Oakdale Confidential


Book Description

This is the novel that everyone in Oakdale is talking about. This is the scandal they can't ignore. It's a major event in Oakdale -- a black-tie gala honoring the Marron family's fifty years of support for Oakdale's Memorial Hospital. But high spirits are cut short when patron of honor Gregory Marron Jr. is delivered in his limo dead on arrival, from an apparent heart attack. Three women in the crowd have reasons of their own to suspect murder. . . . Event organizer Katie Peretti never understood her boyfriend Mike Kasnoff's reasons for not attending the party -- until now. Wrongly implicated in a crime against the Marrons, Mike served a stiff sentence, and has nursed a simmering rage ever since. Maddie Coleman, the teenaged sister of the limo's driver, Henry, knows that her brother owed Marron thirty-thousand dollars. She also knows he couldn't pay him back, and had only one recourse for permanently erasing the debt. Carly Snyder's suspicions are more personal. The wife of police detective Jack Snyder, Carly was one of Marron's mistresses. In a heated moment she wanted her shameful past dead and buried -- a wish her husband possibly honored. Now Katie, Maddie, and Carly, each of them desperate to protect the man they love, are crossing paths in an investigation that's uncovering more poisonous secrets in Oakdale than they ever imagined. The means, motives, and suspects are shifting with each new twist -- and one of these determined women may not live to see the killer revealed.




Oakdale Confidential: Secrets Revealed


Book Description

Now expanded with a note from the author, 16 pages of photos, and a startling new epilogue that everyone in Oakdale is talking about! It's a major event in Oakdale -- a black-tie gala honoring the Marron family's fifty years of support for Oakdale's Memorial Hospital. But high spirits are cut short when patron of honor Gregory Marron Jr. is delivered in his limo dead on arrival, from an apparent heart attack. Three women in the crowd have reasons of their own to suspect murder. . . . Event organizer Katie Peretti never understood her boyfriend Mike Kasnoff 's reasons for not attending the party -- until now. After being wrongly implicated in a crime against the Marrons and serving a stiff sentence, Mike has nursed a simmering rage ever since. Maddie Coleman, the teen-aged sister of the limo's driver, Henry, knows that her brother owed Marron thirty thousand dollars. She also knows he couldn't pay him back and had only one recourse for permanently erasing the debt. Carly Snyder's suspicions are more personal. The wife of police detective Jack Snyder, Carly was one of Marron's mistresses. In a heated moment she wanted her shameful past dead and buried -- a wish her husband possibly honored. Now Katie, Maddie, and Carly, all three of them desperate to protect the men they love, are crossing paths in an investigation that's uncovering more poisonous secrets in Oakdale than they ever imagined. The means, motives, and suspects are shifting with each new twist -- and one of these determined women may not live to see the killer revealed.




My Mother's Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region


Book Description

With his dying breath, Lena's father asks his family a cryptic question: "You couldn't tell, could you?" After his passing, Lena stumbles upon the answer that changes her life forever. As her revolutionary neighbor mysteriously disappears during Josef Stalin's Great Terror purges, 18-year-old Regina suspects that she's the Kremlin's next target. Under cover of the night, she flees from her parents' communal apartment in 1930s Moscow to the 20th century's first Jewish Autonomous Region, Birobidzhan, on the border between Russia and China. Once there, Regina has to grapple with her preconceived notions of socialism and Judaism while asking herself the eternal question: What do we owe each other? How can we best help one another? While she contends with these queries and struggles to help Birobidzhan establish itself, love and war are on the horizon. New York Times Bestselling author Alina Adams draws on her own experiences as a Jewish refugee from Odessa, USSR as she provides readers a rare glimpse into the world's first Jewish Autonomous Region. My Mother's Secret is rooted in detailed research about a little known chapter of Soviet and Jewish history while exploring universal themes of identity, love, loss, war, and parenthood. Readers can expect a whirlwind journey as Regina finds herself and her courage within one of the century's most tumultuous eras.




The Man from Oakdale


Book Description

This is the novel everyone in Oakdale is dying to read! Henry Coleman is Oakdale's self-styled Cary Grant. Why shouldn't a man who's as smooth as a martini and blessed with a wit that's just as dry write a novel starring himself and his gorgeous girlfriend, Vienna Hyatt? In this sophisticated adventure, Coleman puts all his investigative skills to use as he searches for a missing young woman...and dares to reveal some of Oakdale's most closely-held secrets, including a few of his own. Desperate to locate her missing granddaughter, high-powered businesswoman Lucinda Walsh hires Henry Coleman for the job. Two years ago, Lucy Montgomery kidnapped her infant half brother Johnny in order to protect him from their manipulative father, Craig Montgomery, and Johnny's equally ruthless uncle, Paul Ryan. Now, both Craig and Paul are hot on Lucy's trail and it's up to Henry and his socialite girlfriend, Vienna, to find the lovely fugitive first. Sweeping from the sun-drenched South American Republic of Montega to a nobleman's dangerous lair in Sweden, and infiltrating the United Nations in Manhattan, Henry and Vienna discover that the tentacles of Lucy Montgomery's life on the run reach far and wide. With assistance from Margo and Tom Hughes, Sierra Esteban, and Gwen and Will Munson, and challenged by the escalating tensions in their own romantic relationship, they confront enemies both seen and unseen who are locked in a power struggle with Lucy and Johnny at its center. But when Vienna herself disappears, Henry must race against the clock to complete his mission so they can both make it back to Oakdale alive.




Oakdale Confidential


Book Description

When Gregory Marron Jr. arrives dead in his limo at a social event honoring his family, three women--Katie, Maddie, and Carly--have reason to suspect murder, and the ensuing investigation turns up several suspects and past secrets.




The Survival of Soap Opera


Book Description

The soap opera, one of U.S. television's longest-running and most influential formats, is on the brink. Declining ratings have been attributed to an increasing number of women working outside the home and to an intensifying competition for viewers' attention from cable and the Internet. Yet, soaps' influence has expanded, with serial narratives becoming commonplace on most prime time TV programs. The Survival of Soap Opera investigates the causes of their dwindling popularity, describes their impact on TV and new media culture, and gleans lessons from their complex history for twenty-first-century media industries. The book contains contributions from established soap scholars such as Robert C. Allen, Louise Spence, Nancy Baym, and Horace Newcomb, along with essays and interviews by emerging scholars, fans and Web site moderators, and soap opera producers, writers, and actors from ABC's General Hospital, CBS's The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, and other shows. This diverse group of voices seeks to intervene in the discussion about the fate of soap operas at a critical juncture, and speaks to longtime soap viewers, television studies scholars, and media professionals alike.




The Mammoth Book of ER Romance


Book Description

Thrilling tales of romantic suspense set in the emergency room and the hospital as a whole. These are romances which go beyond the classic doctor-nurse romances of yesteryear, having more in common with popular contemporary TV dramas such as House, ER, and Scrubs. This is 'medical romance', reinvented for today with an invigorating injection of edgy modern romantic suspense by Janice Lynn, Dianne Drake, Wendy S. Marcus, Fiona Lowe, Jacqueline Diamond and many more.




Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction


Book Description

As the first encyclopedia solely devoted to the popular romance fiction genre, this resource provides a wealth of information on all aspects of the subject. Romance fiction accounts for a large share of book sales each year, and contrary to popular belief, not all of its readers are women: roughly 16 percent are men. This enormously popular genre continues to captivate people reading for pleasure, and it also commands a growing amount of academic interest. Included are alphabetically arranged reference entries on significant authors along with works, themes, and other topics. The articles are written by scholars, librarians, and industry professionals with a deep knowledge of the genre and so provide a thorough understanding of the subject. An index provides easy access to information within the entries, and bibliographies at the end of each entry, a general bibliography, and a suggested romance reading list allow for further study of the genre.




Skate Crime


Book Description

While producing a tribute to figure skater and coach Lucian Price, Rebecca "Bex" Levy finds herself skating on thin ice when Lucian dies after taking a bad fall and she discovers that someone had tampered with his skates. Original.




Entertainment Industries


Book Description

Entertainment Industries is the first book to map entertainment as a cultural system. Including work from world-renowned analysts such as Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Gray, this innovative collection explains what entertainment is and how it works. Entertainment is audience-centred culture. The Entertainment Industries are a uniquely interdisciplinary collection of evolving businesses that openly monitor evolving cultural trends and work within them. The producers of entertainment – central to that practice– are the new artists. They understand audiences and combine creative, business and legal skills in order to produce cultural products that cater to them. Entertainment Industries describes the characteristics of entertainment, the systems that produce it, and the role of producers and audiences in its development, as well as explaining the importance of this area of study, and how it might be better integrated into Universities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.