When investigative reporter Riley Spartz hears that a young boy is trapped in a sinkhole located in the peaceful Amish farm country outside Minneapolis, she uncovers a dark web of fraud and deception.

An insular Amish town . . . A secret that won’t stay buried . . . Minneapolis’s star investigative reporter Riley Spartz is constantly in search of her next TV sweeps piece. When she hears that a young boy is trapped at the bottom of a sinkhole, she smells ratings. Little does she know just how big the story will be—not only does it involve a tragic murder, but the local Amish community as well. Once Riley is on the case, though, she sees that solving it will be anything but easy. When Riley finds a clue the cops have missed, she uncovers a dark web of fraud and deception in the community—driven by motives as old as the Bible: sex and money. Riley will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice, and she is determined to do so before anyone—including herself—becomes the next target.

Although acceptance of difference is on the rise in America, it's the rare gay or lesbian person who has not been demeaned because of his or her sexual orientation, and this experience usually starts at home, among family members. Whether they are excluded from family love and approval, expected to accept second-class status for life, ignored by mainstream arts and entertainment, or abandoned when intervention would make all the difference, gay people are routinely subjected to forms of psychological and physical abuse unknown to many straight Americans. “Familial homophobia,” as prizewinning writer and professor Sarah Schulman calls it, is a phenomenon that until now has not had a name but that is very much a part of life for the LGBT community. In the same way that Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will transformed our understanding of rape by moving the stigma from the victim to the perpetrator, Schulman's Ties That Bind calls on us to recognize familial homophobia. She invites us to understand it not as a personal problem but a widespread cultural crisis. She challenges us to take up our responsibilities to intervene without violating families, community, and the state. With devastating examples, Schulman clarifies how abusive treatment of homosexuals at home enables abusive treatment of homosexuals in other relationships as well as in society at large. Ambitious, original, and deeply important, Schulman's book draws on her own experiences, her research, and her activism to probe this complex issue—still very much with us at the start of the twenty-first century—and to articulate a vision for a more accepting world.

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference. This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals. Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

National Bestseller Featuring a foreword by Billy Corgan “JT LeRoy’s masterful imagination, command of story, and easy sense of the mythological are a rare combination that demands attention.” — Toronto Star Sarah never admits that she’s his mother, but the beautiful boy has watched her survive as a “lot lizard”: a prostitute working the West Virginia truck stops. Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever. With his own leather mini-skirt and a makeup bag that closes with Velcro, the young “Cherry Vanilla” embarks on a journey through the Appalachian wilds, dining on transcendental cuisine, supplicating to the mystical Jackalope, encountering the most terrifying of pimps, walking on water, being venerated as an innocent girl saint—and then being denounced as the devil. By turns exhilarating and shocking, magical and realistic, Sarah brings urgency, wit, and imagination to an unknown and unforgettable world.

A collection of three page-turners in Julie Kramer’s bestselling series featuring television reporter Riley Spartz—for fans of Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton. Silencing Sam When a widely despised gossip columnist is found shot to death, TV reporter Riley Spartz must secretly investigate a case in which she becomes the prime suspect. Amid murder, she discovers news and gossip have more in common than she ever imagined. Killing Kate Crime-solving means high ratings for Minnesota TV reporter Riley Spartz when she nails the culprit behind Silencing Sam (“Sexy, sinister.” —Linda Fairstein). But the stakes rise when Riley must piece together a serial killer’s murderous motive for Killing Kate. Shunning Sarah When Riley hears that a young boy is trapped in a sinkhole located in the peaceful Amish farm country outside Minneapolis, her reporter’s nose catches the sweet odor of a TV sweeps piece. But not even Riley realizes just how big the story really is…

There were things at Teind House that strangers must never find; things that must be kept concealed from the prying world at all costs . . . Selina March has lived in the remote Scottish hamlet of Inchcape, with its mysterious Round Tower, for nearly fifty years. Brought up by elderly relatives, long since dead, she now lives alone, shunning the outside world. But when she reluctantly accepts a paying guest, Selina's secluded life will change for ever. Crime writer Joanna Savile has come to Inchcape to research her latest novel by interviewing inmates at Moy, the asylum for the criminally insane situated nearby. Her secret aim is to question former child murderer, Mary Maskelyne, Moy's most infamous patient. Joanna's prying will yield unexpected results. For, although they have never met, Selina March and Mary Maskelyne are connected by a shared family tragedy: a terrible act of unspeakable cruelty that took place in India fifty years before. And there are secrets in Selina's more recent past, too. Secrets that are about to be uncovered with the most devastating and horrifying consequences . . .

Somewhere in the world, a murderer is poised to strike. Meet the men and women who can stop him before it’s too late. Introducing fifteen of the most clever and irresistible sleuths in world literature. SAMPLE EXCERPTS FROM: COLLECTING COOPER by Paul Cleave THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly BURNED by Thomas Enger MIDWINTER BLOOD by Mons Kallentoft SHUNNING SARAH by Julie Kramer NORTHWEST ANGLE by William Kent Krueger LAST WILL by Liza Marklund DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Walter Mosley BLESSED ARE THE DEAD by Malla Nunn UNWANTED by Kristina Ohlsson DOG ON IT by Spencer Quinn THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES by M. J. Rose THE GOAT WOMAN OF LARGO BAY by Gillian Royes A DOUBLE DEATH ON THE BLACK ISLE by A. D. Scott SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST by Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due, and Steven Barnes

A collection of excerpts from Julie Kramer’s novels. SILENCING SAM In this town, gossip kills . . . When a widely despised gossip columnist is found shot to death, Riley Spartz must secretly investigate a case in which she becomes the prime suspect. In the wake of the brutal murder, she discovers that news and gossip have more in common than she ever imagined. KILLING KATE Not all angels are divine . . . As TV reporter Riley Spartz discovers a serial killer drawing chalk outlines shaped like angels around the bodies of his victims, she unearths an eerie legend dating back nearly a century. Tracking clues to an Iowa cemetery, Riley finds an infamous Black Angel monument that may be connected to the string of homicides throughout the Midwest. Now she is up against a delusional young man who believes the statue is urging him to kill. SHUNNING SARAH An insular Amish town . . . A secret that won’t stay buried . . . Minneapolis’s star investigative reporter Riley Spartz is constantly in search of her next TV sweeps piece. When she hears that a young boy is trapped at the bottom of a sinkhole, she smells ratings. Little does she know just how big the story will be—not only does it involve a tragic murder, but the local Amish community as well. Once Riley is on the case, though, she sees that solving it will be anything but easy. DELIVERING DEATH Be careful what you open… When Riley Spartz receives a package of teeth in the mail at work, she’s quickly embroiled in a homicide investigation that spirals into one of the odder cases the Minneapolis police force has ever seen. Though the cops try to keep certain grisly details quiet, this murder has a strange twist—it seems that the killer wants the crime publicized. As the stakes continue to rise for her job and her life, Riley must outwit the killer in a trap that could leave yet another person dead...

The American West. Just as America attracted millions to her shores by building upon a foundation of freedom, democracy, and a new start, the lands beyond the Mississippi would also attract people from all over the world with visions of opportunity and wide open spaces and provide America with legends and myths that have yet to die. In Westward, the history of the Old American West unfolds in twenty-eight original stories written especially for this unique collection that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Western Writers of America. Featuring stories handpicked by four-time Spur Award-winning author Dale L. Walker, Westward is a time capsule of the Old American West, from the first horse ever seen by a North American Indian to a man who escaped from the Alamo, from the massacre at Mountain Meadows to Libbie Custer's great secret, from the Apache wars to the California gold rush. And such luminaries of the West as Crazy Horse, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, King Fisher, Doc Holliday, Belle Starr, John Wesley Hardin, and the one black man to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition are brought to life in these colorful and dramatic tales. Here, the ghosts of the Old West, some already there, others lured to that vast and trackless land of the setting sun, will talk to you in this volume of short stories to be treasured. Includes new short fiction by: Arthur Winfield Knight Bill Crider Bill Gulick C. F. Eckhardt Cotton Smith Dale L. Walker Dan Aadland Don Coldsmith Elaine Long Emery L. Mehok Ivon B. Blum James Reasoner Janet E. Graebner John Jakes John V. Breen Lenore Carroll Linda Sandifer Loren D. Estleman Matt Braun Michelle Black Otis Carney Richard C. House Richard S. Wheeler Riley Froh Rod Miller Susan K. Salzer Troy D. Smith Win Blevins At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.