Set in a boarding house on the bleak Cumbrian coast. A journalist disappears while covering a protest at Sellafield. When his wife sets out to find him two weeks later, she stays at the same guesthouse and encounters the same bizarre collection of characters, including the wife of a mass murderer, an ex-astronaut beach bum, and a wheelchair-bound activist.

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night. Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.

In this unique and essential collection, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, Maria Hinojosa, and a host of other frontline thinkers, journalists, and activists employ wit, outrage, and cold, hard facts to expose the "W Effect,"a comprehensive incursion into women's rights. In recent years, women around the globe have come under attack-both literally, in the case of war and punitive repression, and more subtly, in the case of eroded rights and economic power. Yet this dangerous trend has not, to date, been comprehensively documented and deconstructed-in part because women are finding it harder to gain access to the mainstream media. Both a harsh reality check and a hopeful starting point for new action, The W Effect brings together the premier feminist voices to provide cutting-edge reports; fresh, empowering analyses; and engaging, provocative ideas for the future-including a resource guide for information and activism. At this pivotal time, The W Effect is a necessary book for feminists of all ages and genders, for all progressive activists, for students, and for anyone interested in current politics and the future of women's rights and women's lives in America and around the world. With reports on: affirmative action, the Patriot Act, welfare "reform," sexual freedom, reproductive rights, the impact of the religious right, education funding and Title IX, public health policy, globalization, international HIV/AIDS policy, the International Court and the U.N., and more. Journalist and broadcaster Laura Flanders was the founder of the Women's Desk at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), where, for 10 years, she hosted the syndicated radio program CounterSpin. Flanders currently hosts "Working Assets Radio" and is a contributor to The Nation, The Progressive, Ms. and In These Times. She is the author of Real Majority, Media Minority, The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting and Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species (April 2003).

It's been four years since the tragic in-the-line-of-duty murder of his police sergeant wife, Helen, during an officer-involved shooting. Retired Texas Ranger Wade Justus and his Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent son, Hunter, now decompress after solving the serial killings of the Sleeping Beauty Killer in Nashville, bringing that killer to justice. The law enforcement duo travel to Florence, Italy, on vacation where Hunter plans to introduce his father to his love interest, the beautiful and brilliant Carabinieri investigator Lida Aldobrandini. However, the last thing that Wade and Hunter expect is to be caught up in the violence, intrigue, and danger of an ISIS terrorist plot to assassinate Italy's President and slaughter thousands of Italians. A cowboy-hat-and-boots-wearing Texas Ranger would normally appear to be like a fish out of water in Italy, but not this Ranger. Now follow Wade, Hunter, and Lida through the streets of Florence and the wine region of Tuscany as they track down one of the most ruthless, radical ISIS killers in the world, Jamal the Jackal, in this newest installment of the Wade Justus Texas Ranger series. Forensic criminologist and retired police detective Ron Martinelli, best-selling author of Absolute Justus, now brings you Justus for All.

This novel takes up where "The Soldier's Return" left off, following the lives of the Richardson family from 1947 to the mid-1950s. If the earlier novel focused on the father, Sam, the sequel gives equal emphasis to the son, Joe, who is eight as the story opens and an adolescent as it closes.