Chasing the Dime

Henry Price has a whole new life-new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Price is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a nighttime world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities. Price tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met.
Price's skills as a computer entrepreneur allow him to trace Lilly's last days with some precision. But every step into Lilly's past takes Price deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy-and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear.

Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, Amedeo Technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him. Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her. With the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of the Dollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde.) But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall. Despite those holes in the plot and a less than compelling protagonist, the novel succeeds due to Connelly's literary and expository gifts and his more interesting secondary characters. --Jane Adams

This is a very rare coin, though not actually a coin but a 'pattern,' an experimental piece struck by the U.S. Mint when determining the feasibility of producing three cent pieces made of bronze. It is the same diameter as a U.S. large cent burt a good deal heavier and thicker. All three cent pieces actually released for circulation were smaller than a dime and made of silver or nickel, and none were of this design. This example has been authenticated and graded PCGS Proof-66 BN and verified by CAC. It is the Finest Known example. : ) I began collecting coins many years ago when working downtown in Chicago and I purchased a Braided Hair large cent in EF condition. I was hooked on large cents. I have collected large cents and other U.S. coin types, but more recently began collecting Civil War Tokens and Store Cards. This piece fits right in, though it cost as much as a nice automobile. It was love at first sight and I selected it from hundreds of fantastic coins on display. This piece is among the very few examples of this pattern that exist. To find one in such condition is marvelous. Who has an 1863 large cent? Who has a bronze three cent piece? This item has the best of both worlds, and bears a Civil War date. I guess it's my coin collecting dream coin, and today my dream came true. : ) I especially like the fact that it is the same size as a Braided Hair large cent, except much thicker. : )

This is a very rare coin, though not actually a coin but a 'pattern,' an experimental piece struck by the U.S. Mint when determining the feasibility of producing three cent pieces made of bronze. It is the same size as a U.S. large cent but struck on a planchet which is thicker and heavier. All three cent pieces actually minted for circulation were smaller than a dime and made of silver or nickel. This example has been authenticated and graded PCGS Proof-66 BN. As it turns out it is Pop. 1 for this pattern, of only 12 graded. It is apparently the finest known. : ) I have collected large cents and other U.S. coin types, but more recently began collecting Civil War Tokens and Store Cards. This piece fits right in since it bears a Civil War date and has the size and obverse of a braided hair large cent. Who has an 1863 large cent? Who has a bronze three cent piece? I guess this pattern is my coin collecting dream coin, and today my dream came true. : ) The image is an animated gif. To see both sides, click on All Sizes above.

What would you do if you were seventeen years old and broke your neck? It's tough enough to stand on the verge of adulthood without the extra burden of not being able to stand at all. Steve Fiffer had his whole life ahead of him in December 1967 when he fractured his fifth cervical vertebra in a wrestling accident at school, shattering his dreams. The diagnosis was quadriplegia, and his parents were told that he would never walk again. Steve, however, was not content to accept such a fate. He had always been taught that he was a leader, not a follower, and he was not going to take this news lying down. Within five months he was out of the hospital, within seven he was on crutches, and within nine he was beginning his freshman year at Yale University. And most remarkable of all, he never lost his wisecracking sense of humor or his hunger for all that life has to offer.
Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel is Steve Fiffer's story of his coming of age, and of how he created a normal life for himself despite his injury. Steve refused to be consumed or defined by his physical condition; he may not be a dollar bill, he explains, but he's still "three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel." His battle to come back from his injury casts into sharp relief the drama of becoming an adult and wrestling with issues of identity, relationships, and ambition. We join him around the dinner table as he rebuilds his once-distant relationship with his father and gains a new appreciation of their bond; we agonize with him as he tries to find true love (or at least lose his virginity) despite his self-consciousness about his physical awkwardness, and we join him at the Lawson YMCA in downtown Chicago, where he rebuilds his body under the watchful eye of the manic physical-fitness coach Dick Woit, a retired football star who puts Steve through a sort of boot camp to raise his sights even higher and propel him off his crutches for good. Part guru, part drill instructor, Woit helps Steve to develop the mental toughness to put the injury behind him and to embrace adulthood and all its responsibilities.
By turns poignant, darkly comic, and ultimately triumphant, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel is an affirmation of how the ordinary joys of life can win out even in extraordinary circumstances.

Despite the fact that it opens with a paralyzing wrestling injury, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel by Steve Fiffer is one upbeat memoir. After exposing the reader to the numbing psychological aftershock of the injury he suffered at the age of 17--"The accident had fractured more than my fifth cervical vertebra, broken more than my neck. It had fractured reality, broken time"--the book quickly gives way to a sincere and sustained optimism, free of self-pity and sentimentality. The horrific event is effectively turned into a defining experience rather than the primary focus of the rest of his life. Just seven months after being told by doctors that he would never walk again, he manages to enter his first class at Yale University on crutches rather than in a wheelchair. That he would someday walk again seems less a dream than an inevitability: "I wasn't supposed to walk again. I wanted to walk. So I did." But there is much more to Fiffer's coming-of-age tale than his efforts to retrain his legs. In poignant descriptions of personal awakenings, sexual stirrings (and frustrations), and the common desire for acceptance, "becoming whole" extends far beyond the task of dealing with a broken vertebra. He may not be a dollar bill, he explains, but "three quarters, two dimes, and nickel" add up to the same thing in the end.
Some of the book's more colorful and moving passages feature Dick Woit, a former pro-football player who subsists entirely on Cool Whip and whom Fiffer enlists for some tough love. In the manic guru-cum-trainer's first meeting with Fiffer, Woit refers to him as "Crip," promptly instructs him to hit the deck and perform some sit-ups, then declares his effort, and current physical state, "pathetic." Thus motivated, Fiffer begins regularly attending Coach Woit's gym to battle for control of his legs and his life. His struggle to walk makes his story intriguing, even suspenseful, while his grappling with larger issues makes it universal and inspiring. Told with candor and plenty of humor, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel beautifully defines the subtle differences between simply enduring an unimaginable twist of fate and actually making something good of it. --Shawn Carkonen