Town Government

A mage on the run. A doctor with a conscience. A city on the brink. Magic is outlawed. Robots enforce the law with deadly precision. In Cairnisle, trust is a risk only the rich can afford. Fourteen-year-old Fia scrapes by in the slums of Dirt Town with a knife in her boot and a secret in her blood: she’s an illegal mage. When a desperate escape lands her in the path of Aldrich Durante—a privileged young doctor from the gleaming streets above—their collision sparks a truth neither can ignore. Aldrich was raised to fear magic. But the girl he saves isn’t a monster—she’s a mirror ...

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe.

One of the nation's most acclaimed journalists, the New York Times' Mark Leibovich, presents a blistering, penetrating, controversial--and often hysterical--look at Washington's incestuous "media industrial complex...

Seeking to understand the recent deaths and disappearances in their town, a disgraced homicide detective and a group of grieving high schoolers unwittingly join forces. But what this ragtag bunch of answer-seekers find will not only force them into a fight to save themselves and their town, but all of humanity as we know it... Welcome to Cedar Mills. PRAISE FOR CEDAR MILLS... “Plunges right into the action and never lets up!” Readers' Favorite "Cedar Mills is the kind of horror novel that stays with you..." Independent Book Review "Great action, a scary beast, and a beating heart in the...

A journalist dies asking the wrong questions. A new president hides a blood-soaked secret. And one disgraced soldier won't let it go. Ben Gabriel's life is unraveling. Dishonorably discharged from British Special Forces. Fired from South African military intelligence. His girlfriend vanished without explanation. He's drinking too much, sleeping too little, and running out of reasons to care. Then a journalist is murdered in Cape Town harbor—a man who'd been investigating the president-elect's dark past. Gabriel knows what the authorities won't admit: this wasn't random violence. Someone ...

"Simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling." ―The New Republic A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take...

In the idyllic town of Autumn Creek, the annual Harvest Festival is a celebration of life. But as the leaves turn gold, a secret as old as the mountains awakens. Two people have vanished, and a prize steer has been ritualistically slaughtered, its entrails arranged in a perfect, horrifying spiral . The idyllic mask is slipping, and the town’s folklore is about to become its eulogy. They sent a weapon to handle it. Rebuilt from the wreckage of a past massacre, Commander Quinn Mallory is more monster than woman, her body a fusion of scarred flesh and cutting-edge prosthetics . She and her ...

This is the story of a local government manager who got hired by a small mountain town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in his first city manager job. The job got complicated from the first day and developed into more and more complexity.

In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn, Jr., delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.

Eamonn McCann’s account of what it is like to grow up a Catholic in a Northern Irish ghetto - first published in 1974 - quickly became a classic account of the feelings generated by British rule. The author was at the center of events in Derry which first brought Northern Ireland to world attention. He witnessed the gradual transformation of the civil rights movement from a mild campaign for “British Democracy” to an all-out military assault on the British state. This book describes the people involved in the war and gives an account of the springs of the "Catholic" opposition.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.

Hello, Shadowlands takes a deep plunge into crime rings both large and small. It also examines how China’s rise and America’s decline are creating new opportunities for transnational syndicates to thrive. Focusing on human stories on both sides of this crime wave, the acclaimed Bangkok-based broadcaster and journalist Patrick Winn intimately profiles the men and women of the region who are forced to make agonizing choices in the absence of law.

The summer of 1994 was supposed to be boring. It ended in a flash of violet light. In the dying coal town of Iron Creek, twelve-year-old Micah Lawson didn't run away. He was taken. He was lifted from his bicycle by a silent, defying force that melted the asphalt and shattered the silence of the Appalachian woods. His friends saw it happen. Caleb, Craig, and Toby watched the sky tear open. But in Iron Creek, the truth is the first thing buried. The Sheriff calls it a runaway case. The parents call it a tragedy. The town chooses to look down at the ground rather than up at the impossible ...

The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.

The fourth book in a new arc in the New York Times bestselling Amelia Bedelia chapter book series featuring young Amelia Bedelia and her friends! This chapter book is an excellent choice for children who are ready to read independently, and is terrific for building vocabulary. Amelia Bedelia +...

Ethel Cromwell promised herself this mountain retreat would be all about relaxation—porch swings, fresh air, and absolutely no mysteries. Her curmudgeonly companion Hal Briggs made her swear: no sleuthing, no interrogations, just a peaceful getaway with Millie at her rustic Appalachian cabin. But when mysterious keys start multiplying like rabbits, cryptic notes appear on kitchen tables, and the locals spin tales of stolen land and family feuds that would make a soap opera jealous, Ethel's detective instincts kick into overdrive. Much to Hal's chagrin. Between dodging a nosy neighbor with...

Helen Shiller went from radical anti-war activist in Wisconsin, to a member of a collective of white allies of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, to an elected city council person who helped break the back of the racialized opposition to Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor. Shiller participated, when few others did, in the historic fight against the gentrification of a unique economically and racially mixed Chicago community on the Northside.

Following the 2016 election, writer Heather Lende was one of thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines isn't the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation and how the polarizing national politics of our era play out in one small town.