The annual summer visit to the country home of the Old Ones, the uncles and aunts who raised Daddy, brings joy and good times.

Popular fiction author Sally John's first series The Other Way Home (more than 65,000 copies sold) comes to life with a fresh, new cover for a new audience of readers. In A Winding Road Home, the fourth book of the series, two stories are beautifully woven together. Kate Kilpatrick has only one goal—a byline above the fold in a high profile newspaper. But Tanner Carlucci challenges her determination to put career above everything. Adele Chandler gave up on love long ago. A single mom, her priorities are raising her teenage daughter and directing the community's nursing home. Then two men enter her life and change it forever. Sorting through new decisions and consequences, Adele is forced to look at her heart and wonder if love can bloom there again. The Winding Road Home is an inspiring story about how God is a sure Guide through unplanned detours along life's way.

Pentecost! I might have wished that I had never heard the word. In my entire life, nothing else has affected me more profoundly, caused me more anguish, or consumed me more completely than Pentecost! I loved it. I hated it. It shaped me. It destroyed me. It saved me. One way or the other, Pentecost is the story of my life. And I still believe. It has been a LONG WINDING ROAD.

A young architect's search for new architectural values in a time of economic crisis. I paused at the stoop and thought this could be the basis of a good book. The story of a young man who went deep into the bowels of the academy in order to understand architecture and found it had been on his doorstep all along. This had an air of hokeyness about it, but it had been a tough couple of days and I was feeling sentimental about the warm confines of the studio which had unceremoniously discharged me upon the world.—from Down Detour Road What does it say about the value of architecture that as the world faces economic and ecological crises, unprecedented numbers of architects are out of work? This is the question that confronted architect Eric Cesal as he finished graduate school at the onset of the worst financial meltdown in a generation. Down Detour Road is his journey: one that begins off-course, and ends in a hopeful new vision of architecture. Like many architects of his generation, Cesal confronts a cold reality. Architects may assure each other of their own importance, but society has come to view architecture as a luxury it can do without. For Cesal, this recognition becomes an occasion to rethink architecture and its value from the very core. He argues that the times demand a new architecture, an empowered architecture that is useful and relevant. New architectural values emerge as our cultural values shift: from high risks to safe bets, from strong portfolios to strong communities, and from clean lines to clean energy.This is not a book about how to run a firm or a profession; it doesn't predict the future of architectural form or aesthetics. It is a personal story—and in many ways a generational one: a story that follows its author on a winding detour across the country, around the profession, and into a new architectural reality.

Brian Duncan, a twelve- year- old boy, dreams of coming to America. On his arrival in New York, his expectations are dashed by his experiences and that of his family. He becomes despondent, depressed, and homesick and dreads going to school. Brian, in this vulnerable state, is befriended by a kid who introduces him to street-wise activities which could have serious consequences. During one of these ‘errands’, an unsuspecting Brian becomes part of a police investigation, resulting in his parents threatening to send him back to his home country. He is scared to lose his freedom on the one hand, and his family on the other. He chooses to stay in school, and work hard at improving his grades if he is to achieve the American Dream. He makes new friends, studies hard, and throws his energy into playing basketball. However, when his family falls on hard times, Brian thinks that he can be of some financial assistance by returning temporarily to that way of life that got him in trouble in the first place. The consequences of that decision are devastating. He is finally convinced after his traumatic experience that to go down that winding road can not only be dangerous but also deadly.

How did Britain transform itself from a nation of workhouses to one that became a model for the modern welfare state? The Winding Road to the Welfare State investigates the evolution of living standards and welfare policies in Britain from the 1830s to 1950 and provides insights into how British working-class households coped with economic insecurity. George Boyer examines the retrenchment in Victorian poor relief, the Liberal Welfare Reforms, and the beginnings of the postwar welfare state, and he describes how workers altered spending and saving methods based on changing government policies. From the cutting back of the Poor Law after 1834 to Parliament’s abrupt about-face in 1906 with the adoption of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, Boyer offers new explanations for oscillations in Britain’s social policies and how these shaped worker well-being. The Poor Law’s increasing stinginess led skilled manual workers to adopt self-help strategies, but this was not a feasible option for low-skilled workers, many of whom continued to rely on the Poor Law into old age. In contrast, the Liberal Welfare Reforms were a major watershed, marking the end of seven decades of declining support for the needy. Concluding with the Beveridge Report and Labour’s social policies in the late 1940s, Boyer shows how the Liberal Welfare Reforms laid the foundations for a national social safety net. A sweeping look at economic pressures after the Industrial Revolution, The Winding Road to the Welfare State illustrates how British welfare policy waxed and waned over the course of a century.

Raymond is remembered by historians today for surviving a bomb placed in his automobile by a secret squad of the Los Angeles Police Department. After the bombing, newspapers across the country ran photographs showing him stalwartly smoking a cigarette while doctors removed shrapnel from his legs. This brazen attempt on his life would transform Los Angeles, leading to the recall of the mayor, the termination of many Los Angeles Police Department leaders, and the imprisonment of members of a secret LAPD police squad. The assassination attempt would also fuel the growth of Las Vegas, to where many LA underworld figures migrated afterward.For some, Harry Raymond would go down in Los Angeles history as a modern knight in the story of the city's corrupt days, a real-life Philip Marlowe. Others, looking back at his previous career, regarded him as the kind of cop Marlowe hated: brutal and unscrupulous. Although Raymond often worked for the LAPD as a special investigator, he also associated with leading underworld figures of the twenties and thirties. Although it was never clear which side he was on, there was no doubt that he knew a lot about what was wrong with Los Angeles and almost paid the ultimate price for his knowledge.While my book focuses mainly on Raymond's career, its backdrop is LA's growth in the first decades of the twentieth century. It not only tells Raymond's story for the first time but also recounts the history of LA's criminal underworld in the pre-War era. It should appeal both to the general public and scholars interested in the history of Los Angeles in the first part of the twentieth century.