Mother Murphy S Law

A Brief Interview With Mother Murphy, Himself Q. How did you come up with the idea for Mother Murphy's Law? Mother Murphy: I spend a lot of time with my children, and it seems that something is always going wrong. I used to think I was a klutzy daddy...then it dawned on me: 1. When I was a kid, everything my parents did was wrong. 2. Now that I'm a parent, everything I do is wrong. Q. What does Mother Murphy's Law explain? Mother Murphy: The book is pretty much a catalog of things that can go wrong as you have and raise kids. For example: If most of the baby shower gifts you receive are blue, your baby will be a girl. Your baby's diaper is wet moments after you've changed her into a clean one...and leakproof diapers aren't. your toddler knocks on your bedroom door the moment you're about to have sex...or barges in unannounced at the peak of passion. Any food that's good for your child is "yukky"...and any food that's loaded with sugar, salt and fat is "yummy." Anything you say or do when you're with your teenager in public will embarrass him.

Humor

"Suspenseful and sexy!" Ronan Murphy’s law is vengeance. Personal tragedy taught Ronan that he couldn’t count on the law. Now he and his brothers are assassins for hire that step in when the law has failed. A former Navy SEAL, Ronan lives by a set of ironclad rules: take care of business, look after his family and his dog, don’t get close enough to hurt — until he runs into Julia Berenger in a back alley. Julia Berenger will do anything to find her sister. Julia has spent her life taking care of her mom and her irresponsible little sister Elise. There’s been no time for love. No time for anything except keeping her head down and getting through it. Then Elise disappears and Julia has only one lead — the wealthy, powerful man Elise was seeing before she went missing. When the police refuse to help, Julia takes matters into her own hands and finds herself in a back alley, crashing headlong into a gruff avenging angel on the same mission. As Ronan and Julia find themselves inextricably tied to the same mystery, their bond deepens. Soon they’re breaking all the rules, tracing clues that lead from the wealthiest members of high society to the glitzy underbelly of Dubai and fighting their attraction every step of the way. Then a chance to save Elise endangers Julia’s life, and Ronan is forced to accept that he’s in too deep while Julia struggles with her own demons, trying to reconcile the wall she’s built around her heart with her feelings for the man trying to save her sister. Now they'll have to decide if love is worth the price of pain - and if they're willing to let their guard down long enough to find it in each other. _______________________________________ ★★★★★ "This is a grip your seat and hang on for what’s coming." ★★★★★ "Sizzling chemistry!" ★★★★★ "Suspenseful, thrilling and sexy!" ★★★★★ "Exciting. Full of suspense and romance!" ★★★★★ "A great mix of suspense and romance!" ★★★★★ "You have to take risks. And Ronan is worth it!" ★★★★★ "Another page turner!" ★★★★★ "Intriguing, adventurous, dangerous, a smart story with a strong relationship!"

When a local prize-winning farmer is murdered at the state fair, Charlie Cook gets called in to help investigate, but she’s shocked to learn the victim is a friend in this latest installment in the Alaskan Diner Mysteries. Charlie Cooke loves many things, like the Bear Claw Diner, the heated steering wheel of her car, and her orange tabby cat Eggs Benedict. Something she has never loved is the state fair. So when her best friend Annie Jensen begs her for a fair day, she’s reluctant. But Annie isn’t the only one who wants her to spend a day among farm animals and deep fried food. A vendor has been murdered, and Trooper Graham needs his favorite part-time sleuth to dig up the truth, and Charlie is happy to oblige. The case grows personal when Charlie learns the victim is Kelly Carson, whom she and Annie were friends with in high school. If Charlie wants to find justice for Kelly, she and Annie will have to work together to weed out the killer.

Becoming Bourgeois is the first study to focus on what historians have come to call the “middling sort,” the group falling between the mass of yeoman farmers and the planter class that dominated the political economy of the antebellum South. Historian Frank J. Byrne investigates the experiences of urban merchants, village storekeepers, small-scale manufacturers, and their families, as well as the contributions made by this merchant class to the South’s economy, culture, and politics in the decades before, and the years of, the Civil War. These merchant families embraced the South but were not of the South. At a time when Southerners rarely traveled far from their homes, merchants annually ventured forth on buying junkets to northern cities. Whereas the majority of Southerners enjoyed only limited formal instruction, merchant families often achieved a level of education rivaled only by the upper class—planters. The southern merchant community also promoted the kind of aggressive business practices that New South proponents would claim as their own in the Reconstruction era and beyond. Along with discussion of these modern approaches to liberal capitalism, Byrne also reveals the peculiar strains of conservative thought that permeated the culture of southern merchants. While maintaining close commercial ties to the North, southern merchants embraced the religious and racial mores of the South. Though they did not rely directly upon slavery for their success, antebellum merchants functioned well within the slave-labor system. When the Civil War erupted, southern merchants simultaneously joined Confederate ranks and prepared to capitalize on the war’s business opportunities, regardless of the outcome of the conflict. Throughout Becoming Bourgeois, Byrne highlights the tension between these competing elements of southern merchant culture. By exploring the values and pursuits of this emerging class, Byrne not only offers new insight into southern history but also deepens our understanding of the mutable ties between regional identity and the marketplace in nineteenth-century America.