Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected-- and first female-- state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides. As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small, but tight-knit, family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child?

An African-American man accused of rape by a humiliated girl. A vengeful father. A courageous attorney. A worshipful daughter. Think you know this story? Think again. Laura Lippman, the “extravagantly gifted” (Chicago Tribune) New York Times bestselling author, delivers “one of her best novels ” (Washington Post)—a modern twist on To Kill a Mockingbird. Scott Turow writes in the New York Times, “Wilde Lake is a real success.” Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected state’s attorney representing suburban Maryland—including the famous planned community of Columbia, created to be a utopia of racial and economic equality. Prosecuting a controversial case involving a disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death, the fiercely ambitious Lu is determined to avoid the traps that have destroyed other competitive, successful women. She’s going to play it smart to win this case—and win big—cementing her political future. But her intensive preparation for trial unexpectedly dredges up painful recollections of another crime—the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Justice was done. Or was it? Did the events of 1980 happen as she remembers them? She was only a child then. What details didn’t she know? As she plunges deeper into the past, Lu is forced to face a troubling reality. The legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers. But what happens when she realizes that, for the first time, she doesn’t want to know the whole truth?

Columbia is a planned community that has influenced suburban development since its creation in the mid-1960s. This city of 100,000 grew out of rural farmland, patterned by the best thinkers of its time, including visionary developer James Rouse and a team of consultants such as sociologist Herbert Gans and transportation planner Alan Voorhees. World-famous architect Frank Gehry designed key buildings. Oakland Manor, featuring a barn that is a historical landmark, is one example of the structures preserved to give roots to the new town. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon grew up in Columbia and has said it altered the course of his life, making him into the writer he is today.

Celebrate the American dream as author Rema Johnson shares her journey from poverty to motherhood to self education and more. Through the honest testimony of faith, hope resilience, life, and love, she tells how her difficulties enable her to be strong and successful. From Poverty to Ph.D. she has embodied the spirit of a woman who never lets anything stop her or put her down. She had a tough life but now she is Afraid no More.

A writer travels to a fabled estate and uncovers a mystery both sensational and deadly in master storyteller Jennifer Wilde’s novel of unparalleled romantic suspense Mystery novelist Susan Marlow visited Gordonwood only once, as an impressionable twelve-year-old girl, but she never forgot the stately Victorian mansion. When her aunt Agatha invites her for a second visit, she meets Craig Stanton, a devilishly attractive scholar who is writing a history book about Sir Robert Gordon, the legendary Victorian-era explorer. Lady Agatha has given Stanton exclusive access to her family’s papers. But some of those priceless documents are missing. A series of break-ins convince Susan—and the local police—that someone is desperate to get their hands on the Gordon manuscripts. The disappearance of a local girl, a suspicious death, and a body that washes up along the Thames make Susan realize that she might be the final obstacle in a killer’s cunningly orchestrated endgame.

Ever wonder what a man thinks when he can't provide for himself? Have you ever thought about what will happen to a man when taken out of his comfort zone? What happens when his body is incarcerated and his mind roams free. Take a journey thru the eyes of a man born and raised in Jacksonville, FL. After being a resident of the Department of Corrections only two things happen. You become better or worse because you will never be the same. Poetry became his escape from the insanity that surrounded him. The pen and paper became the release of anger and frustration. Now it's time to share it with the world.

From a new author comes a mystery that encompasses four decades of brutal murder and betrayal among a group of neighborhood friends who rise to prominence, wealth and fame, but cannot escape the choice each made about his role in this nation's longest and least understood military campaign. TROOP 1204 On a hot summer California night in 1958, someone brutally slit the throat of a Boy Scout and carved a gruesome murder signature across the twelve year old's forehead. Now, 40 years after that horrific overnight campout, another member of Troop 1204 turns up dead in Arizona with the same latticework pattern of forehead carvings, and the police look to the surviving scouts for their killer. The latest victim, an international film idol, brings worldwide attention to the 1204 troop roster, which includes a policeman, a TV news anchor, a university professor and a doctor, as well as two lawyers and a United States Congressman. The authorities are especially interested in Joshua Hilliard, the only scout known to be in Arizona at the time of the second killing. Hilliard, a Washington, D.C. urban design architect and decorated Vietnam War veteran, sets out to solve the crimes and clear his name. Teaming up with his wife, Carla, a high powered D.C. attorney, he retraces his life and the lives of the other ten surviving scouts, working against time to find the killer before he is indicted for the murders of his childhood friends, the two amateur sleuths confront their past as they fight for their future. In the course of their investigation, they discover how the war has effected their friends' lives and their own feelings toward each other since Joshua's return from Vietnam. As new murders occur and old ones come to light, Josh wages a battle with long dormant memories of his tour in country while Carla comes face to face with her husband's old combat adrenaline rush and her own sexual reawakening as well.

A report from the front lines of the most formative-and least understood-years of children's lives Suddenly they go from striving for A's to barely passing, or obsessing for hours over "boyfriends" they've barely spoken to. Former chatterboxes answer in monosyllables; free-thinkers mimic their peers' clothes, not to mention their opinions. Bodies and psyches morph under the most radical changes since infancy. On the surface, they're "just chillin'." Underneath, they're a stew of anxiety and ardor, conformity and rebellion. They are kids in the middle school years, the age every adult remembers well enough to dread. No one understands them, not parents, not teachers, least of all themselves-no one, that is, until Linda Perlstein spent a year immersed in the lives of suburban Maryland middle-schoolers and emerged with this pathbreaking account. The book traverses the school year, following five representative kids-and including the stories of many more-as they study, party, IM each other, and simply explain what they think and feel. As Perlstein writes about what she saw and heard, she explains what's really going on under the don't-touch-me facade of these critically formative years, in which kids grapple with schoolwork, puberty, romance, identity, and new kinds of relationships with their parents and peers. Not Much Just Chillin' offers a trail map to the baffling no-man's-land between child and teen, the time when children don't want to grow up, and so badly do.

This book provides practical implementation strategies for principals, other administrators, counselors, teachers, and parents who strive to make their school a place where students feel they belong.