Keep the heart in Heart Lake. That's exactly what three small-town shop owners hope to do when they launch their crazy-ambitious "Have a Heart" campaign—asking neighbors to commit one random act of kindness every day. Emma, Sarah, and Jamie love their lakeside community, but the little town is growing too big too fast, and a doing a good deed never hurt anyone. Or so they thought... When Emma slashes prices at her quilt shop, practically giving away blankets to anyone who looks vaguely cold, she almost stitches her way into bankruptcy. Sarah's free cooking class boils down to a hotbed of crime when some punk kid swipes her favorite heirloom. And at Jamie's chocolate shop, things take a bittersweet turn when a local policeman starts giving her grief, stirring up feelings she's tried to forget—and slowly melts away her defenses... With irresistible humor, warmth, affection—and recipes!—author Sheila Roberts serves up a generous, open-hearted story about the friendships we make, the chances we take, and the lives we touch every day.

Celebritocracy delves into celebrity activism while tearing apart most of the highly publicized charitable and activist efforts of your favorite celebrities. Why did George Clooney back off of Darfur? How did Oprah’s attempt to help Katrina victims go terribly wrong? While Kim Kardashian has done great things for criminal justice reform, did her activism on behalf of Armenian genocide set the cause back decades? And did you know that the famed Dodd-Frank Act has a small bit of pork barrel politics wedged into it—urged on by actress Robin Wright—that put thousands of lives in jeopardy in the DRC? Celebritocracy exposes nonfictional accounts of the many instances when celebrity activism ended up causing more harm than good.

It has long been recognised that the Church played a major role in the development of towns and cities from the earliest times, a fact attested to by the prominence and number of ecclesiastical buildings that still dominate many urban areas. Yet despite this physical evidence, and the work of archaeologists and historians, many important aspects of the early stages of urbanization in England are still poorly understood. Not least, there are many unanswered questions concerning the processes by which the larger towns emerged as planned settlements during the pre-Conquest centuries. Whilst the commitment of the Wessex kings is recognized, questions remain concerning the participation of the Church in this process. Likewise, our understanding of the Church's influence in the later development of towns is not yet fully developed. Many intriguing questions remain concerning such issues as the founding of parish churches and their boundaries, and the extent to which the Church, as a major landowner, helped shape the evolving identity of towns and their suburbs. It is questions such as these that this volume sets out to answer. Employing a wealth of historical and archaeological evidence, two key towns - Gloucester and Worcester - are closely examined in order to build up a picture of their respective developments throughout the medieval period. Through this multi-disciplinary and comparative approach, a picture begins to emerge the Church's role in helping to shape not only the spiritual, but also the social, economic and cultural development of the urban environment.

Someone once told me that groupings of objects should be displayed in threes. Three provides both tension and balance among items of varying size and heft. My sister’s accident made me an only child; my husband’s accident made me a widow. Part of me will always believe that Angel was the third, the one that left me with hope. After her husband’s unexpected death at the age of thirty-six, Gina Melrose becomes a “live-aboard” on his boat, docked at a marina in coastal South Carolina, near the home she and Ben once shared. In this temporary, borrowed existence on the water, she settles into numb survival. But Gina finds her life taking yet another dramatic turn late one night when a woman named Reese disrupts her quiet world. With Reese comes a daughter: a charming girl named Angel. After a rough start, Gina realizes that, strange as it may seem, she’s drawn to both Reese and Angel. Their sudden appearance shatters the stillness–and Gina is remade. She is fascinated by Reese, who seems both invincible and vulnerable–and whose past may hold the key to Gina’s future. Gina begins to realize that for the first time since Ben’s death, she’s getting her senses back. As both pain and joy reenter her world, Gina discovers that she is able to accept feeling in order to live fully once more. But the biggest surprise for Gina is her relationship with Angel. After the painful loss of her sister during childhood, Gina had decided that she would never have children of her own. Struggling through conflicted emotions, Gina’s finds her life unexpectedly transformed by the precocious little girl who may be Ben’s daughter. This tender, poignant novel movingly explores the bonds of family and the resilience of hope. In the accomplished tradition of the novels of Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve, Jean Reynolds Page’s Accidental Happiness is a lyrical, enthralling drama unafraid to examine complex relationships with a clear eye and an honest heart.