- Bankruptcy
- Divorce
- Landlord tenant
- Power of Attorney
- Real estate contracts
- Wills and estates
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Gale Legal Forms
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
New Releases - September Edition
Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
FICTION
Playground by Richard Powers. Pulitzer winner Powers (The Overstory) delivers an epic drama of AI, neocolonialism, and oceanography in this dazzling if somewhat disjointed novel set largely on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where a mysterious American consortium plans to launch floating cities into the ocean. The story centers on three characters: Rafi Young, a former literature student from an abusive home in Chicago . . . Rafi’s onetime friend Todd Keane, the billionaire founder of a social media company and AI platform whose connection to the seasteading project is revealed later; and Evelyne Beaulieu, a Canadian marine biologist who has come to Makatea just as the island’s residents must vote on whether to let the project proceed. For some Makateans, the seasteading initiative raises hopes of economic renewal; for others, it triggers fears of environmental destruction and a return to colonialist oppression. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston. Johnston's feel-good debut begins with a case of mistaken identity. Eighty-two-year-old Frederick Fife is on the edge of despair, but everything changes when he takes the place of Bernard Greer, a missing resident of a nursing home. Now Frederick has food, a found family, and a chance to figure out how to return Bernard's life to him better than he found it. Copyright 2024 Library Journal
NONFICTION
Becoming Elizabeth Arden: The Woman Behind theGlobal Beauty Empire by Stacy A. Cordery. Cordery (history, Iowa State Univ.; Juliette Gordon Low) provides the definitive biography of one of the United States' first businesswomen: Elizabeth Arden (1881–1966). Born in Canada as Florence Graham, Arden came to the U.S. and founded her company in 1910. One of the first women to link inner health with outer beauty, she pioneered makeup use for the masses and the idea of self-care. Throughout her success, she continued to innovate, earning 97 patents and garnering a reputation as a marketer with high standards. Even today, a tube of her Eight-Hour Cream is reportedly purchased every 30 seconds in the U.S. The book sometimes borders a bit on hagiography, and Cordery has a clear fondness for her subject, but many readers will think the praise of Arden is well-deserved. Little time is spent, however, on exploring how white privilege played out for Arden and her business opportunities. VERDICT This well-researched biography is recommended for business history collections. A fun related read, Louise Claire Johnson's Behind the Red Door, offers insight from an Arden intern who worked there in the early 2000s. Maria Ashton-Stebbings Copyright 2024 Library Journal.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
New Releases - August Edition
Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
NONFICTION
The Devil Behind theBadge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer by Rick Jervis. Gritty account of a Texas lawman turned serial killer. Jervis, an Austin-based Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, unearths the 2018 murder spree of Border Patrol officer Juan Ortiz, who killed four sex workers in Laredo before being captured by local police. They had perceived the murders were related but were shocked to find the perpetrator was one of their own. Although Ortiz’s arc of violence was brief, the author patiently develops the larger social backdrop and the stories of both killer and victims. He also traces the volatile histories of the border region and the once-neglected Border Patrol, which became a militarized behemoth after 9/11, underscoring that “agents who violated the agency’s use-of-force policy rarely faced consequences.”… The author contrasts Ortiz’s seedy unraveling with the difficult lives of his victims. He empathetically reconstructs their lives and the complex social network that marginalized people depend on, capturing how places like Laredo have become ground zero for the intersecting crises of opiate abuse and migration, amplifying opportunities for predators. An affecting true-crime drama that captures unsettling realities of the southern border. Copyright Kirkus 2024 Kirkus/BPI Communications.
I Heard There Was aSecret Chord: Music As Medicine by Daniel Levitin. Neuroscientist is also a musician who has devoted much of his attention to the role of music—classical, folk, popular—in various therapies and how it impacts the human brain. In his latest book, he investigates the neuroanatomy of music and how it relates to memory and attention. He also offers insight into what he calls the brain's default modes: introspection and meditation. His book takes a look—in a brilliantly creative yet solidly evidence-based light—at the part music can play in the treatment of movement disorders. He also explores other health issues that music can help: Parkinson's disease, trauma-induced and other mental illnesses, memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer's, strokes, and other types of pain and neurodevelopment disorders. VERDICT This fascinating and valuable title gives readers insight into the many neurological benefits of music. Most readers can easily identify what kind of music calms them, provokes creative sparks, or helps get them through strenuous exercises but until they read this, they may not know why music has that power or that it can be great medicine too. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.
Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System - and Pocketed $40 Million by Tanya Smith. In this rollicking debut, Smith reflects on the crime spree that led a judge to label her “a threat to the United States of America.” As a preteen in 1970s Minneapolis, Smith was so infatuated with Michael Jackson that she tracked down his grandfather’s phone number. Wanting more, she called the phone company and got transferred between departments enough times that her call appeared to be coming from the billing division, at which point she pumped employees for Jackson’s home address. Using the same method, Smith conned utility companies, pretending to pay off bills for family and friends, and eventually learned to fake bank transfers and pocket millions of dollars. Her purchases of diamonds and luxury cars caught the attention of the FBI, who started investigating Smith when she was in her teens but refused to believe a young Black woman could organize such a sophisticated scheme. Her run of luck first ended in 1986, when she was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison—then again in the early 1990s, after she’d escaped from prison and was arrested on new fraud charges. Smith is deliriously entertaining company, keeping her foot on the gas all the way through. It’s a gripping real-life caper from a charismatic antihero. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.
FICTION
Friday, July 19, 2024
Massachusetts Permit Practice Test
Need to pass a written learner’s permit exam for passenger vehicles, motor cycles, or commercial vehicles (CDL)? Try the Massachusetts Permit Practice Test on our website! You'll find hundreds of practice questions here based on the RMV manuals that resemble those on the official learner’s permit exams.
The practice test includes:
- Ability to get voice over assistance, check answer popularity and test progress.
- Interactive handbook: Read/listen to it or download for offline use.
- Some tests available in Spanish and/or Russian.
Friday, June 28, 2024
New Releases - July Edition
Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
FICTION