Showing results by narrator "Margaret Strom" in All Categories

Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the 20th century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system.

For my birthday, my best friends Gilly and Pippa signed us up for a weekend at the Central Midwest Spa Convention. Yay. Massages, fine dining, maid service, and best of all, as long as we attend a few workshops, the weekend is a tax write-off. It should be all sunshine and roses, right? Wrong. My former intern at Belliza Beauty aka the Job Stealer, Carmen Carraway, is a featured presenter. Yuck. Throw in an ex-boyfriend, a number one fan, a brewing scandal, and a dead body, and my relaxing birthday weekend is DOA.

Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive - and massively controversial - wildlife rescue mission is underway.

If you're an emotional overeater, you may turn to food to cope with stress and sadness, enhance joy, and bring a sense of comfort. But over time, overeating can cause weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, and many other health problems. In 50 More Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, you'll find 50 more mindful and healthy activities to help you replace your need to overeat.

When Molly is invited to a major society wedding, she expects some wedding drama. Though she never anticipated this much trouble. The bride is the daughter of Molly's close friend Mason—and has been planning this wedding for a long time. But at the reception, things go amiss when the wealthy groom ends up dancing with the grim reaper.

Gilly is engaged, and I have invited a couple of friends to help us celebrate her bachelorette vacation in wine country. We are leaving work behind for three days of good food, good friends, and good fun. Or so I thought. When the youngest of our group, Tippy Davenport, gets flirty with a local musician, his girlfriend is less than pleased. Some might even call her reaction homicidal. But when the woman turns up dead during a hiking tour, our vacation turns into an investigation.

July 4th is a big deal in Locust Point - the parade, the fireworks, and the eagerly anticipated annual River Regatta. And this year local celebrity Holt Dupree will be in town, riding high on his recent draft pick for an NFL team. But not everyone loves football, and not everyone is a fan of Holt Dupree.

The stroke of midnight brings murder. What could be more magical than a black-tie Christmas party where those attending will socialize and rub elbows with the most prominent lawyers and judges in the state? Kay is enjoying the food, the wine, the conversation - and a dance with Judge Beck to the music of an elegant string quartet. But when she finds a dead body in an upstairs bathroom, Kay’s fairy-tale evening hits a sour note. Is the murderer a jilted lover? A rival for a lucrative position? A disgruntled client?

My name is Nora Black, local shop owner and part-time psychic consultant in the resort town of Garden Cove. When an anonymous letter in the local paper exposes my extrasensory secret, our normally idyllic town is plagued by a series of mysterious accidents, and I find myself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Kay's first real case as a licensed investigator is to track down a suspected mistress and the possible hidden assets of an estranged husband. It all seems pretty routine, but when the financial trail leads Kay down a rabbit hole of laundered money and bank fraud, a boring divorce case gets interesting.

David Driver isn't the only one buried in his grave. Kay's friend Olive has a family feud on her hands over who should have inherited the only remaining plot in their family section of the cemetery. When a cousin finally gives in and agrees to relocate her son's casket, the cemetery staff discover there's an extra body in the plot.

Fifties are the new forties and I'm living my best life ever. I may have a few more aches and pains, graying roots, and couple extra pounds, but I also have two quirky best friends who always have my back, business is booming, and my love life has never been better or hotter. That is until my sweetie Ezra Holden invites me home for Christmas to meet his family. The season is full of surprises in Ezra's hometown, like a missing cousin, a case of mistaken identity, and a slew of painful memories—none of them my own.

When Lawrence Lincoln wants to gift his life savings to help the sick granddaughter of Tricia Wellmore, a woman he met on a dating site, his friend and neighbor, Eloise, hires Kay to do a background check. Everything initially appears legitimate, but as Kay digs deeper, it's clear this internet match is far from perfect. Kay needs to use all her resources to find who the scammer is and bring them to justice before more lonely men lose their life savings to a heartless con.

When my BFF Gilly Martin requests my help in narrowing down her dance card from two great guys to one, I reluctantly agree to employ my psychic nose for the good of my bestie's future. But who knew dating could be deadly? After Gilly's ex-husband is arrested for murder, I am more than okay with my Detective Hottie boyfriend locking the meathead up and throwing away the key. However, being a jerk doesn't make someone a killer, and the case smells fishy from the get-go. So, I'm putting my personal feelings aside and using my smell-o-vision to investigate.

My name is Nora Black. I'm over 50 and enjoying my life to the fullest. That is, when I'm not worried about graying hair, low back pain, allergies, and a psychic gift that sometimes stinks. When police officer Reese McKay asks me to use my aroma-mojo to look into the "accidental drowning" of her black-sheep cousin, I can't turn her away. Especially now that she's become a friend.

For more than 40 years, professionals in the field of disability studies have engaged in debates over the use of aversive interventions (such as electric shock) like the ones used at the Judge Rotenberg Center. This book is a historical case study of the Judge Rotenberg Center, named after the judge who ruled in favor of keeping its doors open to use aversive interventions.

Best-selling author Luanne Trainor has come to Locust Point to speak. The writer’s arrival has the small town abuzz with excitement but Ms. Trainor isn’t what the bio on her book’s dust jacket proclaims. What should have been an elegant affair turns ugly with accusations and threats, and there is no lack of suspects when the author is found dead following the meet-and-greet. Could the murderer be another author? Her agent? A disgruntled fan? Or was Luanne Trainor hiding a secret that shadowed her success?

A narrowly escaped tragedy has Suzette thinking about filling in the old pond at the rear of her property—or even selling off that section of land entirely. Kay’s friend and neighbor has tried to keep the remaining portion of the family farm as unchanged as possible, but pond restoration is an undertaking too expensive for her budget.

On a wintery vacation with the kids, Kay and the judge stumble across a barn fire. What appeared to be an accidental blaze turns out to be arson, with the charred timbers hiding a dead body. Adding sleuthing to her holiday itinerary, Kay finds herself investigating and ghost-hunting the murder with two new kindred spirits.

Everyone is enchanted by Olive’s new puppy - even an initially wary Taco. Thinking she might want to add a furry friend to her own home, Daisy convinces Kay to go with her on a whirlwind tour of shelters, rescues, and breeders. But puppy loves comes to an abrupt end when the two women find well-known animal advocate Prucilla Downing dead in a pile of broken trophies and slashed fur coats.