After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years demanding action from their city and state officials. Complaints from the city's predominantly African American residents were ignored until independent researchers confirmed dangerously elevated blood lead levels among Flint children and in the city's tap water. Despite a 2017 federal court ruling in favor of Flint residents who had demanded mitigation, those efforts have been incomplete at best. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts to advocate for improved living conditions, Tainted Tap offers a rich analysis of conditions and constraints that created the Flint water crisis. Katrinell Davis contextualizes the crisis in Flint's long and troubled history of delivering essential services, the consequences of regional water-management politics, and other forms of systemic neglect that impacted the working-class community's health and well-being. Using ethnographic and empirical evidence from a range of sources, Davis also sheds light on the forms of community action that have brought needed changes to this underserved community.

A Deadly Game of Deception Notorious and beautiful, Vidia Swanson works as an "angel," trying to coax incriminating secrets from powerful men who may or may not be traitors of the Crown. Her latest target is suspected of stealing gold from Wellington's troops, but matters take an alarming turn when Vidia realizes that her spymaster thinks she is the one who is tainted—a double agent working for Napoleon. Backed into a corner, she can only hope to stay one step ahead of the hangman in a race to stop the next war before it destroys her—and destroys England. Tainted Angel offers up a compelling game of cat and mouse in which no one can be trusted and anyone can be tainted. "Espionage and passion—Regency style—burning up the pages from chapter one."—New York Times bestselling author Raine Miller "A world of spies and traitors where no one is quite what they seem and the truth is only true for a moment...a thrilling take that will keep you guessing until the very last page."—Victoria Thompson, author of Murder in Chelsea

"After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years demanding action from their city and state officials. Complaints from the city's predominantly African American residents were ignored until independent researchers confirmed dangerously elevated blood lead levels among Flint children and in the city's tap water. Despite a 2017 federal court ruling in favor of Flint residents who had demanded mitigation, such efforts have been incomplete at best. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts to advocate for improved living conditions, 'Tainted Tap' offers a rich analysis of conditions and constraints that created the Flint water crisis"--

Nora Abbott needs to make enough snow to save her ski resort from the drought that is ravishing Northern Arizona, and her recent court victory should mean good times are ahead. But when the death of Nora’s husband brings her overbearing mother into town, energy tycoon Barrett McCreary uses the opportunity to launch what might just be a hostile takeover of her cash-strapped resort. To make matters worse, the local Hopi tribe still claims that making snow on the mountain will upset the balance of the earth, and someone is taking matters into their own hands in an explosive way. The ruggedly handsome Cole Huntsman keeps turning up to help Nora, but he seems to be dealing from both sides of the deck. And with a business empire’s profits—not to mention lives—at stake, double-dealing is a deadly strategy. Praise: “Baker’s series debut brings Native American culture and big business together into a clash that can be heard across the mountains."—Library Journal “A thoroughly satisfying mystery! Shannon Baker captures the grandeur and fragility of the Western landscape while keeping the pages turning.”—Margaret Coel, New York Times bestselling author of Buffalo Bill’s Dead Now "Tainted Mountain is a story as mysterious and beautiful as the Arizona landscape in which it's set. Shannon Baker offers readers a taut, cautionary tale that is a deft mix of both important contemporary issues and the timeless spiritual traditions of the Hopi. For those of us who hunger for the kind of novel Tony Hillerman used to write so well, this promising new series may just fill the bill. Pick up Tainted Mountain and prepare to be entranced."—William Kent Krueger, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Cork O'Connor Series "Pitting greed against the future of a people, Baker's thoughtful thriller, Tainted Mountain, not only presents a compelling clash of myth and violence that will keep you guessing, it also reads like such a love letter to the natural world, you won't want it to end."—Kris Neri, author of Revenge on Route 66

Have human rights as we once understood them become obsolete since 9-11? Aren't new methods needed to combat the apocalyptic violence of al-Qaeda? Shouldn't we sacrifice some rights to make us all safer? And if we can kill a combatant in battle, why shouldn't we torture them if it will save lives? William Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, examines these and other fundamental questions through the prism of our new consciousness about terrorism in this provocative new book. It questions America's own ambivalent record—its tainted legacy—and addresses recent human rights violations: the imprisonment without charge of non-citizens and the violation of the Geneva Convention at Guantanamo Bay. Schulz writes, "One of Osama bin Laden's goals is to destroy the solidarity of the international community and undermine the norms and standards that have sustained that community since the end of World War II. The great irony of the post-9/11 world is that, when it comes to human rights, the United States has been doing his work for him."

A teenage girl must grapple with her agoraphobia as romance blossoms with her new neighbor in this YA novel—“a poignant work, infused with humor” (School Library Journal). Seventeen-year-old Norah Dean hasn’t left the house in years. Her agoraphobia and OCD are so intense that when groceries are left on the porch, she can’t even step out to get them. Struggling to snag the bags with a stick, she meets Luke. He’s sweet and funny, and he just caught her fishing for groceries. Because of course he did. Norah can’t leave the house, but can she let someone in? As their friendship grows deeper, Norah realizes Luke deserves a normal girl. One who can lie on the front lawn and look up at the stars. One who isn’t so screwed up. Readers themselves will fall in love with Norah in this deeply engaging portrait of a teen struggling to find the strength to face her demons.

Smelting is an industrial process involving the extraction of metal from ore. During this process, impurities in ore—including arsenic, lead, and cadmium—may be released from smoke stacks, contaminating air, water, and soil with toxic-heavy metals. The problem of public health harm from smelter emissions received little official attention for much for the twentieth century. Though people living near smelters periodically complained that their health was impaired by both sulfur dioxide and heavy metals, for much of the century there was strong deference to industry claims that smelter operations were a nuisance and not a serious threat to health. It was only when the majority of children living near the El Paso, Texas, smelter were discovered to be lead-exposed in the early 1970s that systematic, independent investigation of exposure to heavy metals in smelting communities began. Following El Paso, an even more serious led poisoning epidemic was discovered around the Bunker Hill smelter in northern Idaho. In Tacoma, Washington, a copper smelter exposed children to arsenic—a carcinogenic threat. Thoroughly grounded in extensive archival research, Tainted Earth traces the rise of public health concerns about nonferrous smelting in the western United States, focusing on three major facilities: Tacoma, Washington; El Paso, Texas; and Bunker Hill, Idaho. Marianne Sullivan documents the response from community residents, public health scientists, the industry, and the government to pollution from smelters as well as the long road to protecting public health and the environment. Placing the environmental and public health aspects of smelting in historical context, the book connects local incidents to national stories on the regulation of airborne toxic metals. The nonferrous smelting industry has left a toxic legacy in the United States and around the world. Unless these toxic metals are cleaned up, they will persist in the environment and may sicken people—children in particular—for generations to come. The twentieth-century struggle to control smelter pollution shares many similarities with public health battles with such industries as tobacco and asbestos where industry supported science created doubt about harm, and reluctant government regulators did not take decisive action to protect the public’s health.

On August 25, 1928, a black sedan pulled into the dusty circular driveway of a farmhouse in the tiny rural community of Catawissa, Missouri. The sheriff of St. Louis County emerged from the vehicle and walked slowly up the front steps. A middle-aged farmwife answered his knock. She spoke quietly with him, excused herself to powder her face, then allowed herself to be led outside and taken away. Authorities sought to question her in a mystery which had been building for twenty years: Was she a selfless saint who voluntarily cared for the acutely ill in order to nurse them back to health and restore them to their families, or a minister of death whose crimes would qualify her as Americaas first female serial killer? In this riveting nonfiction memoir, S. Kay Murphy recounts the tale of searching for the truth about her great-grandmotheraaccused murderer Bertha Gifford.

Marc Almond's story features a larger than life cast of characters. It recounts his "de rigeur" plunge into drink, drugs, and debauchery as well as being an intimate portrait of the star-making personalities of the 1980s.

So many love stories stop at the wedding vows...when couples pledge to love each other "for better or worse, in sickness and health, til death do us part." But not this one. In 1968, Linda sat next to a handsome sailor in the Penn State cafeteria. Who could resist a handsome sailor? Not Linda, who fell head over heels in love. Against the backdrop of the tumultuous sixties, they married and had three children, and Bud became the Navy officer of his dreams. But their perfect Navy family life unraveled with Bud's frightening symptoms hearkening back to two tours in Vietnam. A sudden collapse led to a diagnosis virtually impossible for a vital young man. While Linda raised their children and followed her vows to care for her husband, two questions plagued her: How could her young and healthy husband suddenly have such a sinister cancer? And how could his beloved Navy abandon him? On a mission of love, Linda spent years unearthing what really happened to Bud, only to find that the military that discarded him had hidden the truth about his illness for decades. Tainted Seas is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking story of a passionate couple coping with tragedy, and the continuing journey of a woman dedicated to justice for military families shattered by the very institutions they nobly served. A loving wife on a mission of true love and truth proves that nothing can stay hidden forever--even against the power of the US government.