'Ma'am, we're conducting a police inquiry and would like to ask you a few questions if you don't mind.' Gary thought Ma'am seemed an oddly inappropriate form of address for this recently pubescent young girl. Standing there pale and wide-eyed, she looked more like a waif than a woman. Yet addressing her as Miss would have been even less suitable. After all, she was cradling a baby. Gary Ambrose is a rookie police office in the community of Belvista, and he's struggling to get along with his new partner, Dan. What's worse, they've found the first murder anyone can think of in a long time. At first glance, there are no witnesses, no motives, and no evidence. All Gary and Dan can do is continue to question the neighbors and try to find some sort of trail. Elizabeth Webster is a young single mother who just found out that her landlord has been murdered. Sensing her distress, her mother convinces her niece, Maureen, to visit. But Maureen and Elizabeth haven't been very close since Maureen's baby was kidnapped almost a year before. And two officers won't stop pestering her about Old Will Brount's death. As Gary tries desperately to find a lead and prove himself as an officer, the details of Old Will Brount's character start to unravel. Elizabeth reveals the ugly truth about her family to her cousin, and another body is found dead. Follow the twisted maze of lies and deceit as Officer Ambrose investigates the case of The Poison Pit.

When scholar Terry Williams arrives in Iverness, Scotland, to complete her research on a woman burned at the stake for "congress with the Devil" in the seventeenth century, she finds the city in an uproar over the very recent murder of a young "Wiccan" woman. By the author of The Poison Tree. Reprint.

In a timely contribution to current debates over the psychology of boys and the construction of their social lives, On My Honor explores the folk customs of adolescent males in the Boy Scouts of America during a summer encampment in California's Sierra Nevada. Drawing on more than twenty years of research and extensive visits and interviews with members of the troop, Mechling uncovers the key rituals and play events through which the Boy Scouts shapes boys into men. He describes the campfire songs, initiation rites, games, and activities that are used to mold the Scouts into responsible adults. The themes of honor and character alternate in this new study as we witness troop leaders offering examples in structure, discipline, and guidance, and teaching scouts the difficult balance between freedom and self-control. What results is a probing look into the inner lives of boys in our culture and their rocky transition into manhood. On My Honor provides a provocative, sometimes shocking glimpse into the sexual awakening and moral development of young men coming to grips with their nascent desires, their innate aggressions, their inclination toward peer pressure and violence, and their social acculturation. On My Honor ultimately shows how the Boy Scouts of America continues to edify and mentor young men against the backdrop of controversies over freedom of religious expression, homosexuality, and the proposed inclusion of female members. While the organization's bureaucracy has taken an unyielding stance against gay men and atheists, real live Scouts are often more open to plurality than we might assume. In their embrace of tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, troop leaders at the local level have the power to shape boys into emotionally mature men.

“There’s a whole chapter on my son Beau… He was co-located [twice] near these burn pits.” –Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States of America The Agent Orange of the 21st Century… Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the “burn pits” where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material. This shocking work, now for the first time in paperback, includes: Illustration of the devastation in one soldier’s intimate story A plea for help Connection between the burn pits and Major Biden’s unfortunate suffering and death The burn pits’ effects on native citizens of Iraq: mothers, fathers, and children Denial from the Department of Defense and others Warning signs that were ignored and much more Based on thousands of government documents, over five hundred in-depth medical case studies, and interviews with more than one thousand veterans and active-duty GIs, The Burn Pits will shock the nation. The book is more than an explosive work of investigative journalism—it is the deeply moving chronicle of the many young men and women who signed up to serve their country in the wake of 9/11, only to return home permanently damaged, the victims of their own armed forces’ criminal negligence.