Masked Innocence

A young woman’s affair with her seductive boss leads to dangerous places in this sexy and suspenseful romance by the author of Blindfolded Innocence. The man was sinful. It wasn’t just the looks that made him dangerous, it was the cocky confidence that dominated every move, every touch. And the frustrating yet ecstatic fact about the whole package was that he could back it all up . . . Julia Campbell never knows what to expect with win-at-all-costs Brad De Luca. And she’s starting to like it that way. She gave up safe, conventional relationships when she let the elite divorce attorney seduce her into his world. Now that he’s determined to strip her naked of every inhibition, she’s in danger of falling too deep and too fast. But their affair begins to feel even more dangerous when a murder leaves a trail of suspicion that points straight to the mob . . . and Brad. Trusting a man with a bad reputation and a past full of secrets seems like a mistake. But when she’s forced to make a choice, the consequences will take her further than she could ever have imagined.

There's not a killer in the world who can hide from Mama.... Dark encounters and deadly lessons I was happy to volunteer a few days back home to help Mama distribute clothing to the needy. But I didn't expect big-city dangers to follow me all the way to Otis, South Carolina. Instead of doing good deeds and cooking up a storm, Mama was digging deep into shady secrets after young Brenda Long was discovered dead in a shallow grave. Someone wanted Brenda silenced bad enough to kill, and the list of suspects is long. But is the killer the drug-dealing teacher that Brenda threatened to expose? Or can it have been the man who was sent to jail after Brenda caught him stealing — now paroled and bent on exacting his revenge? Everyone knows that Mama has had good luck as the town's unofficial sleuth. But as a maze of tangled relationships leads to dead ends and dead bodies, time is slipping away. For our worst enemies can masquerade as friends — and even Mama's luck can run out....

A playboy divorce lawyer’s new intern is about to lose her innocence in this scorching hot contemporary romance. Brad De Luca is used to getting whatever and whomever he wants. The premier divorce attorney in town, he’s a playboy who’s bedded half the city—including his own clients. And when the newest intern at his firm poses a challenge, his seductive prowess goes into overdrive. Pre-law student Julia Campbell is fresh off a failed engagement and happy with her new independence. Even if she hadn’t been warned away from Brad at every turn, she’d know he was bad news. The last thing she needs is a man who could destroy her job prospects, not to mention her innocence. But before she knows it, the incorrigible charmer has her under his spell. His deviant tastes plunge her deep into a forbidden world of sexual exploration . . . but her heart may not survive the fall.

From the green hills of Gloucestershire to the brothels of Victorian Bristol and the fens of Cumbria, Mask of Innocence is a fast paced novel set against a rich backdrop of Victorian society. A strong moral tale, Mask of Innocence shows how people come together to seek out truth and love against a whirlwind of turmoil and adversity.

2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature 2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association 2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocence--a reversal of the previously-dominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racial-political projects--a dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls "racial innocence." This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Racial Innocence takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as "scriptive things" that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how "innocence" gradually became the exclusive province of white children--until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself. Check out the author's blog for the book here.

The sole purpose of this book is to encourage people to persevere through hard times; to give hope to the hurting and help the broken to be blessed, encouraged and renewed. No matter what we face in life, there is always hope and healing through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

From Kevin Brownlow, cinema historian and discoverer of lost films, here is the first full-scale exploration of a vital and now almost forgotten chapter of American moviemaking: the response of early producers of the decades before World War I. All the issues that torment America today were rampant in the silent-film era: crime, poverty, alcohol, drugs, racial and ethnic prejudice, epidemics, and the controversies over birth control, abortion, and the death penalty. And there were others that persist today but were then even more explosive: sexual mores, government and police corruption, prison conditions, immigration, and strife between capital and labor. Although many early moviemakers ignored harsh realities, choosing to depict a society shielded by a “mask of innocence,” others went behind that façade, fighting the ever-present censors and producing films that made even the most sheltered moviegoer aware of deep rents in the country’s social fabric. Some films were exploitative, some serious, but together they add up to a revelation of the dark side of American life—a revelation startling to us today because it was later, in the era of the Hays Office, so thoroughly ignored, indeed denied, by Hollywood. Broken Blossoms, The Crowd, Humoresque, Regeneration: these films that have survived and become classics are, in these pages, studied in their historical context. And although a tragic number of other films have vanished, nearly all are reclaimed from oblivion by Mr. Brownlow’s brilliant feat of restoration and descriptive “reconstruction.” Here, never again to be forgotten, are The Fall of the Romanoffs, The Racket, Those Who Dance, and dozens of others. With this remarkable book, Kevin Brownlow completes the panoramic trilogy that began with The Parade’s Gone By… and continued with The War, the West, and the Wilderness. Like its predecessors, Behind the Mask of Innocence is an essential work of silent-film history, certain to become a standard reference; but it is more—at once a surprising portrait of a time not unlike our own and a powerful demonstration of the way in which a popular art form can reveal a society to itself.

Controversies in Innocence Cases in America brings together leading experts on the investigation, litigation, and scholarly analysis of innocence cases in America, from legal, political and ethical perspectives. The contributors, many of whom work on these cases daily, investigate contemporary issues presented by innocence cases and the exoneration movement as a whole. These issues include the challenges faced by the movement, causes of wrongful convictions, problems associated with investigating, proving, and defining 'innocence', and theories of reform. Each issue is placed within a multi-disciplinary perspective to provide cogent observations and recommendations for the effective handling of these cases, and for what changes should be adopted in order to improve the American criminal justice system when it is faced with its most harrowing sight: an innocent defendant.