18 WHEELS OF STEEL GAME LIST

Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight

From an award-winning “savvy storyteller”* comes a page-turning, zeitgeist-capturing novel of a young couple who turn to drug trafficking to make it through the recession.


James and Kate are golden children of the late twentieth century, flush with opportunity. But an economic downturn and an unexpected pregnancy send them searching for a way to make do.
A winter in the mountains of California’s Siskiyou County introduces a tempting opportunity. A friend grows prime-grade marijuana; if James transports just one load from Cali to Florida, he’ll pull down enough cash to survive for months.
James navigates life as a mule, then a boss—from moneyhungry friends to gun-toting drug lords, from Sacramento to Tallahassee, from just making the weight move cross-country to making thousands of dollars a day. The risks keep rising, forcing him to the next criminal level. A kidnapping, a shootout, a bank vault—it all culminates in a swirl of action.
Absorbing and timely, Mule perfectly captures the anxieties of plunging into the criminal world and of being a young person making do in a moment when the American Dream you never had to believe in—because it was handed to you, fully wrapped and ready to go at the takeout window— suddenly vanishes from the menu.


*Entertainment Weekly

This shows the Northern arm of The Horseshoe Weir on The River Derwent at Belper, Derbyshire, England, UK. The UK OS Grid Reference is SK345481.

The small town of Belper was founded by Norman monks who called it “Beau Repaire”, which approximately means “lovely sanctuary”.

The weir was installed in 1797 to provide sufficient hydraulic head for a breast-shot suspension wheel that powered the early cotton mills of Jedediah Strutt. It is listed Grade Two Star.

The structure was built to power the West Mill and by 1820 impounded some 5.8 hectares of pond on the Derwent. It was modified and increased in height in 1819 and 1843.

By 1804 the West Mill had been joined by a North Mill on the left ( Southern ) bank of the Derwent. This was equipped with a large but lightly built suspension wheel that was eighteen feet in diameter and twenty feet long. It was by Thomas Hewes. The wheel engaged a spur cog that transmitted power to a shaft that in turn distributed the power to various zoned stories of the building via rigid rods and bevel gears.

The existing North Mill superseded one built in 1786 and burnt down in 1803. Subsequent to advice from Charles Bage who in 1796 built the World’s first iron-framed building, a flax mill at Ditherington, Strutt built the new North Mill of brick arches over a frame of turtle-backed cast-iron beams, mounted on cast-iron columns. The beams are yoked together with wrought-iron ties and the floors lightened with clay pots. The foundations are of stone. Taken together the design is almost fireproof.

Originally, the cotton was carded on the third and fourth floors and spun in 4236 separate threads using water frames on the first and second stories. The sixth floor was a school. Later, mule spinners were installed to diversify the product.

The Strutt Family divested at Belper in the 1950’s and my understanding is that English Sewing Cotton Limited has suspended operations at its Belper sites. The North Mill is open to the public at regular times and is listed Grade One. Together with the Bage flax mill it may be regarded as the ancestor of steel-framed buildings everywhere including classic American skyscrapers though not, alas, of the suspension designs favored by Old World engineers and tragically exemplified by the New York Twin Towers.

Spinning Mule winding the woollen thread on the bobbins.
King's Stanley is situated approximately two miles west of Stroud in the County of Gloucestershire, UK
Stanley Mill. Built in 1812 for the manufacture of woollen cloth. The main building was one of the first in England of "fireproof" construction, with iron columns.
1812 Present buildings begun
1813 Feb. Sold to Harris and Maclean for ?8,655. Reference to new erected dyehouses, wool-lofts, woolstores, workshops, clothrooms, counting houses, etc. Canal accounts show delivery of stone, bricks, timber, iron and slates. Timber and some stone came from the Forest of Dean. The iron work was made by Benjamin Gibbons of the Earl of Dudley’s Level New Furnaces. This plant built in 1802-3 continued to run until 1954.
1824 First reference to a steam engine at Stanley.
1834 Maclean, Stephens and Co made superfine cloth and kerseymere.
1834. At Stanley, a steam engine of 40 hp. (bought from Boulton and Watt 1824) and 5 water wheels on a fall of 16 feet, equal to 200hp. The supply of water in summer was so irregular it caused interruptions in the work several hours a day.
All machinery considered dangerous was fenced off as far as was practicable. Hours worked, 11 to 12 and in some departments 13. No children under 9 were employed and very few under 10. The youngest, up to 12 or 13, were employed as piecers working up to 101/2 to 11 hours. The older ones worked 11 to 12 hours.
Refractory or disorderly children were dismissed.
1839. At Stanley, a steam engine of 50 hp. and 5 water wheels, 1 of 30hp. and 4 of 25 hp.
c. 1839 Sold to Nathaniel Marling for ?27,000.
1854 Weaving shed built in front of main building, probably replacing an earlier building on the site.
1867 High pressure condensing engine installed.
1868 80hp. Turbine added.

Two strangers are brought together by a beautiful dog. A dog that possesses the clues to a horrifying secret that speaks from the grave.

Jack Howser, a retired widower, finds comfort in the companionship of his faithful Border collie as he tries to fill his lonely days. Life is peaceful, but boring, until Jack finally gives in to his insatiable sense of curiosity and begins to track down the history of his adopted pet. Jack’s probing mind unleashes a cavalcade of events, a roller-coaster ride towards a mind-numbing revelation.

Kerrie Joplin, a former New York City lawyer, has been forced to abandon her career and start fresh—a new life on the shores of a mountain lake in Montana. She has a past that she wants to forget, but one phone call from a stranger and her longing for a dog that was part of that past, draws her back in.

The two new friends find, as they stumble from one clue to the next, that they have more in common than just the love of a dog. Their thirst for solving the mystery that the dog has led them to, gradually becomes an addiction they can’t turn away from. Even when their instincts tell them they are approaching the point of no return.

Their harrowing journey of danger and betrayal lurches them headlong into the tangled web of a diabolical plot, and the realization that with unbridled power even the noblest of intentions can corrupt the human conscience and soul.

Mule is a fast-paced, thought-provoking thriller, gripping from its very first pages right to its final, utterly stunning, words.

Two strangers are brought together by a beautiful dog. A dog that possesses the clues to a horrifying secret that speaks from the grave.

Jack Howser, a retired widower, finds comfort in the companionship of his faithful Border collie as he tries to fill his lonely days. Life is peaceful, but boring, until Jack finally gives in to his insatiable sense of curiosity and begins to track down the history of his adopted pet. Jack’s probing mind unleashes a cavalcade of events, a roller-coaster ride towards a mind-numbing revelation.

Kerrie Joplin, a former New York City lawyer, has been forced to abandon her career and start fresh—a new life on the shores of a mountain lake in Montana. She has a past that she wants to forget, but one phone call from a stranger and her longing for a dog that was part of that past, draws her back in.

The two new friends find, as they stumble from one clue to the next, that they have more in common than just the love of a dog. Their thirst for solving the mystery that the dog has led them to, gradually becomes an addiction they can’t turn away from. Even when their instincts tell them they are approaching the point of no return.

Their harrowing journey of danger and betrayal lurches them headlong into the tangled web of a diabolical plot, and the realization that with unbridled power even the noblest of intentions can corrupt the human conscience and soul.

Mule is a fast-paced, thought-provoking thriller, gripping from its very first pages right to its final, utterly stunning, words.