American Places

Claire Griffith has it all, a thriving career, a gorgeous boyfriend, glamorous friends. She always knew she was destined for more than the life her conservative parents preached to her. Arriving in Los Angeles flat broke, she has risen to become a popular fitness coach and social media influencer. Having rebranded herself as Cleo Ray, she stands at the threshold of realizing her biggest dreams. One summer day, Cleo and a woman named Beck Alden set off in a canoe on a serene mountain lake. An hour later, Beck is found dead in the water, and Cleo is missing.

They called her Lady Stewart when she was married to a British aristocrat. They called her Miss Cora when she ran a brothel in Florida. But she called herself Mrs. Crane when she asked Sherlock Holmes to locate her common-law husband, writer Stephen Crane, who'd gone missing in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In their attempt to fulfil the lady's request, Holmes and Watson encounter a world of celebrity authors, terrorist bombings, and haunted manor houses.

The causes of the American Civil War, which lasted from April 1861 to May 1865, were many and complex. At the heart of the disagreement, however, was slavery. The Southern states of the newly formed but illegal Confederacy were prepared to fight the US federal government to the death to retain their right to keep slaves for their plantations. The election of President Abraham Lincoln in late 1860, whose open intention was to abolish slavery, created a military upheaval south of Washington, DC, and civil war ensued.

The Rogue River Incident – Case XI, Book I (Part 1 of a 2-Book Set) In Rogue River, Oregon, life is peaceful—until a violent, unexplainable attack shatters the town’s quiet existence. Mitch Wilde, a professional outdoor photographer, is thrust into the heart of the mystery when his best friend is shot with a dissolving arrow—a wound that vanishes before anyone can explain it. As strange events escalate, his eccentric neighbor—an investigator of the unexplained—presents chilling evidence of an invisible threat looming over the region. But the true nightmare begins when Mitch ...

A Place Unmade is a book about someone who commits a crime, causes a disaster and the people who try to stop him. Valentina Sorelli is a part-time graduate student and full-time marketing director of a community park in New Orleans. Jack Stillman is a corporate executive who hijacks his company's research for personal gain, and he doesn't care about the consequences. Their separate paths intersect when Valentina meets Jack's son Sam, who becomes the link between the worlds of scientific discovery and corporate espionage. As the story unfolds, Valentina and her classmates unite to try to ...

Lily is a photojournalist in search of the “animal people” who supposedly haunt the city’s darkest slums. Hank is a slumdweller who knows the bad streets all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their two lives collide - uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city’s oldest inhabitants. For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own.

Sheila Ramos’s story mirrors the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their homes since the beginning of the housing crisis in 2007. The Great American Foreclosure Story details with clarity and empathy the road that led Ramos and so many like her toward financial ruin. Alongside Ramos’s story are additional investigations documenting the systematic failures at banks, mortgage servicers, and government watchdogs that have exacerbated the country’s most severe foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression.

Leah Ly a driven, exceptionally talented, Chinese-American actress, working her way through Hollywood’s system, determined to make it on her own, involved with an equally driven Jewish man, discovers she has a Chinese fiancé, arranged at her birth when the Hong Kong businessman comes to LA to meet her. Life collides with life and Leah finds herself unhappy, torn, and conflicted between the love of two men she loves dearly and her heart's greatest desire, as she learns that in all things, she's the key to her happiness or unhappiness.

Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.

Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one woman’s quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.

When Dr. Lise Shields arrived at the correctional psychiatric facility five years ago, she was warned that many of its patients - committed by Maryland's judicial system for perpetrating heinous crimes - would never leave. But what happens when a place like Menaker is corrupted, when it becomes a tool to silence the innocent, conceal an injustice, contain a secret?

A Dark Place is a chilling story about the untold struggles of the disenfranchised that inspiringly illustrates how one man cannot turn his back on the problems of his former community—even though he so desperately wants to leave that troubled place in his past forever.

Revealing how seemingly race-neutral urban sites contain hidden racial assumptions and imperatives, Lipsitz examines the ways in which urban space and social experience are racialized and emphasizes that aggrieved communities do not passively acquiesce to racism. He recognizes the people and communities that have re-imagined segregated spaces in expressive culture as places for congregation.

As dawn breaks on July 2, 2023, two brothers steal a vintage car, load it with assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and drive two hours to Cadence, New York, to start a race war. Their fantasy of mayhem and notoriety brings anguish and loss to the multicultural, inclusive community. Seneca Lake, known for millennia as Assiniki, or Stony Place, by the Seneca tribe, dredges up a shameful history of Cadence. Or perhaps it is the Great Serpent who orchestrates the shocking revelation. Once again, Marian and Lester Greene, Enoch Shenandoah, and their family, friends, and neighbors must ...

The Rogue River Incident – Case XI, Book II (A Paranormal Mystery with Sci-Fi Twists) The invasion isn’t over. And this time, it’s personal. In Rogue River, Oregon, the unexplainable forces that upended Mitch Wilde’s life are far from finished. As the town teeters on the edge of chaos, Mitch’s wife, Mabey, is dragged into the fight, forcing him to make impossible choices to save her and the place they call home. With his loyal friend Jack and the gruff yet brilliant paranormal investigator neighbor, Jasper, Mitch uncovers shocking truths about the forces at play. But to survive, ...

Found alive after the massacre at Wounded Knee, twelve-year-old John Iron Horse is determined not to end up like so many others of his people. Then he learns the motto of the school he's required to attend: "Kill the Indian, save the man." Carter Heath teaches in the government-run educational system and knows there's more to his position than what's happening in his classroom. He'll soon learn that in bureaucracy, politics, money, and ulterior motives are always intertwined.

Johnnie Roane returns from four years of military service in World War II to his wife, Glory. They had been married just a year when he left Lennox, Connecticut, where both their families live and work. In his taxi ride home, Johnnie receives foreboding hints that all has not been well in his absence. Eager to mend his fraying marriage, Johnnie attempts to cajole Glory to recommit to their life together. But something sinister has taken place during the intervening years - an infidelity that has not gone unnoticed in the superficially placid New England town.

Quinn is back! The enigmatic Irishman – once an international assassin, now a Federal Agent – finds himself at the centre of an ingenious political coup. Someone is bankrolling America’s drift towards isolationism, a dark strategy which steamrolls over political and economic institutions and targets innocent Americans for death. A chance meeting with a beautiful young woman and her frail brother puts Quinn on their trail. Not one to take things at face value, he starts to scratch below the surface, putting him firmly in the sights of a group of ruthless mercenaries determined to ...

George Washington didn't really walk around with a mouthful of wooden teeth. Those are real teeth and pearl inlays in Washington's dentures. A recent study by Mary Thompson suggests Washington experimented with early dental transplants. He purchased replacement teeth from his slaves for 13 shillings (roughly $50 in 2015 money).

This study guide has 160 outstanding multiple-choice questions to crush your AP US History Test Prep! Part II includes detailed Answers and Explanations for dozens of questions that will challenge and fuel your prep. The following topics are covered: American Revolution: Causes and events leading to the revolution Declaration of Independence Revolutionary War and its consequences The Constitution: Articles of Confederation Constitutional Convention