A Teenage Odyssey for Adults and Mature Teenage Readers: Selected for the "Albuquerque Easy Reading Parade" (Peter Kelton, March 21, 2014): Five stars from the "San Francisco Book Review Magazine" (for the August issue): Five stars from "Midwest Reviews" (Diane Donovan, May 2014): Roger E. Carrier tells an engaging story of youth, redemption, and sexual coming of age in New Mexico. In 1971, seventeen-year-old Shane Russell makes a well-planned escape from a Michigan winter and sets off on a 2,000-mile bus trip in search of a town that exists only between the covers of Richard Bradford's famous New Mexico novel Red Sky at Morning. Driven to recreate the nude scenes and build the mini Mount Rushmore in Bradford's fictional town of Sagrado, Shane forever touches the lives of his widowed landlady, the detective hired to find him, and his new friends at a colorful high school deep in the Land of Enchantment. Against the backdrop of his father's death in Vietnam and life with his stepmother's new boyfriend, Shane flees the painful realities of his life. In doing so, he finds a place where bats fly and love heals the wounds of the human spirit. Shane's sexual coming-of-age with Sandra (his new girlfriend) is both as funny and profound as youth. Become a teenager again in this rare story about the triumph of the human spirit over grief, the great adversary we all must face. The message of the novel is summarized in two words — "Keep Trying."

This optimistic story about love, prejudice, evil, and overcoming grief involves a relentless contrast between innocent teenage sexuality and the psychotic lust of a murderer of young boys. After sixteen-year-old Tom Miller is harassed by a teenage hoodlum. His girlfriend, Sabrina, obtains a voodoo doll from her godmother, ninety-year-old Lady Priscilla. Its purpose is not to kill the hoodlum but to scare him off, but in the process of payback of his tormentor, Tom, who doesn’t believe in voodoo dolls, makes an unsettling discovery about an important businessman. One windy night, he follows Sabrina as she sleepwalks to a local church. From there, the story marches adventure by adventure through a cemetery and other night prowling, including Tom’s secret yard work for the murderer’s beautiful wife, who has seduction in mind.

For Westerners and Americans in particular, Philippine culture is deceptively familiar. Vestiges of Spanish and American colonial culture, as well as contemporary American media, have created resonances for identifying American culture in Philippine culture. This book guides the reader in re-examining these assumptions of sameness. By taking an unfamiliar text of a noted writer of Tagalog fiction, this study restores the sense of wonder in experiencing Tagalog culture on its own terms rather than by tastes dictated from the outside. The book also examines the broader Tagalog traditions in which the writer, Amado Hernandez, wrote.

A Latino detective in upstate New York must turn to an immigrant rights activist to solve a murder in “this timely and engrossing” crime thriller (Publishers Weekly). When a body is discovered in a reservoir north of New York City, it ignites a baffling and disturbing murder investigation. The victim is young, female and Hispanic. In her purse, police find a photo of a baby. Where is the child? Is she alive? And what about the disturbing note found at the scene? “Go back to your country. You don’t belong here.” Homicide detective Jimmy Vega knows how hard it can be to walk the razor-thin line of acceptance in a place like Lake Holly, NY. Reluctantly turning to Adele Figueroa, a passionate defender of immigrants’ rights, Vega must confront his small town’s darkest secrets and deepest obsessions—before they savagely tear apart the world he’s sworn to defend.

This unique one-volume reference guide provides positive and empowering biographical sketches of 100 famous and well-known adoptees throughout time, serving to counter the many negative stereotypes that exist that exist about people who were adopted, fostered, or lived in orphanages. This work looks at the lives of people who, despite circumstances in their childhood, were able to succeed in making important contributions to art, music, science, literature, politics, and entrepreneurship. This work answers the call to obtaining difficult-to-find information about well-known adoptees. High school students and general readers who are interested in learning more about positive role models in adoption and children's issues will find this book invaluable. McCaslin outlines the parameters she used for inclusion in the book, and then discusses the history of adoption from ancient civilization to today's society. Each entry focuses on the early life of the subject, as well as his or her career and achievements. Entries include Aristotle, Edward Albee, Ingrid Bergman, Oksana Baiul, Ella Fitzgerald, Faith Hill, Marilyn Monroe, Dave Thomas, Orson Welles and many more.

Patriarchs, Prophets and Other Villains takes as a starting point the hermeneutics of suspicion. The book illustrates the way in which texts and interpretations have been manipulated for the purpose of power and control. Through careful-counter readings it challenges the ways in which the female divine has been pushed back by relentless male interpretation and misrepresentation. The essays range across liberation theology and queer theory to sexual hospitality and the 'Song of Songs' as a challenge to hetero-patriarchy. The book provides an accessible resource for any student interested in the ways in which narrow readings of Scripture can become a power base for hierarchies of exclusion.

This book compiles a number of contributions originating from the KESE (Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering) workshop series from 2005 to 2015. The idea behind the series was the realignment of the knowledge engineering discipline and its strong relation to software engineering, as well as to the classical aspects of artificial intelligence research. The book introduces symbiotic work combining these disciplines, such as aspect-oriented and agile engineering, using anti-patterns, and system refinement. Furthermore, it presents successful applications from different areas that were created by combining techniques from both areas.