Mag and Clara Balefire are back for another humorous mystery novel featuring witches and other paranormal characters. In this caper, there’s a dead body, a country club pool that has more than chlorine in it, a scheme to get Mag back to her true age, and you can be sure that Hagatha Crow will stir up trouble. If you like a fun paranormal mystery with a heaping dollop of sarcasm and wit, you'll love this humorous magical story full of chaos and intrigue. Books in this series: Murder Above the Fold Murder on the Backswing Murder Below the Waterline Haunted by Murder Middle Age Before Beauty

Desperate to stay home with her baby, Allie Harrod launches a new career. Sure, she dropped out of Girl Scouts because she was lousy at cookie sales, but makeup is different, right? She'll do anything to make enough money to cover her share of the household bills, but how can she focus on her business when her list of problems is growing? None of her pre-baby clothes fit, her checking account is dwindling, and her mother-in-law has decided to move in! To top it off, her husband's attractive coworker suddenly needs his help every weekend. Middle sister Joan insists that God has the answers to all her problems, but Allie isn't so sure. Can she really trust him? A lighthearted contemporary tale of family, faith, and fun, Age before Beauty is the second book in the Sister-to-Sister series from well-reviewed author Virginia Smith.

Made Up exposes the multibillion-dollar beauty industry that promotes unrealistic beauty standards through a market basket of advertising tricks, techniques, and technologies. Cosmetics magnate Charles Revson, a founder of Revlon, was quoted as saying, "In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope." This pioneering entrepreneur, who built an empire on the foundation of nail polish, captured the unvarnished truth about the beauty business in a single metaphor: hope in a jar. Made Up: How the Beauty Industry Manipulates Consumers, Preys on Women’s Insecurities, and Promotes Unattainable Beauty Standards is a thorough examination of innovative, and often controversial, advertising practices used by beauty companies to persuade consumers, mainly women, to buy discretionary goods like cosmetics and scents. These approaches are clearly working: the average American woman will spend around $300,000 on facial products alone during her lifetime. This revealing book traces the evolution of the global beauty industry, discovers what makes beauty consumers tick, explores the persistence and pervasiveness of the feminine beauty ideal, and investigates the myth-making power of beauty advertising. It also examines stereotypical portrayals of women in beauty ads, looks at celebrity beauty endorsements, and dissects the “looks industry.” Made Upuncovers the reality behind an Elysian world of fantasy and romance created by beauty brands that won’t tell women the truth about beauty.

Americans have a gift for coining proverbs. "A picture is worth a thousand words" was not, as you might imagine, the product of ancient Chinese wisdom -- it was actually minted by advertising executive Fred Barnard in a 1921 advertisement for Printer's Ink magazine. After all, Americans are first and foremost a practical people and proverbs can be loosely defined as pithy statements that are generally accepted as true and useful. The next logical step would be to gather all of this wisdom together for a truly American celebration of shrewd advice.A Dictionary of American Proverbs is the first major collection of proverbs in the English language based on oral sources rather than written ones. Listed alphabetically according to their most significant key word, it features over 15,000 entries including uniquely American proverbs that have never before been recorded, as well as thousands of traditional proverbs that have found their way into American speech from classical, biblical, British, continental European, and American literature. Based on the fieldwork conducted over thirty years by the American Dialect Society, this volume is complete with historical references to the earliest written sources, and supplies variants and recorded geographical distribution after each proverb.Many surprised await the reader in this vast treasure trove of wit and wisdom. Collected here are nuggets of popular wisdom on all aspects of American life: weather, agriculture, travel, money, business, food, neighbors, friends, manners, government, politics, law, health, education, religion, music, song, and dance. And, to further enhance browsing pleasure, the editors have provided a detailed guide to the use of the work. While it's true that many of our best known proverbs have been supplied by the ever-present "Anonymous," many more can be attributed to some very famous Americans, like Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas Alva Edison, Abigail Adams, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to name but a few offered in this fascinating collection.Who wouldn't want to know the origin of "the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings?" This uniquely American proverb and many more are gathered together in A Dictionary of American Proverbs. A great resource for students and scholars of literature, psychology, folklore, linguistics, anthropology, and cultural history, this endlessly intriguing volume is also a delightful companion for anyone with an interest in American culture.

What will Mag Balefire do when someone from her past comes back to haunt her? When Bradley Graham disappeared a few weeks before his wedding, everyone assumed he had a case of cold feet. Everyone that is, except for his fiancé and Mag's old friend, a newly-dead medium named Roma who showed up with an entourage of needy spirits. If the Balefire sisters want to get Roma to leave Balms and Bygones, and take all her ghostly friends with her, Mag and Clara must solve the mystery of Bradley’s death. If you like your witches to come with a heaping dollop of sarcasm and wit, you'll love this humorous magical story full of chaos and intrigue. This is a full-length, humorous witch cozy mystery novel. Books in this series 1. Murder Above the Fold 2. Murder on the Backswing 3. Murder Below the Waterline 4. Haunted by Murder Series keywords: witch fantasy mystery, psychic witch mystery comedy, funny romantic paranormal mystery, witch mystery ghosts, mature witch sleuths, spirits and ghosts, fun and funny paranormal mystery series, magical mystery series, mysteries with witches, feel-good mystery, small town mystery, women sleuths, female protagonists, crime-solving witches, witch cozy mystery, witch mystery.

This book examines stereotypical traits of women as they are reflected in Anglo-American anti-proverbs, also known as proverb transformations, deliberate proverb innovations, alterations, parodies, variations, wisecracks, fractured proverbs, and proverb mutations. Through these sayings and witticisms the author delineates the image of women that these anti-proverbs reflect, her qualities, attributes and behavior. The book begins with an analysis of how women’s role in the family, their sexuality and traditional occupations are presented in proverbs, and presents an overview of the genre of the anti-proverb. The author then analyses how this image of women is transformed in anti-proverbs, sometimes subverting, but often reinforcing the sexist bias of the original. This engaging work will appeal to students and scholars of humour studies, paremiology, gender studies, cultural studies, folklore and sociolinguistics alike.

By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema and illustrates the need for a renewed scholarly focus on contemporary film production.

Have you ever had thoughts like these … I’m so stupid. I’ll never get an A in math. I’m sure the whole world is staring at the zits on my chin. Why can’t I be as pretty as the popular girls? We’ve all been there. Some days it seems like every other girl is smarter, prettier, stronger, or more talented. But did you know that God designed you exactly the way he wants you to be? From the top of your head to the ends of your toes, God made you special, with all the right skills, talents, dreams, and passions. This eBook collection is all about what makes you beautiful, one-of-a-kind, and outrageously loved by God. Including several full-length eBooks by your favorite Faithgirlz authors and excerpts from many more, the relevant devotions, helpful advice, and fun tips in this collection will have you better loving yourself and the creative God who made you. Selections included are from The Skin You're In, The Beauty Book, and The Uniquely Me Book, as well as tons of devotional thoughts from many other Faithgirlz favorites.