Marginal People Author:Michael Smith If you've ever been swept up by life forces initially beyond your control, you'll want to read Marginal People. A stranger arrives in town and meets several people struggling to achieve their dreams and find love. Through guile and blackmail, he forces them to play roles in a kidnapping/ransom plot. The efforts of the characters to extr... more »icate themselves from this maelstrom make some of them stronger, and cost others their lives."Michael Smith's Marginal People is a dark, urban noire thriller about the greed and ultimate self-destruction that lurk in the hearts of seemingly normal men and women. A down on his luck aspiring actor, his emotionally scarred artist girlfriend, a single mother barely surviving on a subsistence wage and a criminal kingpin are among the unwary who become involved in manipulative ex-con's kidnapping and ransom plot. The efforts of these marginalized people to survive and free themselves from the plot's ruthless machinations will transform some of them, and cost others their struggling lives. Grim, shadowy, sinister, and entrancing in its literary power of engagement, Marginal People is not to be missed." -- Internet Bookwatch« less