Based on six years of extended ethnography in multiple agricultural areas of the Eastern United States, Down Country Lanes, Behind Abandoned Houses is a monograph which explores the lives of migrant and seasonal farm workers. The six-year study secured multi-setting field data in primary, secondary and casual sites, and audio-taped narrative life stories from men and women who harvest and perform the related tasks that help to make the many foods which we enjoy in abundance. The study presented in this book elaborates vignettes from field observations with a focus on workers who use drugs and alcohol, and is complemented by formal (narrative life stories) and informal interviews. The author explores diverse field data that reveal the hardships, exclusion and social adversities that migrant farm workers experience many times more often than any other social group with considerable susceptibility to drug / alcohol use. Down Country Lanes, Behind Abandoned Houses gives readers a perspective about farm workers’ social vulnerability across multiple agricultural areas, while comparing willful neglect and social non-existence experienced by farm workers to a gray zone of contemporary horrors in the way that these men and women have been viewed and treated over many decades. The monograph is an invaluable reference for the study of social problems, substance abuse, trans-national migratory experiences and field methods in sociology. The book also serves as a contemporary handbook on the anthropology of American agricultural labor.

This book covers the author’s field experiences as an ethnographer in one country of Central America and an applied anthropologist in four US regions. A range of social fields are examined, which include: constructing a work experience table as a composite job resumé; correspondence with a maximum security prisoner for more than ten years; design features for multiple choice testing; farmworker sero-prevalence reports; health-seeking behavior among the Ngöbé (indigenous people in Central America); HIV/AIDS education in rural farm labor camps; Latinx naming practices for grocery stores and restaurants in agricultural areas; organizational capacity building assistance training; and teaching students in a community college and three secondary schools, among others. The book highlights the importance of incorporating ethnography in the completion of work tasks across a range of social fields, which represent diverse socio-cultural groups and immigrant populations.

UVF: Behind the Mask is the gripping new history of the Ulster Volunteer Force from its post-1965 incarnation to the present day. Aaron Edwards blends rigorous research with unprecedented access to leading members of the UVF to unearth the startling inner-workings of one of the world’s oldest and most ruthless paramilitary groups. Through interviews with high-profile UVF leaders, such as Billy Mitchell, David Ervine, Billy Wright, Billy Hutchinson and Gary Haggarty, as well as their loyalist rivals including Johnny Adair, Edwards reveals the grisly details behind their sadistic torture and murder techniques and their litany of high-profile atrocities: McGurk’s Bar, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the Miami Showband massacre and the Shankill Butchers’ serial-killing spree, amongst others. Edwards’ life and career has led him to the centre of the UVF’s long, dark underbelly; in this defining work he offers a comprehensive and authoritative study of an armed group that continues to play a pivotal role in Northern Irish society.

Strange happenings, unsolved mysteries and seemingly supernatural events have gripped us for centuries. Whether they’re based on a grain of truth or a flight of fancy, the myths, legends and weird tales contained within this book will take you on a fascinating journey to the outer limits of plausibility, and dare you to believe the unbelievable.

In 1984, Catherine Laylle, a Frenchwomen living in London, met and married a German medical student, Dieter. The couple had two sons, Alexander and Constantin. When, however, at Dieter's insistence, they moved back to his home town in Germany, the marriage began to fall apart. Dieter refused to get a job, Catherine found living with his family oppressive and eventually, she returned to London with the children. The boys spent term time with their mother, holidays with their father - until the summer of 1994, when Dieter decided that his sons should be raised as Germans and, with the support of the local judge, defied the London court ruling that gave Catherine custody. Catherine went to the courts in London, Germany and the Hague - but it seemed that no court outside the jurisdiction of Lower Saxony would overrule the decision. Today, Alexander is eleven and Constantin is nine. Catherine has barely seen them in the two years since Dieter kidnapped them - and then only under the supervision of one of his friends. This is the harrowing story of a mother's attempts to regain her children, and of her desperate struggle against a tyrannical family and the blind injustice of the courts in Europe.

The scourge of the monster house affects communities all across Canada, so while the Toronto neighbourhood of York Mills is not unique in this respect, it has suffered more than most, owing to the generous size of its residential lots in what has now become the centre of the city. York Mills was still a rural community until after the Second World War, when a post-war population boom created a housing boom that gobbled up the local woods and farmland. By 1960 most of this land had been sacrificed for housing, and by the mid-1970s it was all gone. Then a strange thing began to happen. Developers, who had the money to outbid legitimate home buyers, started tearing down perfectly liveable post-war homes to build monster houses. Today, over fifty years later, this destructive practice continues. The environmental costs have been devastating, as affordable houses are demolished—their remains dumped in landfills—and mature trees are cut down to facilitate the new construction: construction that demands copious amounts of wood, cement, and other new building materials. The social cost has been equally damaging, as affordable homes are destroyed and replaced by multi-million-dollar houses that are out of reach of families who once called these neighbourhoods home. The three hundred colour photos in this book recall but a fraction of the homes we have lost in this one community alone. The text tells their stories, stories that take us back to a time when houses were places to live, not get-rich-quick schemes.

From the subversive mind behind The Hollows comes a new, page turning horror thriller, perfect for fans of The Only Good Indian by Stephen Graham Jones. Jenna's life has always been a fight. From the traumatic and mysterious loss of her mother on a dark woodland road when she was fifteen, to the abusive and controlling boyfriend she's recently escaped, she has learned that trust hurts you in the end. Now Jenna's found what she hopes is happiness with her new girlfriend, Holly. But the world is full of darkness - some of it ancient, some of it closer to home... Evil, and those who serve it, will not let Jenna go. The Ravening is a gripping, claustrophobic horror novel that sets a timeless nightmare against one woman and her belief in herself, and the possibility that somewhere, somehow, there is love in the world.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, anarchy and chaos rule. Dozens of foul-play situations are reported as corpses are discovered in empty houses and buildings. Scores are being settled. A former assistant district attorney, Henry Xavier OGrady, known to his friends as Irish Henry, is in the midst of it. Henry encounters Martin the Kid Montague, a writer and a witness to the JFK assassination. The Kid has feared for his life since that event. Henry and the Kid each have their own enemies, a direct result of how well they do their jobs. Some of these enemies are the same, namely the local mob, but others are jealous co-workers. The pairs troubled histories catch up with them in the Big Easy and lead to a denouement that offers insight to the tragic event in Dallas. With touches of international intrigue and romance, this mystery novel offers an alternative theory to the lingering question of the JFK assassination.

A true story of life as a child during the Second World War and through adolescence and teenage years in the 1950s and early 1960s. A time of worry and fear for parents, but of excitement and adventure for children. The freedom to roam and fanaticise without supervision and learning from real life experiences. Near misses which today would be considered unbelievably neglectful and dangerous. Working on the farm at fourteen. Joining the army cadets at thirteen to learn to be a soldier and going to summer camp to fire blank bullets from a .303 rifle at your mates was all good fun. On the downside, it was a time when waiting for your call-up papers at eighteen was routine. Then having to drop whatever you were doing to spend two years in the army, training as a real soldier in West Germany, or some other far away commonwealth outpost, and finally, to be demobbed as a disciplined but totally different person. All indications that at the time, you did what was required of you without fear or favour.

James O'Connor has not moved for many years. He remains motionless, his body completely paralysed, and he is unable to breathe without external assistance, but he survives. He survives because he has chosen to survive and although he cannot move, he controls the world around him, and it will be that way for eternity. Be careful. Listen to him, but always be wary of how powerful this man is. Fear him, not because he will destroy you and not because he is evil, but because he knows. James O'Connor has seen things you can only dream of seeing. He has passed through the valley of the shadow of death and walked where only the dead can walk. He has descended lower than any person can possibly descend and he has returned. www.dateofdeath.co.uk