Dallas socialite Cissy Blevins Kendricks wants her sometime-sleuthing daughter Andrea to look into the mysterious death of her friend Bebe, who died soon after moving into a swanky retirement community. Andrea wants no part of her mother's social whirl, but she has no choice when more well-heeled widows turn up dead.
A dark, moody, boarding-school murder mystery teens won’t be able to put down. Katie never thought she’d be the girl with the popular boyfriend. She also never thought he would cheat on her—but the proof is in the photo that people at their boarding school can’t stop talking about. Mark swears he doesn’t remember anything. But Rose, the girl in the photo, is missing, and Mark is in big trouble. Because it looks like Rose isn’t just gone . . . she’s dead. Maybe Mark was stupid, but that doesn’t mean he’s a killer. Katie needs to find out what really happened, and her digging turns up more than she bargained for, not just about Mark but about someone she loves like a sister: Tessa, her best friend. At Whitney Prep, it’s easy to keep secrets . . . especially the cold-blooded kind. “I’ll read anything by Susan McBride.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris People are saying GOOD THINGS about VERY BAD THINGS . . . “A compelling mystery that will suck readers in and keep them turning the pages to reach the exciting conclusion.” —Joelle Charbonneau, New York Times bestselling author of The Testing "Fans of the Pretty Little Liars series will appreciate the high drama and plot twists."—School Library Journal "Fast-paced, well-crafted . . . this will be a popular book."—VOYA “A white-knuckled climax.”—Booklist “An eerie psychodrama.”—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books “The venerable yet sinister school, complete with a web of subterranean steam tunnels, is as absorbing as the tightly wound mystery.”—Publishers Weekly
LAURA DELACROIX BELL—this dazzling trust fund girl’s size 14 figure doesn’t stop her from attracting the sexiest scoundrel in town, or the admiring eye of the Glass Slipper Club. However, a salacious secret could take her out of the running. Michelle “Mac” Mackenzie—brainy, cynical, and maybe a tad judgmental, Mac would rather bury her nose in a good book than embrace her deb destiny. But being a debutante was her late mother’s dream. Ginger Fore—this adorable tree-hugger wants to wear her grandmother’s vintage ball gown instead of splurging on an expensive dress. Yet when she gets tangled up with an older guy, Ginger will have plenty more to think about. Jo-Lynn Bidwill—a former child beauty queen, Jo-Lynn is a bitchy vamp who makes it her mission in life to take out the debu-trash. And Jo-Lynn’s sights are set on Laura Bell.
They call them "pretty parties," and they're the latest rage among Dallas debutantes—get-togethers with light refreshments, heavy gossip, and Dr. Sonja Madhavi and her magic Botox needles. Former socialite Andy Kendricks normally wouldn't be caught dead at such an event, but she's attending as a favor to her friend Janet, a society reporter in search of a juicy story. And boy does she find one when aging beauty queen Miranda DuBois bursts into the room—drunk, disorderly, and packing a pistol. Miranda's wrinkles have seen better days, and she blames it all on Dr. Madhavi. Luckily, Andy calms her down and gets her home to bed . . . where she's found dead the next morning. The police suspect suicide, but Andy knows that no former pageant girl would give up that easily. She's determined to find Miranda's killer herself, but she'll have to be careful. After all, Botox can make you look younger, but it can't bring you back from the grave.
The Debs are back! Now that her dream of becoming a deb is finally coming true, Laura’s confidence is at an all-time high. But when she dares to mess with Jo Lynn’s football star boyfriend, Dillon, Laura finds herself at the center of some heinous gossip. As predicted, becoming a deb is a shallow undertaking that Mac can barely muddle through. Still, things go from bad to worse when the new girl at school starts working her charms on Mac’s best friend, Alex. When Ginger’s grandmother asks her to sit for a formal portrait with the son of a local legend, she discovers that she already knows him—and what she knows isn’t good. The stakes are raised for Jo Lynn when she finds Laura’s digits in Dillon’s cell phone. Is her boyfriend cheating on her with a debu-tank? She will soon find out.
“I’ll read anything by Susan McBride.” —Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels “I’m madly in love with this full-of-surprises story about secrets, family ties—and one magical little black dress. One of my favorite novels of the year.” —Melissa Senate, author of The Secret of Joy “An enchanting escape into a magical world.” —M.J. Rose, internationally bestselling author Can there be magic in a Little Black Dress? Susan McBride, author of The Cougar Club and the Debutante Dropout mystery series, answers with a resounding, unequivocal, “Yes!” McBride’s mesmerizing tale of two sisters whose intertwined lives are torn apart by a remarkable dress that opens up doors to an inescapable future is an ingenious work of the imagination that recalls the novels of Claire Cook and Jill Kargman. A sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking look into two generations of women, this Little Black Dress is something every fan of quality contemporary women’s fiction will want to own.
Bebe's new job at a modeling agency quickly sours when Bradley, her adored boss, takes a personal interest in the company's top model. Then the scheming beauty is strangled with a Pucci scarf-a gift from Bradley! Bebe's determined to find the real killer, before the man of her dreams winds up behind bars. And if that weren't enough to stop a swinging chick in her tracks, she also has to contend with a visit from her parents, a photo shoot in the Virgin Islands, and dates with the Burma Shave man...
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From 1972 to 1976, Hollywood made an unprecedented number of films targeted at black audiences. But following this era known as “blaxploitation,” the momentum suddenly reversed for black filmmakers, and a large void separates the end of blaxploitation from the black film explosion that followed the arrival of Spike Lee’s She's Gotta Have It in 1986. Illuminating an overlooked era in African American film history, Trying to Get Over is the first in-depth study of black directors working during the decade between 1977 and 1986. Keith Corson provides a fresh definition of blaxploitation, lays out a concrete reason for its end, and explains the major gap in African American representation during the years that followed. He focuses primarily on the work of eight directors—Michael Schultz, Sidney Poitier, Jamaa Fanaka, Fred Williamson, Gilbert Moses, Stan Lathan, Richard Pryor, and Prince—who were the only black directors making commercially distributed films in the decade following the blaxploitation cycle. Using the careers of each director and the twenty-four films they produced during this time to tell a larger story about Hollywood and the shifting dialogue about race, power, and access, Corson shows how these directors are a key part of the continuum of African American cinema and how they have shaped popular culture over the past quarter century.