Gayle, Marcus, and Patricia battle demons from their respective pasts in the wake of a paternity crisis, a spouse's gambling problem, and a fledgling business endeavor.

"I really thought I had a handle on life -- then it broke off." Opinionated, straight-talking, and witty, Tee is a fly forty-something. Divorced since her daughter, Amber, was young, Tee has been "handling her business," supporting herself after her would-be songwriter husband took off for L.A., and she's done all right. Organized, responsible, hardworking, and loyal, Tee went from being the first employee of a start-up purveyor of organic lotions to the right hand of the president of what became a major player in the home and personal fragrance market. But then everything changes. First, she's outplaced from her longtime job and doesn't tell anyone. Then she gives her daughter the wedding of her dreams and, after overindulging in champagne, Tee wakes up in bed with the younger best man. For the first time in twenty-five years, Tee doesn't know who she is or what she's going to do every day. Deep in denial, she continues to live her life as if nothing has changed. After a series of financial mistakes, miscalculations, and missteps compound her already shaky situation, she's soon teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. That's when Tee decides that it's time for her to wake up and face reality. Beyond "making money," Tee never really decided what she wanted to do with her life. Then she just stopped thinking about it and invested her hopes in someone else's dream. Now it's her chance to invest in herself. Can she step out on faith to follow her own dream?

The constellation of lives which inspired and illumunated these page are real. Their pain is not theoretical, their struggles are not sophisticated, their heartache is all too tangible. Their courage, faith, and laughter, and tears give new meaning to dignity and.

This volume features in-depth, oral interviews with eleven incarcerated women, each of whom offers a narrative of her life and her reading experiences within prison walls. The women share powerful stories about their complex and diverse efforts to negotiate difficult relationships, exercise agency in restrictive circumstances, and find meaning and beauty in the midst of pain. Their shared emphases on abuse, poverty, addiction, and mental illness illuminate the pathways that lead many women to prison and suggest possibilities for addressing the profound social problems that fuel crime. Framing the narratives within an analytic introduction and reflective afterword, Megan Sweeney highlights the crucial intellectual work that the incarcerated women perform despite myriad restrictions on reading and education in U.S. prisons. These women use the limited reading materials available to them as sources of guidance and support and as tools for self-reflection and self-education. Through their creative engagements with books, the women learn to reframe their own life stories, situate their experiences in relation to broader social patterns, deepen their understanding of others, experiment with new ways of being, and maintain a sense of connection with their fellow citizens on both sides of the prison fence.

Anadarko, a small bootlegger town in Oklahoma’s Kiowa Country, shakes off its sleepy veneer when J.D. Daugherty, an Irish ex-cop turned private eye, and Hoolie Smith, a Cherokee war veteran, show up to investigate the mysterious disappearance of oilman and geologist Frank Shotz. J.D. and Hoolie find their simple missing person case hides a web of murder, graft, and injustice tied to a network of bootleggers with links to the Ku Klux Klan. Set in the aftermath of the violent Tulsa race riot of 1921, Anadarko reveals a deadly and corrupt town filled with a toxic cocktail of booze, greed, and bigotry. Tackling racial prejudice head-on, author Tom Holm expertly weaves a vivid and suspenseful tale set in Prohibition-era Indian Country. This gritty whodunit shows nothing is ever simple in the fight between good and evil.

Double the payday leads to double the danger... A Louisiana state senator and a B-List former actor. What do they have in common? Kinky sex, drugs, and death. Private detectives Charmaine and Jessi Joliet take on two different cases with a tangle of lies, secrets, and betrayal. These female sleuths use their psychic skills and street smarts to outwit a voodoo priestess, scheming thugs, and a gang of deadly ghosts to solve two murders. New Orleans is exotic, fun, steamy, musical... and full of bloody supernatural secrets. Follow along as two sisters track down whodunit among the living and dead.

What does it mean to be masculine? These eleven men thought they knew, following in the footsteps of their fathers, marching to society’s drumbeat of manhood: A man is strong. A man doesn’t cry. A man is the provider. A man does it alone... in the course of their lives, each of these very different men found this same rigid idea of manhood standing between them and their happiness. Standing between them and being a fully realized man. Standing between them and their relationships. Standing between them and their heart’s path. Instead of building them up and making them stronger, they found themselves chained and isolated by these standards of masculinity. In these soulful interviews conducted by intuitive healer and author Alyssa Ditch, these eleven men candidly share their ascent into becoming real men: from heartache to healing, failure to triumph. Join her, as she dives into the hearts of these eleven brave men to understand how these fully-realized men had cast away society’s limitations on ‘masculinity’, rising to become better men for themselves, their families, and their communities. Learn the tools and techniques that worked for each of them on their journey to self-discovery. Be inspired by the example they set for all men, as it makes us think anew... ‘What is healthy masculinity?’

The greatest conquerors do not ride horses and wield swords; picture neither do they acquire victories by any physical force. The 10-1-2009 magnanimous souls who were the patterns for the characters 339 of this story overcame daunting obstacles by a higher power; then celebrated their victories in song. The 1930s and early 1940s were the meanest of hard times. People everywhere were desperate for a thread of hope. After the Great Depression began to lift from some areas, its effects were still strangling the Ozarks which was considered to be among the most desperate regions of the nation. Yet, people like the Harps and Boyers, their young families and neighbors, through faith, were enabled to find and maintain hope. The entire community pulled together to lovingly encourage and help all its members. Not only did they survive their terrible hardship; they lived with joy and a song, and they bestowed priceless treasures upon their progeny. They were "more than conquerors through Him that loved us." The story that Geneva Emerson presents of her childhood in the Ozark foothills during the depression is reminiscent of those occasionally heard from the old timers. However, as this older generation disappears, we are losing the history of the struggles that occurred with the poverty and hard labor in this area just to find daily survival. We need to retain as much of this history as possible to remind us of what it took to populate and develop this frontier Dr. Earl Belcher, Historian

Coach TJ Stonewall established the Lady Phoenix Basketball Program as a way to help young female student athletes with their pursuit to reach their athletic goals and higher education. He had no idea that there were coaches out there who want to win at all costs, and who will try to draw the most talented players away from other programs with material things and promises of fame. While TJ struggles to put an end to illegal recruiting and misuse of funds by other ball clubs, he must contend with troubles of his own, including a player who runs away from home when her mother finds sexually explicit pictures of her, another wayward player with a bad attitude, and a highly skilled player who has lost focus on her academic responsibilities. On top of all that, TJ is a newlywed and must learn how to take care of his wife, who he has waited all his life for. Rise of the Phoenix goes behind the scenes of New York's summer leagues and into the lives of some of the city's most well known players and coaches.