Carol Mason

Is her new husband really who she thinks he is? When young doctor Lauren Matheson meets Joe, an older divorced businessman, at a glittering poolside in California, it's a chance encounter that seems life-changing for them both. Back home in London, their feelings only strengthen. But Lauren soon discovers that building a happy future with Joe is going to be an uphill struggle... She's determined to be a good stepmother to his children, four-year-old Toby and complicated teen Grace. But under the watchful eye of Meredith, Joe's intimidating ex-wife, Lauren can't seem to do a thing right. Why won't Joe ever take her side against Grace? And what really happened between him and Meredith? As her husband retreats into a cold, secretive version of the dashing man she met in California, Lauren starts to wonder if she's made a costly mistake. Was Joe ever the man she thought she married?

Between You and Me

You want to know what the worst thing is? It’s not the embarrassment, or the looks on people’s faces when I tell them what happened. It isn’t the pain of him not being there—loneliness is manageable. The worst thing is not knowing why. When Justin walks out on Alice on their honeymoon, with no explanation apart from a cryptic note, Alice is left alone and bewildered, her life in pieces. Then she meets Evelyn, a visitor to the gallery where she works. It’s a seemingly chance encounter, but Alice gradually learns that Evelyn has motives, and a heartbreaking story, of her own. And that story has haunting parallels with Alice’s life. As Alice delves into the mystery of why Justin left her, the questions are obvious. But the answers may lie in the most unlikely of places…

After You Left

A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them. For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it's pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children--tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily's seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control. Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What's more, he's started drinking again. When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily's life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Even if doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own...

Little White Secrets

What is it about the coast that attracts people running from their past? Maybe there's something in a sea breeze that blows away your problems. Maybe when you look out at the ocean you can see the future; forget the secrets and pain holding you back. Or at least you can forget them for a time. When Olivia moves to Port Townsend, her marriage is floundering, and her life is in pieces. She doesn't know if things with her husband Mark are truly over, or quite why the phone call she longs for on her daughter's birthday will never come. Joining a letter-writing club seems like a harmless decision. But when she meets Ned, an ex-soldier badly wounded in Afghanistan, this unlooked-for friendship revives unexpected emotions and memories she'd rather forget. Can Olivia find the courage to confront what she's hiding from and finally begin to heal the wounds that have torn her life apart? From the bestselling author of After You Left comes a story about finding hope in second chances.

The Shadow Between Us

'Affairs are easier to have than you'd think.' Jill and Rob are happily married - until they discover that it's Rob's fault they can't have kids. It isn't the end of the world for Jill. She's just happy to have a trustworthy husband who loves her deeply and presses all the right buttons in the bedroom. But Rob's gone off sex and refuses even to discuss it. In fact, all communication between them has come to an infuriating halt. And Jill just yearns for a bit of fun. It wouldn't be so bad if one of her best friends wasn't having the best sex of her entire life (albeit behind her husband's back) while her other friend has a stunning husband who she's still in lust with. But are things ever what they seem? How well do we ever know our husbands, our best friends or even ourselves? Jill is about to find out when she faces infertility, infidelity and the truth head on...

The Secrets of Married Women

From the bestselling author of After You Left. Do you ever really get over your first love? Fifteen years ago in the colourful bustle of Vietnam, Celine and Patrick met and shared four blissful days together. It felt like true love, but soon reality tore them apart and Celine moved on. But now, when she sees him unexpectedly on a busy London street, suddenly nothing else matters. As she deals with the mixed emotions of an amicable divorce, Celine becomes preoccupied with her daughter and the dating agency she founded--not least when her ex-husband, Mike, asks her to find him someone new. But now her path has crossed with Patrick's again, is fate determined to pull them back together? Or is it Mike she really wants a second chance with? Because first love is hard to get over. But real love never lets you go. Revised edition: Previously published as The Love Market, this edition of The Last Time We Met includes editorial revisions.

The Last Time We Met

The Love Market

When Jill's husband discovers he can never have children, it tears a hole in their marriage that Jill doesn't know how to repair. Frustrated, she seeks comfort in her friends: fierce Leigh, with her high-powered career and doting family, and sweet, uncomplicated Wendy, who has a rock-solid marriage any woman would envy. Leigh and Wendy's lives seem perfect. But beneath the surface are secrets that could tear their friendship apart. Leigh has grown tired of her stay-at-home husband and is looking for excitement--outside of the marriage bed. And after seventeen years of marriage, Wendy can't shake the sense that there is something missing in her life. As Jill is drawn deeper into her friends' relationships, she is confronted by a temptation of her own: an intriguing stranger whose good looks and charm spark an instant connection. Full of the realities of modern-day marriage, The Secrets of Married Women asks the question: how well can we ever know our husbands, our friends, or even ourselves? Revised edition: This edition of Secrets Of Married Women includes editorial revisions.

In Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, Carol Mason examines the legacies of a pivotal 1974 curriculum dispute in West Virginia that heralded the rightward shift in American culture and politics. At a time when black nationalists and white conservatives were both maligned as extremists for opposing education reform, the wife of a fundamentalist preacher who objected to new language-arts textbooks featuring multiracial literature sparked the yearlong conflict. It was the most violent textbook battle in America, inspiring mass marches, rallies by white supremacists, boycotts by parents, and strikes by coal miners. Schools were closed several times due to arson and dynamite while national and international news teams descended on Charleston. A native of Kanawha County, Mason infuses local insight into this study of historically left-leaning protesters ushering in cultural conservatism. Exploring how reports of the conflict as a hillbilly feud affected all involved, she draws on substantial archival research and interviews with Klansmen, evangelicals, miners, bombers, and businessmen, a who, like herself, were residents of Kanawha County during the dispute. Mason investigates vulgar accusations of racism that precluded a richer understanding of how ethnicity, race, class, and gender blended together as white protesters set out to protect "our children's souls." In the process, she demonstrates how the significance of the controversy goes well beyond resistance to social change on the part of Christian fundamentalists or a cultural clash between elite educators and working-class citizens. The alliances, tactics, and political discourses that emerged in the Kanawha Valley in 1974 crossed traditional lines, inspiring innovations in neo-Nazi organizing, propelling Christian conservatism into the limelight, and providing models for women of the New Right.

Conservatives and the 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy

Reading Appalachia from Left to Right

Carol

We love. We lose. And sometimes we love again... Back when neither could have imagined what lay ahead, Angela's husband Jonathan made her a promise - that if he died before she did, he would see to it that she wasn't on her own. He would send her someone to love. Now two years have passed since Jonathan's sudden death, but the pain of losing him is as sharp as ever. Feeling cut adrift in his native Canada, Angela whisks her vivacious mother off to a Greek island, thinking a holiday might be just the prescription she needs. But being with your mum who's afraid of dying, when you yourself are afraid of living, is hardly the formula for a laid-back week in the sun. It's only when Angela meets two very different men who seem to have the uncanny ability of seeing right into her soul, that she starts to think about Jonathan's promise to her. Can something magical be happening? Is one of these men the lover her husband has sent for her?

Send Me a Lover

How can those who seek to protect the "right to life" defend assassination in the name of saving lives? Carol Mason investigates this seeming paradox by examining pro-life literature—both archival material and writings from the front lines of the conflict. Her analysis reveals the apocalyptic thread that is the ideological link between established anti-abortion organizations and the more shadowy pro-life terrorists who subject clinic workers to anthrax scares, bombs, and bullets. The portrayal of abortion as "America's Armageddon" began in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Mason says, Christian politics and the post-Vietnam paramilitary culture popularized the idea that legal abortion is a harbinger of apocalypse. By the 1990s, Mason asserts, even the movement's mainstream had taken up the call, narrating abortion as an apocalyptic battle between so-called Christian and anti-Christian forces. "Pro-life violence of the 1990s signaled a move away from protest and toward retribution," she writes. "Pro-life retribution is seen as a way to restore the order of God. In this light, the phenomenon of killing for 'life' is revealed not as an oxymoron, but as a logical consistency and a political manifestation of religious retribution." Mason's scrutiny of primary sources (direct mail, internal memoranda, personal letters, underground manuals, and pro-life films, magazines, and novels) draws attention to elements of pro-life millennialism. Killing for Life is a powerful indictment of pro-life ideology as a coherent, mass-produced narrative that does not merely condone violence, but anticipates it as part of "God's plan."

The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics

Killing for Life

Martin Harry Greenberg

Patricia WARRICK

Anthropology through science fiction. Edited by Carol Mason, Martin Harry Greenberg, Patricia Warrick

Three years after seeing her first love, Patrick, quite by chance in London, Celine’s ten-year marriage to Mike is over and she is running her own business, called The Love Market, a professional matchmaking service in Northern England. She’s coping with the unanticipated heartbreak of a marriage ending, and her quirky twelve-year-old daughter who seems to blame her for the split.Then, out of the blue, Patrick emails. Tempted to find out if all the old feelings can possibly still be there, she’s thrown into tailspin again when Mike has an unusual proposition for her, forcing her to question whether a divorce really means it’s over.

Uses the state of Oklahoma as a case study for how US conservatives have attempted to unqueer America since the 1950s. By exploring the scandal-filled lives of four Oklahomans, this book demonstrates how unqueering operates in a conservative American context. Carol Mason weaves a story about how homogenizing, antigay ideas evolve from generation to generation so that they achieve particular economic, imperial, racial, and gendered goals. Using engaging and accessible commentary on antigay crusaders (Sally Kern and Anita Bryant) and two queer teachers dismissed from their positions (Billy James Hargis and Bruce Goff), Mason illustrates how the lives of these figures represent paradigmatic moments in conservative confrontations with queers and help us to understand the conflation of terrorism with homosexuality, which dates back to the McCarthy era. “Oklahomo is a wonderful addition to recent queer studies of critical regionalism, rural life, and sexual norms. Via four spot-on case studies, Carol Mason traces a hypnotic history of the US Right that deepens our knowledge of how cultures of terror materialized alongside cultures of sexuality in the American Midwest. Overflowing with acuity, this book is mandatory reading for scholars invested in LGBTQ studies, rural/urban studies, and forgotten tales of modern conservatism.” — Scott Herring, author of Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism

Carol Mason

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