Showing results by narrator "Bernadette" in All Categories

We need only scan the latest news headlines to see how bias and prejudice harm adults and children alike - every single day. Police shootings that give rise to the Black Lives Matter revolution, rampant sexual harassment of women and the subsequent #MeToo movement, and extreme violence toward trans men and women are just three examples.

Barb Barrett has inadequate skills for relationships. In particular, she cannot follow her husband’s instructions. Because of this character “flaw,” she falls through the safety net of her lousy marriage, losing custody of her children and her home as she plummets. Guided only by her intense inner life, and a questionable business plan, Barb is determined to reinvent herself. She moves into a house once occupied by the literary genius Vladimir Nabokov, author of the notorious Lolita.

A young boy's freak accident leads Riley Spartz to investigate a homicide in the closed religious society of the Amish. No women near the small Minnesota town have been reported missing and because the victim's face is damaged, she can't be identified without the help of a forensic artist. When she finally is recognized as Sarah Yoder, a young Amish woman, the police have difficulty investigating the case because the Amish believe in forgiveness rather than prosecution, and no one in the community is talking.

Taking place in the quintessential Canadian town, The Night Bell moves between the past and the present as two mysteries converge. A discovery of the bones of murdered children is made on land that was once a county foster home. Now it's being developed as a brand-new subdivision whose first residents are already railing against broken promises and corruption. But when three of their number are murdered after the bones are found, their frustration turns to terror.

Martha "Marty" Nickerson, an assistant district attorney on Cape Cod, speaks for victims of crime and their families and sees the system as a means for doing right. After she wins a murder case, a suspect is put behind bars. But soon another body turns up in disturbingly similar circumstances. Did Marty and her colleagues target the wrong man? Her supervisor refuses to reopen such a high-profile case. But Marty fears that the real killer will strike again.

Elizabeth, a member of the "sandwich generation", people caught in the middle of simultaneously caring for their children and for their aging parents, is the mother of Ava and the daughter of Daddy, and responsible for both. Hers is the story of a woman's struggle to keep her family whole, to raise her child in a house of laughter and love, and to keep her father from hiding the house keys in his slippers.

Chris Dubbs tells the fascinating stories of Edith Wharton, Nellie Bly, and more than 30 other American women who worked as war reporters. As Dubbs shows, stories by these journalists brought in women from the periphery of war and made them active participants - fully engaged and equally heroic, if bearing different burdens and making different sacrifices. Women journalists traveled from belligerent capitals to the front lines to report on the conflict. But their experiences also brought them into contact with social transformations, political unrest, labor conditions, and more.

Felix Ketay, a 25-year-old Los Angeles dyke, has her foundations shaken when she’s ditched by her pomosexual girlfriend and then gay-bashed on the streets of West Hollywood. Felix’s old-school lesbian aunt, Anna Lisa Hill, ran away from home in 1965 at age 19 and ended up in Lilac Mines, a small town in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills with a small but tight-knit butch/femme community.

How did life begin on Earth? Does it exist elsewhere? What would those life forms be like? These fundamental questions about the nature of life and our own cosmic significance are endlessly fascinating. In this book, we present several theories on the origin of life, some of its extreme and surprising forms, and the ongoing search for signs - or sentience - on distant worlds.

Since her husband Eddie's death in a boating accident eight months ago, Alice Glendenning has struggled to make ends meet while waiting for the insurance company to pay up. When Alice takes a job as a real estate agent, she makes a new friend, Charlie Hobbs, from whom she is supposed to try to buy his waterfront land for a developer. Things quickly become a nightmare for Alice when her two children, Ashley and Jamie, aren't on the school bus home one day.

When an illegal Mexican immigrant is shot to death on a ranch outside Dallas, it makes the news, not because of the immigrant but because of the shooter, rising political star Senator Chase. The death appears to be a hunting accident, and the well-loved senator spins the disaster artfully with his tearful press conference. But then the wife of the victim steps forward with another tale and evidence of a cover-up of epic proportions.

Disillusioned with the celebrity world, Rosie Richardson escapes to run a refugee camp in the African jungle. When famine strikes and a massive refugee influx heads for the camp, governments and agencies drag their heels. Bringing her former media savvy to the fore, realizing the only way to get food out fast is to bring celebrities first, Rosie turns to the life and man she fled to organize a star-studded emergency appeal from famine-racked Africa.

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride is inspired by "The Robber Bridegroom", a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends.

Since 2000, America's most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College in Virginia, a small Christian school that has earned the nickname "God's Harvard". Most of these students are home-schoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. The school grooms them to become the Christian elite of tomorrow, dispatching them to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science to wage the battle to take back a godless nation.

Millennials and Generation Z, the largest generations in the workforce, want to work for and do business with organizations that promote equity and inclusion. But how does any organization - or individual - move from good intentions to meaningful action? In Inclusive 360: Proven Solutions for an Equitable Organization, Bernadette Smith delivers a systematic road map towards a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization. This progressive path is full of inspiring ideas from the world's most innovative companies - easily adapted for one's own organization.

Still Water Saints chronicles a momentous year in the life of Agua Mansa, a largely Latino town beyond the fringes of Los Angeles. Agua Mansa is home to the Botanica Oshun, where people come seeking charms, herbs, candles, and above all, the guidance of the shop's owner, Perla Portillo. Perla has served the community for years, arming her clients with the tools to overcome all manner of crises, large and small.

The brutal murder of LaVerne Stordock, a respected family man and former police detective, shocked the residents of his rural Wisconsin community. On the surface, the case seemed closed with the confession of Stordock's second wife, Suzanne. But the trail of secrets and lies that began with his death did not end with his widow's conviction. Ever since she was a teenager, Dorothy Marcic was haunted by unresolved questions surrounding the killing of her uncle. Though she led a busy life as a playwright, theatrical producer, and university professor, she couldn't put her doubts to rest.

Charles Kendrick, a senior U.S. senator, is a suspect in the disappearance of a young female staff member. A multi-state manhunt is already underway, and the district attorney is pressuring Kendrick for an interview, which his lawyer, Marty, doesn't want to grant. At the same time, Marty and her law partner and lover, Harry Madigan, are preparing the defense of a man accused of murdering a priest. Both defendants are lying, but to whom? And can their actions be justified?

At the urgent request of Harry Madigan, Martha "Marty" Nickerson takes on the defense of Louisa Rawlins, a woman suspected of murdering her wealthy husband. Harry is Marty's law partner, her lover, and, coincidentally, Louisa Rawlins' ex-lover. Glamorous and charismatic, Louisa is the polar opposite of Marty. Though the evidence against Louisa is compelling, Marty's gut tells her that something doesn't quite fit. Yet, as the trial progresses, Marty begins to doubt her own judgment.

In the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice.