Frances Smith is a pseudonym for a woman who lived in fear of her life for 22 years. Married at 16 to a Dublin criminal, she endured years of relentless mental and physical torture until she found the strength to fight back. This is her courageous story told with brutal honesty and at times humour. It chronicles her descent to the brink of suicide and consequent rebuilding of her life.

Few films in the twenty-first century have represented coming-of-age with the beauty and brutality of Bande de Filles (or Girlhood). This book provides an in-depth examination of Céline Sciamma’s film, focusing on its portrayal of female adolescence in contemporary Paris.Motivated by the absence of black female characters in French cinema, Sciamma represents the lives of figures that have passed largely unnoticed on the big screen. While observing the girls’ tough...

As the author’s childhood tumbles from her memory onto the pages of print, the reader is privy to all sorts of surprising revelations. Be prepared to chuckle with glee, feel your mouth gape reading about situations too weird to be untrue, wince as your heart breaks in sadness and anger over sordid situations, and shake your head both in disbelief and even perfect understanding of unusual childhood tales.Between the covers of the book, the author’s very direct style in sharing the g...

"After Dinner Conversation" Magazine - June 2021Cost Of Human Life: AI software designed to more efficiently run the railroad system runs into a programming issue.Step Back: A husband and wife decide to have a natural childbirth and find it's more than they bargained.The Cave Of Adventure: A scientist that studies fish memory wanders into a cave that gives her the chance to share ...

Conventional wisdom tells us that marriage was illegal for African Americans during the antebellum era, and that if people married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is an impression that imbues beliefs about black families to this day. But it's a perception primarily based on documents produced by abolitionists, the state, or other partisans. It doesn't tell the whole story. Drawing on a trove of less well-known sources including family historie...

The Journey Continues -- is the third part of the trilogy about two serial killers. The book begins as one of the serial killers at long last finds his intended victim. Because of the pressure caused by a true crime book about two serial killers in Southern California specifically the High Desert he is determined to find the second serial killer. The book continues as he leaves messages for the authorities that hes back and he makes his own search simply because he needs a place to hide. H...

Buster wondered what it was like to spend a night in the forest. His friends Shep, the German shepherd, and Rodney, the golden retriever, agreed that they would take him, but they would build a dog hut to sleep in. Buster's other friends, Carbon, the black Labrador, Rocky, the big brown dog, Mr. French, the French poodle, and Mutt-Gomery, a homeless dog, would help build the campfire and bring the necessary dog treats.As they sat around the campfire, his friends saw an opportunity ...

New Milford is located in western Connecticut, and an ideal example of small-town New England life. The original inhabitants of the area were the Potatuck; at the beginning of the 18th century, the land that later became New Milford was purchased from the indigenous people, and the first settler, John Noble, arrived from Massachusetts to build his home in 1707. As the centuries progressed, so did the town, and New Milford became a business center with many mills, shops, taverns, and other ...

Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891) is a comic novella by Francis Hopkinson Smith. A Virginian gentleman Colonel Carter is stranded in New York without funds. He is campaigning for a railroad for Fairfax County in Virginia. The novel was successfully adapted for the screen in 1915.

This book analyses how contemporary genre cinema represents trans-identified characters.Informed by key debates within transfeminism, queer theory, contemporary trans studies – and engaging with the concerns voiced by gender critical feminism – this culturally oriented book critiques the representation of trans characters in a range of cinematic genres, including the musical, period costume drama, the road movie, melodrama, coming-of-age stories, and romances. The case studies addr...