A woman struggles to escape her past in a thriller boasting a “fabulous setting, gripping suspense and a masterful hero” (Milly Johnson). Madeleine Frost is finally free. After enduring her boyfriend’s increasingly controlling and bullying behavior, she has finally had enough. For her safety—and that of her young daughter—she is leaving. But where to? With little choice, Maddie ends up at her estranged father’s hotel, where she meets the rough-edged Christopher “Bandit” Lawless—an ex-marine and gamekeeper of the grounds—who hides his own painful past behind a hard exterior. After discovering the diary of a previous landowner, Maddie and Bandit find themselves immersed in the history of the old house, uncovering its secrets, scandals, and tragedies—and the truth about each other. But when Madeleine’s ex shows up, determined to reclaim what he believes is his, Maddie and Bandit will have to stand together and fight for the love they have only just found . . .

Gathered together are three extraordinary books by renowned storyteller and memoirist Austin Clarke. ’Membering, Clarke’s breathtaking memoir, spans over fifty years of his life as a writer, chronicling his coming to Canada in the fifties, formative experiences with Malcolm X, Chinua Achebe, and LeRoi Jones, and bursting with cultural insights and poignant memories from a narrative master. In The Polished Hoe, winner of the Giller Prize and the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, when an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery. Choosing His Coffin is a selection of Clarke’s finest work from more than forty years of storytelling, drawing on his Caribbean roots and his years in Canada. These stories range in theme from growing up in West Indian society and what it means to be black in both the United States and Canada to surviving as an immigrant in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture.

Compulsive buying is a shopping addiction with worldwide prevalence that causes significant emotional, financial, and social problems for those afflicted by it. While most research has focused on the problem and its consequences, this book examines the intersections between consumer traits, self-regulation, ethical considerations, and compulsive buying. Compulsive Buying: Consumer Traits, Self-Regulation and Marketing Ethics presents a model on consumer trait predictors of compulsive buying as well as guidelines for consumers, government policymakers, and companies.

Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery. As the novel opens, Mary Mathilda is giving confession to Sargeant, a police officer she has known all her life. The man she claims to have murdered is Mr. Belfeels, the village plantation owner for whom she has worked for more than thirty years. Mary has also been Mr. Belfeels’ mistress for most of that time and is the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor. What transpires through Mary’s words and recollections is a deep meditation about the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. Infused with Joycean overtones, this is a literary masterpiece that evokes the sensuality of the tropics and the tragic richness of Island culture.

The moment chic magazine editor Jackie arrives for her sister's Italian wedding and sees her old boyfriend Romano, her groomed facade slips… Romano Puccini's spectacular palazzo is an idyllically romantic setting! But before Jackie Patterson can join in the frenzy of last-minute wedding preparations and don her exquisite bridesmaid dress, she must brave Romano's heart-stopping effect on her. And unburden the seventeen-year-old secret from that fateful, sultry Italian summer…

A Sunday Telegraph and Times Higher Education 'Book of the Week', Deborah Cohen's Family Secrets is a gripping book about what families - Victorian and modern - try to hide, and why. In an Edinburgh town house, a genteel maiden lady frets with her brother over their niece's downy upper lip. Would the darkening shadow betray the girl's Eurasian heritage? On a Liverpool railway platform, a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year old illegitimate son for adoption. She had dressed him carefully that morning in a sailor suit and cap. In a town in the Cotswolds, a vicar brings to his bank vault a diary - sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment - that chronicles his sexual longings for other men. Drawing upon years of research in previously sealed records, the prize-winning historian Deborah Cohen offers a sweeping and often surprising account of how shame has changed over the last two centuries. Both a story of family secrets and of how they were revealed, this book journeys from the frontier of empire, where British adventurers made secrets that haunted their descendants for generations, to the confessional vanguard of modern-day genealogy two centuries later. It explores personal, apparently idiosyncratic, decisions: hiding an adopted daughter's origins, taking a disabled son to a garden party, talking ceaselessly (or not at all) about a homosexual uncle. In delving into the familial dynamics of shame and guilt, Family Secrets investigates the part that families, so often regarded as the agents of repression, have played in the transformation of social mores from the Victorian era to the present day. Written with compassion and keen insight, this is a bold new argument about the sea-changes that took place behind closed doors. Born into a family with its own fair share of secrets, Deborah Cohen was raised in Kentucky and educated at Harvard and Berkeley.She teaches at Northwestern University, where she holds the Peter B. Ritzma Professorship of the Humanities.Her last book was the award-winning Household Gods, a history of the British love-affair with the home.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book Flip through the channels at any hour of the day or night, and a television talk show is almost certainly on. Whether it offers late-night entertainment with David Letterman, share-your-pain empathy with Oprah Winfrey, trash talk with Jerry Springer, or intellectual give-and-take with Bill Moyers, the talk show is one of television's most popular and enduring formats, with a history as old as the medium itself. Bernard Timberg here offers a comprehensive history of the first fifty years of television talk, replete with memorable moments from a wide range of classic talk shows, as well as many of today's most popular programs. Dividing the history into five eras, he shows how the evolution of the television talk show is connected to both broad patterns in American culture and the economic, regulatory, technological, and social history of the broadcasting industry. Robert Erler's "A Guide to Television Talk" complements the text with an extensive "who's who" listing of important people and programs in the history of television talk.

* Looks at the Internet from a morbid, sordid, entertaining perspective rather than a technical how-to perspective * Makes the Internet fun, fascinating, and non-intimidating for casual users. * Focuses on well-known actors, politicians, performing artists, and other public figures and how they have been treated online.

An aging California vintner is determined to protect her empire from a hostile family takeover and the dark secrets that could destroy everything she loves At age seventy-four, Assaria “Sari” LeBaron is still a force to be reckoned with. For decades, she has run the Baronet Vineyards, one of California’s largest and most successful wine producers, maintaining sole control even after a suspicious accident left her permanently crippled. And now, in her golden years, the formidable Sari refuses to relinquish power to her own children, a decision that has only served to increase tensions among her already emotionally damaged family members. But Sari’s ambitious son, Eric, is no longer willing to play a subservient role, and has begun working behind the scenes to take over the business, forming alliances within and outside the family in his effort to dethrone the unyielding matriarch. The most difficult fight of Sari LeBaron’s long and eventful life has begun; a heartbreaking struggle that will pit loved one against loved one and expose long-hidden secrets that could destroy both Sari’s business and her family. The LeBaron Secret is another riveting excursion into a world of privilege that Stephen Birmingham knows intimately. It is a breathtaking tale of secrets and lies, shady double-dealings, family skeletons, and the inner turmoil of the fabulously wealthy as only the bestselling author of “Our Crowd” and The Auerbach Will could tell it.

The Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies offers students and researchers original contributions that comprise the debates, intersections and future courses of the field. It is divided in six themed sections: 1)Theories and Perspectives, 2) Cultural artefacts, Symbols and Social practices, 3) Public, Transnational, and Transitional Memories 4) Technologies of Memory, 5) Terror, Violence and Disasters, 6) and Body and Ecosystems. A strong emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary breadth of Memory Studies with contributions from leading international scholars in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, biology, film studies, media studies, archive studies, literature and history. The Handbook addresses the core concerns and foundations of the field while indicating new directions in Memory Studies.