When a defense attorney becomes the defendant, one small town is forced to reconsider their ideas of good and evil. Unsympathetic Victims is the first in the Ashley Montgomery Legal Thriller Series. Fans of relatable female protagonists and plot twists that keep you guessing will love Laura Snider's gripping debut novel. When successful public defender Ashley Montgomery helps acquit yet another client, people in small-town Brine, Iowa are enraged. Following the verdict, a protest breaks out - and the hated defense attorney quickly finds her life in danger. But little does Ashley know, things are about to get worse - much worse. One of her clients turns up dead, and Ashley is arrested for his murder. As local investigators Katie Mickey and George Thomanson dive into the case, they start to suspect that Ashely is being framed - but by whom? With Ashley's freedom at stake, Katie and George are desperate to find out the truth. And soon, they uncover a sinister plot born of corruption, greed, and misplaced loyalty that will leave the whole town reeling - and questioning their faith in the people they trusted most.

A scan of today's television programming reveals numerous media stories, factual and fictional, featuring some aspect of crime. These depictions can stray far from reality, with the effect of creating and reinforcing distorted impressions. This collection offers a sociological analysis of race, class, and gender stereotypes within crime media. Essays discuss particular examples of inequalities and stereotypes, consider the implications of such portrayals, and demonstrate how they influence the public's expectations and beliefs about real-world crime.

In this "edge-of-your-seat" thriller and sequel to the Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine book club pick Conviction (The Los Angeles Times), Anna and Fin find themselves on another breathtaking chase across Europe—and another race to save their own lives. Deception. Theft. Murder. All you need is confidence. Anna McDonald has made a terrible mistake. She has forced her blended family to vacation together. The weather is bad, her daughters are bored, and her ex-husband still insufferable. Oh, and Fin Cohen brought his latest girlfriend, too. So when news of a shocking kidnapping breaks, Anna and Fin do the responsible thing. They take off to solve the case. Lisa Lee, a young YouTube star, has vanished after answering the door to what she thought was a pizza delivery. Police suspect her dad or the delivery guy, but in Lisa’s last known video she ventured into an abandoned chateau in France, where she uncovered a priceless artifact. Anna knows they must find this young woman before it’s too late. To do so, they need to track down that treasure, a casket that could hold answers to the greatest questions ever asked. But Anna and Fin might have misunderstood the stakes of the game. Soon, they find themselves mixed up with some very dark characters, on another thrilling chase across Europe—and another race to save their own lives. Praise for the national bestseller Conviction: "One of the most talented, most daring, most humane writers of the past twenty years . . . Conviction is Mina's finest work to date: a dark star of a novel, blazingly intense, up-to-the-minute fresh, and exciting as all hell." ―A.J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window "Endlessly surprising . . . This incredible novel seems to have been written in a white-hot rage."―Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review "Conviction combines all Mina's gifts―for suspense, humor, menace, sentiment―in spectacular fashion."―Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal "A page-turner with depth and soul."―O, the Oprah Magazine

International in scope and varied in its theoretical approaches, this collection of ten new critical essays examines the prevailing trends in recent crime fiction. Of particular interest are shifting, and increasingly globalized, conceptions of crime, as well as the genre's response to technological, legal, and social changes at the end of the 20th century. Employing critical tools new to crime-fiction studies, the essays also gesture toward a future for genre scholarship.

Race as a Factor

At a time when Canadians were arguing about the merits of a new flag, the birth-control pill, and the growing hippie counterculture, the leaders of Canada's largest Protestant church were occupied with turning much of English-Canadian religious culture on its head. In After Evangelicalism, Kevin Flatt reveals how the United Church of Canada abruptly reinvented its public image by cutting the remaining ties to its evangelical past. Flatt argues that although United Church leaders had already abandoned evangelical beliefs three decades earlier, it was only in the 1960s that rapid cultural shifts prompted the sudden dismantling of the church's evangelical programs and identity. Delving deep into the United Church's archives, Flatt uncovers behind-the-scenes developments that led to revolutionary and controversial changes in the church's evangelistic campaigns, educational programs, moral stances, and theological image. Not only did these changes evict evangelicalism from the United Church, but they helped trigger the denomination's ongoing numerical decline and decisively changed Canada's religious landscape. Challenging readers to see the Canadian religious crisis of the 1960s as involving more than just Quebec's Quiet Revolution, After Evangelicalism unveils the transformation of one of Canada's most prominent social institutions.