Calvin Samuels is a public defender with a passion for sticking by the underdog. His clients are desperate men and women with desperate cases. Like John Rogers. Although Samuels saved him from a life behind bars, he couldn’t save his life. Within months of his acquittal, Rogers’ body is fished from the Ohio River, two bullet holes in the back of his head. Police speculate his death was the result of a drug deal gone bad. Believing he failed a friend who depended on him, Samuels seeks redemption in the representation of Mark Alexander, accused of the brutal murder of two drug dealers. Needing to believe in his client’s innocence, however, Samuels is blind to clues that Alexander is not what, or who, he seems. Until he meets Allison Morris, Alexander’s former lover and the prosecution’s most damning witness. Could Alexander actually be Rogers’ murderer? But when the trial finally reaches its stunning conclusion, Samuels’ descent into the maelstrom has only just begun.

A fun and informative guide to some of the more obscure, curious and tricky words in the English language.

After ballet dancer Sasha Davis suffers a severe injury and returns home to Minnesota to recover and deal with her mother's death, she forms an unexpected bond with her live-in aide, Evelyn, who helps Sasha face life with a renewed purpose.

Often considered the lowest depth to which cinema can plummet, the rape-revenge film is broadly dismissed as fundamentally exploitative and sensational, catering only to a demented, regressive demographic. This second edition, ten years after the first, continues the assessment of these films and the discourse they provoke. Included is a new chapter about women-directed rape-revenge films, a phenomenon that--revitalized since #MeToo exploded in late 2017--is a filmmaking tradition with a history that transcends a contemporary context. Featuring both famous and unknown movies, controversial and widely celebrated filmmakers, as well as rape-revenge cinema from around the world, this revised edition demonstrates that diverse and often contradictory treatments of sexual violence exist simultaneously.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theater, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinized due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career. In this critical study of Wong's cross-media and transnational career, Yiman Wang marshals extraordinary archival research and a multifocal approach to illuminate a lifelong labor of performance. Viewing Wong as a performer and worker, not just a star, To Be an Actress adopts a feminist decolonial perspective to speculatively meet her as an interlocutor while inviting a reconsideration of racialized, gendered, and migratory labor as the bedrock of the entertainment industries.