Few Americans remember these days that politics can be funny. But Texas congresswoman Carly Wagner knows this firsthand. She won her first election delivering one-liners about her opponent that made people chuckle so hard they voted her into his seat. She won not only because she could outtalk her rival but also because she wasn't shy about employing her sexy contralto, big baby browns, and the long legs that once got her the crown of Miss Texas. She doesn't apologize for her methods, either---in the Lone Star State, sassy women have always plowed tough ground to get what they want. Although she currently sleeps alone, professionally, Carly knows politics can make strange bedfellows. But when she walks into her office one morning and finds her party's second most powerful man murdered in her office chair, she finds out that politics can also be deadly serious. Someone has to find the culprit before this capital crime kills Carly's prospects for reelection. Resourceful and gutsy, she wants to go it alone, but her party can't take that chance. When they send in the cavalry, she can't believe the kind of man they choose. He's young, yummy, and lethal. He calls himself Mr. Jones, owns toys like Mr. Bond---and acts like Mr. Corleone. He's one of the town's secret weapons of mass destruction---and she wants nothing to do with him. Then she wants to do everything with him. Missing Member is the first in a vastly entertaining new series featuring the crime-solving duo of Congresswoman Carly and the delectable Mr. Jones.

Short, unattractive, hobbling about Stalin's Moscow on a wooden leg, Walter Duranty was an unlikely candidate for the world's most famous foreign correspondent. Yet for almost twenty years his articles filled the front page of The New York Times with gripping coverage of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. A witty, engaging, impish character with a flamboyant life-style, he was a Pulitzer Prize winner, the individual most credited with helping to win the U.S. recognition for the Soviet regime, and the reporter who had predicted the success of the Bolshevik state when all others claimed it was doomed. But, as S.J. Taylor reveals in this provocative biography, Walter Duranty played a key role in perpetrating some of the greatest lies history has ever known. Stalin's Apologist deftly unfolds the story of this accomplished but sordid and tragic life. Drawing on sources ranging from newspapers to private letters and journals to interviews with such figures as William Shirer and W. Averell Harriman, Taylor's vivid narrative unveils a figure driven by ambition, whose early success reporting on Bolshevik Russia--he was foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power--established his international reputation, fed his overconfident contempt for his colleagues, and indeed led him to identify with the Soviet dictator. Thus during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which Stalin engineered to crush millions of peasants who resisted his policies, Duranty dismissed other correspondents' reports of mass starvation and, though secretly aware of the full scale of the horror, effectively reinforced the official cover-up of one of history's greatest man-made disasters. Later, he took the rigged show trials of Stalin's Great Purges at face value, blithely accepting the guilt of the victims. He believed himself the leading expert on the Soviet Union, and his faith in his own insight drew him into a downward spiral of distortions and untruths, typified by his memorable excuse for Stalin's crimes, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." Taylor brilliantly captures the full range of Duranty's astonishing life, from his participation in the Satanic orgies of Aleister ("the Beast") Crowley, to his dramatic front-line reporting during World War I, to his epic womanizing and heavy drug and alcohol abuse. It is the bitter, ironic story of a man who had the rare opportunity to bring to light the suffering of the millions of Stalin's victims, but remained a prisoner of vanity, self-indulgence, and success.

Danger, Mystery, Intrigue and Twists A beautiful, deadly contract killer holds one of the keys to the mystery of a woman's death, the most gruesome murder Addie's ever seen or heard about. Detective Adelaide Henson of Asheville P.D. will brave the streets of Little Havana to find her, corner her. If she can do that without getting herself killed, she'll learn what she needs. Henson hopes to return with answers, and her list of suspects reduced to ONE. Still, things don't make sense. The murderer can't be in two places at once, or is there more than one on the loose? Just how much more dangerous will this get? Conventional detective techniques aren't working. Something is wrong, something is amiss. The deeper Addie goes, the more she risks. Is she willing? Is she able? Follow Henson in this psychological murder mystery, Book Two of the series.

Writer, vampire, and sleuth extraordinaire Simon Kirby-Jones becomes immersed in medieval mayhem when a renaissance fair comes to town bringing with it Tristan Lovelace, the man who made him a vampire, and murder. Reprint.

Summary: Games to develop discussion skills, especially those required for handling open-ended questions and solving problems as well as remedial activities to use when a group becomes aggressive, inhibited, argues without definitions or encounters other difficulties.