The Heir The Arceneaux family has a long history of falling victim to circumstance--madness, embezzlement, even murder--but when the last of the unmarried females inherits the family plantation, she is determined their unfortunate legacy will end with her. After her father is imprisoned in New York, she embarks on a new life in New Orleans with what is left of all the hope she can muster. What she finds is an abandoned house, a fractured family, and an oppressed people. Determined to find her own way, she confronts the challenges head on, and soon realizes change is not something needed only for her, but for many. People of Color In the decades before the Civil War, Louisiana was the most advanced state on the topic of freedom. People of color were successful in business and owned property--some of which they acquired through the gifts or wills of white fathers whose black and mulatto wives and mistresses exacted better lives for their children. A Step Backward The Civil War brought change--any black lineage became cause for discrimination, even in Louisiana--and many blacks and mixed-race persons were relegated to occupations not unlike those of their ancestors. Women, though white, were expected to be hostesses and leave business to men--especially the business of voting. A Family Reunited Willows Plantation, still worked by the descendants of the slaves who built it, becomes the anchor to affect change and in a historical fiction story spanning five generations, author Cyndie Shaffstall, takes you on a journey through abolition and suffrage efforts of the 1700s and 1800s. A Voodoo priestess, a French artist, the first woman presidential candidate, and the world’s fair shed light on issues and provide opportunities to reunite and strengthen an entire family.Each book of The Delegate series reads as though you've come across someone's journal. While you read, the saga envelopes you, and it becomes your journal, and your story, as you are transported through time.

    It’s about where they go from here, the changes they see in themselves and in other people in their lives and the choices they make. The choices make affects their relationships and shapes their personality.

     She tries to remember her mother's voice and the pitch and treble of it passes through her; the rhythm of it so clear that for a moment they are...connected by frail strings. So begins The Land of Women, and we are swept into Fiona O'Faolain's last summer in Ireland, the season of her burgeoning sexuality. It is a time, too, when mother and daughter step toward friendship among the voluminous gowns they make for local brides. Yet that giddy summer also delivers betrayal. Fiona's journey from the shame that ended her girlhood takes her to Santa Fe and to Carlos Aragon, a restorer of antiquities, whose ancestry is mysteriously linked to hers. As he explores their pasts with the precision of an artisan, Fiona must face her excruciating memory. In The Land of Women the past lives in the present, and physical and emotional geography touch.

    He thinks Mount Sinai Hospital is an exclusive golf course and his catheter is a gym bag. His only link to reality is his thirty-five-year-old nephew, who makes his living as a hired gun for thirteen softball teams and still goes by the name College Boy.But College Boy's body has begun to betray him -- almost as much as his lack of ambition. (His only legitimate paycheck comes from a gig as a laugher on a morning radio show.) Not only that, the Dirt King, a small-time gangster who controls all the replacement soil in Central Park, is after College Boy. As their lives collide, College Boy takes refuge in the arms of Sheila -- his uncle's cleaning woman and a part-time call girl.And then it gets weird.

    These modern-day cowpokes--two chivalrous knights of the rope and range with a hankering for bucking broncos and for the female of the two-legged species--find much more than they bargained for in Oklahoma City. Against the colorful, flamboyant backdrop of the hard-ridin', hard-playin' rodeo circuit, they encounter a city woman named Lilac, with whom Cody falls in love; a bull named Kamikaze; and two corrupt Texas billionaires who bet against Lick. In the vein of a latter-day Will Rogers, Baxter Black combines a colorful yarn with occasional bits of his unique cowboy philosophy and poetry."It could make a dead man sit up and laugh"--The Washington Post Book World

    When his plane goes down, the sisters must put aside their differences and pray he comes back in time for Christmas.The Ragged Heiress by Dilly CourtOn a bitter winter's day, an unnamed girl lies dangerously ill in hospital. When two coarse, rough-speaking individuals come to claim her, she can remember nothing. It's a Vet's Life by Cathy WoodmanAlex and Maz are due to get married at Christmas. But as busy country vets, there's little time for each other, let alone arranging a wedding. It's going to take a Christmas miracle to get these two down the aisle.

    This lenticular journal cover sets in motion images of slithering, shuffling zombies from the bestselling graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Filled with lined pages, this all-purpose journal is perfect for jotting down notes, making to-do lists, plotting your own survival strategy, and is just the creepy thing for zombie fans everywhere.

    An Ivy League graduate who grew up on Park Avenue takes his first job at the most sensational tabloid newspaper in New York City - and soon finds himself writing promotional stories about a cash giveaway contest intended to keep the paper alive! Jack Stone is not your everyday reporter, and his real education doesn’t begin in earnest until he hooks up with streetwise photographer Vinnie Corcora to do stories about the contest winners - a cast of characters who bring new meaning to "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It’s a wild ride that defies expectations and stereotypes, and along the way Jack earns a Ph.D in the human condition - while learning the true meaning of love, loyalty and friendship.

    [Penguin Readers Level 6]

    She taught her family how to read Scott’s medical chart and to ask pointed questions, no longer leaving his care to the medical professionals who had overdosed him with drugs to the very brink of death in less than three days.“Jo, you have to tell people what they’ve done to me. You have to tell them!”pleaded her little brother, as he lay writhing in agony.In “For the Love of Scott!”, the author recollects her family’s poignant story of love, bewilderment, and lingering frustration when faced with catastrophic medical mistakes. Read the experiences of Scott Hamilton’s family members as they struggle through a storm of horrific medical errors that could have been prevented and recognize what you need to do when someone you love is faced with life-threatening circumstances created by health experts.It took Jo 27 years to put this heartbreaking event down on paper. Writing opened old wounds and required hours of research and documentation. It forced her family to relive a chapter in their own lives that they desperately wanted closed. Yet, they rallied together to help Jo with her mission to keep that promise.To help further her goals, Jo Hamilton will be donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of her book, to the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal Winner, Scott Hamilton's foundation, The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative. The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative was created to help with cancer research, support cancer patients and their families, and find a cure cancer.

    Her novels and short stories speak to women and men about their most intense relationships and heartfelt feelings.In this collection of five short stories and a novella, Ms. Godwin is at her best. In the title novella, "Mr. Bedford," a young would-be writer spends time in England under the strange and watchful eye of a rather unusual elderly couple; in "Amanuensis," a charming college student cares for a famous but blocked novelist, with unpredictable results; and in "The Angry Year," a rebellious student is drawn to two different kinds of men until she discovers what she has been running to and from.

    A selection of confused teenagers. A play doomed for disaster. A distinctly below average teacher. Being a successful teacher is difficult, especially when you are not overly keen on doing any actual work.Still, the narrator of Thrift is undeterred as he lies and cheats his way through the Christmas term, hoping that he can save his career, and perhaps even earn himself a thoroughly undeserved promotion.

    For Claire Anderson, this crosses the line. To make matters worse, they’re on the lam and can’t be returned to sender until In Between, the afterlife way station, can arrange transportation to pick them up. In the meantime, Claire tries to contain this motley crew, hoping to stave off an international incident. How do they manage to walk among us? Will Claire succeed in repatriating them? And at what cost? The Afterlife Coach is a humorous tale of second chances, self-awareness and, for those among us who make bad choices, demonstrates just how hard it is to die happily ever after.

    Experts say they are scanner echoes tossed out of the past by the Phenomenon. The rumors and a cryptic entry in an ancestor's diary propel Lieutenant-Commander Mart Britlot of the Confederation navy into the dangerous Sivon sector of space. There, Britlot hopes to find help for the Confederation, now facing a two-front war. As the last living Confederation descendant of the Adian nation, Britlot is obsessed with finding the ghost ships, believed destroyed during a mass emigration 300 years in the past. He dreams of riding to the rescue at the head of the never defeated Adian fleet; he dreams of finding family after the death of all his near relatives at the hands of the Combine. He'll drive his ship and crew beyond endurance to achieve this. The felid Tlartox Empire, eager to avenge their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Confederation, has voted to annul the long-standing peace treaty. The glory of The Hunt beckons. Admiral Tood Tlomega has focused on the human planet Lormar, with its great naval base, as a fitting target for retribution. She will return dignity to the people of Tlar. She will return them to the path that Tlar illuminated so many centuries ago.But a small band of Tlartox subversives intend to rake a claw across the plans of the war-mongers, and give both the Empire and the Confederation something they hadn't counted on.

    The quarrel began in 1850 on a West Indian sugar plantation, and the grudges still separated Bristol's two most important families—until the 1927 Michaelmas ball, when handsome rake Jack Martinez danced with spoiled, precocious Maude Rudolph.