Corrupt California homeowner associations are the stuff of which lawsuits and websites are made. Often, associations are the graveyards for homeowners dreams. You may live in one, if you do, youll want to read how a used car salesman inherited a home in the Austin Hills Homeowners Association and drove it toward catastrophe. Lincoln Bosworth cares nothing for the exquisite rural beauty of Austin Hills. His single-minded goal is accumulating a following of sycophants to hold control of the associations board of directors. Exploiting giant gaps in homeowner law, and aided by unethical lawyers, Bosworth abuses board power, openly defies the restrictions of the governing documents and gains control over two million dollars of assessment money. He will spend as he pleases and what seems to please him most is to reward friends for their loyalty. He drives those who oppose him from the association. Not content to purge from within, he plans a massive gate to exclude those who dont belong. Braving the wrath of Bosworth, the members finally manage to elect one of their own to the board. Randy Peterson now serves on the board with a passion for justice, and his criticisms and revelations are a threat. For Bosworth, however, Randy is just one more obstacle to be handled. Then, on a hot August afternoon, one of the boards decisions results in a tragic accident that claims four lives. Bosworth launches a propaganda campaign and Randy becomes a real threat as he aligns with law enforcement and reveals the corruption of the board. A sheriffs detective figures one of Bosworths board members was involved in the accident. Was it really an accident, or was it manslaughter? Whatever it was, it leads to coldblooded murder. A link between the accident and the murder is too thin for prosecution and the investigation appears to stall. The newspapers call the murder a perfect crime and why not? In Franklin County, half of all murders go unsolved. Will this be one?

First Published in 1991.During its last decades, the Kingdom of Laos was inhabited by a gentle people with a few astonishingly able leaders. When the Vietnamese war monopolized American headlines, the little country became famous for the wrong reasons. This book was conceived as an attempt to tell of the Laos the author knew: its people, its culture, its history as he does not want the kingdom to disappear without some written record of why it was so special.

This keepsake hardcover storybook follows the everyday adventures of fairy princess Holly and her best friend, Ben the elf. Based on the Nick Jr. TV show, from the creators of Peppa Pig!

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler delivers an inventive collection of three novellas that are a magical companion to his acclaimed longer fictions. • "Millhauser makes our world turn amazing!" —The New York Times Book Review Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect in Little Kingdoms. In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them.

This handbook presents a multilayered and multidimensional history of state formation in premodern India. It explores dense and rich local and subregional historiography from the mid-first millennium BC to the eighteenth century in South Asia. Shifting the focus away from economic and political factors, this handbook revises the conventional understanding of states and empires and locates them in their quotidian conduct and activity on socio-cultural and concomitant factors. Comprehensive in scope, this handbook addresses a range of themes connected with the idea of state formation in the subcontinent. It includes discussions and debates on ritual practices and the Brahmanical order in early India; the Delhi Sultanate and role of Sultans among the Hindu kings; the cosmopolitan ‘Islamicate’ cultural influences on Puranic Hinduism; cultural background of the Mughal state. The handbook examines new questions and ideologies of state formation, such as: · facets of violence and resistance; · the significance of the autonomous spaces and forests; · regional elites, including ‘Little kings’; tribal background of some famous cults; · trade and maritime commerce; · royal patronage, courtly manners, lineage formation; · imperial architecture, monuments, and temple, among others. Featuring case studies from different part of the India subcontinent, and with contributions by renowned historians, this authoritative handbook will be an indispensable reading for teachers, scholars, and students of early India, medieval India, premodern India, South Asian history, Asian history, historiography, economic history, historical sociology, and South Asia studies.

This is an invaluable work looking into new areas relating to India's princely states. Based on an abundance of rarely used archival material, the book sheds new light on diversities related to the princely states such as health policies and practices, gender issues, the states’ military contribution or the mechanisms for controlling or integrating the states. Contributions are from international, reputable scholars, and they present historiographic, analytical and methodological approaches, placing attention to concepts, theories and sources. Inter-disciplinary in nature, this book will appeal to scholars and researchers of South Asia, studies of transnational histories, cultural and racial studies, international politics and economic history and the social history of health and medicine.

Focusing mainly on the Mappila Muslim trading family of the Arackal Ali Rajas, this book throws light on the repercussions of European commercial expansion on the traditional socio-political relations in the South Indian kigdom of Cannanore during the early-modern period.

Why has monarchy been such a prevalent institution throughout history and in such a diverse range of societies? Kingship is at the heart of both ritual and politics and has major implications for the theory of social and cultural anthropology. Yet, despite the contemporary fascination with royalty, anthropologists have sorely neglected the subject in recent decades. This book combines a strong theoretical argument with a wealth of ethnography from kingships in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Quigley gives a timely and much-needed overview of the anthropology of kingship and a crucial reassessment of the contributions of Frazer and Hocart to debates about the nature and function of royal ritual. From diverse fieldwork sites, a number of eminent anthropologists demonstrate how ritual and power intertwine to produce a series of variations around myth, tragedy and historical realities. However, underneath this diversity, two common themes invariably emerge: the attempt to portray kingship as timeless and perfect, and the dual nature of the king as sacred being and scapegoat.

"Grace is more than just a story, it's more than just a theology, and it's more than just a powerful force—no, grace is a person, and his name is Jesus. Jesus is the grace of God." — Paul David Tripp There is nothing we can do to earn God's grace—it is a gift. Through 40 daily meditations from his best-selling devotional New Morning Mercies, popular author and speaker Paul David Tripp explores the role grace plays in the everyday life of a Christian. He reminds us that God, in his infinite mercy, can radically transform even the weakest people by the life-changing power of his grace through his Son, Jesus Christ.