Includes discussion questions and an excerpt from the next book in the series.

Bestselling author Jude Deveraux spins a rollicking story of a mismatched couple who unearth a sparkling, irresistible passion across the rugged West! Captain Ring Montgomery was handsome, a skilled rider, a crack shot, popular with the men and their ladies. That was reason enough for a jealous, surly colonel to saddle Montgomery with a most peculiar assignment: to escort an opera singer into the Colorado gold fields. Ring’s plan was to scare the little lady enough so that she’d hightail it for home. After all, a Civil War was brewing! But LaReina, The Singing Duchess—as Maddie was called—didn’t scare easily. And she didn’t intend to explain her reasons for coming West to any high and mighty soldier. Captain Montgomery might be smart enough to figure out that she was no European duchess, and gentleman enough not to take advantage of her. But he’d have to go on thinking she had some insane desire to sing opera to a bunch of ragtag miners—for she didn’t dare trust him with the truth…

Laruel Mountain Laruel: the title is a sort of rough palindrome, appropriate for Jake Reinhart's vision, in which time is reflected upon itself and the end is also the beginning (and is also the end). The transient and the enduring are revealed to be one and the same. These photographs - somehow both tender and unsparing - were made in Southwest Pennsylvania, in the Youghiogheny region. One surviving translation has it that "Yough" means four, and "henné" means stream. "I've been along those four streams, and I've seen how they come together," Reinhart says, "losing their specificity yet retaining what is inherent to each - creating something larger and joining places and people that would otherwise appear disjointed and separate." As for the streams, so for the images in Laruel Mountain Laurel: individual pictures exist essentially, while together they bind both space and time - the eternal and the geological brought into a semblance of coherence with the fragile and the human. We see that, despite our best efforts to erase and exploit, the land will ultimately have its own way, and on its own schedule. --

A close look at the aftereffects of the Mount Laurel affordable housing decision Under the New Jersey State Constitution as interpreted by the State Supreme Court in 1975 and 1983, municipalities are required to use their zoning authority to create realistic opportunities for a fair share of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households. Mount Laurel was the town at the center of the court decisions. As a result, Mount Laurel has become synonymous with the debate over affordable housing policy designed to create economically integrated communities. What was the impact of the Mount Laurel decision on those most affected by it? What does the case tell us about economic inequality? Climbing Mount Laurel undertakes a systematic evaluation of the Ethel Lawrence Homes—a housing development produced as a result of the Mount Laurel decision. Douglas Massey and his colleagues assess the consequences for the surrounding neighborhoods and their inhabitants, the township of Mount Laurel, and the residents of the Ethel Lawrence Homes. Their analysis reveals what social scientists call neighborhood effects—the notion that neighborhoods can shape the life trajectories of their inhabitants. Climbing Mount Laurel proves that the building of affordable housing projects is an efficacious, cost-effective approach to integration and improving the lives of the poor, with reasonable cost and no drawbacks for the community at large.

This definitive study by the preeminent breeder of kalmias includes recent introductions of these beautiful shrubs. It includes all seven species of Kalmia and nearly 80 recognized cultivars.

In 1928 New York native Muriel Earley Sheppard moved with her mining engineer husband to the Toe River Valley -- an isolated pocket in North Carolina between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountains. Sheppard began visiting her neighbors and forming friendships in remote coves and rocky clearings, and in 1935 her account of life in the mountains -- Cabins in the Laurel -- was published. The book included 128 striking photographs by the well-known Chapel Hill photographer, Bayard Wootten, a frequent visitor to the area. The early reviews of Cabins in the Laurel were overwhelmingly positive, but the mountain people -- Sheppard's friends and subjects -- initially felt that she had portrayed them as too old-fashioned, even backward. As novelist John Ehle shows in his foreword, though, fifty years have made a huge difference, and the people of the Toe River Valley have been among its most affectionate readers. This new large-format edition, which makes use of many of Wootten's original negatives, will introduce Sheppard's words and Wootten's photography to a whole new generation of readers -- in the Valley and beyond.

In his second collection, Casteen moves inward from the physical labor and vernacular culture that shaped his first book, Free Union, yet continues to focus on landscape and human relationships. These poems dwell in the music of language, the hard truths of those who are no longer young, and the pleasures of the reflective life.