Familiar Strangers Changing Faces

Desperation can make people do strange things...Janet sacrificed her freedom for a man who didn't love her and took the heat for a crime he committed. After years in jail and being reunited with her daughter, Brandy, Janet is finally starting her life afresh. Kevin comes into her life and is the solid foundation during an unstable time in her life. However, Kevin has his own drama to contend with. His beautiful ex-girlfriend, Chara cannot seem to understand that Kevin has moved on with his life. After all she broke up with him. Chara doesn't see it that way. Kevin belongs to her. No one will take what belongs to her ask the other women who made that same mistake. Janet's daughter, Brandy endured much suffering and pain while her mom was in prison. Tyrone was the one man who she thought would always be there for her, that was until he abandoned her. Familiar Strangers, Changing Faces explores how desperation can push men and women to the edge of sanity.

A Twist of Fate is the story of seventeen-year-old Angel Johanson, a shy, self-conscious young woman striving to find her place in a world fraught with peril. As she struggles to understand what happened to her and get her mind off the young woman she never knew, she devotes herself to getting through another day. Her fight for survival leads her back to the family that rescued her. Angel has long accepted the circumstances she now faces and her newfound friends, with the exception of one—Sean Callenger. She finds herself both frightened and fascinated by him and his unusual family. Her stubborn focus to put the pieces of her own life back together leaves no room in her affections for Sean or the romantic interest others try to proclaim for her. Determined not to show any feelings for Sean, Angel’s friends scheme up Operation Romance—a sure plan to push her and get the two of them together. But just as Angel begins to succeed with keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself, she unveils his family’s mystery, and suddenly, nothing seems sure.

How multiracial people identify themselves can have a big impact on their positions in family, community & society. This volume examines the multiracial experience in the US.

Who helps in situations of forced displacement? How and why do they get involved? In Helping Familiar Strangers, Louise Olliff focuses on one type of humanitarian group, refugee diaspora organizations (RDOs), to explore the complicated impulses, practices, and relationships between these activists and the "familiar strangers" they try to help. By documenting findings from ethnographic research and interviews with resettled and displaced persons, RDO representatives, and humanitarian professionals in Australia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Indonesia, Olliff reveals that former refugees are actively involved in helping people in situations of forced displacement and that individuals with lived experience of forced displacement have valuable knowledge, skills, and networks that can be drawn on in times of humanitarian crisis. We live in a world where humanitarians have varying motivations, capacities, and ways of helping those in need, and Helping Familiar Strangers confirms that RDOs and similar groups are an important part of the tapestry of care that people turn to when seeking protection far from home.

Bringing together the leading authors currently working at the intersection of social science and transport science, this volume provides a companion to the well-established and extensive international Transport and Society series. Each chapter, and the volume as a whole, offers closer and richer consideration of the issues, practices and structures of multiple mobilities which shape the current world but which have typically been overlooked or minimised. What this approach seeks to do is not only draw attention to many new areas of research and investigation relating to mobile lives, but also to point to new theories and methods by which such lives have to be researched and examined. Such new theories and methods are relevant both to rethinking 'transport' studies as such but are also recasting 'societal' studies as 'transport' so that it comes out of the ghetto and enters mainstream social science.

The key aim of this volume is to demonstrate ways in which an understanding of history can be used to inform present-day transport and mobility policies. This is not to say that history repeats itself, or that every contemporary transport dilemma has an historical counterpart: rather, the contributors to this book argue that in many contexts of transport planning a better understanding of the context and consequences of past decisions and processes could lead to more effective policy decisions. Collectively the authors explore the ways in which the methods and approaches of historical research may be applied to contemporary transport and policy issues across a wide range of transport modes and contexts. By linking two bodies of academic research that for the most part remain separate this volume helps to inform current transport and mobility policies and to stimulate innovative new research that links studies of both past and present mobilities.

Familiar Strangers is a marvelous kaleidoscope of varied colours and exquisite patterns as the pages keep turning. The author has undoubtedly presented us a collection of exquisite literary gems. The varied plots, built with intense imagination, showcase the human whims and absurdities in stark reality and in surrealism. Each story is different from the other in theme, background, and presentation. No lover of literature can put down Familiar Strangers once they start reading it.

Given the continuing cataclysmic shift in the economic landscape in the last few years, librarians have been forced to reevaluate not only the traditional services that they offer but also their continued existence and relevance to their academic institutions. Given the ‘new normal’ of tighter constraint on personnel and materials budgets, librarians now are compelled to find new ways of offering services and forging new relationships with departments and programs outside the traditional library setting. This volume highlights a number of projects being implemented in academic libraries including: rethinking the entire concept of a library, redefining physical space for new collaborative uses, adapting entrepreneurial techniques to acquire funding, creating new research tools and improving services, forging new consortial partnerships, allying more closely the mission of the library with that of the institution, and adapting public library programs to academic libraries. By re-examining the purpose of an academic library under continuing financial duress, librarians can ensure that their libraries will continue to have relevance to higher education. This book was published as a special issue of College & Undergraduate Libraries.