It is 1954, and prostitution is legal in the tropical haven that is Verona Island. Here, among gangsters and corrupt lawmen, Lila Gulliver runs a brothel that promises her exclusive clientele privacy and discretion. When nineteen-year-old Carità, beautiful and blind since birth, comes to her door seeking employment, Mrs Gulliver sees a business opportunity and takes a chance. Carità is mesmerising, sharp and a mystery to her employer, always holding herself at a distance. One night, the son of a wealthy judge patronises Mrs Gulliver's establishment, immediately falling madly in love with Carità. This is Ian Drohan - young, idealistic and cushioned by wealth and family connections. Mrs Gulliver mistrusts him, and worries for Carità's future. Carità, on the other hand, is fearless, headstrong and a force of nature that Mrs Gulliver is always several steps behind. A dazzling drama filled with sex, wry wit and literary references, Mrs Gulliver follows two women who have nothing to lose in their fight for agency on an island too ready to dismiss them.

A short, lush novel about sex, second chances and taking control in a man's world.

It is 1954, and prostitution is legal in the tropical haven that is Verona Island. Here, among gangsters and corrupt lawmen, Lila Gulliver runs a brothel that promises her exclusive clientele privacy and discretion. When nineteen-year-old Carita, beautiful and blind since birth, comes to her door seeking employment, Mrs Gulliver sees a business opportunity and takes a chance. Carita is mesmerising, sharp and a mystery to her employer, always holding herself at a distance.

One night, the son of a wealthy judge patronises Mrs Gulliver's establishment, immediately falling madly in love with Carita. This is Ian Drohan - young, idealistic and cushioned by wealth and family connections. Mrs Gulliver mistrusts him, and worries for Carita's future. Carita, on the other hand, is fearless, headstrong and a force of nature that Mrs Gulliver is always several steps behind.

A dazzling drama filled with sex, wry wit and literary references, Mrs Gulliver follows two women who have nothing to lose in their fight for agency on an island too ready to dismiss them.

Jan Vidor seems like the ideal tenant for a long summer holiday in a Tuscan villa. Unobtrusive and quietly sociable, the American academic can be relied upon to entertain herself - but her aristocratic landlady Beatrice has made a terrible mistake. A chance remark about a violent death at Villa Chiara during the war piques Jan's writerly interest and sends her digging into the Salviati family's tragic past. Was Beatrice's uncle Sandro really mistaken for a partisan, or was his killer someone closer to home? Does it matter if Jan just fills in the gaps? After all, Beatrice said she could do as she liked with the story, she even said 'I give it to you' . . . Written with a deep understanding of loyalty and temptation, I Give It To You is a riveting novel about who owns a story, whether we have a right to what we inherit, and what a gift really means.

Jan Vidor seems like the ideal tenant for a long summer holiday in a Tuscan villa. Unobtrusive and quietly sociable, the American academic can be relied upon to entertain herself - but her aristocratic landlady Beatrice has made a terrible mistake. A chance remark about a violent death at Villa Chiara during the war piques Jan's writerly interest and sends her digging into the Salviati family's tragic past. Was Beatrice's uncle Sandro really mistaken for a partisan, or was his killer someone closer to home? Does it matter if Jan just fills in the gaps? After all, Beatrice said she could do as she liked with the story, she even said 'I give it to you' . . . Written with a deep understanding of loyalty and temptation, I Give It To You is a riveting novel about who owns a story, whether we have a right to what we inherit, and what a gift really means.

Over the past 70 years, the American university has become the global gold standard of excellence in research and graduate education. The unprecedented surge of federal research support of the post-World War II American university paralleled the steady strengthening of the American academic profession itself, which managed to attract the best and brightest educators from around the world while expanding the influence of the "faculty factor" throughout the academic realm. But in the past two decades, escalating costs and intensifying demands for efficiency have resulted in a wholesale reshaping of the academic workforce, one marked by skyrocketing numbers of contingent faculty members. Extending Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein's richly detailed classic The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers, this important book documents the transformation of the American faculty-historically the leading global source of Nobel laureates and innovation-into a diversified and internally stratified professional workforce. Drawing on heretofore unpublished data, the book provides the most comprehensive contemporary depiction of the changing nature of academic work and what it means to be a college or university faculty member in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The rare higher education study to incorporate multinational perspectives by comparing the status and prospects of American faculty to teachers in the major developing economies of Europe and East Asia, The Faculty Factor also explores the redistribution of academic work and the ever-more diverse pathways for entering into, maneuvering through, and exiting from academic careers. Using the tools of sociology, anthropology, and demography, the book charts the impact of waves of technological change, mass globalization, and the severe financial constraints of the last decade to show the impact on the lives and careers of those who teach in higher education. The authors propose strategic policy recommendations to extend the strengths of American higher education to retain leadership in the global economy. Written for professors, adjuncts, graduate students, and academic, political, business, and not-for-profit leaders, this data-rich study offers a balanced assessment of the risks and opportunities posed for the American faculty by economic, market-driven forces beyond their control.

Primary healthcare premises are increasingly becoming more sophisticated, offering health promotion, minor surgery and specialist services. The acquisition of new premises, expansion or investment in traditional surgeries can be the greatest financial commitment and also one of the most daunting. This book is specifically written to enable development with minimal disruption to the daily medical routine. The book contains viewpoints of specialists with many years' experience gained from working in their individual fields. It is essential reading for GPs, trainees, practice managers and professional advisers to general practice. Specialist architects, solicitors, financial advisors, accountants and health authority managers will also achieve a better understanding of this complex subject.

This book considers the production of political media content from the perspective of academics who are increasingly asked to join the ranks of voices charged with informing the public. The work draws on the authors' first-hand experience and relationships with media reporters, managers, producers, and academics offering their expertise to a wide array of media outlets to understand and report on the dynamics shaping how the academic voice in political news may be at its most useful. Featured prominently in the book is the trade-off between a conventional form of political punditry, which is often characterized by partisan rancour, and a more analytical, theoretical, and/or policy-based approach to explaining politics to both general and diverse audiences. Along the way, the work draws on original survey, in-depth interview, and experimental data to garner insights on what academics in media, reporters, and media managers perceive are the appropriate roles for academics featured in political media. This book also contains relevant technical tips for effective media communication by academics.

This book considers the production of political media content from the perspective of academics who are increasingly asked to join the ranks of voices charged with informing the public. The work draws on the authors' first-hand experience and relationships with media reporters, managers, producers, and academics offering their expertise to a wide array of media outlets to understand and report on the dynamics shaping how the academic voice in political news may be at its most useful. Featured prominently in the book is the trade-off between a conventional form of political punditry, which is often characterized by partisan rancour, and a more analytical, theoretical, and/or policy-based approach to explaining politics to both general and diverse audiences. Along the way, the work draws on original survey, in-depth interview, and experimental data to garner insights on what academics in media, reporters, and media managers perceive are the appropriate roles for academics featured in political media. This book also contains relevant technical tips for effective media communication by academics.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale "has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.
Like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World "and George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale "has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.

Latinos in the New Millennium is the most current and comprehensive profile of Latinos in the United States: looking at their social characteristics, group relations, policy positions, and political orientations. The authors draw on information from the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS), the largest and most detailed source of data on Hispanics in America. This book provides essential knowledge about Latinos, contextualizing research data by structuring discussion around many dimensions of Latino political life in the U.S. The encyclopedic range and depth of the LNS allows the authors to appraise Latinos' group characteristics, attitudes, behaviors, and their views on numerous topics. This study displays the complexity of Latinos, from recent immigrants to those whose grandparents were born in the United States.

Latinos in the New Millennium is a comprehensive profile of Latinos in the United States: looking at their social characteristics, group relations, policy positions and political orientations. The authors draw on information from the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS), the largest and most detailed source of data on Hispanics in America. This book provides essential knowledge about Latinos, contextualizing research data by structuring discussion around many dimensions of Latino political life in the US. The encyclopedic range and depth of the LNS allows the authors to appraise Latinos' group characteristics, attitudes, behaviors and their views on numerous topics. This study displays the complexity of Latinos, from recent immigrants to those whose grandparents were born in the United States.

Are universal rights bound to colonialism? Are they culturally imperialistic? By juxtaposing Morocco's practice of torture with its discourse of cultural relativism, this study links popular resistance to universal rights to a deliberate politics that delegitimizes those very same rights, requiring a new, more inclusive system of universalism.

This study explores the role played by the Moroccan state in the drafting process of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Author Osire Glacier examines whether universal rights follow logically from the colonial experience and exist as a form of cultural imperialism. By juxtaposing the Moroccan state's systemic practice of torture with its discourse of cultural relativism, she reveals that popular resistance to universal rights, expressed via discourses of relativism and cultural authenticity, correspond to a deliberate form of politics aimed at delegitimizing those very same rights. Ultimately, she challenges critics condemning universal rights as neocolonial to produce new perspectives that can support a more inclusive system protecting universal rights.

During the 1950s, amid increased attention to the problems facing cities-such as racial disparities in housing, education, and economic conditions; tense community-police relations; and underrepresentation of minority groups-local governments developed an interest in "human relations." In the wake of the shocking 1965 Watts uprising, a new authority was created: the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission. Today, such commissions exist all over the United States, charged with addressing such tasks as fighting racial discrimination and improving fair housing access. Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in promoting positive intergroup outcomes and enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Drawing on a wide range of theories and methods from political science, social psychology, and public administration, they assess policy approaches, successes, and failures in four cities. The book sheds light on the advantages and disadvantages of different commission types and considers the stresses and expectations placed on commission staff in carrying out difficult agendas in highly charged political contexts. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers suggest that the path to full inclusion is fraught with complications but that human rights commissions provide guidance as to how disparate groups can be brought together to forge a common purpose. The first book to examine these widely occurring yet understudied political bodies, Human Relations Commissions is relevant to a range of urban policy issues of interest to both academics and practitioners.

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed . If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs...

Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl who may have been given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie.

This private drama is being played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon's house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn . . .

Beautifully written, PROPERTY is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change, where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.
 

From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property, the story of a woman on the run from sexual obsession 'An impressive writer...I admire her straightforward style and the intelligence and strength of her heroine' Ann Tyler Helene is a woman constantly on the run. A social worker, she spends her days trying to sort out other people's lives. But her need for professional detachment carries through to her private life where she is pursued by a series of needy men - one simply mad and obsessive, another a drug addict whose habit is all-consuming, the third the partner of her best friend who has a cruel, selfish streak. People see in her the sort of person in whom they can confide their secrets and desires but Helene is determined never to give up the option to walk away.

In 1979, Valerie Martin, her husband and their two young children joined what they thought was a non-denominational Christian Ministry. Having "forsaken all" to follow Christ, they embarked on a twenty-two month waking nightmare. The physical, mental and emotional abuse endured by the Martins culminated in the loss of custody of their children and all their personal assets. Subsequently Valerie was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A Soul Protected details these events as well as the arduous task of recovery and restoration that spanned three decades. Ms Martin's book provides resources and practices that can assist individuals who have endured any kind of soul shattering experience and who suffer from PTSD.

From the acclaimed author of Orange Prize winning PROPERTY comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor-scarred but still strong-familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know. Unable to confront her hideous suspicions about Dr. Jekyll, Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. Through her astute reflections, we hear the rest of the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, and this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible.

Two women, Chloe Dale, an artist comfortably ensconced in bucolic suburbia, and Salome Drago, a wily, seductive refugee from a country that no longer exists, confront each other in a Manhattan restaurant, and the battle lines are drawn. Toby Dale, son of the artist and ardent suitor of the refugee, is in no position to choose sides. Outside, the drumbeats for the impending invasion of Iraq drown out all argument, and those who object will soon be reduced to standing in the street.
The story of two families--suspicious, territorial, naive in their confidence that they are free of the past--"Trespass" unfolds with commanding force. It is a bracing, tender novel for the 21st century.

During the 1950s, amid increased attention to the problems facing cities-such as racial disparities in housing, education, and economic conditions; tense community-police relations; and underrepresentation of minority groups-local governments developed an interest in "human relations." In the wake of the shocking 1965 Watts uprising, a new authority was created: the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission. Today, such commissions exist all over the United States, charged with addressing such tasks as fighting racial discrimination and improving fair housing access. Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in promoting positive intergroup outcomes and enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Drawing on a wide range of theories and methods from political science, social psychology, and public administration, they assess policy approaches, successes, and failures in four cities. The book sheds light on the advantages and disadvantages of different commission types and considers the stresses and expectations placed on commission staff in carrying out difficult agendas in highly charged political contexts. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers suggest that the path to full inclusion is fraught with complications but that human rights commissions provide guidance as to how disparate groups can be brought together to forge a common purpose. The first book to examine these widely occurring yet understudied political bodies, Human Relations Commissions is relevant to a range of urban policy issues of interest to both academics and practitioners.

From the book: "I didn't know I was going to be the first one. I felt like I was really going to have to deliver. If I didn't succeed, they were going to say, 'All Mexican American women are failures.'" Texas Representative, Irma Rangel "There are not enough women who have figured out how to balance [faith and family], how to prioritize, but I believe that the younger women will make a difference . . . that as they grow up professionally and politically, that you will see more women in the ranks." State Senator Judith Zaffirini "I think the expectations are higher because there haven't been that many [Latinas in the Texas Senate] and you are represent[ing] not just females, but an ethnic group that has not always been afforded the opportunity to participate in the political process." State Senator Leticia Van de Putte

In the decades since Latinas began to hold public office in the United States in the late 1950s, they have blazed new trails in public life, bringing fresh perspectives, leadership styles, and policy agendas to the business of governing cities, counties, states, and the nation. As of 2004, Latinas occupied 27.4 percent of the more than 6,000 elected and appointed local, state, and national positions filled by Hispanic officeholders. The greatest number of these Latina officeholders reside in Texas, where nearly six hundred women occupy posts from municipal offices, school boards, and county offices to seats in the Texas House and Senate.

In this book, five Latina political scientists profile the women who have been the first Latinas to hold key elected and appointed positions in Texas government. Through interviews with each woman or her associates, the authorsexplore and theorize about Latina officeholders' political socialization, decision to run for office and obstacles overcome, leadership style, and representational roles and advocacy. The profiles begin with Irma Rangel, the first Latina elected to the Texas House of Representatives, and Judith Zaffirini and Leticia Van de Putte, the only two Latinas to serve in the Texas Senate. The authors also interview Lena Guerrero, the first and only Latina to serve in a statewide office; judges Linda Yanes, Alma Lopez, Elma Salinas Ender, Mary Roman, and Alicia Chacon; mayors Blanca Sanchez Vela (Brownsville), Betty Flores (Laredo), and Olivia Serna (Crystal City); and Latina city councilwomen from San Antonio, El Paso, Dallas, Houston, and Laredo.