Desperate Stages tells the stories of a disgraced one-time playwright, a starving actor, and a failed actor-manager, whose lives crossed in Fredericton in 1845. Together they provided New Brunswick with some of its most exciting drama and its wildest theatre riot.

Desperate is for those who love their children to the depths of their souls but who have also curled up under their covers, fighting back tears, and begging God for help. It’s for those who have ever wondered what happened to all their ideals for what having children would be like. For those who have ever felt like all the “experts” have clearly never had a child like theirs. For those who have prayed for a mentor. For those who ever felt lost and alone in motherhood. In Desperate you will find the story of one young mother’s honest account of the desperate feelings experienced in motherhood and one experienced mentor’s realistic and gentle exhortations that were forged in the trenches of raising her own four children. Also in Desperate: QR codes and links at the end of each chapter that lead to videos with Sarah Mae and Sally talking about the chapter Practical steps to take during the desperate times Bible study and journal exercises in each chapter that will lead you to identify ways in which you can grow as a mom Mentoring advice for real-life situations Q & A section with Sally where she answers readers questions

From the publisher of Not Without Peril and No Limits But the Sky, this collection seeks the lessons learned from twenty stories of backcountry incidents, from close-calls to unsolved mysteries. First-hand accounts, route maps, photos, and expert analysis from Search and Rescue professionals illuminate the realities faced in the Northeastern wilds. Readers who immerse themselves in these near misses, methodical searches, and the gut-wrenching clarity of hindsight will be better prepared for whatever the wilderness brings.

In the executive offices of the four major networks, sweeping changes are taking place and billions of dollars are at stake. Now Bill Carter, bestselling author of The Late Shift, goes behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of the television industry, capturing the true portraits of the larger-than-life moguls and stars who make it such a cutthroat business. In a time of sweeping media change, the four major networks struggle for the attention of American viewers increasingly distracted by cable, video games, and the Internet. Behind boardroom doors, tempers flare in the search for hit shows, which often get on the air purely by accident. The fierce competition creates a pressure-cooker environment where anything can happen . . . NBC’s fall from grace—Once the undisputed king of prime time, NBC plunged from first place to last place in the ratings in the course of a single season. What will be the price of that collapse—and who will pay it? CBS’s slow and steady race to the top—Unlike NBC, CBS, under the leadership of CEO, Leslie Moonves, engineered one of the most spectacular turnarounds in television history. But in this ruthless world, you’re only as good as last week’s ratings . . . . ABC’s surprising resurrection—Lost and Desperate Housewives—have brought ABC the kind of success it could only dream of in the past. So why don’t the executives responsible for those hits work there any more? The End of the News As We Know It—In a stunningly short period of time, all three of the major network news anchors—Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings—signed off, leaving executives scrambling for a way to keep network news relevant in an era of 24/7 information. Crazy Like Fox—They’re outrageous, unconventional, and occasionally off-putting, but more and more people are watching Fox shows. Most of all they keep watching American Idol. How did Simon Cowell snooker himself into a huge payday? Stay tuned . . .

New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin’s Desperate Girls is a tightly wound, fast-paced romantic thriller that follows a desperate woman on the run as she hides from a killer’s symbolic revenge spree. Defense attorney Brynn Holloran is right at home among cops, criminals, and tough-as-nails prosecutors. With her sharp wit and pointed words, she has a tendency to intimidate, and she likes it that way. She’s a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, but in her personal life, she’s a mess. When a vicious murderer she once helped prosecute resurfaces and starts a killing spree to wipe out those who put him behind bars, one thing becomes clear: Brynn needs to run for her life. When the police come up empty-handed, Brynn turns to a private security firm for protection. But when she defies advice and gets involved in the investigation, even the former Secret Service agent assigned to protect her may not be able to keep her safe. With every new clue she discovers, Brynn is pulled back into the vortex of a disturbing case from her past. As the clock ticks down on a manhunt, Brynn’s desperate search for the truth unearths long-buried secrets and reignites a killer’s fury.

Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so. For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk. Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, “both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it” (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.

Counterinsurgency is a doctrine premised on winning the population of a nation-state over to the government’s side. Counterinsurgency is also associated with a continuing presence of military forces for long periods and significant aid expenditures. As such, it is a curious strategy to employ in the midst of wars seen as failing and when the population has turned against the conflict. This book examines counterinsurgency’s emergence in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan in order to understand how it is employed in the midst of these perceived war fighting failures. In doing so, it thinks of strategy as narrative that describes how actions will result in better future effects. In so doing, this book traces the ways in which the strategy making process overcomes fragmentation to produce consensus. It concludes that through the examination of how actors, analogies, and narratives are produced and deployed into strategy debates, the reasons for counterinsurgency’s emergence in crisis periods can be determined. This approach enables a better understanding of the dynamics of policy-making and how geostrategic change occurs.

The year was 1939. I was a young child who lived in Britain. I had just turned nine years old. My country and other European countries at the time are fighting a war with Germany. Before I was born, in 1918, Britain was at the end of World War I when the Germany surrendered to the British and French forces. Now Germany was controlled by a man known as Hitler. He controlled the Nazi Party who had reared their ugly heads. They said war was their intent to regain the lands, which was supposedly stolen from German nation after the end of World War I in the year 1918. The German Army, early in September 1939, marched their troops into Poland and took over their country.

Long before Battle Royale or The Hunger Games, the author of The Planet of the Apes imagined a world governed by science and brutality gone mad in this long-neglected, dystopian sci-fi classic, now in a new translation Despairing at the state of world degeneration, a group of the world's most renowned intellectuals form the new Scientific World Government, aiming to put the world to rights. Elected into power, they quickly start making changes for the better, eliminating world hunger and cancer, encouraging scientific thought, and banning frivolous entertainment. But while congratulating themselves on a job well done, they fail to notice that actually, people are not happy. The suicide rate has sky-rocketed and, strangely, it turns out the public wants a little risk and conflict in their lives. So to cater to the masses, the Department of Psychology forms a plan: they will stage an entertainment show the likes of which the world has never seen before. It starts with gladiatorial style battles, bloodthirsty and brutal, where the victors become celebrities of unseen proportions, and quickly escalates into entire historical battle re-enactments involving chemical warfare and mass destruction. The Scientific World Government has unleashed a monster. What has the world let itself in for?