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- Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World
- Book Directory - The Independent Author Network
We have made great efforts to ensure that our coverage of community from a theoretical perspective does not obscure the fact that community is the experience of real people. We have found a variety of ways to make real-life stories part of the encyclopedia, often by using sidebars of primary text to show the human dimension of ideas and beliefs about community. More than half the enties are accompanied by sidebars drawn from fiction and nonfiction, including excerpts from ethnographic reports eyewitness accounts written by anthropologists.
The full archives are being made available to researchers by Berkshire Publishing Group and Ms. Nor have we forgotten that community features prominently in popular culture, whether popular books such as Clan of the Cave Bear and the Harry Potter series; well-known literary works, such as Pride and Prejudice; or television programs, such as Mayberry R. Our Community in Popular Culture appendix includes novels, nonfiction books, 47 stage productions, movies, 28 documentaries, 64 television programs, and 63 songs that embody some aspect of the theme of community.
Scholars and practitioners will find it thought provoking, and teachers will be able to use it to encourage analysis and discussion. Besides that, it's just plain fun. Finally, skeptics who wonder whether community is a topic large enough to merit an encyclopedia of this scale will be convinced not only by the entries written by experts but also by the Master Bibliography of Community, which includes 4, citations to books and journal articles. The literature on community is vast because the topic is at the core of the human experience.
The Encyclopedia of Community 's Master Bibliography is the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and international bibliography for the study of community, and we trust that it will be of great value to researchers. Encyclopedias should always be organized for the convenience of the reader. We have divided the entries in the Encyclopedia of Community by category, based on the editors' widely varied interests and expertise, but they've been presented here in A-to-Z order.
This means the reader will find Apartheid next to Appalachia, Schools next to Scientology. But we recognize that readers will want to be able to move from entry to entry, tracing an idea or exploring a particular aspect of community, so there are four navigational tools. The first two are standard: We wanted to do more, though, because many readers will come to the Encyclopedia of Community looking for answers to specific questions.
With the help of two leaders within the U. Libraries have a unique role in the world because they are both knowledge centers and public places. They are more valuable now than ever, the one place in every community where everyone—no matter what their age, income, or ethnic background—is welcome.
The library resource appendix is full of practical ideas for creating community, for supporting civic engagement, and for building social capital. Sections are cross-referenced to the wide range of relevant articles on these topics, providing a unique way of connecting information within the encyclopedia to many other resources, most important, those in the library. The Encyclopedia of Community covers hundreds of efforts to change, revitalize, and maintain communities; it presents varied and often conflicting perspectives on what community is and what it means.
Its entries explore types of community intentional communities, ethnic communities, and community colleges, for example , famous communities, issues and trends in community building, institutions that influence and sustain communities, and a wide variety of concepts and theories.
Important terms such as social capital, civic engagement, sense of community , and communitarianism are explained. In terms of historical reach, the encyclopedia reaches back to the earliest days of human settlements, continues through the centuries to eighteenth-century utopian societies, covers the communes of the s, and probes today's cybercommunities.
The following list outlines the areas of community research that have been brought together for the first time in the Encyclopedia of Community and credits the editor who reviewed the entries in each category. Ways in which the planning and design of a community can affect its development, and how its physical development can affect the lives of its inhabitants. Key concepts involved in the ability of a community to allocate resources and provide goods and services to all its residents. Community contexts influencing human and family development across the life cycle from childhood to old age.
Historic and contemporary full-time, residential communities in which members have deliberately come together to live. Changes that have been wrought on world society and on our understanding of the nature of community with the advent of new technologies. Distinguishing features of rural people and places, as well as contemporary issues related to rural poverty and community development. Key concepts and definitions related to the idea of social capital—that is, that social networks have value stemming from trust, reciprocity, and information flows between individuals.
Basic concepts of social structure, social organization, social institutions, social differentiation, and social processes that influence daily interactions. Understanding urban areas and urban issues through the study of community and of neighborhoods in particular. Entries on specific communities, some place-based, such as Appalachia and Silicon Valley, and others more diffuse, such as the Hutterites and the Shakers.
In our Reader's Guide, we have classified these communities using a set of criteria unique to the Encyclopedia of Community. While the classifications do not absolutely or uniquely define the communities some communities fit into more than one category , we feel that this system provides a useful way to explore the essence and impact of different types of human groups and networks.
Communities or categories of communities in which membership is based on common interest, such as book clubs, reading groups, and artists' colonies. Communities or categories of communities in which membership is based on the shared desire to achieve specific goals, whether political, economic, or other. Examples include activist communities and hospices. Communities or categories of communities in which membership is based on ties of blood, kinship, race, ethnicity, or deeply held shared beliefs, such as Asian American communities and monastic communities.
Communities or categories of communities in which membership is based on residence in a particular place, such as shantytowns or condominiums. The Encyclopedia of Community gives considerable attention to global topics such as participatory democracy, consumerism, cultural identity, and individualism that are viewed differently and have differing impacts in various parts of the world.
Throughout the encyclopedia, we show diverse political, cultural, and religious perspectives toward private obligation, civic engagement, and how best to live together. Authors come from around the world and a total of eighteen nations, and the editors have made a determined effort to go beyond the distinctly U. One of our goals in creating this publication is to increase the internationality of community scholarship.
In contrast with Europe and the United States, a powerful, modern state has been considered essential to social cohesion, even as family ties to a home village, where ancestors are buried, continues to be central to an individual sense of identity. In fact, a report from a medical research society ascribed the long lifespan of Chinese intellectuals to the fact that they had devoted their lives to the struggle for collective interests. Among scholars in Asia today, there is considerable interest in the concept of a civil society and the maintenance of national and regional culture in the face of globalization and modernization.
Europeans tend not to use the word community as much as Americans, concentrating instead on concepts such as active citizenship, the third sector, and social inclusion. There is also confusion in Europe over the term social capital , which is sometimes used, by the World Bank and others, in the way it is used in the United States, but is used in a completely different way by the European Union. The term community has different resonance in different parts of Europe. In essence, according to Gabriel Chanan of the Community Development Foundation in London, the Anglo-Saxon countries and a few northern European countries, specifically Holland, Belgium, and Scandinavia—more or less historically Protestant countries—share a similar understanding of community, but that understanding is not shared by the rest of Europe.
In Germany, community intimates Nazism to some, while in ex-Communist countries it suggests Communism. In France, it sounds statist; that is, it suggests centralized government control. It is therefore important to recognize that when we use the word community in this work we often mean what is elsewhere called, variously, active citizenship, local partnership, third sector, nongovernmental organizations the pan-European term for community and voluntary organizations, which are central to the concept of social capital in the United States , civil society, local autonomy, or social inclusion.
In order to fully cover these themes, we have chosen to include only a very limited number of biographical entries, and, like many other publications, we have largely excluded living people. However hundreds of people, both past and present, who have been or are influential in the development of communities or our thinking about community are discussed in context in the relevant entries.
Community is a diffuse concept, and what is meant by community varies widely from one culture to another. The word itself derives from the same Latin root as the word common: It sometimes seems that anything can be called a community. Our goal in the encyclopedia is not to eliminate some definitions and elevate others but to take the broadest possible look at the multitude of human webs—groups, networks, ties, and bonds—that we call community.
Some people imagine that community came after family, beginning when humans started living in bands. But world historians such as David Christian explain that bands, both pre-human and pre-chimpanzee, came first. Both humans and chimpanzees are, as Aristotle suggested more than 2, years ago, social rather than individual creatures. These earliest of communities served for defense and coordinated action against predators, made possible the intensive care needed by human infants, and also provided opportunities to exchange information—not so different, really, from some of the things that bring communities together today.
And while foraging societies spent most of the year in family groups, rules of exogamy that is, prohibiting people from mating with close kin exist in all human societies. Recent research suggests that given sufficient resources, foraging people routinely come together for special events for example, the aboriginal Australian festivals called corroborees , and have done so for as long as human culture has existed, some , years.
In the distant past, a vivacious sense of community helped proto-humans survive by diffusing information and making them more effectively cooperative. While sociality is a characteristic of many but not all animals, community is the defining characteristic of humans alone. Only humans form social groups, or webs, that can exchange and share attitudes, ideas, beliefs, and identity.
The flow of human history, in fact, depends on the ways these human webs expanded and gathered power across the millennia, thanks to competition that rewarded more effectual cooperation among ever-larger numbers of individuals. Another important concept that has—like community—struggled for a clear, authoritative definition is culture, the core concept in the field of anthropology. The debate about what culture is went on for several decades until in the early s the profession asked anthropologist Alfred Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley, to sort it out.
Kroeber wrote a reasonably terse volume listing some different definitions he had culled from the literature and then added several new possibilities, finally recommending just one. The profession was duly grateful, and went on to ignore what he suggested. The lesson here is that absolute definitions are not necessary; it may be the fluidity of a core concept that makes it so useful.
Community may be thought of as a geographic place, shared hobbies or interests, a warm sense of togetherness, interaction in a common space such as a chat room, and so forth. The encyclopedia brings together many views of community, not eliminating any definition but providing a forum in which they can be compared and understood.
Whatever definition the reader has in mind, we are confident that all major aspects of it will be covered. The problem of community is not simply its decline if indeed it is declining. While community values are invoked to justify civility, tolerance, and the best of human nature, community is also essential to fundamentalism, violent antisocial groups, religious and racial intolerance, and other human ills. Community can both support humanistic, civil life and destroy it. It makes most people feel good, associated as it is with warmth, friendship, and acceptance. But among academics the word arouses suspicion.
Doesn't community imply the abandonment of ethical universalism and the withdrawal into closed particularistic loyalties? Humans have a fundamental need to belong, to be part of a community, while at the same time wanting to be valued as unique. Depending on the period in history and the culture, the balance may weigh more heavily to one side or another, or the conflict between the two desires may be more or less intense. There are times when this conflict is particularly poignant. The way their families and towns responded is a fascinating example of the challenges and complexities of community and of human relationships.
There can be diametrically opposed views on something as routine as the opening of a new Starbucks cafe. One person may consider this an exciting community development, the creation of a place where community members can meet and mingle. Others see the arrival of Starbucks as a sign of the end times, when true community and friendly local faces are replaced by the standardized anonymity of a global chain. Some progressives think community is an extension of democracy, that in community everyone is equal, everyone gets something.
This is a far cry from community as traditionally experienced. Communities are often hierarchical, and their stability comes from the fact that everyone knows his or her place. A popular view among progressives, especially in the United States, is that everyone likes community:. This is not, in fact, true. Many conservatives love the idea of small communities.
Regnery, the wealthy, conservative businessman who funded Celo Community in North Carolina in the s as well as the rightwing publishing company with his name , believed that self-sufficient farming rather than urban public housing and industrial jobs would revive the pioneer spirit of the United States. But there have been some who see community and any communitarian tendency as a threat to capitalism, free enterprise, and individual rights.
Similarly, there are many political liberals who are strongly committed to individual rights, and who have vehemently combated the rights-and-responsibilities agenda of the communitarian scholars led by Amitai Etzioni. The idea of community does presuppose that the group, people together, has a value and rights. There are times when what is good for the community as a whole is in direct conflict with what is good for a given individual.
In recognizing the often harsh realities of community—lack of opportunity and privacy, pressure to conform—we have attempted to go beyond the popular views of community that see it as little more than a pleasant amenity to be sought and consumed at will. Currently, thousands of scholars, activists, writers, government officials, students, and others around the world are studying efforts to change, revitalize, and maintain communities.
There are hundreds of community studies programs and centers at colleges in the North America and Europe, and community is also covered in such diverse disciplines as sociology, anthropology, geography, [Page xxxix] political science, history, psychology, environmental studies, economics, public health, education, management, leadership, urban and rural studies, architecture and planning, American studies, medicine, and social work. With so many people from so many fields interested in community, it is no surprise that numerous paradigms, rationales, theories, and research methods have been applied to the study of community.
Broadly speaking, these myriad approaches can be divided into two general and somewhat overlapping categories. The first, and more traditional, approach stresses the study of community and community life through description, analysis, comparison, and explanation. The second, more recent, approach is an activist one: It seeks to change communities and sees communities as a force for social change. Since the turbulent s, many university community studies programs have trained young people to utilize the community as an agent of social transformation. Numerous private and nonprofit community development organizations take the second approach, and many scholars see community as an organizing principle for social action in areas as various as economic development and environmental activism.
For example, the architecture movement known as the New Urbanism aims to create developments that will encourage community life. Similarly, environmentalists are forming communities called ecovillages, where they can develop and practice sustainable living techniques in the company of like-minded people. Those who studied U.
Since the s, there has been an abrupt about-face, and now the most admired and sophisticated work in the profession is community studies. This field has won the lion's share of prestigious prizes, and students of communities have garnered the most admiring and thoughtful reviews, the most attractive jobs, the best fellowships. In more recent years, the same impulse flourishes in a new guise—microhistory—which seeks to tell resonant stories in a thickly described local setting.
Why this turn to community concerns? Why this allocation of attention and prestige to those who have made the turn, and why at this time? Some of it is surely the recognition that narrow professional specialization is itself a dead end. The world isn't divided as the disciplines of the university are. Religion is relevant to politics, psychology is relevant to religion, sociology to psychology, economics to sociology, and on and on. History in particular has moved forcefully from a self-imposed insularity to a dazzling—even excessive—disciplinary cosmopolitanism, in two ways, both of which have brought historians to an unprecedented concern for community.
First, historians have enlarged their horizons has been by borrowing from other disciplines. The extent of this borrowing has been almost immeasurable, and sociology, literary studies, economics, and a host of others have all had fashionable followings. But the single steadiest source of inspiration over the past three decades has been anthropology, with its abiding tradition—its veritable defining dimension—of fieldwork in a bounded community.
Insofar as anthropology has helped form the paradigm for the historical turn to the social sciences, it has ineluctably afforded historians models of analysis based in small societies more than in vast national ones. Second, historians have turned their attention from subjects for example, the New Deal, or the Civil War to problems. Since the s, an increasing number of historians have sought not just to describe the world but also to change it. In the process, they discovered that the things they sought to change did not yield neatly to the ministrations of specialists.
Like academics in other disciplines who have hoped to touch the world, historians found that they had to develop multidisciplinary means to address multidimensional problems and achieve multifaceted ends. They began thinking of new arenas in which they could collaborate with their new partners, and the community was one of the most obvious new arenas. Just as the fruit fly became part of the defining paradigm of early genetics, or the laboratory rat of behavioral psychology, the community became a conditioning focus of historical endeavor.
There were developments internal to the discipline of history that encouraged this change in focus.
History relies on primary sources, so it mattered mightily that the primary sources on the nation seemed very nearly exhausted while those on the mill town, the reform school, the insane asylum, the ethnic enclave, and hundreds of other communities were virtually untapped. And [Page xl] historians' shift in interest reflected a shift in the interest of the American public as a whole: For historians—as for the general public—the national perspective was losing appeal; historians were intrigued by larger or smaller frameworks. In the age of the Internet and the global economy, in a time of cheap travel and with the emergence of English as the language of the world, many began thinking in terms of world history, Atlantic history, and other transnational frameworks.
In an age when the immensity of things discouraged people, many others began to care more about groupings closer to home, where they felt they could still matter. When university scholars turned to the study of communities, they could scarcely help noticing that communities had been central to human existence all along. In a similar way, developments in other fields are bringing scholarly subjects closer to people's real-life experience and providing guidance on how to deal with pressing social challenges. We are familiar with what has become a common political adage, that it takes a village to raise a child, meaning that child rearing should be a community effort.
In intentional communities, child rearing has often been considered of particular importance, and in some communities child rearing is deliberately taken over by the community as a whole. This urban research highlights the question of what to do when collective child-rearing customs become or are problematic. Youth function as do the canaries in the mine shaft or, as sociologist Ralph Brown suggests, canaries in the gemeinschaft: How youth fare developmentally is an indicator of a community's well-being. Social capital shows that in every act of giving or reciprocity, there is an act of short-term altruism and longterm self-interest since these networks, norms, and behaviors ultimately improve the community, which means a better life for the giver.
The term social capital also stands in strong contrast to the warmer, looser, fuzzy sense of community popular in everyday parlance. Social capital clearly appeals to hard-nosed economists, but some wonder whether the phenomena of human networks and reciprocity should be reduced to transaction-based economic terms.
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Technology has made possible the formation of new communities that are very different from earlier communities—but one has to remember that simply calling something a community does not mean that it provides its members with the same benefits that earlier, less technological forms of community have provided. In Bowling Alone , Robert Putnam provides useful observations about the fact that even if users of a chatroom call something a community it doesn't mean that they can easily mobilize other members of the chatroom, or get social support, or job leads from their fellow community members.
Other scholars have pointed out that technology often reinforces our existing ways of relating to one another rather than creating new ways. Nevertheless, the notion of virtual communities has excited the world of community scholarship, and the worlds of learning, information management, and scholarship generally. John Seely Brown, Director of the Xerox Palo Alto Business Center, and Paul Duguid an Encyclopedia of Community contributor write about the community-forming character of the Internet and in the Social Life of Information about how communities form around fields of knowledge and their key documents.
The study of community has also been of much interest in the business world. Perhaps the key work remains that of German social theorist Max Weber — , who set forth the basic model of the modern bureaucracy. In the twentieth century, much effort has been devoted to applying the findings of social and behavioral research to corporations. The goal is to use empirical research to help build and maintain more effective work units and foster communication between people at different levels, and the word community is used, in a variety of ways, throughout the literature on corporate human resources and organizational development.
In the Encyclopedia of Community , we have expanded this focus by giving a great deal attention to community economics as well, and to social capital in the workplace. Many, perhaps most, of the entries in the Encyclopedia of Community have something to say about the impact [Page xli] of community in our daily lives. For the many readers who not only are trying to understand human ties in an academic way but also are curious about how to experience, personally, a richer sense of community, the encyclopedia provides many perspectives and possible solutions, from cohousing to intentional communities.
The communities in which we live have direct impact on our private lives in several ways. First, communities provide us with a sense of identity. This can be something as basic as what we call roots—which, naturally, extend beyond family to place and culture—to the idea of a hometown. There are many people today who simply have no single place they think of as home, whose family ties are weaker than anything imaginable to our ancestors, and who, not surprisingly, spend time trying to create new communities to fill that void.
But the majority of people in the world continue to be rooted in ways that are hard for mobile, urbanized, individualistic Westernized people to imagine; as a result, both the experience of and ideas about community vary enormously from country to country. Second, communities frequently provide us with a sense of meaning and purpose. This is certainly true of religious communities, in which shared meaning specific spiritual or theological beliefs might be described as the primary unifier.
But the need to find a sense of meaning and purpose is at the core of human groups as diverse as social activists and Trekkies—and the encyclopedia explores the shared meanings that link people in communities. Third, communities provide conviviality. The encyclopedia touches on this theme in a number of articles, but conviviality—the pleasures of community—is a topic that merits further exploration. Finally, civility—how we behave toward strangers in the public sphere—is an important feature of community.
A particularly diffuse concept, civility is beginning to get attention from civic leaders, scholars, and even political pundits. Civility extends to how we treat public property and facilities, how we park, and how we address and interact with those who are not part of our community. Increased travel and tourism, which brings strangers into even remote small towns, mean that we continually come into contact with people we will never see again.
All cultures have had social norms for dealing with strangers, and many cultures have had strong requirements for hospitality. But what we see today in many places is a breakdown of basic civility. As a result, civic and school leaders, among others, are pressing for more attention to this aspect of living together. An encyclopedia creates a community—a virtual think tank—of scholars. Although our mission was not to produce findings, the process of putting together the Encyclopedia of Community broadened our horizons and increased our understanding of our human community.
As the encyclopedia is used by students, scholars, and professionals throughout the world, we expect it to generate further research, international collaborations, and the testing of ideas and theories. During the eighteen months it took to create the encyclopedia, we made a variety of observations that may be of interest to readers. First, the thorough research and countless case studies our contributors supplied have confirmed the importance of community in our lives.
Community, we discovered, is related to family and friendship, but it has dimensions of its own that are vital to individual health and to the health of societies. We found that much of the study of community has often been remote from the daily lives and concerns of the people studied. It needs to be broadened to address a number of pressing topics in definitive ways.
These include child rearing, social support and inclusion, face-to-face communities after urbanization, the survival of traditional communities, and bridging or integration between different communities. We also hope that gender will be examined more closely. It is striking that the best-known writers on community are, even today, men. While we have many women contributors, there is a preponderance of men, especially in public policy and economics.
This is true in other emerging fields, usually because male scholars are in a position to take more career risks with new topics. Community is a human story, a human need, and we look forward to seeing more work done to bring gendered perspectives into every area of community studies.
Some topics that we wanted to include had not yet been studied broadly enough in terms of their relationship to community. These include sex and sexuality that is, intimate relationships in community context and shared work both historically and in modern times, in the workplace and among neighbors and friends. Environmentalists often propose that living in small [Page xlii] communities—with local food and energy supplies and little dependence on cars—is the key to solving global environmental problems. While there are many efforts in this direction, from mass transit systems to community supported agriculture, we need a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in using community to solve environmental problems.
The relationship between community and consumerism needs further attention, and we also need more study, especially internationally, of the connection between community and modernity. Comprehensive, cross-cultural coverage of these topics will be of great value. We would also like to see more knowledge drawn from archaeology and evolutionary history. Why has community been around for so many millennia, and how has our need for community evolved as the species and, later, various cultures evolved? In prehistoric days, living in community increased each individual's chances of survival, because together they could protect one another and work together to develop and manage a consistent food supply.
More research into the sociobiology of community would be invaluable, as there are likely to be considerable debates over whether we are hard-wired to cooperate and what the implications and consequences are if it turns out we are. We expect to see continued and increasing interest in the effects of development on community, in rich and poor nations, in urban, rural, and suburban areas.
In Westernized countries, newer suburban subdivisions lack shared public space, yet without vibrant public spaces the community identity of a town erodes. What will that mean for the future of the suburban subdivisions? We are learning that for small towns as much as for big cities, it is important to preserve mixed socioeconomic classes, mixed uses of space, and public spaces in general.
As in a city, the combination of commercial and residential activities in a small town makes it resilient by providing a more textured, vital life. Despite having been liberated from place, people in the twenty-first century still long for some idealized place to live equivalent to an agrarian community, a place where they can be known and nurtured, a place to which they can be attached and where one can sustain a coherent identity. It is striking that humans are inclined to value something more when it becomes elusive, hard to obtain, perhaps even less essential.
Cervantes wrote Don Quixote , his satire of chivalry, when chivalry was waning. Max Weber describes the Protestant ethic as the Protestant ethic ceases to make a difference in the economy or even to differentiate between Protestants and Catholics. Similarly, if the community is now coming into view as never before, the implication may be that community is not rising in cultural centrality and power, but declining.
Elective identity has increasingly become a human aspiration. It is at once our glory and our agony. Immigrants came to the New World, for example, to be free to make something more of themselves than they thought they could at home. Pioneers went west for the same reason. With globalization and Americanization, the idea of elective identity is reaching many other parts of the globe. But as the historian Alexis de Tocqueville — saw so long ago, our freedom doesn't fulfill us. We yearn to belong, to be anchored, to be embedded, to be in a place and to have a place. We will always crave community and the sense of belonging it confers, even while we see its dangers community can, in the extreme, lead to ethnic cleansing, to the Ku Klux Klan.
Community remains a figment of our fondest imaginings as well as a necessity of our existence whose claims on us we ceaselessly struggle to defeat. The Encyclopedia of Community captures the fullness of our deep and contradictory responses to community. To conclude, consider two types of social capital: Bonding social capital creates stronger ties within a group; bridging social capital builds stronger ties between groups—across social class or ethnic lines, for example. In publishing, we can compare bonding knowledge and bridging knowledge.
Most academic books and journals, and most encyclopedias, increase bonding knowledge—the knowledge developed within a particular discipline, by people who already know one another. Interdisciplinary efforts like this, however, are designed to create bridging knowledge, something bigger than the sum of its parts. This is where a major encyclopedia can play a role that simply isn't possible for smaller, specialized publications. This is the mission encyclopedias must embrace in the future. Although the Encyclopedia of Community was completed in record time for a scholarly encyclopedia—less than eighteen months to design the project, develop the list, commission contributions from renowned scholars, and have them ready for typesetting—its conceptual gestation took considerably longer.
And although it was completed in a small town in New England, it began in London more than ten years ago, as my environmental writing led me into research on community. My coeditor David Levinson is a cultural anthropologist who, always curious, began to look at the various books and journals I had assembled on community.
He realized how much scholarship there was on community in other fields he had worked in, and we soon saw the potential for a major encyclopedia. Acknowledgments for this project range far beyond that for most encyclopedias. The Encyclopedia of Community is not only ambitious but perhaps also audacious, and David Levinson and I could not have pulled it off without an extraordinary and widely varied team—or community—both within and without Berkshire Publishing Group.
Our first thanks must go to Rolf Janke at Sage Reference, who immediately grasped the importance and relevance of this topic when we first explained it over lunch in San Francisco in November He took our proposal to his colleagues at Sage Publications, in Thousand Oaks, California, and he was able to inspire VP Blaise Simqu and CEO Michael Melody, who saw the project's potential and the interesting fit it made with Sage's acclaimed book and journal program in sociology and urban studies.
We are thrilled to have this opportunity again to collaborate with Sage on a groundbreaking scholarly project. The small editorial team at Berkshire Publishing began this project during the final months of development on our even larger Encyclopedia of Modern Asia.
As a result, we often thought of the Chinese concept guanxi. Guanxi is akin to what we call networks or relationships. Guanxi is the greatest reward of huge multiauthored projects, and we turned to many people we already knew when we began the Encyclopedia of Community. And the new connections we have made are already leading to further work on human relationships of various kinds, such as the more hierarchical relationship of leaders and followers. Putting together an editorial board can be a considerable challenge, especially for a project as interdisciplinary and innovative as this one.
While David Levinson and I came up with the project concept and served as general editors, we received invaluable assistance from the project's editors—a distinguished group of scholars who have devoted their careers to the investigation of different aspects of community. They have our warmest thanks for an exceptional editorial effort and have become dear colleagues and friends. I had corresponded with Ray about community since the early s, and it was a pleasure to work with him. Sonya Salamon, an anthropologist who works in rural sociology, joined the board and provided a broad and truly up-to-date look at community in rural life.
She also encouraged us to expand our coverage of family and community. Two of our editors came to us through architectural historian Dell Upton, thanks to a piece of community serendipity that merits notice. I was active in a campaign to save the neighborhood elementary schools in the Berkshire [Page xliv] Hills Regional School District, and one of my comrades in the effort, James Mullen, passed along various articles and magazines related to New Urbanism, because we felt that many of the arguments for New Urbanism could also be made for preserving town-centered schools.
One of those magazines contained an article by Dell Upton that struck a chord, and when I contacted him he suggested that we ask Roberta Moudry to serve as editor for our architecture and planning entries and Michael Zuckerman to serve as editor for history. Mike provided entry reviews of exceptional precision, and he did a great deal to improve and expand our coverage. One of the special pleasures of this project has been picking a favorite book off my shelf and contacting its author about helping with the project.
We did this many times, but perhaps first with Michael Shuman, author of Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age , who provided guidance on a wide range of community economics topics. Dennis Judd came to us through Sage, as longstanding but newly retired editor of their Journal of Urban Studies. His perspective was a perfect fit, and we especially enjoyed meeting him in Chicago because his love for that city was so evident.
It has been wonderful to work with editors who are so committed to their subjects. William Metcalf was the ideal editor for the entries on intentional communities. Bill is past president of the Intentional Community Studies Association and author of numerous publications on intentional communities around the world. In addition, he is based outside the United States—adding to our global perspective. To move to the most recent developments in the study of community, editor Barry Wellman—coeditor of The Internet in Everyday Life —not only provided extensive coverage of online and virtual communities, but he also was an extraordinary contributor to the Community in Popular Culture database.
Readers will find the Popular Culture entries in Appendix 3 of Volume 4, and with ongoing contributions, at our Web site, http: Amitai Etzioni was another obvious candidate for editorship. He was unable to join the board but contributed an important entry on communitarianism, which also sets out the history of how sociologists have looked at community. Robert Putnam, too, became an important supporter of the project, and his colleague at the Kennedy School of Government's Saguaro Seminar, Tom Sander, joined our board. Tom and his wife were expecting a baby when we first talked, and he made it clear that his time was limited, but over the course of the project he went above and beyond what we expected, and provided contacts and guidance that helped to keep us on course.
This is a case when I wish I could acknowledge every contributor with a special comment, because their response to the project was so heart-warming, especially in early days when we wondered just what we had taken on. Our warmest thanks to all of the people whose thoughtful work is now available in the Encyclopedia of Community.
I would especially like to thank those who went above and beyond, pitching in either by making numerous suggestions of authors to contact, giving us valuable advice on coverage, or writing additional entries, sometimes under very tight deadlines: Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah provided thoughtful comments, and we value their encouragement for a project that draws in so many ways from their pioneering efforts. Throughout the course of the project, encouragement came from many quarters.
We were honored to have comments from Daniel Bell of City University of Hong Kong, who was helpful about Asian thinking on community, and our thanks also go to Chaibong Hahm of Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, who put us in contact with Daniel and other Asian colleagues working on civil society and related topics. A longstanding contact, Gabriel Chanan, director of Policy and Research at the Community Development Foundation in London, deserves special thanks for his interest in the project, the contacts he put us in touch with, and his consistently thoughtful advice on European perspectives.
For contributions to and thought-provoking comments on the introduction, I particularly want to thank coeditor Michael Zuckerman, as well as David Christian, William McNeill, and Paul Duguid. We also had the pleasure of getting to know several librarians who have been astonishingly active in promoting the concept of community and democratic participation within the library world.
Kathleen first made us aware of how much is being done to build on the public library's unique role as community center. Their suggestions and guidance were invaluable as we put together the Libraries Building Community appendix, and we're especially glad to have been able to include some extracts from speeches given by Sarah and Nancy because these pieces so clearly show their passion for making libraries places that build community—and democracy.
We are grateful to Ms. Berkshire Publishing is making the full archives available online, free of charge, to researchers on a wide range of community issues, at http: An effort like this draws on the talents of virtually everyone within a small company like Berkshire. Project coordinator George Woodward took charge of a particularly complex project with poise and consistent good humor. He developed great rapport with editors and authors, and he played a key role in shaping our Community in Popular Culture database.
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Associate editor Marcy Ross was also a lively contributor to the Resource Guides and Popular Culture database, and she managed the copyediting process and our team of freelance copy editors with characteristic warmth and skill. The key member and senior editor of the copyediting team was Francesca Forrest, who has an exceptional ability to work collaboratively with scholars to ensure that their ideas are presented in language that will be accessible and engaging to all. Entries came from many authors whose first language is not English, and from many unused to writing for a general audience, so the work of Marcy, Francesca, and our entire copyediting team is an invaluable feature of this Berkshire Reference work.
The Encyclopedia of Community provoked a great deal of discussion in the office, especially as all the other project coordinators—Sarah Conrick, Elizabeth Eno, and June Kim—were involved in final manuscript checking, and then as the Resource Guides and Popular Culture database were compiled. Our technology department—Debbie Dillon, Cathy Fracasse, and Trevor Young—stepped in with practical assistance at every stage, and also provided an amazing variety of book, movie, and music suggestions. Thomas Christensen, Rachel Christensen, and Emily Cotton also lent valuable administrative support to the project.
The production department at Sage Reference also deserves hearty thanks for their enthusiasm, professionalism, and timeliness in handling a project of this scale. I began thinking about these acknowledgments while in a place—and a situation—at the heart of community. I was at Town Hall, observing the weekly meeting of our Board of Selectmen, and I was there because I was trying to decide whether to run for office again. While politics is by no means the only aspect of community covered in these volumes, the relationship between community building at a personal level and community building in public life is a recurrent theme.
Democracy depends, our contributors explain, on the many connections, ties, and common understandings that are the stuff of community at many levels. Our thanks, therefore, go to one particular community, that of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where we have learned so much about both the upsides and downsides of community life.
Karen Christensen is an editor and author who has focused for more than ten years on community and environmental issues. In response to a suburban childhood, she became fascinated by Japan and China, and then, at age ten, by farming. At fourteen she ran away to a commune, and at sixteen she made a solo trip by bus deep into Mexico. After college, she lived in London for more than ten years, where she worked with Valerie Eliot on the T. Her book, Eco Living , now in its third U.
Green Party's speaker on women's issues. Karen has been active in community affairs and local politics, both in her London neighborhood and in the Berkshires. She is currently working on a book about the search for community, A Smaller Circle. David Levinson is a cultural anthropologist specializing in contemporary social issues and well-known editor of major print reference publications. His first work, a study of the Bowery in New York, was published when he was still an undergraduate. He has written widely on ethnicity, social problems, and human relationships, covering such topics as international ethnic relations, multiculturalism, substance abuse, homelessness, and violence against women and children, as well as management and cross-cultural research methods.
Levinson currently serves as Berkshire's president and editorial director. He is currently writing a history of African American [Page xlviii] church community in Great Barrington, where Berkshire Publishing is based and where leading intellectual W. DuBois was born and raised. Her research interests include child and adolescent development, African American families, family functioning and resilience, urban poverty, and qualitative research methods.
For several years he has been a major contributor to the literature on urban political economy, urban economic development, national urban policy, and urban revitalization. He also has published extensively on urban regeneration in Europe and the United States. William Metcalf is a self-employed researcher and author, as well as an Adjunct Lecturer at Griffith University in Australia. He specializes in the study of intentional communities and has previously served as president of the International Communal Studies Association, which is headquartered in Israel.
During thirty years of research, he has visited well over intentional communities worldwide. Roberta Moudry is an architectural and urban historian. She received her M. She has taught courses in American urban and planning history and architectural theory. Ray Oldenburg has held positions in the state university systems of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Florida. His areas of specialization are community and public life, and he is known internationally for his book The Great Good Place , which appeared in and is presently in its third edition.
She has studied Illinois rural communities, as well as families and communities, for some thirty years, and is past president of the Rural Sociological Society. Her most recent book is Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland. Kennedy School of Government. He managed the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, the largest survey of social capital to-date, measuring levels of social capital in forty communities nationwide. Michael Shuman is a Stanford-trained attorney and economist. He currently runs two institutions: Bay Friendly Chicken Inc. He is author of Going Local: He found community in the s on the streets of New York City and found the Internet in science fiction novels at the same time.
He has been immersed in some form of the Internet since He has been studying American communities all his scholarly life. Divided into twenty-one broad subject areas, the resource guides that follow cull relevant Encyclopedia of Community entries, and related books and Web sites, journals, and organizations.
This material presents readers with the information and tools necessary to explore each topic in more depth and to become involved with organizations and activities that focus on building stronger communities. The beginnings of our sense of self and our understanding of how we connect with others lie in the period between birth and adulthood. A large amount of scholarship has gone into trying to understand childhood and adolescence, much of it related to the interactions within families or between young people and other children, teachers, coaches, and people of different ages.
It also calls for some different resources than those traditionally used in the study of economics. The following are lists of publications and organizations that focus on the impact of economics from the daily lives of individuals to the systems that link the entire global community. It is in the best interests of any society to ensure that its members are provided with the right tools and information to live healthy lives.
According to William H. From the smallest rural communities to the border-crossing expanse of the Internet, people come together to advocate or implement changes. The following publications and organizations are concerned with providing the public with the information and resources necessary to take a stand and organize on behalf of their communities. As a town grows, both in population and in area, a number of people become responsible for measuring and directing its growth.
There are ecological, economic, and other social concerns to keep in mind, and poor planning now can result in serious problems years later. This is why many scholars and policymakers are looking at what makes community development that is practical, beneficial, and sustainable. The following publications and organizations are concerned with understanding and ensuring appropriate and well-advised development of communities around the world. Even sociology, the field with which the subject is often aligned, only formally dates back to the nineteenth century.
The publications and organizations below are representative of the types of research that have been conducted, as well as organizations and academic centers currently involved in the field of community studies. Whether it consists of two neighbors fighting over the building of a fence or nations fighting over a large strip of land, conflict has always played a role in shaping communities.
Much effort on the part of governments and citizens has gone into resolving conflicts and suppressing crime, violence, and other forms of deviance. The publications and organizations listed below focus on conflicts within and between communities. One of the basic questions about community is whether physical location—and face-to-face contact—matter. Many people, including historians as well as landscape planners and environmental activists, believe that connection to place is essential.
Much discussion about community and social capital is related to cultivating local knowledge, local identify, and a sense of home. The following publications and organizations examine the importance of a strong connection to one's home region, as well as detailing ways in which this connection can be strengthened. This section features publications and organizations about issues that transcend political boundaries.
Some are universals—such as death—that affect communities around the world; others, such as festivals, are institutions that can be found in any number of different countries; and still others, such as colonialism, are processes that occur when groups interact. A crucial consideration of any neighborhood, town, or nation is ensuring that its residents have adequate shelter. Developing and providing housing is a complex social and political issue. In the twenty-first century, intentional communities of all kinds exist in virtually every part of the world, and range from well-established spiritually oriented Communities such as Findhorn in Scotland to more recent innovations such as ecovillages and cohousing.
The following publications and organizations are dedicated to either the study of historic or contemporary intentional communities or the promotion of alternative ways of living in the modern world. Many will be useful to readers who are thinking about joining, or forming, an intentional community.
The Internet provides people around the world with easier access to a vast amount of information, as well as the ability to Communicate with friends, relatives, and even complete strangers, who live anywhere from the house next door to the other side of the planet. The following publications and organizations examine the development and ramifications of these new technologies.
Political leaders and institutions can have profound effects on shaping the future of a community. The laws and other regulations issued by the government determine many aspects of community life, from the development of land to the definition and handling of deviance. The following publications and organizations examine types of government, civic participation, community organizing, and popular movements, as well as exploring the relationship between governments and citizens.
Race and ethnicity play an important role in both selfidentity and community identity. Ignorance and prejudice over race and ethnicity have caused many problems throughout human history, but group identity has resulted in strong communities and the empowerment of racial and ethnic minorities. The following publications and organizations are committed to the study of identity and relations, and the promotion of cultural understanding. Much like race and ethnicity, religion has traditionally played an important role both in shaping one's sense of self and in forging connections among a group of people.
For many people, churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship are regular gathering places, where they can find both physical and spiritual community. The following publications and organizations examine the role that religion plays in the lives of individuals and in the lives of their communities. Rural communities face many of the same problems as their urban counterparts, but often in different degrees. In addition, there are a host of issues unique to rural life.
Rural sociology and other aspects of rural studies seek to break down the stereotypes associated with rural communities and to understand the similarities and differences in the challenges they face and the strategies they use in order to be successful. The following publications and organizations are representative of the work currently being done in this field of study. The following publications and organizations examine the role of the small town in the modern world. From gathering with friends to watch a baseball game to waiting in line with strangers at a fast-food restaurant, from meeting coworkers at the local bar to offering help to a stranded motorist, interactions between people form a large component of human existence.
Although new technologies and shifts in lifestyle are changing the ways in which people interact, such connections are still a vital part of a person's selfidentity and understanding of the rest of the world. Conviviality is an aspect of life that is understood in every culture, and promoted today as something that builds social capital. The Italy-based Slow Food Movement has, in fact, made conviviality a core part of its mission. The following are lists of publications and organizations that focus on information public life and the personal bonds that form the basis of community. The following publications and organizations take a look at the debate over social capital and its effects on communities.
The world's urban population saw a dramatic increase during the twentieth century as many towns grew into cities. With the growth of cities, new and unique issues and problems developed. The fields of urban and suburban studies are concerned with the rise of cities and suburbs, phenomena that are observable in countries around the world, as well as the lifestyles of their inhabitants. The following publications and organizations are devoted to studying the problems faced by urban populations, as well as the strategies that have evolved or have been implemented to deal with these issues.
Volunteerism is a community activity in several different ways. First, it involves performing activities that are usually intended to benefit a community in some way. The following publications and organizations provide information on studying, arranging, and performing volunteer work. As we created the Encyclopedia of Community , we were increasingly struck by the unique role that libraries have in the twenty-first century: They are public spaces, open to all, and they are knowledge centers.
They are a place where we can make connections to information, knowledge, and to other people—a place where community can happen, and thrive. Libraries are the heart of our communities. They are the one place in every community where everyone—no matter their age, income, ethnic background—is welcome. We want the Encyclopedia of Community to encourage people to see their libraries as the starting point for a wide range of community-building projects. Libraries become community hubs in a wide variety of ways. Some bring people together by having computersavvy teenagers teach the basics to seniors eager to get online.
New academic, public, and school libraries often offer meeting and study rooms. The connections that libraries help us to make are crucial. And even as libraries become a gateway for information technology, Richard A. Ruthie has no idea who wanted her pushing up daisies. All she knows is that she can't cross over until the matter is laid to eternal rest. Granny Raines, the widow of Ruthie's ex-husband and co-owner of the Sleepy Hollow Inn, is the prime suspect.
Now Emma Lee is stuck playing detective or risk being haunted forever. In the moonlight, shovelfuls of earth fall on a wooden crate at the bottom of a deep pit. Soon the hole will be filled and covered over with leaves, erasing all trace of the victim below, waking to the horror of being buried alive. Newly divorced Gaby Duran isn't really expecting to Newly divorced Gaby Duran isn't really expecting to find her soul mate on a dating site like InTune.
She just needs a distraction from pining over her ex-husband, Ben, and the happy marriage they once had. And she's wise enough to know that online, the truth doesn't always match the profile. Almost everyone lies a little—or a lot. But Gaby quickly discovers there is much more at stake than her lonely heart.
Local singles are going missing after making online connections. And a predator is searching again for the perfect match. One who will fulfill every twisted desire. Simple living isn't about depriving; it's about enriching. But while scribbling "Be more But while scribbling "Be more organized" on a list of New Year's resolutions doesn't take much effort, actually becoming more organized requires real change. Are you constantly late to the office because you have trouble getting out the door in the morning? Is your house in such disarray that you can't have friends over for dinner?
It's easy to feel stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed when your surroundings, schedule, and thoughts are chaotic. This essential manual is a simple, day-by-day plan for purging your life of clutter, becoming more efficient and productive, and creating a symbiotic relationship between your work and personal life. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for organization. Erin offers useful and innovative suggestions for tackling the physical, mental, and systemic distractions in different areas of your home and office each day.
Her down-to-earth approach will help you part with sentimental clutter, organize your closet based on how you process information, build an effective and personalized filing system, avoid the procrastination that often hinders the process, and much more. Once you cure the clutter, she shares practical advice for maintaining your harmonious home and work environments with minimal daily effort. Unfortunately murder seems to be the crop in season… Cam is finding the New Year just as hectic as the old one.
Her sometimes rocky relationship with Supplying fresh ingredients for a dinner at the local assisted living facility seems like the least of her worries—until one of the elderly residents dies after eating some of her produce. Cantankerous Bev Montgomery had a lot of enemies, from an unscrupulous real estate developer who coveted her land to an aggrieved care provider fed up with her verbal abuse.
But while the motives in this case may be plentiful, the trail of poisoned produce leads straight back to Cam. Not even her budding romance with police detective Pete Pappas will keep him from investigating her. As the suspects gather, a blizzard buries the scene of the crime under a blanket of snow, leaving Cam stranded in the dark with a killer who gives new meaning to the phrase "dead of winter. But with a little help from the spirited ghost of Granny Apples, she may be able to solve one murder and prevent another. Sisters Lucinda and Ricarda Lucy wants to sell and Rikki is against it.
Rikki asks Emma to contact their deceased father, Felix, to help her convince Lucy not to sell. In the California coastal town of South Cove, history is one of its many tourist attractions, until it becomes deadly. Jill Gardner, proprietor of Coffee, Books, and More, has discovered that the old stone wall on her property might be a centuries-old mission worthy of being declared a Jill Gardner, proprietor of Coffee, Books, and More, has discovered that the old stone wall on her property might be a centuries-old mission worthy of being declared a landmark.
But Craig Thomas, the obnoxious owner of South Cove's most popular tourist spot, The Castle, makes it his business to contest her claim. When Thomas is found murdered at The Castle shortly after a heated argument with Jill, even her detective boyfriend has to ask her for an alibi. Jill decides she must find the real murderer to clear her name. But when the killer comes for her, she'll need to jump from historic preservation to self-preservation. Regan Reilly is back in another?
On her way to the reunion, Regan stops at her favorite diner, Dot and Don? She helps the police investigate the break-in. Later the same day, two year-old Quiltier alumni, who returned for their eightieth reunion, leave the infirmary where they were assigned rooms.
When they have not returned by And there is the mystery of who from Regan? And where did she get the money? So much for a quiet reunion. The quirky, colorful personalities who work at the college and the local television studio, as well as the Quiltier grads and others who and find their way to the campus keep the story light as the mysteries pile up.
Cameo appearances by Regan? Nora Reilly the famous mystery writer and Luke Reilly, the owner of several funeral homes in New Jersey? The unusual mix of characters and unexpected events will keep readers turning the pages of this fast-paced and fun mystery. Hundreds of fans have gathered together for the first annual Old Town Zombie Walk, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes.
To keep any of her friends from winding up six feet under, Mel will do whatever it takes to find a killer -- no matter how scary things get He's come for me. My savior, my heart, and ultimately, my devil. As a child, Anna Olmstead is rescued from her life of poverty and drugs by a vampire named Asher. Over the years, she grows to love Asher, first as a father and later as a lover. But soon trouble interrupts her once-perfect life But soon trouble interrupts her once-perfect life.
While Anna wants to settle down, Asher wants a more voyeuristic, party-driven lifestyle. When Anna leaves him, Asher does everything he can to bring her back to him? Even as she finally escapes and starts a new life with a special agent of the F. This time, she may not be able to escape him. But when a prank turns deadly, the Simmons sisters Bernie's college roommate Ellen Hadley is burning the candle at both ends. She's grown a successful business baking treats for dogs and cats, and she's a dutiful wife and mother who somehow manages to fit all the cooking and cleaning into her busy schedule.
When Bernie jokingly suggests Ellen fake her own kidnapping to set her family straight, she never imagined her friend would actually go through with it. Ellen swears she doesn't know the victim, but as police investigate her half-baked plans, they turn up more questions than answers. As the food and cocktails columnist for the Island Times, Hayley Powell attends a lot of events -- but this one will be murder… On the eve of her high school reunion, Hayley dreads seeing the trio of mean girls who used to torment her: Sabrina Merryweather, Nykki Temple, and former These days Ivy wears a different crown as the cupcake queen -- and flaunting her success is just the icing on the cake.
But maybe the prom queen should have been voted Most Likely to Die. At the reunion, Ivy is found murdered, cupcakes scattered around her. Is a killer out to teach the mean girls a lesson? Little do they know how well the name fits… On their Little do they know how well the name fits… On their very first day of business, Brendon Lawyer huffily takes his coffee…to the grave. It seems he had a severe allergy to peanuts…but how could there have been nuts in his coffee? And who stole his emergency allergy medication?
But one of them is a killer, and Krissy needs to read between the lies if she wants to save her new store -- and live to see how this story ends…. Her rescue cat, Eddie, and a group of volunteers are always on board to deliver cheer -- until one of her helpers gets checked out for good Although the death was originally ruled a hunting accident, a growing stack of clues is pointing towards murder.
But it's no day at the spa when the rivalry with their chic opponent turns lethal. Blossom Valley is abuzz with excitement over The Pampered Life, a brand new spa Blossom Valley is abuzz with excitement over The Pampered Life, a brand new spa with a trendy menu of decadent services and employees who look like they jumped off the pages of a fashion magazine -- and Dana Lewis is worried it could ruin business.
But when the swanky spa's owner is drowned in a mud bath, police suspect a healthy rivalry may have turned into deadly revenge. Now, with all eyes on the farm, Dana must sift through a tawdry list of suspects and catch a killer more fearsome than a botched chemical peel. Agnes and Eleanor embark on their most challenging case to date, finding Bigfoot!
Who is she to say that Bigfoot isn? Armed with a baggie full of brown hair, Agnes and Eleanor march into the sheriff? Outright refusing to use county resources for a DNA analysis. Suggesting that the only way they would investigate is if an endangered species is involved. Never one to be told no, Agnes does the only thing she thinks will get them to change their minds by planting evidence in the form of a road killed Bald Eagle on Billy? East Tawas is not only overrun with Bigfoot sightings, but it would seem just about everyone they question claims to have seen something mysterious in the woods.
When big game hunters roll into town, and with the DNR and U. Fish and Game fighting over the brown hair, not to mention a reality show offering up a ten million dollar prize to whoever finds Bigfoot, it? Avid teapot collector Rose Freemont takes a break from her Victorian tea house only to find a new mystery brewing elsewhere Rose is eager for tough cookie Zunia Pettigrew to appraise a prized antique teapot she believes may be a holy water vessel from China. But when Zunia declares the pot a fake, Rose is really steamed. When Bridget, Cici and Lindsay left behind their safe suburban lives for a stately old mansion in the Shenandoah Valley, they redefined the concept of family.
The friends, like the house, have faced many challenges and undergone major changes over the years. But the one thing they never imagined But the one thing they never imagined was that one day they would be expanding their house of women to make room for a husband. A second marriage in midlife is never easy, and Lindsay and Dominic know they will be facing their share of adjustments when they begin their life together. But she has the Vera Wang; she has a famous style columnist as her wedding planner; her best friend is the most popular caterer in the county, and she is marrying the love of her life.
What could possibly go wrong? When the wedding takes place at Ladybug Farm, the answer is: The three friends have weathered many storms together, but this one could shake the foundation of their life together. Only when they are faced with the loss of someone they all hold dear do they come to a renewed appreciation for the depth of their devotion to each other, the power of love, and the real meaning of family.
A Shot in the Bark: Would you recognize a serial killer if you met one? Talked to one every day? Artist Lia Anderson doesn? But a violent death brings Detective Peter Dourson into the close-knit group, and he is convinced someone is not who they But a violent death brings Detective Peter Dourson into the close-knit group, and he is convinced someone is not who they seem. As the investigation uncovers secrets, Lia struggles to cope with warring emotions and a killer watches.
Finding Me by Kathryn Cushman. A Contemporary Drama of Family Lies and Forgotten Loves After her father and stepmother's accidental death, Kelli Huddleston sorts through their belongings and learns a shocking secret. Years before, her father faked his death during a boat wreck at sea--and faked Kelli's as well. He'd run from a wife, a son, and a daughter back in Tennessee, meaning Kelli has a family she's never known. She's already cashed the payout on her dad's life insurance check and looks at it as her ticket to a new life.
The lure and puzzle of digging into this hidden past is too much to resist, and she soon finds herself in Tennessee. When the trip threatens to open doors to the past better left shut, and her plans for the future are threatened, Kelli must make an agonizing choice that will change her life forever.
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Three novels take you deep into the Old South, where a family of outlaws has found fertile ground for illicit behavior? A beautiful woman and a family secret help a swampland gang member reform his ways. Coming to the aid of a Coming to the aid of a lovely innkeeper and seeing the effects of crime on the innocent makes a desperado set down roots. Coming from a family with skeletons in its closets helps a governess take on a mystery and turn a fortune seeker into a hero. After the loss of her husband and the birth of her baby, Charlotte has had a long, hard year. But when a notorious robber believes she knows the location of a long-lost treasure, she flees to Cheyenne and opens a dressmaker's shop to lie low and make a living.
When wealthy cattle baron and When wealthy cattle baron and political hopeful Barrett Landry enters the shop to visit her best customer, Charlotte feels drawn to him. If Barrett is to be a senator of the soon-to-be state of Wyoming, he must make a sensible match, and Miriam has all the right connections. Yet he can't shake the feeling that Charlotte holds the key to his heart and his future.
Soon the past comes to call, and Barrett's plans crumble around him. Will Charlotte and Barrett find the courage to look love in the face? Or will their fears blot out any chance for happiness? Elizabeth Harding arrives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to establish her medical practice thanks to the wooing of her two older sisters who extolled the beauty of the land.
She's certain she'll have a line of patients eager for her expertise and gentle bedside manner. However, she soon discovers the However, she soon discovers the town and its older doctor may not welcome a new physician. Even more frustrating, the handsome young attorney next door may not be ready for the idea of a woman doctor. For his part, Jason Nordling has nothing against women, but he's promised himself that the woman he marries will be a full-time mother. Despite their firm principles, Elizabeth and Jason find that mutual attraction--and disdain from the community--is drawing them ever closer.
And when the two find themselves working to save the life and tattered reputation of a local woman, they'll have to decide how far they're willing to go to find justice--and true love. However, she soon discovers Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Sometimes it's the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. What's indisputable is that someone is dead.
But who did what? Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline's youngest "how "is this possible? And to top it all off, Madeline's teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline's ex-husband over her. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare.
While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn't be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Stick a Fork in It Poppy Markham: Culinary Cop, Bk 2 by Robin Allen. As a health inspector and former chef, Poppy Markham thought she'd seen it all -- until she steps into Capital Punishment. The restaurant's twisted concept -- last meals of death row inmates -- could be a hit only in outlandish Austin, Texas.
But the macabre theme becomes all too real But the macabre theme becomes all too real when co-owner Troy Sharpe is found dangling from a hangman's noose in the cinder block dining room. Discovering that Troy was a hard-drinking jerk leads Poppy to the rub: Things are going great for Lexy Baker. She's finally opened her dream bakery, gotten rid of her cheating boyfriend and settled into her grandmothers house with her perky dog Sprinkles at her side.
But her blissful life doesn't last long. When her ex boyfriend is found poisoned with When her ex boyfriend is found poisoned with cupcakes from her bakery, Lexy finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation headed up by her hunky neighbor detective Jack Perillo. With the help of a gang of iPad toting, would-be detective grandmothers, Lexy decides to take it upon herself to find the real murderer in order to clear her name and get her bakery back in business.
As things heat up on the murder trail, in the kitchen and between Lexy and the hunky detective, it's a race against time to put the real murderer behind bars and get back to baking. Will Lexy get her man? Includes the recipe for Lexy's famous cupcake tops! If only humans were as easy to read… Dead men may tell no tales, but they can screw up your life with a few phone calls.
Grace is inclined to let the matter rest in peace, but when her sister is named a suspect, Grace decides to get to the bottom of the cryptic calls. The horse was being stabled at the R-n-R Ranch -- but was taken in the middle of the night. Now, with her sister in trouble and a missing horse on her hands, Grace hopes the information harnessed from her psychic skills will be enough to rein in the killer…. Halloween carnivals are supposed to be all fun and games, but when one of the school teachers is found strangled by a quilted table runner at the end of the night, Tess, bakery owner and amateur sleuth, is on the case.
Between stalkers, small business rivals and neighbors whose hobbies clash Between stalkers, small business rivals and neighbors whose hobbies clash with the victim? Will she be able to catch the killer before he or she strikes again? A Hoe Lot of Trouble: Her marriage to adulterous police detective Kevin Quinn has wilted. Her antisocial stepson Riley is spreading trouble like Her antisocial stepson Riley is spreading trouble like pungent manure. Even her gardening tools are disappearing, including a rather valuable set of hoes.
Worst of all, the delightful old man who first introduced her to the joys of horticulture is dead? Something evil has taken root in Nina? Books in the Nina Quinn Series: Tamsen Mack, a successful children? Scattered around the room are a set of clues he left behind: An eerie quote from Edgar Alan Poe and a friend? Aided by her friends and armed with sugar and caffeine, Tamsen plunges into the murder investigation. When she discovers a long forgotten crime her curiosity leads her to a connection between two chilling murders and the ties they have to her own circle of friends.
When everyone has something to hide and someone to protect Tamsen wonders who among her friends she can really trust. No Substitute for Murder by Carolyn J. Divorced from a philandering con man and downsized from her job as a talk radio show producer, Barbara Reed is desperate for money. With her unemployment checks running out, she signs on as a high school With her unemployment checks running out, she signs on as a high school substitute teacher and learns what stress is all about.
When she finds history teacher Henry Stoddard strangled with his own outdated tie, her stress level soars into the red zone. Stoddard was a bully and a blackmailer. The list of suspects is a long one, and police put Barb at the top. When she discovers a second body, the noose of circumstantial evidence tightens. With help from the showgirl widow of a reputed mobster, a trash-scavenging derelict, and members of the Cheese Puff Care and Comfort Committee, Barb struggles to keep a grip on her job, her sanity, and her freedom. This mystery contains no vampires, werewolves, zombies, or space aliens.
It was not tested on laboratory animals. It makes no claims to political correctness. Characters may not be fully clothed at all times. A Hostage to Heritage: And a madman who didn't bargain on Michael Stoddard's tenacity. The American Revolution enters its seventh grueling year. In Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat In Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat investigator Lieutenant Michael Stoddard expects to round up two miscreants before Lord Cornwallis's army arrives for supplies. But his quarries' trail crosses with that of a criminal who has abducted a high-profile English heir.
Michael's efforts to track down the boy plunge him into a twilight of terror from radical insurrectionists, whiskey smugglers, and snarled secrets out of his own past in Yorkshire. Winston Barquist III, a former big time corporate attorney who narrowly escaped disbarment, is now a pound, moped-riding lawyer, turning his life around with a new girlfriend and a re-invented career as a sole practitioner in a flea-bag office above a Dairy Mart. Mostly, his cases consist Mostly, his cases consist of defending small-time hoods and negotiating simple divorces, but his life takes an abrupt new direction when a svelte society matron parks her Mercedes at his front door and hires him to investigate a large fund in which she and her business-mogul husband are both trustees.
Miriam Hastings has her future plans in place But Trygve Knutson is intent on changing them. Just a few short weeks into her year-long training at the Blessing Hospital, Miriam Hastings is called home to Chicago, where her mother is gravely ill. With siblings to care for, Miriam pleads to With siblings to care for, Miriam pleads to be allowed to finish her training in Chicago. Her nursing supervisor grants her a brief reprieve but extracts a promise that Miriam will return to Blessing and fulfill her one-year commitment. While in Chicago, Miriam has tried to get Trygve Knutson and Blessing out of her mind, but his letters make that impossible.
Trygve is busy building a house, hoping he can convince Miriam to return to North Dakota and marry him. Torn between Trygve's love and her family's needs, she doesn't know what to do. When Miriam finally returns to Blessing, she buries herself in her work. But no matter how hard she tries to put it off, she has some life-changing decisions to make about her future, her family What will it take to convince her to stay? No longer lonelywith friends like Sunny, Aneta, and VeeEsther believes sixth grade is simply the best! She hopes to be one of the S. Out of work and down on her luck, Lucie Rizzo is forced to do the one thing she?
A move that brings her back into the tempting arms of Frankie Falcone, the ex that never fails to make her heart sit up and beg. When Lucie parlays her When Lucie parlays her temporary dog-walking gig into a career making fancy dog accessories, Frankie becomes her number one supporter. Life starts to look like a walk in the park? Despite help from the on-again, off-again Mr.
Fix-It in her life, Lucie is thrown into an investigation that? One that could shatter her new life and her second chance at love. But when a death on the reservation cuts his vacation short, he learns that the secrets of the past have a way of stirring up trouble in the present. As a scout for the legendary And while the dead body is hard to miss, the coveted book is nowhere to be found.
Now, Manny has to watch his back while searching for a murderer and the missing journal, because this slippery killer will do anything to make sure the past stays buried. Rebecca Robbins has pulled the rink she inherited off the market. She's decided to stay in Indian Falls for good. With the help of her Elvis-loving grandfather and her sexy, commitment-seeking large animal vet boyfriend, Rebecca has to track down thieves that have eluded the cops for years, solve a murder, get her friend safely married, and somehow cook dinner for an ever expanding guest list without getting herself killed.
Murder on Cinnamon Street: A detective with panic attacks? That describes Elizabeth Clary or just E to her friends perfectly. Of course, her detecting only happens on paper, as she? That is, until some of her fellow residents start dropping like flies. Who is killing these disparate and seemingly innocent individuals? In the summer of , recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her In the summer of , recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn.
The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief? Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. In narrating her story, Ora discovers more truth about herself than she could ever have imagined. The main characters are Quaker and live in a solidly Quaker community.
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Quakers are non-violent yet the actions of the two main characters will go to any lengths to help fugitive slaves escape. Quakers believe in equality, yet when a mixed-race child is born they turn their backs and are uncomfortable with the child. Quakers are pacifists yet two brothers go off to war to fight for their country. Ann Redfield's strength is derived from her Quaker faith, yet she is thrown out of the church for an act of love. She is steadfast in her determination to live her faith, not just profess it.
Ann's life is testament to the true meaning of the Quaker teachings. The author is a history professor and historical researcher. A Pet Psychic Mystery No. Pete native is killed in a hit and run, pet psychic Darwin Winters gets a vision from the victim's prized golden retriever that leads her to believe it was no accident. As suspects start piling up, Darwin finds herself in the middle of the dead woman's family and friends, not knowing As suspects start piling up, Darwin finds herself in the middle of the dead woman's family and friends, not knowing who she can trust.
Stories of artifacts and pirate legends, strange disturbances at the Pinellas Point Indian Mound, and show dog shenanigans all add up to one thing Can Darwin separate family secrets from cover ups and lies to dig up the truth? Or will it be silenced forever along with the victim? Celebrate the holidays every day of the year with this collection of four short stories based upon the popular Sparrow Falls Mystery series, now available for the first time in paperback.
Join spunky senior sleuth Tilda, young journalist Addie, and the story keeper of the old Scots burying Join spunky senior sleuth Tilda, young journalist Addie, and the story keeper of the old Scots burying ground, Morwenna Goss, in three cozy mysteries and one heartwarming story that will remind you of the true meaning of each season. Christmas It is Christmas Eve, the night of Morwenna?
All eyes are upon a rare and valuable emerald necklace desired by every guest, but for very different reasons. When the priceless gem vanishes right before their eyes, who among those present could have dared to steal it? This bit of local legend in the small southern town creates the mood for an unforgettable and heartwarming Valentine? Fourth of July The day of the annual Fourth of July picnic in Sparrow Falls starts out well enough, until Tilda pays a visit to a friend and finds the dear lady?
The only viable suspect is the confused and bewildered wife of the extremely wealthy? Halloween Friends gather at Tilda? As the time draws closer to midnight, each guest begins to wonder if the invitation was a treat? The produce is local -- and so is the crime -- when long-simmering tensions lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty's farm. It'll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn't willing to get her hands dirty.
Autumn has descended on Westbury, Massachusetts, but the mood at the Farm-to-Table Dinner in Cam's newly built barn is unseasonably chilly. Local entrepreneur Irene Burr made a lot of enemies with her plan to buy Westbury's Old Town Hall and replace it with a textile museum -- enough enemies to fill out a list of suspects when the wealthy widow turns up dead in a neighboring farm. Even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco -- at least temporarily -- and settled a score with Irene.
With the Fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift through a bushelful of possible killers that includes Irene's estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of the way. The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she'll have to wrap this case up quickly. Curator and occasional sleuth Chloe Ellefson is off to Minneapolis to help her friend Ariel with a monumental task. Ariel must write a proposal for a controversial and expensive restoration project: When a dead body is found stuffed into a grain chute, Chloe's attention turns from milling to murder.
Back in Milwaukee, Chloe's love interest Roelke has been slammed with the news that a fellow officer was shot and killed while on duty. Sifting through clues from both past and present, Chloe and Roelke discover dangerous secrets that put their lives—and their trust in each other—at risk. While storm clouds gather over the landscape, fiercer storms rage inside the passenger cars. The tensions between North and South rapidly escalate until one traveler's journey abruptly and brutally ends.
Who was the murderer? Was the victim the real target? Amid swirling suspicions and deceptive intrigue, Jeb and Rachel Leigh join Pinkerton Detective Jonathan Ward in a race to unmask a killer. But murder isn't the only evil Jeb must confront. As motives and suspects abound, Jeb learns what it means to place a price on a human life, not only as a victim of murder, but also as property to be traded and sold.
The final showdown means hard choices, a test of loyalties, and a face-to-face encounter with Death On A Southern Breeze. The watchers that night who saw only blackness and the suggestion of trees massed against an ebony sky claimed later that they knew something would happen. Some probably cursed their ill luck that they hadn? But one watcher, enveloped in fog and superstition, neither rejoiced nor cursed, viewing the spectacle merely as an eyewitness to the centuries-old custom and accepting the dubious honor that added his name to the meager list of Those Who Had Seen.
The ghost seen this year is tied to the custom of Watching the Church Porch -- a sighting of a person? Frightening, but not unusual. But it is odd, because someone else dies. And in circumstances leaving no doubt the death is murder -- by a human hand. But Detective-Sergeant Brenna Taylor has issues of her own -- professional and personal. She thought she had her future with her boyfriend sorted out, but when her colleague, Mark Salt, enlists her help to break up with his girlfriend, Brenna wonders if it?
A string of burglaries in the village and a second murder add more pressures for the detectives. When Brenna is authorized to conduct a formal interview of a suspect she accepts the assignment eagerly, believing the Team is finally wrapping up the case. But the questioning ends inconclusively, plunging Brenna into despair. So when Maddy's cheating ex-husband Grant shows up with some pie-in-the-sky idea to win Maddy back, Eleanor is happy to see her sister swiftly show him the So when Maddy's cheating ex-husband Grant shows up with some pie-in-the-sky idea to win Maddy back, Eleanor is happy to see her sister swiftly show him the door.
Naturally, when Grant is later found stabbed in the heart with a barbeque skewer, Bob is featured on the police chief's menu as Suspect 1. And when it turns out that Maddy stands to gain a different kind of dough -- and lots of it -- from Grant exiting this world, she and Eleanor know it's up to them to cook up an investigation to find the real killer A hidden secret… A ghost to keep it that way. Never mind that the farm in question was settled by a veteran of the Battle of Never mind that the farm in question was settled by a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg, and never mind that its occupants have complained of floating lights, shadowy figures, and poltergeist-style vandalism for a solid half century.
When her amiable neighbor Archie Pratt, beloved captain of a local unit of reenactors, vanishes from the farmhouse without a trace, Leigh is certain there is a rational explanation. She can only hope. Because when her children discover an aged map of the neighborhood that seems to point to hidden treasure, the local Civil War buffs think otherwise. Only one thing is for sure: And as intrigue escalates to violence within feet of her own backyard, Leigh determines to figure out whom… before any more hastily dug holes turn into unmarked graves!
The Walkaway by Scott Phillips. Newton Neighbors by Suzy Duffy. Crystal Lake-in the suburbs of Newton-is one of the most desirable places to live in Boston, and Newton Neighbors is a romantic comedy about its colorful residents just trying to "live the dream. The story starts with two fire trucks and a couple of cop The story starts with two fire trucks and a couple of cop cars getting called to the upmarket road, and that's when things begin to heat up.
The Ladies of the Lake: Maria's best asset has always been her hot Puerto Rican body, but she sees the effect a new sitter has on her husband, so she decides to fight back the hands of time. Cathi is Maria's best friend and greatest admirer. Her own life is pretty good, too. Still, she can't help being consumed with ambitions to live on the water.
She spirals from persuasion to coercion to deceit faster than you can say 'change of address,' but will she succeed? Noreen may seem like the nice little granny from next door. However, it's the quiet ones you need to watch. While facing forty is a nightmare for Maria, Noreen's living large at eighty. She believes "the only thing worse than a weak dollar is a weak martini.
But when she takes a babysitting job in Newton, she gets more than she bargains for in the shape of fine-looking firefighter. We learn soon enough that not all heroes are good-but is bad better? Thankfully we have Ely, Jessica's crazy roommate, who keeps everyone laughing and partying, too. There's Botox, Bollinger, and a randy Bulldog. We have fireworks, fistfights, and family fiestas. It's a story that stretches from Boston, to London, to beautiful Puerto Rico.
Welcome to the wet 'n' wild world of Newton Neighbors. Everybody in Magnet Springs is in on the not-so-secret curse of the Miss Blossom pageant. Everybody, that is, except Whiskey Mattimoe--full-time real estate agent, part-time sleuth, and long-suffering owner of Abra, her willful and sometimes felonious Afghan hound. Any hope that Abra has Any hope that Abra has reformed her purse-snatching ways is dashed when the dog disappears with the bejeweled Miss Blossom tiara, a priceless heirloom insured for more than Whiskey's net worth.
When the new Miss Blossom lands in the hospital and a former Miss Blossom turns up dead, the truth of the curse chills Whiskey to the bone. As if she didn't have enough on her plate, now Whiskey has to catch a cold-blooded killer--before the latest Miss Blossom is pushing up daisies. Christmas in Paradise is a magical time of year that Tj has always looked forward to with happy anticipation. This year her holiday spirit is marred by the anticipated arrival of two new men in her life.
When one of the men ends up dead, Tj must juggle community plays, Christmas tree cutting, When one of the men ends up dead, Tj must juggle community plays, Christmas tree cutting, sleigh rides, and holiday shopping, with a complex murder investigation in order to save someone she loves. Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever.
But she can't do it alone. Former slave Bella Jamison Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie's home. Though it may cost them their lives, they work with Sophie to betray Rebel authorities. Harrison Caldwell, a Northern freelance journalist who escorts Bella to Richmond, infiltrates the War Department as a clerk-but is conscripted to defend the city's fortifications.
As Sophie's spy network grows, she walks a tightrope of deception, using her father's position as newspaper editor and a suitor's position in the ordnance bureau for the advantage of the Union. One misstep could land her in prison, or worse. Suspicion hounds her until she barely even trusts herself. When her espionage endangers the people she loves, she makes a life-and-death gamble. Will she follow her convictions even though it costs her everything-and everyone-she holds dear?
Ms Ohio Happy Pennington finds out it? When her fiercest competitor tumbles dead out of the isolation booth during the televised pageant finale, Honolulu PD gets to thinking Happy might have killed her. Nab the real killer? Beauty Queen Mysteries 2? A giggle a minute? Happy might be the next Stephanie Plum!?
Now beauty queen and budding sleuth Happy Pennington returns, this time to gaudy, Now beauty queen and budding sleuth Happy Pennington returns, this time to gaudy, garish Las Vegas? When Happy pulls bridesmaid duty for pageant-wear purveyor Sally Anne Gibbons, the last thing she expects at the altar is a corpse.
But at these over-the-top nuptials that? Sometimes it seems everybody in Sin City has a secret, from the cocktail waitress trying to land a reality-show gig to the silver-haired cougar with a penchant for blackjack dealers. Maybe hunky pageant emcee Mario Suave is hiding something, too: But in glittery Miami? Find out why readers call this mystery series? A jigger of tranquility is all Em Johnson wants, but now that her beloved Tiki Goddess Bar has been chosen as the location for Trouble in Paradise, TV's hot new reality show, life is anything but tranquil.
When a member of the camera crew is found dead in her kitchen-stabbed to death with Chef When a member of the camera crew is found dead in her kitchen-stabbed to death with Chef Kimo's sashimi knife-the scene on the sleepy North Shore of Kauai goes from eccentrically crazy to downright dangerous. Suspects lurk behind every paper drink umbrella. It's not enough that Chef Kimo is the number one suspect or that the life's-a-party Hula Maidens nearly burn down the place while dancing the hula with flaming coconuts.
Roland Sharpe, a handsome, Hawaiian, fire-dancing detective, warns the locals not to interfere, but Em and the madcap Maidens can't help themselves and soon wind up knee deep in danger again. Can the irrepressible troupe solve three murders before the champagne goes flat? Bound by Guilt by C. A botched robbery at a used bookstore sends a guilt-ridden teen girl on the run. Foster kid Roxi Gold longs for a family and will do anything to fit in? Police officer Abby Dawson has seen the worst of society, and not just at work.
One fateful night a man? One searches for justice; the other finds herself fleeing with a stolen first edition of The Great Gatsby. Will the power of forgiveness set them free or will they both remain bound by guilt? A marauding monkey, a mysterious murder, middle-aged hula maidens, and mugs full of Mai Tai's. Just another day in Tiki Goddess Paradise. What is supposed to be a fun trip to a mixology contest turns weird when Louie's legendary "Booze Bible" is stolen, and Em's ex-husband winds up dead-with Em the number-one suspect. Sexy Kauai detective and part-time fire dancer Roland Sharpe rushes to Em's side along with the unpredictable Hula Maidens, whose detective skills are even more haphazard than their dance routine at the island tiki bars.
Toss in an escaped monkey and a killer who wants to make this the last call for someone's honky-tonk, tiki-tossing night out, and it's going to be another wild escapade for Em and her Hula Maidens. Her books are not only known for their intense emotion, but for characters you'll remember long after you turn the last page.
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Visit her world of tiki totems, hula maidens and tropical fun at thetikigoddess. Beauty Queen Mysteries 4 Beauty queen Happy Pennington loves Christmas, but this year murder gets in the way of the tinsel and the candy canes? In snowy small-town Minnesota? Happy discovers that nothing, Happy discovers that nothing, and no one, is what it seems. Society matrons worship Norse goddesses.
Victorian mansions hide salacious secrets. And prominent families feud in the strangest ways. Just in time, heartthrob Mario Suave swoops in to help Happy any way he can? That mystery, too, is Happy? Find out why readers call this a? After a dozen years as an Emmy-winning anchor and reporter, Diana hung up her mic to become an author of fast and fun romantic fiction. Her novels have been called? Romance Reviews Today ,? Library Journal , and? A road trip leads to her grandfather Poppy's home on the picturesque Treasure Coast of Florida, where she impulsively snaps up A road trip leads to her grandfather Poppy's home on the picturesque Treasure Coast of Florida, where she impulsively snaps up an abandoned building -- only to discover it's already occupied by a fresh corpse.
But before Cara can get the doors of her shop open, she bumps into an old boyfriend, Cooper Rivers, who claims to still love her. Then Cara learns that Cooper's affection might be a ploy to save himself from a murder plea. Is it possible that Cara's second chance at love has come too late? Includes recipes and craft tips. Crime reporter Nichelle Clarke's days can flip from macabre to comical with a beep of her police scanner. Then an ordinary accident story turns extraordinary when evidence goes missing, a prosecutor vanishes, and a sexy Mafia boss shows up with the headline tip of a lifetime.
As Nichelle gets closer to the truth, her story gets more dangerous. Armed with a notebook, a hunch, and her favorite stilettos, Nichelle races to splash these shady dealings across the front page before this deadline becomes her last. Includes book club discussion questions. Buried Leads by LynDee Walker. When an Armani-clad corpse turns up in the woods, crime reporter Nichelle Clarke smells a scoop. A little digging, and Nichelle uncovers a web of corruption that stretches all the way to Washington, D.
And a dead lobbyist. It's everything Nichelle's ever dreamed of. The cops are playing it close, the feds even closer, and Nichelle's afraid her boss will assign the story to the political desk any day. Her sexy Mafia boss friend warns her off the case, her TV rival is hot on her designer heels, an ambitious copy editor wants her beat, and victims are piling up faster than she can track them down.
As Nichelle zeroes in on the truth, it'll take some fancy footwork to nab this headline before the killer nabs her. Whether she's juggling the demands of her complicated love life or solving the mystery? Maggie Barbieri, Author of Once Maggie Barbieri, Author of Once Upon a LieWhen a superstar athlete's son turns up dead in a tiny town on the Virginia coast, crime reporter Nichelle Clarke gets the inside scoop. But she quickly spies a gaping hole her inner Lois Lane cannot ignore.
Determined to unravel the mystery, Nichelle fights off paparazzi cameras and an unexpected rival. She uncovers an illegal moonshine operation, a string of copycat suicides, and a slew of closets stacked with more skeletons than slingbacks. Chasing a killer who? Small Town Spin is a treat not to be missed, a fantastic addition to the Headlines in High Heels series. Boasting a strong cast of supporting characters, one of whom I would love to see disappear, and engaging and witty dialogue?. This is the best one yet in this series and I can?
Dru Ann Love, Dru? Small Town Spin makes headlines with a smart, stylish reporter who has a knack for solving mysteries? This novel is a first class cozy worthy of Agatha Christie.? The first book in the Posie Parker mysteries. Set in , Murder Offstage is full of intrigue and red herrings. This is a classic murder mystery This is a classic murder mystery which will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie and Downton Abbey. Just who exactly is the dangerous Lucky Lucy Gibson? And why has she killed the first violin player of the local theatre? And more importantly, what on earth has happened to Mr Minks, the much-loved office cat?
Stormi Nelson, best-selling romance author, moved into her huge Victorian house in the private community of Oak Meadows Estates. When her agent tells her that her characters are becoming too cardboard and that she needs to get out and mingle with people, she comes up with the idea of a When her agent tells her that her characters are becoming too cardboard and that she needs to get out and mingle with people, she comes up with the idea of a Neighborhood Watch Program.
The only problem is - she's the only member. On her first night of patrol, she stumbles over a dead body, meets a hunky detective, who happens to be her neighbor and clearly frustrated with her, and her mother, sister, niece and nephew arrive to shake up Stormi's peaceful life. As she is immersed ever deeper into the mystery surrounding a neighbor's murder, she decides to change writing tactics and write a romantic mystery based on her experiences. What follows is a frolicking good time as Stormi finds herself the nosiest neighbor of them all.
Can she find the killer before she becomes the next victim? Diary of a Mad Diva by Joan Rivers. Now in paperback, following up the phenomenal success of her headline-making New York Times bestseller I Hate Everyone Starting With Me, the unstoppable Joan Rivers is at it again. That fat pig, Bridget Jones? But as Joan, being both beautiful and introspective, begins to record her day-to-day musings, she realizes she has a lot to say. And everyone, God help them.
A no-holds-barred, delightfully vicious and always hilarious look at the everyday life of the ultimate diva. Follow Joan on a family vacation in Mexico and on trips between New York and Los Angeles where she mingles with the stars, never missing a beat as she delivers blistering critiques on current events, and excoriating insights about life, pop culture, and celebrities from A to D list , all in her relentlessly funny signature style.
This is the Diary of a Mad Diva. For the first time in a century, a diary by someone that?