South Beach in the late 1990s is a town of blink-and-you'll-miss-'em nightclubs populated by celebrities, models, mobsters, heiresses, drug dealers, drag queens, and fun seekers of all stripes. It's a place where the famous come to party like locals, the locals party like rock stars behind velvet ropes, and the press is savvy enough to know what not to report. Rachel Baum is a sheltered, career-oriented everygirl when she moves to South Beach from her quiet Miami suburb, searching for a life less ordinary. Quickly making friends among SoBe's most exclusive scenesters, she spends her days building a career and her nights building a reputation. But in a town where friends become enemies faster than highs become hangovers, the life less ordinary turns into more than Rachel bargained for. As she pursues the endless party in penthouses, dive bars, after-hours clubs, and cocaine speakeasies, Rachel struggles to balance her goals and ambitions with the decadence and excess -- especially her drug-fueled, on-again off-again relationship with Yale-graduate-turned-addict John Hood -- that threaten to destroy everything she's always worked for. With tremendous wit and razor-sharp insight, Diary of a South Beach Party Girl portrays the innermost sanctums of South Beach's privileged Beautiful People through the eyes of a no longer innocent heroine.

Dear Reader, For six months I've been lifting weights with the "Muscle Mafia" at Gold's Gym and hanging out with bar bands writing songs hoping one of my lyrics make it to the big time. This book is about people's private side they seldom share their family and friends. The songs were inspired by hundreds of wonderful people I interviewed in South Beach. It's been said that a vacation in South Beach is like a trip to a movie set, a fashion shoot, and a tropical paradise all rolled into one. That's a pretty good description of the way it feels in South Beach. Fun in the sun, excitement, glamour, everlasting pampering of the body, soul, and mind, believe me folks South Beach has it all! To all the fans of "Along The Road To Heaven", and "A Sense of Wonder" who sent me e-mails begging for a third poetry/song book of Florida here it is. Jeff Langer "Beautiful Reward" is Mr. Langer's tenth book. He's written songs for hundreds of bands in South Florida. In 2006 Mr. Langer won the prestigious, "America's Brightest Songwriter Award" and has received lavish praise from the "International Poets Society, and Rolling Stone Magazine".

Master the Power of Story When you consider the thousands of years of storytelling that comprise our literary tradition, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the shadow of so many works. But there are common threads that link all stories--from Beowulf and Hamlet to Gone With the Wind and The Godfather to the story you're drafting right now in your head. These threads form the foundation that supports story--a foundation Nancy Lamb shows you how to access and master. Whether you're writing a novel, a memoir, or a screenplay, The Art and Craft of Storytelling offers time-tested ways to translate a concrete idea into a polished work. In this book, you will find strategies for: • Creating a successful a beginning, middle, and end while moving smoothly from one stage to the next • Crafting memorable characters, choosing the best point of view for your story, and constructing authentic, compelling dialogue • Integrating and navigating the more subtle elements of story, such as voice, tone, premise, and theme • Understanding genres and subgenres and how they apply to your story • Structuring plots that transform a ho-hum story into a page-turning read The Art and Craft of Storytelling gives you all the tools you need to contribute your own story to our great tradition, to open new worlds to your readers, and to introduce new ways of thinking. This is the power and purpose of story. And by your writing, this is the tradition you honor.

Despite increasing interest in the use of human enhancement drugs (HEDs), our understanding of this phenomenon and the regulatory framework used to address it has lagged behind. Encompassing public health, epidemiology, neuroethics, sport science, criminology, and sociology, this book brings together a broad spectrum of scholarly insights and research expertise from leading authorities to examine key international issues in the field of HEDs. As "traditional" and other "new" drug markets have occupied much of the academic attention, there has been a lack of scholarly focus on human enhancement drugs. This book provides readers with a much-needed understanding of the illicit drug market of HEDs. The authors, from a variety of cultural contexts, disciplines and perspectives, include both academics and practitioners. Topics explored in this collection amongst others include: • The anti-doping industry and performance and image enhancing drugs • Steroids and gender • The use of cognitive enhancing drugs in academia • The use of sunless synthetic tanning products • The (online) trade of HEDs • Regulations of the enhancement drugs market This collection will serve as a reference for students, academics, practitioners, law enforcement and others working in this area to reflect on the current state of research and consider future priorities. This detailed exploration will provide a valuable knowledge base for those interested in human enhancement drugs, while also promoting critical discussion.

Carefully selected to reflect the latest research at the interface between public health and criminal justice in the US, these contributions each focus on an aspect of the relationship. How, for example, might a person’s criminal activity adversely affect their health or their risk of exposure to HIV infection? The issues addressed in this volume are at the heart of policy in both public health and criminal justice. The authors track a four-fold connection between the two fields, exploring the mental and physical health of incarcerated populations; the health consequences of crime, substance abuse, violence and risky sexual behaviors; the extent to which high crime rates are linked to poor health outcomes in the same neighborhood; and the results of public health interventions among traditional criminal justice populations. As well as exploring these urgent issues, this anthology features a wealth of remarkable interdisciplinary contributions that see public health researchers focusing on crime, while criminologists attend to public health issues. The papers provide empirical data tracking, for example, the repercussions on public health of a fear of crime among residents of high-crime neighborhoods, and the correlations between HIV status and outcomes, and an individual’s history of criminal activity. Providing social scientists and policy makers with vital pointers on how the criminal justice and public health sectors might work together on the problems common to both, this collection breaks new ground by combining the varying perspectives of a number of key disciplines.

From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.

ONCE IN NINE LIVES, SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENS. The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight. Everyone warned that Homer would always be an “underachiever.” But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease, survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen’s life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer’s unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that transformed Gwen’s life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized that Homer had taught her the most valuable lesson of all: Love isn’t something you see with your eyes. BONUS: This edition contains a new afterword and an excerpt from Gwen Cooper's Love Saves the Day.