Books by Joseph Covino

"Francesco Ferrari Mines the Mission, a reverent send-up of Alfred Hitchcock's major motion picture masterpiece, VERTIGO (1958), is the third and most epic entry in this crime suspense thriller series. Francesco Ferrari, San Francisco's new iconic private detective for the times (not the dated Sam Spade past), a former Franciscan seminarian-turned-shamus, drives a Ferrari California T sports car, packs a .357 magnum and operates out of a flat in the historic Buena Vista Cafe on the city's northern waterfront. And he covers only those cases affecting the city he loves -- his namesake City of Saint Francis. This time out, Ferrari's hired by the president and CEO of an internet pornography company, located in the city's largely Latin Mission District, to watch and follow his young and enigmatic Catalonian wife, whom he claims is obsessed with a once celebrated but dead Spanish dancer known as Seänorita Carmelita. A feminist anti-pornography activist plummets to her death from the Mission Dolores basilica bell-tower and Ferrari's quickly implicated in her demise. Creatively adapting essential elements from both the classic Vertigo novel and movie, this complex, erotic, romantic, and wholly original detective/love story is neither a copycat imitation nor a make-over of the Vertigo story. This is, make no mistake, most definitely not your parents' Vertigo -- nor even your grandparents'! Just when you think this story is traversing familiar territory it will deviate drastically into fresh, unfamiliar, and even surreal realms, which will both startle and surprise. Once Ferrari falls -- and falls hard he does -- for the sultry and seductive subject of his surveillance, becoming obsessed with solving the secret mystery she lures him into, he's forced to follow a haunted trail that turns as emotionally daunting as it does deadly -- leading, dizzyingly, to a shocking, climactic conclusion from which the tough and tenacious detective may never fully recover. One you won't see coming. One you won't ever forget. Listen to soundtrack music composed by Bernard Herrmann while reading this book, and you'll believe you're reading a Hitchcock film!" --

A sensitive and unassuming kid's seven atrocious years of violent bullying, child abuse and mis-treatment suffered at the wicked hands of an evil and malevolent mother and step-father from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s in Pensacola, Florida.

He conquered a continent. She conquered him. Behind every great man is an even greater woman. Manuela Saenz was the woman behind the Liberator of the Americas: Simon Bolivar!

The continuation novel sequel to Francesco Ferrari Navigates Fisherman's Wharf

"San Francisco has a new iconic private detective for the times ... His name's Francesco Ferrari. A former Franciscan seminarian-turned-shamus, he drives a Ferrari California T sports car, packs a .357 magnum and operates out of a flat in the historic Buena Vista Cafe on the city's northern waterfront. And he covers only those cases affecting the city he loves -- his namesake City of Saint Francis. In his debut novel, Francesco Ferrari Navigates Fisherman's Wharf, the theme is ethnic cleansing. Something's ominously amiss in Ferrari's own neighborhood of Fisherman's Wharf, where some outlandish and deadly things are happening. Someone's out to make over the wharf for the Italians again -- and by any means necessary. The Port of San Francisco's being terrorized and a new organized crime family in the city, bossed by a stunning femme fatale, could be the sinister culprit responsible. After the dead body of a former lover is fished out of San Francisco Bay, Francesco Ferrari is sucked into a case so strange -- involving even sunken treasures, killer pirates, an imposing Italian villain, and a death struggle on San Francisco Bay in sight of the Golden Gate Bridge -- the festive Fisherman's Wharf of the tourist-and-travel brochures will never seem the same again...." --

Inspired by champion bodybuilder and filmdom¿s quintessential Hercules--STEVE REEVES--this compact but revolutionary philosophical primer prepares anyone at any age to properly practice practical principles of total fitness, diet, nutrition and weight training to their utmost benefit for health, longevity and youthful vitality. It pays special tribute, carrying on the torch passed on by Reeves, by forcefully raising its impassioned voice against unnatural, steroidal bodybuilding. It confronts the latter-day fitness fads, frauds and gurus from Perricone to Dr. Phil by imparting proven precepts of natural fitness without worthless resort to infomerical-promoted contraptions(like Bowflex)or synthetic supplements. CONTENTS Acknowledgment Preface: Train--Don¿t Talk--For Results Foreword: Why Rely On Reeves For Verve Chapter One: Physique Critique Chapter Two: Sensible Weight Training Chapter Three: Training Tips For Select Exercises Chapter Four: How To Weight-Train Correctly(In Steve¿s Own Words To The Mass Media) Chapter Five: Practical(Not Perricone)Prescription For Youth Chapter Six: Intelligent Nutrition And Weight Control Chapter Seven: Supermarket Banking Chapter Eight: Insight Into The Steve Reeves Diet Chapter Nine: The Travesty Of Steroidal Bulk-Building(In Steve¿s Own Words To The Mass Media) Chapter Ten: Contemporary Bulk-Building--Advanced And Modern Or Deadly And Suicidal? Chapter Eleven: Steve¿s Impassioned Pleas For Sanity In Bodybuilding(In His Own Words) Chapter Twelve: Now It¿s My Turn(Or Why I¿m No Fan Of Arnold!) Afterword: A Superior And Superlative Past Appendix 1: Contacts And Stats Appendix 2: A Cautionary Warning To Parents Of YMCA Kids Appendix 3: Picking A "Personal Trainer" Appendix 4: Genetic Grounds To Refrain From Bulk-Building