Some of the Australia's most horrific murders occur in the seemingly safe and ordered world of our suburbs. And a new fresh voice has captured some of the most bewildering and shocking of these tales. From the tragic story of Jane Thurgood-Dove, shot down in cold blood in her Melbourne driveway in front of her small children, to the bloodbath in Kapunda when 16-year-old Chantelle Rowe was brutally murdered, along with her parents, in her home by a jealous friend. From the young Perth mum who left her toddler by the sea to drown, to the Cowra grandpa who murdered his wife and grandchildren, these are truly terrible crimes. Evil strikes in the most banal of places and you will be left wondering why?
Takes a critical look at the spiritually corrosive influence of suburbia and suburban life, identifying eight toxic elements in the suburban lifestyle and introducing eight corresponding disciplines designed to nurture one's spiritual life.
'Two anonymous lifeless bodies lie on the hard-frozen ground alongside a small winding road in an affluent suburban town, north of the confines of New York City. The discovery of the bodies will result in an awakening of the sleepy bedroom community's police department and one of the agency's young, upstart police officers.' Rocco DeMarco is a young police officer on a suburban "Bedroom Community" police department, north of New York City, who is placed in a position of Baptism by Fire. Just days after being assigned as a patrolman to the detective division, DeMarco, along with his lieutenant, are summoned to a murder scene: two young girls are found, in trash bags that have been dumped across the street from the local high school. The subsequent investigation presents many new, and sometimes dangerous, situations. DeMarco is new to the Detective Division in a Department that still has a reputation for bungling a previous high-profile case. Will DeMarco's inexperience and enthusiasm cloud his awareness of the dangers he will be facing? This case presented many challenges. What DeMarco knows is outnumbered by the things he doesn't know; who are the victims? Where were they from? Where did the crime take place? Above all: Who did it? Young Officer DeMarco encounters many firsts in his young career; autopsies, working the dangerous streets of the Bronx, and confronting killers who would certainly kill him next. Rocco is suddenly thrown into an investigation that involves multiple agencies, language barriers and uncooperative witnesses. Can an upstart from a small 'upstate' police agency handle an investigation of this magnitude? DeMarco is hampered by fellow detectives who care little about victims and resent his doggedness. Murder's are not supposed to happen in toney Lakeside, an affluent bedroom community in Westchester. DeMarco's only support is his Lieutenant who knows investigative talent when he sees it and tells him, "It's Your Case Kid." DeMarco has no leads and only circumstantial evidence, but finds the weak link; a dim-witted son of a Bronx social club owner. Taking advantage of his known drug involvement, and his infatuation with women, DeMarco turns the witness and his father, who knew everything, against the killer. The case takes on a whole new level of risk when DeMarco realizes he is hunting a homicidal, former enforcer from Castro's Cuba, who came over on the Mariel Boat Lift in the early 80's. Against all odds, can an upstart investigator from suburbia get justice for two dead women on the streets of the Bronx?
The children of U.S. small-town Alexandria are just trying to live like normal teens until their parents’ promised return from a mysterious, four-year religious pilgrimage, and Ben Schiller is no exception. She’s just trying to take care of her sister, keep faith that her parents will come back, and get through her teen years as painlessly as possible. But her relationship with her best friend is changing, her younger sister is hiding a dark secret, and a terrible tragedy is coming for them all.
Amanda’s husband has just traded her in for an affair with a teenybopper. Brooke is a trophy wife collecting dust. And Candace (Don’t call me Candy) has had too many husbands and too little love. What do these three unlikely accomplices have in common besides a Little League team called the Mudhens? A plot to reclaim a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t. And they’re going to do it with a mop and a bucket. Maid for You starts as a way for Amanda to make enough money to keep the roof over her kids’ heads after her husband splits for his midlife crisis. But when Candace and Brooke join her, it becomes much more. Donning disguises, they enter the homes of those who once spurned them and discover more than just clutter in the closets of their neighbors’ otherwise tidy lives. But when Amanda takes on the job of cleaning the home of the town’s most eligible hunk, someone decides to do her dirty. Now Amanda, Brooke, and Candace are on a mission to prove that being single in suburbia isn’t a crime–even if it does lead to some irresistible temptations….
Exploring Suburbia is the first book-length study of suburbia in Australian literature; it addresses a long-neglected and underexamined area within Australian literature and analyzes novels by some of Australia's most important writers from a new perspective, in addition to examining novels previously neglected by critics. This book provides new insights and perspectives on fourteen Australian novels, several of which are canonical works that have been analyzed extensively by other scholars. This study will lead to a reassessment of the novels and authors under discussion and prompt further research into suburbia in Australian literature. It demonstrates that that the authors who have explored suburbia since 1961 have already moved Australian literature in a new direction, away from the traditional focus on the bush and the city, demonstrating that the literal and theoretical space between the city and the bush contains the most interesting and important engagements with contemporary Australian culture. Exploring Suburbia is an important addition for collections in literature. It will also be an excellent textbook for professors teaching courses on space and culture in literature. It will also, of course, be an essential read for courses in Australian and international literature.
The “fascinating” true story behind the HBO Max and Hulu series about Texas housewife Candy Montgomery and the bizarre murder that shocked a community (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as Silicon Prairie. But beneath the placid surface of their seemingly perfect lives, both women simmered with unspoken frustrations and unanswered desires. On a hot summer day in 1980, the secret passions and jealousies that linked Candy and Betty exploded into murderous rage. What happened next is usually the stuff of fiction. But the bizarre and terrible act of violence that occurred in Betty’s utility room that morning was all too real. Based on exclusive interviews with the Gore and Montgomery families, Edgar Award finalist Evidence of Love is the “superbly written” account of a gruesome tragedy and the trial that made national headlines when the defendant entered the most unexpected of pleas: not guilty by reason of self-defense (Fort Worth Star-Telegram). Adapted into the Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning television movie A Killing in a Small Town—as well as the new limited series Candy on Hulu and Love and Death on HBO Max—this chilling tale of sin and savagery will “fascinate true crime aficionados” (Kirkus Reviews).
Part ethnography, part cultural study, this text examines the lives of teenage girls from the world of the Long Island, New York, middle school in order to explore how standards of normalcy define gender, exercise power, and reinforce the cultural practices of whiteness.
A chilling account of the murders of two hunters in rural Michigan—a mystery that haunted a community and baffled the police for two decades. In the bitter cold of 1985, two buddies from Detroit embark on a hunting trip to the Michigan wilderness, unaware they will soon become the hunted. The eerie silence surrounding their sudden disappearance is broken after nearly two decades when a relentless investigator inspires a terrified witness to break her silence. The witness narrates a haunting scene that had unfolded years back, pointing fingers at the prime suspects—the Duvall brothers. With no bodies unearthed, the justice system is riveted by the startling revelations during an electrifying trial in 2003. The brothers, Raymond and Donald Duvall, had bragged about the murders, evocatively explaining how they dismembered their victims and fed them to pigs. Despite the shocking confession, the case holds its ground purely on a single witness’s account, taking the courtroom through a labyrinth of dark secrets and sinister acts. This gripping thriller presents a vivid tale of crime that reveals the devastating power of evil.
"This book explores two centuries of suburban growth as integral to global urbanism. It argues that the future of an urbanizing world will be a suburban world and presents suburbs as places that are interesting and viable on their own terms rather than simply poor cousins of big cities. Examples come from every peopled continent, offering glimpses of suburbs from London to Lima, Sao Paolo to Singapore, Cairo to Chicago, and Dublin to Delhi. The approach is both historical and thematic. The book first traces the history of suburban development in England and North America to 1940 and then examines three different trajectories of suburbanization in more recent decades. The United States and other nations drawing on British planning traditions have built low density suburbia characterized by owner-occupied housing, dependence on automobiles, planned new towns, and a legacy of racial residential segregations. High-rise housing built by national governments dominated suburban rings in Eastern Europe and parts of Western Europe and East Asia. Where neither government nor private market has been able to meet demand, residents have acted themselves to create informal communities with self-built housing on cheap peripheral land, sometimes misleadingly called shantytowns. After this world tour, a chapter explores suburban rings as places of work, from early dispersed manufacturing and industrial suburbs to research and development suburbs in developed economies about the world. Another thematic chapter examines the negative and even dystopian reputation of suburbs and sprawl in literature, popular media, and science fiction"--
