On a steamy August day in 1993, the Pee Dee Education Center held its monthly meeting in the long, narrow board room on the second floor of the building located on Dargan Street in downtown Florence. On that day, eighteen of the nineteen member superintendents voted to sue the state of South Carolina. As they took this action, the superintendents were not aware they were becoming a part of a state-by-state national movement, a movement that would challenge state governments to provide a higher level of education for each state's poorest students. The South Carolinians only knew they were struggling to offer students in their districts the kind of education the students needed to break out of the cycle of poverty in which most of them were trapped. This book is the story of how the Pee Dee superintendents brought the suit against the state, risking their reputations and livelihoods to stand up for poor children in their districts. It's also the story of a state's unwillingness to address the educational needs of its children. Part I of the book traces the development of school finance suits in the country with special emphasis on New Jersey, Kentucky, and Ohio. Part II describes the South Carolina trial, including testimonies of the eight plaintiff superintendents and other key witnesses. Part III includes the court decision in the South Carolina case, a comparison of that decision with those in New Jersey, Kentucky, and Ohio and a more detailed comparison of the South Carolina case with its neighbor, North Carolina.

Ted Crowley ran Quincy, Illinois. The brothels, the prostitution up and down the Mississippi River involving 10 states and Cuba all centered around the Quincy godfather. His relationship with James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Martin Luther King Jr., is exposed in River of Shame. What was Crowley's role in the assassination? What was the government's role? Was James Earl Ray 'programmed' to kill and be a patsy to the assassination? Why did Ted Crowley go with Ray to Memphis. What was Crowley's business in Cuba?

The American prison system has grown tenfold in thirty years, while crime rates have been relatively flat: 2 million people are behind bars on any given day, more prisoners than in any other country in the world — half a million more than in Communist China, and the largest prison expansion the world has ever known. In Going Up The River, Joseph Hallinan gets to the heart of America’s biggest growth industry, a self-perpetuating prison-industrial complex that has become entrenched without public awareness, much less voter consent. He answers, in an extraordinary way, the essential question: What, in human terms, is the price we pay? He has looked for answers to that question in every corner of the “prison nation,” a world far off the media grid — the America of struggling towns and cities left behind by the information age and desperate for jobs and money. Hallinan shows why the more prisons we build, the more prisoners we create, placating everyone at the expense of the voiceless prisoners, who together make up one of the largest migrations in our nation’s history.

Book two in the New York Times–bestselling author’s world history–spanning epic that began with Isle of Woman. Piers Anthony’s Shame of Man is a towering saga of remarkable scope, retelling the story of humanity in a daring and exciting way. At once grand in scope and intimate in human detail, Shame of Man recounts the stunning journey of a single family reborn again and again throughout history. Beginning in the earliest origins of our ancient ancestors who emerged from the Eden of Africa millions of years ago, Shame of Man follows two lovers—Hugh, a dreamer and musician, and his beloved Ann, a beautiful dancer—as they struggle to preserve their family and their way of life during some of the most turbulent periods of our savage past. Their saga takes them from the caves of prehistoric Europe to the Holy Land in the time of King David, through the imperial court of third century Japan, and Damascus in the early days of Islam, to Central Asia in the era of Genghis Khan, and the fallen paradise of Easter Island, concluding with a harrowing glimpse of our future, in the wreckage of a world devastated by global ecological catastrophe. Through their eyes we experience humanity’s greatest triumphs, and witness its greatest shame, the relentless exploitation of nature that now threatens our very survival.

Author Emily J. Edwards takes Viviana Valentine to new heights—and new lows—in this “firecracker of a series” (Allison Epstein), perfect for fans of Ashley Weaver and Rhys Bowen. 1950, New York. Viviana Valentine–Girl Friday turned partner to New York’s top investigator, Tommy Fortuna–is drawn into a sordid new case when Buster Beacon, a wealthy man of science, beckons them to a party at his mansion north of the city. There, Buster entertains blue-blooded friends as well as investors keen to make a dollar on the many advancements made in his home laboratory, but he’s been hearing strange noises in the night coming from his expansive estate, and he doesn’t know who to trust. Once Viviana and Tommy arrive, the party is snowed in. And suddenly, there is a dead body and nowhere to hide. Who killed the disguised federal agent in their midst? And how have details from the top-secret lab become public? Once chomping at the bit to be brought into this mysterious life, Viviana wonders if she’s ready for the risks that come with the territory—risks that rise treacherously high as the killer targets the next victim. Set in the gritty, noir world of 1950 New York City, Emily J. Edwards’s Viviana Valentine Goes Up the River packs all the elements mystery fans love: an irresistibly clever protagonist, a posh cast of heroes and villains, and a murder case that could defy even the most seasoned investigator.