This book looks at the realities of raising kids, as the author shares her own personal experiences of when things occasionally go wrong.

    He’s a successful pillar of the community. She is a beautiful young wife devoted to him. From the outside, their life appears perfect. But on the inside, she is constantly on edge, trying to keep him happy so she won’t suffer scathing words that hurt just as much as the occasional sharp blow from him. Then she snaps. In the blink of an eye, she becomes a widow and finds herself inextricably entwined in the web of lies he wove in the months before his death. When a blackmailer threatens to expose her as a murderer, she must piece together her husband’s life to find the key to her own freedom. Fatal Impulse is the first in an intriguing new series, where each widow faces challenges that threaten to destroy her just as she begins to find her strength.

    I wanted not a tract, but a tapestry in which making is seen in the context of the other processes—sexuality, mortality—inseparable from it.""Bidart has patiently amassed as profound and original a body of work as any now being written in this country. He has given form for our age to what is most urgent and most private in the human soul: the ordeals of solitude and mortality and hunger and, recently, that action through which being speaks: the drive to make or create. Bidart’s poems sound like no one else’s; they look like no one else’s. . . . He is, in the feeling of our jury, one of the great poets of our time."—Louise Glück, jury chair, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award The Academy of American PoetsThe inaugural edition in Sarabande's Quarternote Chapbook Series which will feature a select group of poets by invitation onlyFrank Bidart's collections of poetry include Desire (1997), which received the 1998 Bobbitt Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize; In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (1990); The Sacrifice (1983); The Book of the Body (1977); and Golden State (1973). Among his many honors are the Lila Acheson Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund Writer’s Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America, and the Lannan Literary Award. He teaches at Wellesley College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    The school’s football team was the pride of the university and the city. Before the late 1970s, however, the relatively small school had trouble recruiting and struggled to keep up with the big-time football universities that were often more than double its size. Under pressure to compete, the SMU football program engaged in ethics, rules, and recruiting violations for years. When the corruption came to light, the NCAA handed out its most serious punishment in the history of college sports—the “death penalty”—which cancelled the team’s entire 1987 schedule.In A Payroll to Meet, author David Whitford details the Mustangs’ descent into corruption and the fallout when it was discovered. Most egregiously, the football program ran a huge slush fund that was used to pay players from the mid-1970s through 1986. Bill Clements, chairman of the SMU board and soon to be reelected governor of Texas, knew all about the slush fund before the NCAA did. He opted, however, to phase out the payments rather than stop them immediately, for fear that angry players might go public and create still more problems for SMU. Clements and the athletic director Bob Hitch decided that the football program had “a payroll to meet.”

    But I can’t help myself.I’ve worked my face off to make a name for myself in the architect world, and finally it’s landed me the perfect job—teaching at my local university. Not a day goes by when a student doesn’t flirt and try their hand at winning my heart, if only for a night. But I know the rules, and I follow them closely. No way in hell I’m giving up this sweet gig.My newest student has stolen my attention and has me thinking things I should never think.And her flirting goes to a new level. She’s defiant, dark, and not afraid of a little blackmail to get what she wants. The young woman is beyond beautiful and everything I fantasize about, but I have a secret I want to keep hidden. Unfortunately for me, she knows it and is more than happy to use it to get what she wants most—me.What started out as a one-time payment turns into a burning need neither of us can ignore. I just hope this girl is the type that doesn’t kiss and tell. Otherwise, I’m ruined.

     ***POTENTIAL SPOILERS*** Meet retired cop, Sam Prichard. THE GRAVE MAN (Book 1) Sam Prichard was a cop, and a good one, until the bullets took out the joint of his right hip. Now he's trying to learn to live without being a cop, and getting to know his neighbors, learning to walk again and even ride a motorcycle. Life is bearable, barely, but then he gets asked to find a missing child, and the lure of getting back into some kind of police work is too much for him to resist. When he teams up with computer whiz Indiana Perkins, he suddenly becomes one of the best investigators he's ever even known. Now, he's found the missing child, but it's thrown him right into the middle of something that may be a drug war--or could be a chance to stop the next 911! There's no way out for Sam, so he's in for the ride of his life, but when the girl he's becoming fond of is suddenly drawn into the line of fire with her own little daughter, Sam is ready to forget all the rules and do whatever is necessary to win the day. DEATH SUNG SOFTLY (Book 2) Sam opens his practice as a Private Investigator, and gets his first real case almost instantly: Find Barry Wallace, a local rock singer who was on the verge of making it big, and vanished suddenly! When Barry's body turns up minus his head and hands, the case becomes ominous, and now he has to find a killer, instead! LOVE AND WAR (Book 3) Sam and Indie are finally married, and off to enjoy their honeymoon in beautiful Hawaii, but sometimes fate has a cruel streak! When Sam notices something odd as they're departing Denver, and then finds out that terrorists have planted small nuclear bombs in twelve US cities including Honolulu, he's on the case, honeymoon or not! FRAMED (Book 4) Sam Prichard has recovered from his last mission to save the world, and is back to being a normal private eye. Suddenly, he's got three seemingly unrelated cases, but the clues keep leading him to the same places and people. He's decided there's something fishy going on, but then he wakes up and finds that one of his clients is dead, and he is the only possible suspect! THE KILL LIST (Book 5) “Mr. Prichard, I don't strike so many times so close together, but in order to get you interested, I'm going to up the odds. The first one will die exactly 24 hours after you receive this note. The second will die 12 hours after that... ...and the third 12 after that. If you cannot stop me before I can kill the third one, then no one can. Then there will be a fourth victim, but you get no clues for that one. Good luck." DRIFTER: PART I (Book 6) / DRIFTER: PART II (Book 7) / DRIFTER: PART III (Book 8) Sam takes on an odd case: he's hired to track down a man who has been thought to be dead for more than forty years, but recently showed up alive to visit his dying mother. Now his daughter, who never even met him, wants to ask him where he's been all this time, and why she grew up without him in her life.

    Boy, was I wrong. Now they’ve become my temptations… and they’re willing to share.Matt, Dereck, and Bryce made sure my high school experience was hell. They pushed me to the edge until I saw no other way out, but to run.After transferring and finishing high school far away from the cruel trio, I’m on my way to becoming the best goddamn nurse ever.Then, the boys show up on my campus, and everything goes to shit. Working as a firefighter, cop, and paramedic while going to school, they might’ve fooled everyone into thinking they’re the saviors, but I know they’re up to their old tricks. Only this time, it’s not my mind, but my body they’re after.Too bad I’m not the weak girl I used to be. This time, I won’t run. This time, I’ll face the trio and bring them down to their knees.Yet the more time I spend with them, the more I see that they’ve changed. My heart is telling me I can trust them. My soul wants all three. Will I be able to leave my past demons behind and give myself to my three men?Her Temptations is a steamy reverse harm, enemies to lovers, college romance. No cheating, No cliffhanger, plenty of heat, and a guaranteed HEA!

    He’s got a killer reputation, social status, unfathomable wealth, fast cars, and all the women he wants. Hell, he even has a video game character made in his likeness. Brother…But, he’s willing to pay the big bucks for my high-end escort services. If the boy needs a monster to prance around his annual Halloween Crawl of Horrors experience, then I’m his ghoul. The only real problem is that I’m terrified of things that go bump in the night. Halloween is NOT my holiday. But, I can swallow my fear for a month and play Barbie to his Ken. The main thing to keep in mind is that the man is a client. None of this is real. Not the wealth, the heat, the steamy moments where I want to give up all of my candies and stop being a trick… all fake. And he is completely off limits. The fact that he keeps making me feel so safe in the swirls of horror around us isn’t helping anything.He might be looking for a rich fake witch, but I’m starting to feel forever. Maybe I’ll just put a spell on him. ‘Cause then he’s mine… right?

    This is the story of the trials and exploits, the victories and defeats, of one of those units. This book takes us from the first ever assault against a terrorist ship carrying weapons of mass destruction to attack London, to the epic siege of the terrorist-held Qala-I-Janghi fortress in Afghanistan. In the interim, our half-a-dozen soldier-characters deliver suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars in cash to 'friendly' Afghan warlords; they penetrate the towering heights of the uncharted Naka Valley, where allied intelligence has identified the mother of all terrorist training camps; they fight in the labyrinthine tunnels running beneath the Afghan mountains; and they risk all to rescue their fellow soldiers from a downed aircraft stranded on a snow-blasted mountain peak. The book culminates in the single battle in which more terrorists were killed than any other in Afghanistan: the siege of Qala-I-Janghi, an ancient mud-walled fortress used to imprison the most dangerous Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. The battle for Qala-I-Janghi would last a staggering eight days, from the moment of the first shots being fired at the start of the uprising to the hour that the fort yielded up the last Al Qaeda fighters. It is a battle in which over 500 terrorists would die - but which would also claim the life of a US serviceman and dozens of Northern Alliance allies, with scores of severely wounded British and American soldiers. And in the final denouement, this savage battlefield turns out to be populated by the most ultimately shocking enemy - John Walker Lindh, the white American Taliban who held out in the forts' bunker until the very last. At the same time as the story of the fort siege played out on TV screens all across the world, our band of British and American special forces were involved in a secret, deadly dual to rescue their fellow men - a duel that only one side could win.

    Told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, Pike Place takes the reader back to a simpler place and time in America.

    This book provides an account of the life of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who led an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state to create Eelam, a separate nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils.The book begins from Prabhakaran’s childhood days in the aftermath of India’s and Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain. The Sri Lankan Tamils were following Gandhi’s non-violent methods to fight for their rights as citizens of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran, an ardent fan of Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, felt that non-violence would not work against a Sinhala dominated government and began experimenting with violent acts against the Government to send a message. His initial success became the nucleus for the formation of LTTE, which became the quintessential guerrilla organization fighting the State.The book details various incidents of Prabhakaran’s life including terror attacks, assassination of politicians, heads of States and militant leaders; India’s role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict; Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka; the Eelam wars, negotiations, betrayals and elections; through to his killing in May 2009.

    Some didn’t make it out alive. After hearing whispers that seemed almost too awful to believe, BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Christine Kenneally embarked on a years-long journey to find out what really went on in these institutions. What she discovered was even more horrifying than the legend: the systematic abuse and even the alleged murder of children by nuns. Her searing report, which is part investigation, part true crime drama, part ghost story, cracks open a secret history of American life — and adds a vast new dimension to the Catholic church’s mistreatment of children. From a world shrouded in secrecy, Kenneally tells the story of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, and of Sally Dale, the plucky redhead who was the apple of the nuns’ eyes. Until they decided to make an example of her, administering daily torments, isolating her from the rest of the world, and convincing her that she would never escape. Of all the children who passed through St. Joseph’s, she may have been there the longest. The horrors she suffered and the deaths she said she witnessed did not come into full view until the day, decades later, when she attended a St Joseph’s reunion. Then the past came flooding back like a torrent. Along with scores of other survivors, and guided by an idealistic young lawyer, Sally somehow found the courage to come forward and tell the world what she had experienced. She wanted more than anything else to be heard and believed. But she was going up against one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and she was in for the fight of a lifetime. The legal battle that ensued upended every assumption that the people of Burlington had. Could memory be trusted? Could forgetting be forgotten? Could a pleasant community turn a blind eye to evil? And could nuns, the very women charged with protecting these most vulnerable members of society, have instead tortured or even killed them? The Catholic sex abuse scandal – which most recently yielded a grand jury report on how the church hid the crimes of hundreds of priests — shattered the silence that for so long had protected the church. But the truth about what went on inside its orphanages has somehow remained all but unspoken, even as other countries have undertaken huge national inquiries. In the US, there has been no reckoning. The orphanages’ dark secrets, like the dead children who haunt survivors’ dreams, still lay buried. Until now. Through painstaking reporting, based in thousands of pages of documents — many of them secret — and interviews with survivors, Kenneally connects what happened at St. Joseph’s to similar accounts that emerged from seven countries across three continents, revealing a terrible matrix of corroboration.

    So was His.If you've ever tried to pick up the shattered pieces of your life and put them back together again without help, you know it's an impossible task. When you lose your job, when divorce divides your family, when a loved one commits suicide, or when cancer claims a friend, it's easy to lose perspective and abandon hope.According to Jon Weece, Christianity does not require you to smile through your pain, much less praise God for tormenting you. God doesn't enjoy your suffering. But he does understand it--and he knows exactly how to fix it.That's what Me Too is all about: A God who turned the ugliness of the cross into a spectacle of eternal beauty. An all-powerful Lord who will do the same with the pain of this world. An eternal Father who specializes in wiping away tears and putting you back together again. If you'll allow him.

    With these characters William will make us laugh and cry. And never again will we think that someone is just a regular bloke - everyone can be a king or a queen in their own suburb.