The murder of a moderator for a school competition spells trouble for Portland P.I. partners and moms Maya Kendrick and Sandra Wallage . . . Twelve-year-old Rocco Fanelli is a spelling bee champ in the making. He’s the odds-on favorite to win the local middle-school bee and go on to the regionals, the state, and ultimately the nationals. Which is why someone is trying to intimidate him to drop out with a threatening note in his locker. Rocco’s concerned parents hire Maya and Sandra to uncover the culprit and ensure their son’s safety. But the competition turns killer when a high school teacher who’s running the bee, clearly favoring certain students, is found dead in the school supply closet. Sandra had already confronted Ellie Lambert over unfairly grading her son Ryan—which now makes her a suspect. She’s not the only one who tangled with the teacher, however, and with suspects ranging from helicopter parents to the school custodian, Maya and Sandra will need to put their heads together to spell out who had the motive and opportunity to silence Ellie Lambert . . .

When Derek Barton enters his school spelling bee, he is challenged to excel by his major sponsor, Sara Daniel. Others assisting her in his preparation possess different and more sinister motives. Derek faces a moral dilemma in which each step he takes towards the state finals ratchets up the stakes. In the final analysis, whichever choice he makes will endanger people he loves and lead to devastating consequences.

Bullets and Fire is the first collection on lynching in Arkansas, exploring all corners of the state from the time of slavery up to the mid-twentieth century and covering stories of the perpetrators, victims, and those who fought against vigilante violence. Among the topics discussed are the lynching of slaves, the Arkansas Council of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, the 1927 lynching of John Carter in Little Rock, and the state’s long opposition to a federal anti-lynching law. Throughout, the work reveals how the phenomenon of lynching—as the means by which a system of white supremacy reified itself, with its perpetrators rarely punished and its defenders never condemned—served to construct authority in Arkansas. Bullets and Fire will add depth to the growing body of literature on American lynching and integrate a deeper understanding of this violence into Arkansas history.

This collection by a New York Times journalist gathers three horrifying true accounts of crimes of passion, ambition, and fear. Author Joe Sharkey delivers three gripping accounts of betrayal and murder in this compelling American true crime collection. Above Suspicion: Soon to be a major motion picture starring Emilia Clarke and Jack Huston, this true account tells the story of the only FBI agent to confess to murder. Assigned to Pikeville, Kentucky, rookie Mike Putnam cultivated paid informants and busted drug rings and bank robbers. But when one informant fell in love with the bureau’s rising star, their passionate affair ended with murder. Deadly Greed: On October 23, 1989, Charles Stuart reported that he and his seven-months-pregnant wife, Carol, had been robbed and shot by a black male. By the time police arrived, Carol was dead, and soon the baby was lost as well. Stuart then identified a suspect: Willie Bennett. The attack incited a furor during a time of heightened racial tension in the community. But even more appalling, Stuart’s story was a hoax—he was the true killer. Death Sentence: John List was working as the vice president of a Jersey City bank and had moved his mother, wife, and three teenage children into a nineteen-room mansion in Westfield, New Jersey when he lost his job and everything changed. Fearing financial ruin and the corruption of his children’s souls by the free-spirited 1970s, he came up with a terrifying solution: He would shoot his entire family and vanish, taking on a new life and a new identity.

Good thing Beth Kennedy likes to multi-task. As a PTA secretary, children’s bookstore owner, and single mom, Beth has to work hard to schedule time for sleuthing… Beth is excited about the spring PTA project—the Senior Story Session, which pairs elderly residents of Sunny Rest Assisted Living with Tarver Elementary students to produce a book that the PTA can sell as a fundraiser. But her enthusiasm is dampened when she discovers one of her regular customers at the bookstore, Amy Jacobson, has died from bee stings. What are bees doing out so unseasonably early in Wisconsin—and why wouldn’t Amy, who was deathly allergic, have taken greater care to avoid them? Now it’s up to Beth to get the buzz on who used killer bees to send Amy Jacobson to her eternal rest…

In a society of strangers, there develops what can be called crimes of mobility -- forms of criminality rare in traditional societies: bigamy, the confidence game, and blackmail, for example. What they have in common is a kind of fraudulent role-playing, which the new society makes possible. This book explores the social and legal consequences of social and geographical mobility in the United States and Great Britain from the beginning of the 19th century on. Personal identity became more fluid. Lines between classes blurred. Impostors abound.

It’s a killer Christmas in more ways than one in the latest Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails mystery set in Bar Harbor, Maine. With the holiday season in full swing, food and cocktails columnist and restauranteur Hayley Powell has lots to check off her last-minute to-do list. Not included is the sudden arrival of her father, who hasn’t been in the picture since she believed in Santa Claus. Dwight Jordan’s presence in Bar Harbor might just be the unwanted gift that keeps on giving—especially after he becomes the top suspect in a case of yuletide murder . . . As Hayley plans a New Year’s Eve bash while handling a hefty helping of family drama, she must lean into her closest friends to unravel a twisted mystery. Because the countdown is on to find out who killed the sore loser at the gingerbread house contest before Dwight disappears again—this time behind bars. And the more Hayley learns about the possible culprits, the more she knows it’s either crack the case ASAP or watch everything crumble like a stale cookie . . .

In this white-knuckle thriller for fans of Lisa Gardner and Karin Slaughter, a brilliant, troubled forensic psychologist finds herself matching wits with a frighteningly talented sociopath. Dr. Iris Ballard’s glory days are behind her, so when Luke Hudson, her former FBI partner and onetime lover, asks for help constructing a psychological profile of an elusive serial killer who murders single mothers and dumps their bodies in the woods, Iris turns him away. She just wants to be left alone with her infomercials, her German Shepherd, and her vodka. That is, until she gets a peek at the case files. The media has dubbed him “the Woodsman.” But after Iris learns the sickening details held back from the press, and as she sets foot onto the scene of his latest crime, she assembles a portrait of a more complicated, enigmatic, meticulous man. Control is his motivation. He thrives on it. Soon he even tries to manipulate the investigation by contacting Iris, hoping to rattle the woman he considers an intellectual equal. The game is on. Iris thinks she has a read on her target, enough to push his buttons, to make him lose control. But when the Woodsman gains the upper hand, Iris faces the most painful reckoning of all—with her own violent past.

This work examines the unique and ever-changing relationship between politics and comedy through an analysis of several popular American television programs. Focusing on close readings of the work of Ernie Kovacs, Soupy Sales, and Andy Kaufman, as well as Green Acres and The Gong Show, the author provides a unique glimpse at the often subversive nature of avant-garde television comedy. The crisis in American television during the political unrest of the late 1960s is also studied, as represented by individual analyses of The Monkees, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and All in the Family. The author also focuses on more contemporary American television, drawing a comparative analysis between the referential postmodernism of The Simpsons and the confrontational absurdity of South Park.