In 1791, shortly after the United States won its independence, George Washington personally asked Pierre Charles L’Enfant—a young French artisan turned American revolutionary soldier who gained many friends among the Founding Fathers—to design the new nation's capital. L’Enfant approached this task with unparalleled vigor and passion; however, his imperious and unyielding nature also made him many powerful enemies. After eleven months, Washington reluctantly dismissed L’Enfant from the project. Subsequently, the plan for the city was published under another name, and L’Enfant died long before it was rightfully attributed to him. Filled with incredible characters and passionate human drama, Scott W. Berg’s deft narrative account of this little-explored story in American history is a tribute to the genius of Pierre Charles L'Enfant and the enduring city that is his legacy.

For four women, the bonds of friendship had sustained them for twenty years, through marriage, motherhood — and murder. Looking back, it seemed like paradise — lives filled with the blessings of friendship, marriage, children and career. Over twenty years, four friends shared everything through good times and bad, and together they faced the challenges of life and love head on. Now, one of their number sits alone to ponder the strange twists and turns of fate and the unpredictability of circumstance. Now, she must sift through each of their pasts to discover exactly what went wrong, how dreams turned to nightmares, how friendships faded and how lives were destroyed. In this powerful novel, Joy Fielding explores the bonds women forge, the nature of friendships, and the meaning of unconditional love.

A reissue of the 1994 edition with a new preface by the author and a new afterword by Reginal Dyck.

The individuals who transformed American cities and towns in the post-Civil War decades built their homes, with few exceptions, on America's grand avenues, such as New York's Fifth Avenue and Los Angeles's Wilshire Boulevard. This book offers essays on twelve eminent urban residential avenues, each contributed by a different scholar and accompanied by twenty to thirty duotone photographs. Originally published as the catalog for the exhibit at the Octagon Museum of the American Architectural Foundation.

Grand River Avenue details the history of this historical Michigan roadway, which has served as a footpath, wagon rut, and ultimately a two-lane highway. Grand River Avenue, or Michigan US-16 as it was ultimately designated, is one of Michigan's true Blue Highways--an original two-lane, blacktop road still serving as a direct path through roadside America. Originally a Native American trail, this ancient path has been a westbound route from the Straits of Detroit to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan for more than 1,000 years. Over time, it has served as a footpath, horse trail, wagon rut, stagecoach route, plank road, and ultimately a two-lane highway that gave some of America's earliest motorists their first taste of long-distance automobile travel.

LAPD bicycle cop—and aspiring homicide detective—Ellie Rush is back on patrol in the newest mystery from the award-winning author of Murder on Bamboo Lane. Ellie stops for a friendly chat with gardener Eduardo Fuentes while patrolling one of Los Angeles’s premier concert halls. A few minutes later she’s shocked to discover him lying at the bottom of a staircase, clinging to life and whispering something indecipherable. Nearby, the father of Xu, a Chinese superstar classical musician, claims Fuentes was knocked down while attempting to steal his son’s multimillion-dollar cello—a story Ellie has trouble believing. Meanwhile Ellie has issues of her own to deal with—like the curious theft of her car, a 1969 Pontiac Skylark. But after the gardener takes his last breath and Xu mysteriously disappears, it’s clear to Ellie she must act quickly before someone else falls silent…

Take one power-waling grandma and mix her with two high-energy fraternal twins, and before long it's hard to tell who's chasing whom. This magical mixture rolls off the pages of cartoonist Steve Breen's first collection of Grand Avenue strips. Twins Michael, who wants to be a Shakespearean actor, and Gabby, a billionaire in the making, keep the postman, neighbors, and each other on the run - with Grandma Kate not far behind. Since it's debut in 1999, Grand Avenue has captured the hearts and tickled the funny bones of readers in more than 125 newspapers nationwide.

An enthralling story of the iconic Grand Concourse in the West Bronx Stretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has gracefully served as silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx, and New York City, for a century. Now, a New York Times editor brings to life the street in all its raucous glory. Designed by a French engineer in the late nineteenth century to echo the elegance and grandeur of the Champs Elysées in Paris, the Concourse was nearly twenty years in the making and celebrates its centennial in November 2009. Over that century it has truly been a boulevard of dreams for various upwardly mobile immigrant and ethnic groups, yet it has also seen the darker side of the American dream. Constance Rosenblum unearths the colorful history of this grand street and its interlinked neighborhoods. With a seasoned journalist’s eye for detail, she paints an evocative portrait of the Concourse through compelling life stories and historical vignettes. The story of the creation and transformation of the Grand Concourse is the story of New York—and America—writ large, and Rosenblum examines the Grand Concourse from its earliest days to the blighted 1960s and 1970s right up to the current period of renewal. Beautifully illustrated with a treasure trove of historical photographs, the vivid world of the Grand Concourse comes alive—from Yankee Stadium to the unparalleled collection of Art Deco apartments to the palatial Loew’s Paradise movie theater. An enthralling story of the creation of an iconic street, an examination of the forces that transformed it, and a moving portrait of those who called it home, Boulevard of Dreams is a must read for anyone interested in the rich history of New York and the twentieth-century American city.

Grand Avenue runs through the center of the Northern California town of Santa Rosa. One stretch of it is home not only to Pomo Indians making a life outside the reservation but also to Mexicans, blacks, and some Portuguese, all trying to find their way among the many obstacles in their turbulent world. Bound together by a lone ancestor, the lives of the American Indians form the core of these stories—tales of healing cures, poison, family rituals, and a humor that allows the inhabitants of Grand Avenue to see their own foibles with a saving grace. A teenage girl falls in love with a crippled horse marked for slaughter. An aging healer summons her strength for one final song. A father seeks a bond with his illegitimate son. A mother searches for the power to care for her cancer-stricken daughter’s spirit. Here is a tapestry of lives rendered with the color, wisdom, and a quest for meaning that are characteristic of the traditional storytelling in which they are rooted, a tradition Sarris grew up hearing and learning. Vibrant with the emotions and realities of a changing world, these narratives—the basis of an HBO miniseries—are all equally stunning and from the heart.