Mlad" who gave the Soviets incredibly detailed information on the bomb in Los Alamos.

     In 1992 a Soviet spymaster claimed that the FBI had uncovered less than half of his atomic spy network. One he said had never been revealed, and who was still alive, was a physicist code-named "Perseus."

     Lynnette Baughman took that enigma as the "What if…?" question that sets her novel in motion. "What if the identity of a spy who worked on the Manhattan project, and who was still alive 50 years later, was a secret worth killing for?"

     A Spy Within, out in November 1999 from Top Publications, Dallas, is the first novel by Lynnette Baughman, who lives in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with her husband, Bill.    

Mystery Writer, L.C. Hayden to sign at Brentanos at Liberty Square

Dallas, Texas - L.C. Hayden will be at Liberty Square Mall in downtown Philadelphia on Friday, February 12, 1999 at 12:30 pm. to sign her first book, Who's Susan? Ms. Hayden, a creative writing instructor from El Paso, will be making six other appearances in the Philadelphia area over this same weekend.

Who's Susan? has received raved reviews since its publication. It is listed as "highly recommended" by New Mystery Magazine. In the El Paso Herald Post it was said it was "A true thriller, bound to keep the readers= eyes glued to the pages until the final secret is revealed."

The El Paso Times observed that Who's Susan? AWill keep readers turning the pages to its gripping end. And Peter Brookhouzen of Today=s New-Herald said, "WHO'S SUSAN? is compelling, a tightly written suspenseful mystery that keeps you guessing until the end. It's a terrific first novel."

June 15, 1998 - Brash Endeavor to be Released in July

Dallas, Texas Attorney/writer, William Manchee, announced today that his latest novel, Brash Endeavor, is scheduled to be released by RTP Publishing next month. Brash Endeavor is part of the new Stan Turner Mystery series. Manchee's first novel, a legal thriller entitled Twice Tempted was released last year.

Brash Endeavor is about a young man starting a law practice in Dallas in the late seventies. He and his wife have struggled to get him through law school and now they're looking forward to reaping a bountiful harvest from their hard work. Unfortunately they soon discover how perilous the practice of law can be as his first four clients use and manipulate him for their own sinister purposes. Day after day he is confronted with every imaginable adversity, the worst of which is when his wife is arrested for murdering his alleged mistress. When she's hauled off to jail in front of their four children, he wonders about the propriety of his career choice.

Manchee, a member of the Mystery Writers of America, will be appearing in July at Cluefest in Plano, Texas and in October at Bouchercon in Philadelphia. In July he will be doing booksignings in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. He will also be available for booksignings in the Seattle area in late July and the San Francisco Bay area in late August. To book Mr. Manchee for a signing please contact Jennifer Sinks at the above telephone number. For further information about Brash Endeavor,ISBN# 1-884570-89-5 contact RTP at (919) 557-0040 or visit Mr. Manchee's website at billmanchee.com.

September 1, 1998 - Author William Manchee to participate on Legal Thriller Panel at Bouchercon 29

Dallas, Texas- Top Publications announced today that Attorney/writer, William Manchee, will be a panelist at Bouchercon 29 in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 3, 1998 at 10:30 a.m. The panel's topic will be: Is there life for the legal thriller. Manchee will join Bonnie MacDougal, Paul Levine, Martin Edwards and Lisa Scottoline on the panel which will be moderated by Paige Rose.

Manchee's latest novel, Brash Endeavor, was recently released by RTP Publishing and is currently available through Hervey's Booklink (214 221-2711). Brash Endeavor is part of the new Stan Turner Mystery series which was introduced last year with the publication of Undaunted. Due to the demise of Undaunted's publisher, Commonwealth Publications, earlier this year Undaunted is currently unavailable, however, it is expected to be re-released soon by a new publisher. Manchee is also the author of a legal thriller entitled Twice Tempted.

Manchee is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Southwest Writers Workshop. For further information about Manchee or his novels visit his website at billmanchee.com.

June 1, 1998 - Author/Attorney William Manchee announces the formation of small press, Top Puplications.