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The Unraveling of Violeta Bell: A Morgue Mama Mystery (Morgue Mama Mysteries #0)
by C. R. Corwin"Irascible, fearless and unapologetic, Maddy is a heroine cozy fans will embrace."—Publishers WeeklyNewspaper librarian Maddy Sprowls never gives story ideas to the editors at The Hannawa Herald-Union. She prefers to stay in the newspaper "morgue" and do her job. Then one Saturday she sees four elderly women get out of a taxicab at a garage sale. She figures that those women must hire the cabby every week to drive them from garage sale to garage sale. And wouldn't that make a great feature story for the paper? Monday morning she runs straight to the newsroom with her idea. Shortly after the story runs, one of the four women is murdered: retired antique dealer Violeta Bell. Maddy wants no part of the investigation, but before she knows it, she's on another of her infamous snoopathons. And, good gravy, enjoying every minute.Violeta Bell is an enigma. She even claimed to be the Queen of Romania. Could it be true?
Prince: The Man and His Music
by Matt ThorneThe newest, most updated book on Prince available today—now updated with information about the afterlife of his work following his untimely death. Famously reticent and perennially controversial, Prince was one of the few music superstars who remained, largely, an enigma—even up to his premature death on April 21, 2016. A fixture of the pop canon, Prince is widely held to be the greatest musician of his generation and will undoubtedly remain an inspiring and singular talent. This revised and updated second edition of this meticulously researched biography is the most comprehensive work on Prince yet published. Unlike other Prince books, this one eschews speculation into the artist's highly guarded private life and instead focuses deep and sustained attention exactly where it should be: on his work. Acclaimed British novelist and critic Matt Thorne draws on years of research and dozens of interviews with Prince's intimate associates (many of whom have never spoken on record before) to examine every phase of the musician's 35-year career, including nearly every song—released and unreleased—that Prince has recorded. Originally released in the UK in 2012, this revised and updated second US edition of Prince includes updated content regarding work released and made available after the artist’s death.. This astonishingly rich, almost encyclopedic biography is a must-have for any serious fan of Prince.
Black and White Styles in Conflict
by Thomas Kochman"Goes a long way toward showing a lay audience the value, integrity, and aesthetic sensibility of black culture, and moreover the conflicts which arise when its values are treated as deviant version of majority ones."—Marjorie Harness Goodwin, American Ethnologist
Clubhouse Confidential: A Yankee Bat Boy's Insider Tale of Wild Nights, Gambling, and Good Times with Modern Baseball's Greatest Team
by Luis Castillo William CaneClubhouse Confidential is the explosive, inside story of Yankees players and managers by a bat boy who saw it allYou are invited to come behind the closed doors of the Yankees' clubhouse for the ride of your life in this intimate memoir about the team's glorious years and the superstars who made it all possible.For the first time ever, Luis "Squeegee" Castillo, bat boy and clubbie for the Yankees from 1998 to 2005, talks about working with Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Joe Girardi, Bernie Williams, Roger Clemens, Joe Torre, and many other modern-day Yankee greats. Luis saw and heard what really happened in the privacy of the clubhouse, at parties, and in hotel rooms, bar fights, and secret meetings from Miami to St. Louis, from Detroit to Arizona, and from Toronto to New York. He even vacationed with some players and got to know them like family, discovering their pitching and hitting secrets, joining them in all-nighters, and learning their often hilarious methods of meeting girls and having fun on the road.Like a fly on the wall, Luis takes you backstage to show you how A-Rod's bragging when he hits home runs annoys teammates. Discover how manager Joe Torre checks racing results during games. Hear what happens inside the sanctity of the clubhouse after Roger Clemens beans Mets catcher Mike Piazza and then-a few months later during the 2000 World Series-throws a bat at him. Find out how Mariano Rivera eats junk food during games, why Posada routinely fights with El Duque, what Jeter is really saying to players on other teams as he rounds the bases, and so much more. Everyone knows what happened on the field. Now pull up a chair and enjoy the secret stories that only Luis can tell about what really happened behind the scenes-and why.
Grave Consequences: A Charlie Henry Mystery (The Charlie Henry Mysteries #2)
by David Thurlo Aimée ThurloCharlie Henry, former Special Forces operative and newly minted pawnbroker, thinks that he's finally turned a corner and the calm, quiet life he's always wanted is just ahead. But life never really works out that way. A young Navajo man comes into Charlie's shop, FOB Pawn, claiming that his girlfriend mistakenly pawned a beautiful family heirloom, a turquoise necklace that she desperately needs back. When he's unable to produce any proof of this tale, Charlie is immediately suspicious and sticks by the golden pawnbroker rule: No claim ticket, no exchange. Then the young man returns with reinforcements—and guns—making it abundantly clear that there's more to this story than a family treasure. This necklace quickly becomes the focus of a case where everyone lies, and every question seems to answer with gunfire. With the help of his semi-estranged brother, Alfred, a tribal cop working undercover, Charlie quickly finds out that the pendant was the work of a Navajo silversmith who was recently murdered. And, in an act so taboo in Navajo culture as to be unthinkable, his grave dug up and this piece of jewelry removed. With multiple parties vying to get their hands on the necklace—for what ill-gotten gains, no one knows—it's up to Charlie and his comrades-in-arms to help find out who's really telling the truth, and uncover the mysteries that this heirloom holds.
Mood Indigo: An Edna Ferber Mystery (16pt Large Print Edition) (Edna Ferber Mysteries #9)
by Ed IfkovicShe was 1932 Broadway's newest sensation. Then she was murdered.Three years after the Crash that ushered in the Great Depression, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber finds herself a guest at Noël Coward's lavish birthday party. The British wit, enjoying the Christmas holiday season in New York and bracing for a trip to Cleveland in the new year, has filled his room with rich, famous folks whose lives continue in stark contrast to those being lived out in the city's streets and poorer neighborhoods.Edna is haunted by the dark landscape of Manhattan outside Coward's elegant rooms: the snake-like breadlines, the shanty village in Central Park, the gaunt apple sellers in threadbare suits on freezing sidewalks. She has yet to be introduced to the Automat where a few cents are the difference between nourishment and starvation.Among those who've kept fortune intact is Dougie Maddox, the financially astute but socially naïve only son of a Fifth Avenue dynasty. His widowed mother, known as Lady Maud, has kept the thirty-five-year-old on a short leash, but Dougie has crossed paths with Belinda Ross, the new Broadway songbird. He's mesmerized by her, a woman flagrantly courted by other men. But Belinda seems besotted by Dougie. Gossip flourishes—she has a shadowy past and a producer brother anxious to break onto the Great White Way.When Belinda is found strangled late one night in a Times Square Automat, jealous, hot-tempered Dougie is the prime suspect. But Noël, who had befriended him, and Edna, who likes him, team up to clear Dougie's name. Their investigation inevitably takes them deep into Belinda's circle and her past.As the crowds in Time Square ready for a half-hearted New Year's celebration, are Noël and Edna watching the last act of a New York Othello, or is there some other killer-maybe more than one-afoot on the icy pavements of New York City?
The Constitution in Congress: Democrats and Whigs, 1829–1861
by David P. CurrieThe Constitution in Congress series has been called nothing less than a biography of the US Constitution for its in-depth examination of the role that the legislative and executive branches have played in the development of constitutional interpretation. This third volume in the series, the early installments of which dealt with the Federalist and Jeffersonian eras, continues this examination with the Jacksonian revolution of 1829 and subsequent efforts by Democrats to dismantle Henry Clay’s celebrated “American System” of nationalist economics. David P. Currie covers the political events of the period leading up to the start of the Civil War, showing how the slavery question, although seldom overtly discussed in the debates included in this volume, underlies the Southern insistence on strict interpretation of federal powers. Like its predecessors, The Constitution in Congress: Democrats and Whigs will be an invaluable reference for legal scholars and constitutional historians alike.
Short Squeeze: A Mystery (Jackie Swaitkowski Mysteries #1)
by Chris KnopfThe outside world thinks living in the Hamptons requires a Bentley, a face-lift, and a shingle-style home the size of Buckingham Palace. The truth is a lot more complicated than that. Dig a little deeper and you're as likely to find a saint--or a Mensa genius--as you are a deviant or certified nut job lurking right below the surface.I know this because these are my beloved clients.Meet Jackie Swaitkowski, a smart-aleck attorney whose legal turf is supposed to be the buzzing Hamptons real-estate market. But when a new client turns up dead, things take a sudden and decidedly dangerous turn. In a client's pocket is an envelope that contains a shocking piece of evidence that suggests that the death was anything but an accident.Jackie has bigger fish to fry--like her old flame Harry's surprise return to town--until a late-night car chase changes her priorities. Now she has every reason to believe that the next name on the killer's list is her own.Chris Knopf has been praised for his quick-witted writing and broad knowledge of the highs and lows of Hamptons life, and his books have been included on best-of-the-year lists complied by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and others. Now, in Short Squeeze, he brings an irresistible new heroine to center stage.
Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; The Past
by Galway KinnellThese three books--Body Rags, Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, and The Past--are central to the life's work of one of the masters of contemporary poetry. Published here in one volume, they include many of Galway Kinnell's best loved and most anthologized poems. In a note, Galway Kinnell comments on the numerous revisions he has made to many of the poems for this edition.
Falling with Wings: A Mother's Story
by Dianna De La Garza Vickie McIntyreBefore she was mother to global superstar Demi Lovato, she was just Dianna Hart. Dianna tells her story from the very beginning in this complete and genuinely affecting memoir. She had big plans of becoming a country music star, but her life went in a different direction than her dreams. She developed an eating disorder early in life to gain a sense of control in her strict upbringing. As she continued to struggle with body image and her obsession with being perfect her entire adult life, she was also met with other difficult situations. Her husband and father of her two eldest daughters, Dallas and Demi, had his own troubles that effected the entire family. She coped with alcohol and pills, forming a long-lasting addiction. She's had terrible lows but also some great highs as she watched her daughters break out in Hollywood to become strong, empowered young women. As a mother caring for daughters with addictions while continuing to battle her own, Dianna offers a unique perspective. And as a family, they have survived everything life has thrown at them and come away from it stronger than ever. Dianna tells her story of living through and surviving adversity--with tremendous strength, love and faith.
The Final Faberge (The Inspector Jack Oxby Novels)
by Thomas SwanRumor has it that a mysterious Fabergé Egg disappeared in the days just before the Russian Revolution. It's up to Scotland Yard art crime detective Jack Oxby to solve the mystery and find the infamous art treasure. Trouble is, whoever attempts to find the Fabergé Egg turns up dead. No matter for Oxby, the fearless hero of Thomas Swan's two previous art crime thrillers, The Da Vinci Deception and The Cezanne Chase.The Final Fabergé is a page-turning novel of suspense that fans of the British television series Lovejoy, the art history mysteries of Iain Pears, and the classic film The Thomas Crowne Affair, will thoroughly enjoy.
Bodies Electric: A Novel
by Colin HarrisonJack Whitman is a powerful executive with a massive multimedia conglomerate. He is extremely well-paid, highly ambitious, and desperately lonely since his wife's murder. Then one night on a subway car, his eyes meet those of a woman he cannot forget.Dolores Salcines is a ravaged beauty on the knife edge of despair--a woman on the run with secrets, and good reason to hide them. What she needs is a savior--an impulsive rescue form a dire past. What she has found is a man willing to give it to her.It begins as a reckless liaison. It spirals into a nightmare that threatens Jack's career, his fortune, and his life. A trap has been set. For Jack, the only chance at escape is to submit to the one final dangerous urge that resides in the dark side of every human heart.
From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island
by Lorna Goodison"Throughout her life my mother [Doris] lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up."In the tradition of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and Carlos Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana comes Lorna Goodison's luminous memoir of her forebears—From Harvey River. When Doris' English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family's home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the "fabulous Harvey girls" and where the rich local bounty of the land went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents' house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to "hard life" Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters as they raise their family of nine children.In lush prose, Lorna Goodison weaves memory and island lore to create a vivid, universally appealing tapestry.
Stand Tall: Fighting for My Life, Inside and Outside the Ring
by Dewey Bozella Tamara JonesThe inspiring story of one man’s fight against his wrongful incarceration and his eventual triumph—both inside and outside the boxing ring.In the late 1970s, Dewey Bozella was wrongfully convicted of murdering Emma Crapser, a ninety-two-year-old resident of Poughkeepsie, New York. Sentenced to twenty years to life in prison, Bozella fiercely maintained his innocence throughout his ordeal at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and even refused the prosecutor’s offer of freedom in exchange for an admission of guilt. But in 2009, more than a quarter century later, Dewey Bozella would reclaim his identity and his humanity when his conviction was vacated.In this raw and uplifting memoir, Bozella takes us through the trials, tribulations, and joys of his life inside prison and, eventually, as a free man. While at Sing Sing, he took up boxing to channel his anger, and eventually became the prison’s light-heavyweight champion. Bozella also met and married the love of his life from behind bars, lost countless parole hearings, and spent agonizing time on a cell block with both his brother’s murderer and, it turned out, the true crim-inal in whose place Bozella served so much time. But Bozella never gave up. After he was refused parole and had his sentence extended, the Innocence Project caught word of his case. Thanks to his undying faith, stalwart persistence, and the aid of a young pro bono attorney at the Innocence Project who doggedly worked toward Bozella’s release when all hope seemed lost, he was released from prison in 2009. Shortly thereafter, he won his professional boxing debut against Larry Hopkins, started an afterschool athletics program for at-risk youth, and was awarded the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage.An incredibly uplifting underdog story, Stand Tall recounts one man’s perseverance in the face of injustice and his difficult road to freedom.
The Needs of Strangers
by Michael IgnatieffThis thought provoking book uncovers a crisis in the political imagination, a wide-spread failure to provide the passionate sense of community "in which our need for belonging can be met." Seeking the answers to fundamental questions, Michael Ignatieff writes vividly both about ideas and about the people who tried to live by them-from Augustine to Bosch, from Rousseau to Simone Weil. Incisive and moving, The Needs of Strangers returns philosophy to its proper place, as a guide to the art of being human.
The Female Stress Survival Guide: Everything Women Need to Know
by Georgia Witkin"I hope this book helps you help yourself live with female stress so that you can manage it rather than have it manage you. Knowledge is power, so read on." —Dr. Georgia WitkinIn this new Third Edition updated to address 21st-century concerns, the noted stress expert, psychologist, author, and TV commentator has thoroughly revised and expanded her classic bestseller, which has sold over 200,000 copies and been translated into 9 languages. "New stresses, such as mastering the computer or kids returning home, have not replaced the old stresses—just multiplied them," Dr. Witkin writes. She shows us how we can learn to cope and conquer, helps us identify "the female stress syndrome," teaches us to use stress to our advantage, and, most important, she describes clearly many proven physical and mental techniques for successful stress management.Comprehensive and thoughtful, refreshingly honest, spiced with real-life anecdotes, quizzes, checklists, and a "female stress questionnaire," Dr. Georgia Witkin covers a wide range of concerns for women of all ages, including chapters on family, love and sex, teens, aging, men, and much more.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease
by John HeidenryIn 1953, six-year-old Bobby Greenlease, the son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer and his wife, was kidnapped from his Roman Catholic elementary school by a woman named Bonnie Heady, a well-scrubbed prostitute who was posing as one of his distant aunts. Her accomplice, Carl Austin Hall, a former playboy who had run through his inheritance and was just out of the Missouri State Penitentiary, was waiting in the getaway car with a gun, a length of rope and a plastic tarp. The two grifters thought they had a plan that would put them on the road to Easy Street; but, actually, they were on a fast-track to the gas chamber. Shortly after they snatched the little boy, the two demanded a ransom of $600,000.00 from the Greenlease family and it was paid; but, Bobby was already dead, shot in the head by Hall and buried in a flower garden behind the couple's house, exactly where his body was found by police shortly thereafter. The Greenlease ransom was the highest ransom ever paid in the US to that date and the case held the US transfixed in the same way the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby had done decades earlier. In a bone-chilling account of kidnapping, murder and the dogged pursuit of a child's killers, John Heidenry crafts a haunting narrative that involves mob boss Joe Costello, a cast of unsavory grifters, hardboiled detectives and a room at the legendary, but now razed, Coral Court Motel on Route 66. Heady and Hall were apprehended quickly, convicted and executed in a rare double execution in the State of Missouri's gas chamber on a cold December night not long before Christmas. By that time, little Bobby Greenlease was stone cold in his grave and a fickle America had turned back to its Post-War boom. However, one question has never been solved: as Hall was being pursued around Kansas City and St. Louis, half of the ransom was lost and never recovered. Did it end up with the mob via Joe Costello? To this day, no one knows and dead mob bosses tell no tales. In a book that brings to mind films like "Chinatown" and "Double Indemnity", John Heidenry has written a compelling work that blends true crime and American history to take a close look at one of the United States' most notorious murders.
A History of Trust in Ancient Greece
by Steven JohnstoneAn enormous amount of literature exists on Greek law, economics, and political philosophy. Yet no one has written a history of trust, one of the most fundamental aspects of social and economic interaction in the ancient world. In this fresh look at antiquity, Steven Johnstone explores the way democracy and markets flourished in ancient Greece not so much through personal relationships as through trust in abstract systems—including money, standardized measurement, rhetoric, and haggling.Focusing on markets and democratic politics, Johnstone draws on speeches given in Athenian courts, histories of Athenian democracy, comic writings, and laws inscribed on stone to examine how these systems worked. He analyzes their potentials and limitations and how the Greeks understood and critiqued them. In providing the first comprehensive account of these pervasive and crucial systems, A History of Trust in Ancient Greece links Greek political, economic, social, and intellectual history in new ways and challenges contemporary analyses of trust and civil society.
The Hatbox Letters: A Novel
by Beth PowningA luminescent debut novel following one woman's journey through love, loss, grief, and renewalIn her rambling Victorian house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, fifty-two-year-old Kate Harding faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents' eighteenth-century Connecticut house. Kate remembers the sense of permanence and refuge that she felt in her grandparents' apple-scented world, as well as, more recently, with her husband. As she begins to read the hatbox letters, she discovers that what to a child seemed a serene and blissful marriage was in fact founded on a tragic event. As Kate's eyes clear to the truth of the past, a new tragedy unfolds, and her own house, filled with the shared detritus of marriage and motherhood, becomes the refuge where Kate can connect the strands of her unraveled life.
Love Illuminated: Exploring Life's Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers)
by Daniel JonesFrom the editor of the New York Times' popular "Modern Love" column, the story of love from beginning to end (or not).Love. We want it. We need it. We pay it homage with songs and poems and great works of art. And when we lose it, there's no pain as intense or excruciating. For centuries we've been trying to figure it out, control it, or just get better at it. As the editor of a column about love for the New York Times, Daniel Jones reads thousands of stories about people's intimate relationships—the ones that soar, crash, or hum along, from the bizarre to the supposedly “normal.” It's possible that he's read more true love stories than anyone on earth. In Love Illuminated, he teases apart this mystifying emotion that thrills, crushes, and sustains.Drawing from the 50,000 stories that have crossed his desk over the past decade, Jones explores ten aspects of love—pursuit, destiny, vulnerability, connection, trust, practicality, monotony, infidelity, loyalty, and wisdom—and creates a lively, funny and enlightening journey through this universal human experience that jangles the head and stirs the heart.
The Irish Manor House Murder: A Torrey Tunet Mystery (Torrey Tunet Mysteries #2)
by Dicey DeereEver seeking peace and quiet for her writing, Torrey Tunet believes she has found it in the quaint village of Ballynagh, nestled in the hills of rural Ireland. But something-she can't quite put her finger on it-is awry. With every change in the wind comes some strange news. First, her closest friend, Rowena Keegan, tries to run over the esteemed Dr. Ashenden, her own grandfather and master of the biggest manor in town. Why, Torrey wonders, would anyone want to kill him, least of all his favorite granddaughter? Torrey wants to believe that Rowena's attack on the doctor was a simple fluke, but when the old man later turns up dead in the forest, and Rowena confides a pressing secret to her, Torrrey can no longer stay intentionally ignorant. An outsider, Torrey looks on in bewilderment as mysteries crop up one after another in her beloved Ashenden family, which has taken her under its wing. And when the grandfather's will is read and a gypsy, shrouded in purple, arrives on the scene, family secrets fifty years old reveal themselves just as new ones begin to arise, capturing the attention of young and old townspeople alike. Ballynagh might never be the same.
Grave Doubts: A Dci Andrew Fenwick Mystery (D.C.I. Andrew Fenwick Mysteries #3)
by Elizabeth CorleyAndrew Fenwick must stop a serial killer in Elizabeth Corley's Grave Doubts, a thrilling and unputdownable mystery filled with chilling clues, deadly twists, and taut psychological suspense. Viciously attacked by a serial rapist, intent on murder, Sergeant Louise Nightingale is recovering from her ordeal, relieved that the psychopath has been put behind bars for a very long time. Escaping to a remote family home for a well-earned rest, she is unaware that her nightmare has only just begun. When a nameless, faceless terror starts stalking the country, her colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Fenwick, questions whether or not they have the right man. Leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, the killer soon makes clear his ultimate goal—Nightingale--and he will not rest until he can exact his cruel and calculated revenge. Desperately trying to reach her before the killer does, DCI Andrew Fenwick wonders if her continued silence means he is already too late in this electrifying, pulse-pounding psychological suspense novel from the author of Requiem Mass. With a captivating plot that races through switchbacks and hairpin turns, this is a book you won't dare put down. "Sergeant Louise Nightingale is a fully rounded and interesting heroine… There are elements of the Gothic here, and of romance, but both those elements and the ever increasing body count are described with great subtlety. The detection element is cleverly done and the story genuinely exciting." --Literary Review
Why Ecology Matters
by Charles J. KrebsGlobal temperatures and seawater levels rise; the world’s smallest porpoise species looms at the edge of extinction; and a tiny emerald beetle from Japan flourishes in North America—but why does it matter? Who cares? With this concise, accessible, and up-to-date book, Charles J. Krebs answers critics and enlightens students and environmental advocates alike, revealing not why phenomena like these deserve our attention, but why they demand it. Highlighting key principles in ecology—from species extinction to the sun’s role in powering ecosystems—each chapter introduces a general question, illustrates that question with real-world examples, and links it to pressing ecological issues in which humans play a central role, such as the spread of invasive species, climate change, overfishing, and biodiversity conservation. While other introductions to ecology are rooted in complex theory, math, or practice and relegate discussions of human environmental impacts and their societal implications to sidebars and appendices, Why Ecology Matters interweaves these important discussions throughout. It is a book rooted in our contemporary world, delving into ecological issues that are perennial, timeless, but could not be more timely.
American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry
by Leslie CarrollA behind-the-scenes look into the life of Meghan Markle and her romance with Prince Harry—a dishy, delightful must-read filled with exclusive insights for anyone obsessed with the Royal Family.Leslie Carroll’s books on royalty are “an irresistible combination of People Magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago TribuneWhen Prince Harry of Wales took his American girlfriend, Meghan Markle, to have tea with his grandmother the queen, avid royal watchers had a hunch that a royal wedding was not far off. That prediction came true on November 27, 2017, when the gorgeous, glamorous twosome announced their engagement to the world. As they prepare to tie the knot in a stunning ceremony on May 19, 2018, that will be unprecedented in royal history, people are clamoring to know more about the beautiful American who captured Prince Harry’s heart. Born and raised in Los Angeles to a white father of German, English, and Irish descent and an African American mother whose ancestors had been enslaved on a Georgia plantation, Meghan has proudly embraced her biracial heritage. In addition to being a star of the popular television series Suits, she is devoted to her humanitarian work—a passion she shares with Harry. Though Meghan was married once before, Prince Harry is a modern royal, and the Windsors have welcomed her into the tight-knit clan they call “The Firm.” Even a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable, as well as impermissible, for any member of Great Britain’s royal family to consider marrying someone like Meghan. Professional actresses were considered scandalous and barely respectable. And the last time an American divorcee married into the Royal Family, it provoked a constitutional crisis!In American Princess, Leslie Carroll provides context to Harry and Meghan’s romance by leading readers through centuries of Britain’s rule-breaking royal marriages, as well as the love matches that were never permitted to make it to the altar; followed by a never-before-seen glimpse into the little-known life of the woman bringing the Royal Family into the 21st century; and her dazzling, thoroughly modern romance with Prince Harry.
The Chastity Plot
by Lisabeth DuringIn The Chastity Plot, Lisabeth During tells the story of the rise, fall, and transformation of the ideal of chastity. From its role in the practice of asceticism to its associations with sovereignty, violence, and the purity of nature, it has been loved, honored, and despised. Obsession with chastity has played a powerful and disturbing role in our moral imagination. It has enforced patriarchy’s double standards, complicated sexual relations, and imbedded in Western culture a myth of gender that has been long contested by feminists. Still not yet fully understood, the chastity plot remains with us, and the metaphysics of purity continue to haunt literature, religion, and philosophy. Idealized and unattainable, sexual renunciation has shaped social institutions, political power, ethical norms, and clerical abuses. It has led to destruction and passion, to seductive fantasies that inspired saints and provoked libertines. As During shows, it should not be underestimated. Examining literature, religion, psychoanalysis, and cultural history from antiquity through the middle ages and into modernity, During provides a sweeping history of chastity and insight into its subversive potential. Instead of simply asking what chastity is, During considers what chastity can do, why we should care, and how it might provide a productive disruption, generating new ways of thinking about sex, integrity, and freedom.