After a ten-year absence, Ed Bach, author of the controversial collection of short stories, So Long, Charlie, delivers his latest and most complex novel to date, Joleen. Bachs latest work is an unsentimental look at two people struggling to make sense of the world, the beautiful but mentally unbalanced, Joleen Simmons and her clinging, colorless husband, Hush Simmons. Entering high school, Joleen becomes an immediate sensation. She is sweet, charming and very beautiful. But that sweet high school introduction abruptly ends when a lurid side of Joleen reveals itself and she is abruptly snubbed by her many friends. In college, Joleen joins a well-respected theatrical group where her natural gifts bring immediate success. She quickly maneuvers to the top only to blow it when she is given the lead in the schools featured play and is laughed from the stage. Rejected, she takes a job she hates. She becomes restless and marries a man she will soon regret. She torments her daughter yet confides in a sister who continually betrays her. She bullies her mother yet adores a womanizing, drunken father. She performs whorishly in bed with a husband she refuses to kiss. Reminiscent of April Wheeler in Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road, Joleen Simmons is a woman thrust into a life she neither wants nor accepts. No one can say for certain if Joleen is a complete nut case, mentally unbalanced, crazy, or simply someone so broken by the events of her past that she unashamedly torments and manipulates her way through life. And what of Hush Simmons, the fawning high school friend Joleen marries, divorces, then quickly lures back into bed? Is it her natural beauty that drives him to the limits of his own sanity? Her superior upbringing? Her familys wealth? Or is it Joleens raunchy behavior that steals his personal identity and turns him into a man he no longer recognizes, someone so corrupted by his wifes physical aggression that he loses sight of who he is and what he has become, a murderer? From the author of So Long, Charlie, Bach delivers an existential examination into the lives of two people at war with each other and themselves, a couple so riddled with childhood memories that their present actions only serve to drive them further and further apart. Bach offers no answers to lifes greater mysteries. Instead he brings to mind questions the reader may wonder about for years. While the story and its many characters are fictionalized, the storys central plot, is real.

Joleen is a beautiful but sad little cloud. She longs to have friends. She has travelled around the world to many special places. But whenever she finds children playing, they shoo her away. Who wants a cloud hanging around when you just want to have fun? Joleen goes to her mother and father upset that she has no friends, but her father reminds her that clouds have a special purpose. Joleen needs to remember that and be proud of who she is. Thinking on her father’s words, Joleen comes to understand that it is more important to be who you are than spend time worrying about what others think of you. Just being yourself can make you stronger than you ever imagined!

Court of Appeal Case(s): C009332 Number of Exhibits: 1

Two wild cowboys’ hearts get lassoed in these fan-favorite tales from two stars of Western romance The Creed Legacy Linda Lael Miller Rough-and-tumble rodeo cowboy Brody Creed likes life on the move—until a chance encounter with his long-estranged twin brother brings him “home” to Lonesome Bend, Colorado, for the first time in years, and forces him to face the secrets that continue to haunt him. But can this restless bad boy finally overcome his past—and find a future with Carolyn Simmons, the opposite of everything he thought he wanted? Blame It on the Cowboy Delores Fossen All of Logan McCord’s carefully laid plans erupt the day he walks in on his would-be fiancée getting…well, not so carefully laid. Tonight, just once, Logan is acting on instinct by agreeing to a cute stranger’s request for a fling with a Texas cowboy. But when chef Reese Stephens tracks him down looking for the heirloom watch she’d left in his keeping, they just might discover that Reese’s crazy past and Logan’s battered heart are no match for the kind of chemistry that could turn one night into the start of a passionate lifetime.

Dancing with Broken Bones provides a chilling portrait of what it is like to die while living in urban poverty. Via interviews with patients and their families as well as powerful photographs, the author demonstrates that a complex array of factors shape the experience of dying poor in the inner city: mistrust of physicians; inadequate communication among providers, patients, and families; a sense of alienation within the bureaucratic maze of the public hospital system; and indignities in care. By demystifying the stereotypes surrounding poverty, the book illuminates how faith and an unassailable spirit provide strength and courage throughout the end of life experience. Dancing with Broken Bones is a rallying call for compassionate individuals everywhere to understand and respond to the needs of the especially vulnerable people who comprise the world of inner-city dying poor.

Meet The Creed Cowboys! Brought to you by #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller, the First Lady of the West. A Creed in Stone Creek. Steven is a single attorney who becomes the guardian of an orphaned five-year-old boy and trades his big-city law firm for a ranch in Stone Creek, Arizona. When Steven takes on the pro bono defense of a local teen, he meets his match in beautiful, by-the-book prosecutor Melissa O'Ballivan. Creed's Honor. A hardworking rancher running his uncle's place in Lonesome Bend, Colorado—that's Conner. Maybe a small-town cowboy's life isn't exactly his dream, but he owes the man who took him in as a kid. Then his estranged twin brother reenters his life—and so does a woman named Tricia McCall… The Creed Legacy. He's a rodeo cowboy and Conner's twin. Brody is also a restless bad boy with a secret past. He's the opposite of everything Carolyn Simmons wants, but, despite that, she falls for him—and falls hard. Three Creed men, all cowboys, all gorgeous, all yours!