"A black southern doctor offers a gripping memoir of his childhood in Alabama, his efforts to overcome racism in the white medical community, his participation in the civil rights movement and his problems with the Medicaid program and state medical authorities"--Provided by publisher.

National bestselling author Sharon Shinn introduces a rich new fantasy world, one in which people believe that five essential elements rule all things and guide their lives.

THE young man drew up his horse at the side of the dusty road and looked across the barbed-wire fence into the orchard beyond. Far distant against the horizon could be seen the blue mountain range of the Big Horns, sharp-toothed, with fields of snow lying in the gulches. But in the valley basin where he rode an untempered sun, too hot for May, beat upon his brown neck and through the gray flannel shirt stretched taut across his flat back. The trees were clouds of soft blossoms and the green alfalfa beneath looked delightfully cool. Warm and dry from travel as he was, that shadowy paradise of pink and white bloom and lush deep grass called mightily to him. A reader of character might have guessed that handsome Larry Silcott followed the line of least resistance. If his face betrayed no weakness, certainly it showed self-satisfaction, an assured smug acceptance of the fact that he was popular and knew it. Yet his friends, and he had many of them, would have protested that word smug. He was a good fellow, amiable, friendly, anxious to please. At dance and round-up he always had a smile or a laugh ready.

During the conflict between cattlemen and sheepmen, Wyoming sheepman J.C. Tate violates an agreed-upon line of demarcation with his sheep. Rancher Rowan McCoy organizes a night raid on the herd, but gives orders that guns are not to be used. One man with a grudge against Tait decides to disobey.

This story is about a woman, Rose, whose husband, a policeman, is shot on duty in Belfast. She and her teenage daughter emigrate to South Africa. Rose goes to live in a seaside resort near Cape Town, meets a young man and, being a ballroom dancing teacher, helps him win a Latin dance competition. He falls in love with her. Although attracted by him, Rose doesn’t love him but he pursues her till she gives in and they marry. Meanwhile Rose’s brother, a doctor whose wife has just died, follows her with his twelve-year-old son, Teddy. He wants to carry on a relationship with his unwilling sister, but is killed in a car accident, leaving Rose well provided for. She makes a home for Teddy over school holidays and gives him the affection and interest of a mother. He tries, when he is on holiday from school, to protect Rose from her unfaithful and abusive husband. Later, as a young man Teddy qualifies as a pilot and wants to rescue Rose from her empty marriage. She separates from her husband and Teddy takes her with her two very young children to Canada. Her husband goes to pieces and commits suicide. Rose adores Teddy but as he is a pilot he is often away, and she grows lonely. Her son had been emotionally scarred by a compromising experience with a girl. He is encouraged by a disturbed pen-friend to overcome his fear of the opposite sex by making advances to his mother. As a seventeen-year-old he begs her for a closer relationship and overpowers her. Rose and her son find they grow close and deeply love each other. He wants to find a meaning to his life and eventually decides to become a priest. Later he is not certain if he really has a calling and, as he is unable to let go of his mother, decides finally to give up and remain with her. She is unhappy in Canada and wants to return to South Africa.

Diving for sea urchins is a competitive business, and Mickey Sutter knows some of the divers are hoping she'll quit after losing her husband in an automobile accident. Don't hold your breath. She's tougher and far more stubborn than most people realize. With her nephew on board as crew, Mickey pilots Perseverance toward Neah Bay, located on the northwest tip of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. She's ready for opening day of the season, but nothing prepares her for finding the body of a good friend--dead in the bottom of his fishhold. The Coast Guard and local police treat his death as an accident, but Mickey is bothered by some unexplained details and starts her own investigation. When her snooping turns up evidence of poaching, she reports it to the proper authorities. The next morning, she finds a threatening note on her boat, warning her to mind her own business. Mickey is furious, and it fuels her growing suspicion that one of the poachers murdered her friend. Convinced she knows who did it, the search for proof almost gets her killed.

A history of the countries bordering the Black Sea told through the stories of the people who live there. Fringing the Black Sea is a diverse array of countries, some centuries old and others emerging only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Jens Mühling travels through this region, telling the stories of the people he meets along the way in order to paint a picture of the mix of cultures found here and to understand the present against a history stretching back to the arrival of Ancient Greek settlers and beyond. A fluent Russian speaker with a knack for gaining the trust of those he meets, Mühling brings together a cast of characters as diverse as the stories he hears, all of whom are willing to tell him their complex, contradictory, and often fantastical tales full of grief and legend. He meets descendants of the so-called Pontic Greeks, whom Stalin deported to Central Asia and who have now returned; Circassians who fled to Syria a century ago and whose great-great-grandchildren have returned to Abkhazia; and members of ethnic minorities like the Georgian Mingrelians or Bulgarian Muslims, expelled to Turkey in the summer of 1989. Mühling captures the region’s uneasy alliance of tradition and modernity and the diverse humanity of those who live there.