Family Honor

A blazingly original novel from the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, featuring a sharp, tough, sexy new P.I., Sunny Randall. Sunny Randall is a Boston P.I. and former cop, a college graduate, an aspiring painter, a divorcée, and the owner of a miniature bull terrier named Rosie. Hired by a wealthy family to locate their teenage daughter, Sunny is tested by the parents’ preconceived notion of what a detective should be. With the help of underworld contacts she tracks down the runaway Millicent, who has turned to prostitution, rescues her from a vicious pimp, and finds herself, at thirty-four, the unlikely custodian of a difficult teenager when the girl refuses to return to her family. But Millicent’s problems are rooted in much larger crimes than running away, and Sunny, now playing the role of bodyguard, is caught in a shooting war with some very serious mobsters. She turns for help to her ex-husband, Richie, himself the son of a mob family, and to her dearest friend, Spike, a flamboyant and dangerous gay man. Heading this unlikely alliance, Sunny must solve at least one murder, resolve a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the top of state government, and bring Millicent back into functional young womanhood.

Experience this gripping true story of a Japanese American family’s transformation from brokenness to wholeness in the face of tragedy. The inspirational account of a Japanese-American family’s triumph after grappling with the death of their three children—two from AIDS and a third the victim of a tragic drive-by shooting—Honor Thy Children chronicles the creation, devastation, and remarkable resurrection of the Nakatanis, who journey from unimaginable grief to healing. Praise for Honor Thy Children “This is a story that will break your heart and make it whole again. It will bring you into a realm of humanness and compassion you didn’t know you had. It might even set you free to love in ways you’ve never loved before.” —Sister Helen Prejean, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Dead Man Walking “I have never read such a powerful story about a Japanese American family like this before. It relates a universal message of the deep love the Nakatanis have for their children which transcended alienation and despair.... It is the Nakatanis enduring legacy of love and hope to the world.” —Ford H. Kuramoto, national director, National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse

Focusing on Florence, Thomas Kuehn demonstrates the formative influence of law on Italian society during the Renaissance, especially in the spheres of family and women. Kuehn's use of legal sources along with letters, diaries, and contemporary accounts allows him to present a compelling image of the social processes that affected the shape and function of the law. The numerous law courts of Italian city-states constantly devised and revised statutes. Kuehn traces the permutations of these laws, then examines their use by Florentines to arbitrate conflict and regulate social behavior regarding such issues as kinship, marriage, business, inheritance, illlegitimacy, and gender. Ranging from one man's embittered denunciation of his father to another's reaction to his kinsmen's rejection of him as illegitimate, Law, Family, and Women provides fascinating evidence of the tensions riddling family life in Renaissance Florence. Kuehn shows how these same tensions, often articulated in and through the law, affected women. He examines the role of the mundualdus—a male legal guardian for women—in Florence, the control of fathers over their married daughters, and issues of inheritance by and through women. An ambitious attempt to reformulate the agenda of Renaissance social history, Kuehn's work will be of value to both legal anthropologists and social historians. Thomas Kuehn is professor of history at Clemson University.

Deputy’s Sense of Justice Destroyed There’s no way sheriff’s deputy Dan Justice could have prepared for this. He spent a lifetime ensuring his actions and faith live up to the meaning of his name—Avidan: “God is just.” Then injustice invades his world, ripping away what matters most, forever robbing him of the life he once knew. Can his sisters and small-town community—especially one woman who loves Dan—help him overcome the horrors he’s facing? Or will bitterness and anger shatter him forever? What happens when justice fails the lawman? Sanctuary, Oregon . A town where the local diner owner makes you drink your milk—no matter how old you are. Where juvenile delinquency means blowing up outhouses. Where folks not only know their neighbors, but care about them. For widowed sheriff’s deputy Dan Justice, it’s a place where he and his kids can heal and grow. Shelby Wilson loves Sanctuary and her work with troubled teens. Like Jayce Dalton. Sure, he’s as troubled as they come, but Shelby knows Dan is exactly what Jayce needs. She just didn’t expect that Dan might be what she’s always needed, too. But sleepy little Sanctuary has a dark side, steeped in pain and secrets. Secrets that could destroy everything Dan holds dear. Secrets that will one day have Dan groping through the fog toward a lifeless body—and faith-shattering grief. Can Dan find sanctuary in the light of God’s justice? “A surefire hit!”— Karen Kingsbury , bestselling author of Beyond Tuesday Morning “Shattered Justice is for anyone who has ever known grief or asked God, “Why me?”— Terri Blackstock , bestselling author of River’s Edge Story Behind the Book “The idea for Shattered Justice came out of an article I read in the newspaper. This very thing happened to a police officer. As I read the article, I kept wondering how anyone who spent his life serving others could ever come back from such a horrific, unjust loss. Of course the details in this book differ from the event that inspired it, but the story unfolds from a similar life-shattering event and follows Dan as he struggles with grief and anger.”

Across many parts of the world, violence inflicted in the name of family honor is attracting an increasing amount of attention. Family honor violence, otherwise known as honor-based violence, is physical force inflicted primarily on women for conduct defined as dishonorable. This book explores these conflicts of honor, how they are triggered, how they are handled, and why some lead to death. Drawing on a range of case studies and employing Donald Black's concept of social geometry, Execution by Family incorporates and goes beyond patriarchy, culture, and kinship to develop a unified theory of family honor violence. It discusses the "honor belt," a series of countries stretching from north Africa to southeast Asia, in which similar forms of inequality, patriarchy, group authority, and gerontocracy are prevalent and how, within the confines of this inequality, honor violence flourishes. Reviewing survey data and pointing to a multi-pronged, cross-national social movement, the book also discusses the future of honor-based violence. Given the growing awareness of family honor violence, Execution by Family will be of interest to anybody concerned with family conflict, violence, crime, and popular morality. It will be invaluable reading for academics and students in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social psychology, and anthropology.

Ethnography in Unstable Places is a collection of ethnographic accounts of everyday situations in places undergoing dramatic political transformation. Offering vivid case studies that range from the Middle East and Africa to Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia, the contributing anthropologists narrate particular circumstances of social and political transformation—in contexts of colonialism, war and its aftermath, social movements, and post–Cold War climates—from the standpoints of ordinary people caught up in and having to cope with the collapse or reconfiguration of the states in which they live. Using grounded ethnographic detail to explore the challenges to the anthropological imagination that are posed by modern uncertainties, the contributors confront the ambiguities and paradoxes that exist across the spectrum of human cultures and geographies. The collection is framed by introductory and concluding chapters that highlight different dimensions of the book’s interrelated themes—agency and ethnographic reflexivity, identity and ethics, and the inseparability of political economy and interpretivism. Ethnography in Unstable Places will interest students and specialists in social anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations, and cultural studies. Contributors. Eve Darian-Smith, Howard J. De Nike, Elizabeth Faier, James M. Freeman, Robert T. Gordon, Carol J. Greenhouse, Nguyen Dinh Huu, Carroll McC. Lewin, Elizabeth Mertz, Philip C. Parnell, Nancy Ries, Judy Rosenthal, Kay B. Warren, Stacia E. Zabusky

This text is an original investigation in the complex relationship between women, gender, and language in a Muslim, multilingual, and multicultural setting. Moroccan women's use of monolingualism (oral literature) and multilingualism (code-switching) reflects their agency and gender-role subversion in a heavily patriarchal society.