Two hearts, two souls. Devastated by loss, united through destiny.The rules: Communicate only through text messages and never reveal our real names or other personal details.My name is Ean Montgomery. After the drunk-driving accident that killed my wife, son, and unborn daughter, I was forced to see a grief counselor. In an unconventional move, she gave me a private cell phone and the first initial of the name of a woman who had been widowed by the same accident.I h...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.Independent businesses in the United States have been under attack in recent decades. Large chains, or "big-box" stores, have dominated the market for nearly every product, in the process homogenizing our once unique Main Streets. Now local communities across the country are fighting back, and Stacy Mitchell is helping to shape the too...

I wasn't supposed to take on any new clients.All my current couples were already a handful.A marriage therapist with a failing marriage.If only they knew.That is until Kami Lynn walked into my office without her husband.I only treated couples.I was supposed to help save her marriage; instead, I was the main reason for its destruction.I did everything the way I was supposed to.I graduated college.Went straight into my career.

Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement.Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal...

National bestselling author Kiki Swinson never lets up with relentless characters, unpredictable twists, and a merciless depiction of Southern striving, scheming—and dying. Now she takes you to the explosive beginnings of wild-card lawyerYoshi Lomax, who discovers that even a life of privilege isn’t bullet proof …The perfect storm …Young, irreverent, and reckless, Yoshi is struggling to make good at her prestigious college and keep her demanding mother off her back, w...

When I envisioned the life that I wanted for myself, I pictured myself sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery me and my husband had spent months designing. I pictured looking down at a baby that resembled the both of us, and thanking God that he chose me to be their mother.My reality was that I was staring down at another negative pregnancy test and realizing the possibility that I had failed another cycle of IVF, alone.There was no husband here to comfort me, or a nurse...

Every day I turned my camera on, sat in front of my tripod, and recorded myself doing my makeup, hair, or getting ready for an event. My supporters watched wishing they had the newest designer bag that I had just worn, or the mountains upon mountains of PR every brand sent to my front door. They wanted to be Harlym J., and I mean, I couldn’t blame them. I made this lifestyle look like a piece of cake with three cherries on top.What they didn’t see was the breakdowns, tears, and wee...

When four college friends formed the Brown Sugarettes Mastermind Group, they had very different goals—but matched each other in ambition. Yet ten years later they can’t help wondering what happened to thehopeful, confident, driven women they used to be—and how to get them back …Radio personality Raina, known as “the black Delilah,” hates the wholesome persona that’s made her a success.Doling out syrupy versions of her grandma’s wisdom feels worlds away from the...

The American musical is a paradox. On stage or screen, musicals at once hold a dominant and a contested place in the worlds of entertainment, art, and scholarship. Born from a mélange of performance forms that included opera and operetta, vaudeville and burlesque, minstrelsy and jazz, musicals have always sought to amuse more than instruct, and to make money more than make political change. In spite of their unapologetic commercialism, though, musicals have achieved supreme artistry and ha...

Issues of identity have always been central to the American musical in all its guises. Who appears in musicals, who or what they are meant to represent, and how, over time, those representations have been understood and interpreted, provide the very basis for our engagement with the genre. In this third volume of the reissued Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, chapters focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, regional vs. national identity, and the cultural and class...

For the past several years, the American musical has continued to thrive by reflecting and shaping cultural values and social norms, and even commenting on politics, whether directly and on a national scale (Hamilton) or somewhat more obliquely and on a more intimate scale (Fun Home). New stage musicals, such as Come from Away and The Band's Visit, open on Broadway every season, challenging conventions of form and content, and revivals offer audiences a ...

This knife-edge psychological thriller set in the entertainment hotbed of Atlanta delivers a gripping, twisty tale of one psychologist and six talented but dangerously toxic clients who push her to her own vulnerable limits—and maybe beyond—with cruel and unexpected consequences.Dr. Victoria Benning knows it’s unethical to discuss the therapy sessions of her clients, but the drama of their unpredictable lives tests her professional role like never before.First, she counsels...