Tells the story of an unsolved mass murder of five family members in rural Wisconsin

"How well do you know your wife, Mr Crookham?" Peter Crookham arrives home late from work to a bloodbath: his journalist brother, Andy, is dead - covered in knife wounds - and his beautiful young wife, Mariana, is bathed in his blood. Convinced his wife is incapable of murder, Peter vows to clear her name. Yet he is forced to question his conviction when he discovers the subject of Andy's final investigation - Mariana's past. This past, Peter will discover, is inextricably linked to one man: an elusive, mysterious figure affiliated with the then East German security service, the STASI. But this man is more than that. Much more. And so is Mariana Crookham.

In this spine-tingling thriller--the dark offspring of The Lives of Others and The Fugitive--an architect races against the clock to clear his wife of his brother's murder. Architect Peter Crookham is running late for a dinner party with his estranged journalist brother and his gorgeous German wife, Mariana. He enters his home to discover his brother viciously stabbed to death and his wife covered in blood and clutching a knife, in a nearly catatonic state. Refusing to accept that Mariana could be responsible for Andy's death, Peter vows to clear her name. As he begins to search the past for clues, Peter soon learns that Andy had been looking into Mariana's murky past in Germany, and had even traveled to Berlin to piece together some facts about her childhood. Anxious for answers, Peter retraces his brother's steps in East Berlin--and finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving violent remnants of the former East German security service, the feared STASI. With a split narrative that alternates back and forth between Peter's current hunt for the truth and the horrendous realities of life in communist East Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, Blood Relative asks the question: How well do we really know the ones we love?

A suburban teenager is targeted by a traumatized survivor of a brutal dictatorship in this “fast-paced tale of obsession” (The New York Times). Pretty and popular sixteen-year-old Mariah Ebinger enjoys a pleasant and peaceful life, though she sometimes wonders about herself. She experiences weird dreams, and has an inexplicable phobia about helicopters. Strangest of all is her ability to speak Spanish. Rolando Carrera, a man from thousands of miles away, might be able to explain some of the mystery—but he has no intention of doing that. Years ago, his wife and daughter were murdered by the death squads in Argentina’s infamous “dirty war.” Now Carrera has crossed some terrible internal line. His grief and rage have blended into a toxic cocktail of obsession with one single burning aim: Kill Mariah Ebinger. . . . “Hougan is a master.” —Library Journal “Hougan’s sharp prose imparts urgency to her sensitively rendered account of all-too-plausible violence and its chilling consequences.” —Publishers Weekly

Investigation Discovery (ID) TV aired an episode loosely adapted as a partially fictionalized version of this book. Now read the REAL story. "BLOOD RELATIVES" proves that truth is stranger than fiction. This is a "who done it" with twists and turns and multiple murders you won't see coming. The characters and events are REAL - including "the mother who legalized abortion in America," and her children who are caught up in complex family relationships resulting from adoption, abortion, incest, greed, corruption and murders. Just as one may hand down a family recipe, this story, which takes the reader from the 1960s to the present, the story provides an intriguing mix of Southern pride and prejudice, mystery, motives and murders. Turn up the heat, stir in the action, add a pinch of reasonable doubt, allow to simmer, and feed your craving for a bloody tale.

The essays in Relative Values draw on new work in anthropology, science studies, gender theory, critical race studies, and postmodernism to offer a radical revisioning of kinship and kinship theory. Through a combination of vivid case studies and trenchant theoretical essays, the contributors—a group of internationally recognized scholars—examine both the history of kinship theory and its future, at once raising questions that have long occupied a central place within the discipline of anthropology and moving beyond them. Ideas about kinship are vital not only to understanding but also to forming many of the practices and innovations of contemporary society. How do the cultural logics of contemporary biopolitics, commodification, and globalization intersect with kinship practices and theories? In what ways do kinship analogies inform scientific and clinical practices; and what happens to kinship when it is created in such unfamiliar sites as biogenetic labs, new reproductive technology clinics, and the computers of artificial life scientists? How does kinship constitute—and get constituted by—the relations of power that draw lines of hierarchy and equality, exclusion and inclusion, ambivalence and violence? The contributors assess the implications for kinship of such phenomena as blood transfusions, adoption across national borders, genetic support groups, photography, and the new reproductive technologies while ranging from rural China to mid-century Africa to contemporary Norway and the United States. Addressing these and other timely issues, Relative Values injects new life into one of anthropology's most important disciplinary traditions. Posing these and other timely questions, Relative Values injects an important interdisciplinary curiosity into one of anthropology’s most important disciplinary traditions. Contributors. Mary Bouquet, Janet Carsten, Charis Thompson Cussins, Carol Delaney, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Sarah Franklin, Deborah Heath, Stefan Helmreich, Signe Howell, Jonathan Marks, Susan McKinnon, Michael G. Peletz, Rayna Rapp, Martine Segalen, Pauline Turner Strong, Melbourne Tapper, Karen-Sue Taussig, Kath Weston, Yunxiang Yan

Alan Davis' freaky family returns! They've existed, hidden among mankind for centuries, a mysterious bloodline of superhumans, eternal and apart. And all they've desired is to be left alone, to pursue their individual interests in peace. But now, the existence of their hidden clan is threatened with exposure by the activities of one of their youngest siblings, Rory Destine, who aspires to be the costumed crimefighter called the Crimson Crusader! And now that the cat's been let out of the bag, who or what is going to come calling at the Destine family's Ravenscroft doorway? Collects ClanDestine #1-5.