"Kate throws her dog Frank a festive birthday party, but he'd rather have a quiet day with her"--

Histoire d'une Grecque moderne is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Through the narrator's own bias and hypocrisy and through his "doubles" in the story who mirror or contrast with his character, Abbe Prevost deflates the patriarchal figures of eighteenth-century European society. The Oriental heroine's quest for intellectual and physical autonomy challenges such traditional authority figures as the aristocratic hero/narrator, the European imperialist, the "philosophe," and the writer who reflect Western sexual and cultural prejudices. Like the other novels of Prevost's 1740 trilogy (and even to a greater extent than in "Manon Lescaut"), "La Greque moderne" conveys a disturbing moral pessimism and indeterminancy that, in the end, the heroine's courage and determination cannot overcome. In an age of skepticism and increasing individualism, "La Greque moderne" seems to question the existence of any trustworthy model of moral authority.

An exploration of the corrosive effects of overpriced housing, exclusionary zoning, and the flight of the younger population in the Northeast Winner of the 2014 Bruss Silver Award and First-Time Author Award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors Towns with strict zoning are the best towns, aren't they? They're all about preserving local "character," protecting the natural environment, an dmaintaining attractive neighborhoods. Right? In this bold challenge to conventional wisdom, Lisa Prevost strips away the quaint façades of these desirable towns to reveal the uglier impulses behind their proud allegiance to local control. These eye-opening stories illustrate the outrageous lengths to which town leaders and affluent residents will go to prohibit housing that might attract the “wrong” sort of people. Prevost takes readers to a rural second-home community that is so restrictive that its celebrity residents may soon outnumber its children, to a struggling fishing village as it rises up against farmworker housing open to Latino immigrants, and to a northern lake community that brazenly deems itself out of bounds to apartment dwellers. From the blueberry barrens of Down East to the Gold Coast of Connecticut, these stories show how communities have seemingly cast aside the all-American credo of “opportunity for all” in favor of “I was here first.” Prevost links this “every town for itself” mentality to a host of regional afflictions, including a shrinking population of young adults, ugly sprawl, unbearable highway congestion, and widening disparities in income and educational achievement. Snob Zones warns that this pattern of exclusion is unsustainable and raises thought-provoking questions about what it means to be a community in post-recession America.

While seeking the seven magical coins that will allow him to reach his father, who is trapped in the castle of Vlad Tepes, Sam Faulkner travels to such places as ancient Delphi, a Stone Age cave, and 1930s Chicago.

The Canadian people have faced crises of leadership, but never more seriously than during the War of 1812. Despite the many studies of this turbulent time, there are still controversies over traditional issues, one being the quality of leadership on both sides.

Sam Faulkner travels back in time to medieval Scotland, ancient Egypt, and Renaissance Bruges in search of his missing father.