This is the story of an eventful term: 2nd years Anna and Denise want to make money and have adventures to write up on the blog they're creating. They set up an above-board business running children's parties and a covert vigilante business - meting out other people's revenge (e.g. hiding gymbags, spoiling homework). They defend their actions by claiming that they're fighting injustice. Both explore the other sex - Anna is practical and sets herself up with boyfriends, Denise is romantic and dreams about boys. They are self-absorbed and wrapped up in each other and don't notice the real injustice under their noses: Denise is ignoring her younger sister, Justine, who is suffering. The book relates how they finally use their undoubted ingenuity for a good cause - saving Justine - and how they lose some of their self-absorption and widen their friendship to include others.

A TRUE CRIME THRILLER THAT EXPLORES THE DARKEST REGIONS OF ROMANTIC INFATUATION. THE YEAR: 1969 THE SETTING: Berkeley, California THE STORY: Amidst the turmoil of student rebellion two loners encounter each other and turn an innocent flirtation into a dance of death. THE CHARACTERS: Prosenjit Poddar was the brilliant engineering student who wanted nothing more than to return to his native India a big success and to marry a woman of his parents' choosing. Tanya Tarasoff was the naive coed who just wanted somebody to love. And Larry Moore was the young psychologist who thought he recognized the warning signs that his patient was not just suffering from a jilted love affair... but was about to commit an act of murder. THE STAKES: In a culture clash that pits the traditional values of male-dominated India against free-love attitudes of Berkeley in the '60s, an impending tragedy unfolds. Soon Larry Moore finds himself face-to-face with the biggest dilemma of his career. What does a doctor do if he perceives his patient as mentally unstable and a threat to the well-being of another... but is bound by the oath of doctor-patient confidentiality not to warn the police? This true story tracks Moore's race against time to stop the inevitable. BAD KARMA is more than an anatomy of madness; it is also a chronicle of the events that would culminate in a landmark decision handed down by the California Supreme Court. Known simply as Tarasoff, this 1976 ruling would change the oath of confidentially between therapist and patient, and establish the rule that a mental health professional has the legal duty to protect a threatened individual.

In the summer of 1978, twenty-one-year-old Paul Wilson jumps at the chance to join two local icons on a dream surf trip to mainland Mexico, unaware their ultimate destination lies in the heart of drug cartel country. Having no earthly idea of where he'll get the money to pay his share, and determined to prove his mettle, he does the only thing he can think of: He robs a supermarket. And, if karma didn't already have enough reason to doom the trip, he soon learns one of his companions is a convicted killer on the run, and the other an unscrupulous cad. Mishap and misfortune rule the days, and mere survival takes precedence over surfing. Original photographs (including pre-kingpin El Chapo), and Wilson's strong narrative style, combine to make this true story personal--in the tradition of Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan--except this tale had to wait for the statute of limitations to expire before it could be told.

In this moving autobiography, Daniel Gawthrop writes about the politics and pleasures of being a self-identified ''rice queen''; a gay man who is attracted to Asians. Navigating through the urban jungles of Western cities like Vancouver and London, as well as the humid streets of Bangkok and Saigon, Daniel explores the multicultural minefields of sexuality and culture as he articulates the manners and contradictions of his desires. The politics of race, and the unspoken rules of gay Asian culture in both Western and Eastern settings, underscore Daniel's personal journey in which he recalls his teen years spent idolizing Bruce Lee and his fixation on an Asian schoolmate whose hazing becomes a sexual spectacle for him. As he enters adulthood, his desires become manifest as he explores the subcultures of Long Yang Clubs (where gay Asians and ''their admirers'' can meet) before departing for Asia, where his encounters often become transactions, and he learns the hard way that sexual desire has a human and emotional cost. Evoking the themes of Edward Said's Orientalism, The Rice Queen Diaries is as much a personal statement about culture and otherness as it is about gay desire. Traversing three continents, these diaries are a personal reckoning, a bold coming to terms with the nuances of sexuality that has relevance for all of us.

Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce opens an intimate window on the lives of divorced men. Literature on divorce focuses primarily on its effects on women and children, but fair and personal accounts of the lived experiences of custodial and non-custodial fathers are less available. In this highly accessible text, ten American men share intensely personal reflections of guilt, pain, frustration, sacrifice, loneliness and pride. The men do not see themselves as exemplary; rather, their stories are graphically honest, revealing what Paterson calls ordinary men “with all their warts.” The author reviews significant works on the male experience of divorce from psychological, legal, educational and sociological experts, interspersing commentary and research with the men’s own voices. From the initial discussion of why men marry and why they divorce through the men’s painful memories of being pushed out of their children’s lives by angry and resentful mothers, the author illuminates the legal, fiscal, emotional and practical experiences of men struggling to reinvent their fathering while they find themselves reconfigured into deserters, deadbeats and visitors. The societal myth that fathers are less valuable parents than mothers is thoroughly deconstructed in this text. The book will help divorced and divorcing men and those who work with them to fully understand the experiences of fathers who never stopped loving and caring for their children, in spite of the fact that the contributions of fathers are still largely discounted by schools, courts, and worst of all, by their children’s mothers. From this book, readers will understand that there are just too many reasons why fathers must never be forgotten in the lives of their children.

Our heroine, a moderately successful TV writer in L.A., wants her life to be as sunny and perfect as a Hollywood rom-com: a cool job, a wacky best friend, and lots of age-appropriate hot guys just dying to date her. Instead, she’s a self-described spinster who is swimming in anxiety and just might have a tiny little brain tumor. So she turns to an unlikely source for inspiration: the eighteenth-century novelist and diarist Frances Burney, who pretty much invented the chick-lit novel. A semi-autobiographical unromantic comedy, The Spinster Diaries is a laugh-out-loud satire of both the TV business and the well-worn conventions of chick lit—as well as the true tale of the forgotten writer who inspired Jane Austen to greatness. It's an endearing and refreshingly honest testament to how one person’s life can reach out across the centuries to touch another’s.

• Seasonal strategies from a veteran of the surf • Ten-year compilation of detailed journals • Rigs and effective methods for bass, blues, weakfish, sharks, and more • Best spots along the Jersey coast