Best Selling Books by Elizabeth Marshall

Having endured years of an abusive marriage, Grace Evans finally walks out on her loveless marriage and boards a train for York. Within hours of arriving in the ancient city, her destiny is changed forever by a portrait in her hotel room. Haunted by the ghost of Robert Hamilton and confronted with a portrait of herself painted four hundred years ago, Grace has every reason to doubt her sanity. Then Grace finds herself four hundred years in the past, in the bed of the man who has haunted her. A man she barely knows but who, with just one kiss, filled the empty space that had been her shattered heart. How are Grace and Robert connected to Simon and Corran of 'When Fate Dictates'? I'd love to tell you, but that would ruin the surprise, so I'm sorry folks, you are just going to have to find out in 'Entwined', book three of the 'Highland Secret Series'.

Global climate models predict increases over time in average temperature worldwide, with significant impacts on local patterns of temperature and precipitation. The extent to which such changes present a risk to food supplies, farmer livelihoods, and rural communities depends in part on the direction, magnitude, and rate of such changes, but equally importantly on the ability of the agricultural sector to adapt to changing patterns of yield and productivity, production cost, and resource availability. Study findings suggest that, while impacts are highly sensitive to uncertain climate projections, farmers have considerable flexibility to adapt to changes in local weather, resource conditions, and price signals by adjusting crops, rotations, and production practices. Such adaptation, using existing crop production technologies, can partially mitigate the impacts of climate change on national agricultural markets. Adaptive redistribution of production, however, may have significant implications for both regional land use and environmental quality.

Inequitable distribution of food venues that sell produce and other foods seen as healthy within a neighborhood has been suggested as a contributor to health inequities. My research was designed to address the following question: How do healthy food access advocates in Sacramento County conceptualize "healthy food access" and construct their strategies? I conducted in-depth interviews with twenty-two non-profit and government staff and unpaid community activists who have worked on projects identified as increasing "healthy food access". My research showed that interviewees often believed their projects were important for prevention of obesity and chronic disease, but emphasized the goal of the project as "community-building". While there were varying opinions on the strategies to engage community members, community engagement was highly prioritized; the successful outcome was often seen as social capital. Interviewees believed that engaging community members around the topic of food was an important community development strategy. Interviewees generally felt projects strengthened neighborhood relationships and built a stronger community, yet identified community engagement could be improved within the projects. Despite emphasizing food as having the potential to unify community members, interviewees revealed that food consumption behavior can be complex, personal, and sensitive when discussing their own food choices. I argue that engaging community members around the topic of "healthy food" is more complicated than interviewees generally discussed in the interviews due to the complex, sensitive, and personal nature of food. I question the belief popularized by food movement activists - that food is unquestionably a unifying force to engage community members around simply because "everybody eats food."

Increasing legislative and societal pressures are forcing manufacturers to become environmentally-conscious and take responsibility for the fate of their goods after they have been used by consumers. As a result, some manufacturers operate hybrid systems which produce new goods and recover used goods. Product recovery describes the process by which used products are returned to their manufacturers or sent to a specialised facility for recovery, before being sold on the original or a secondary market. The quality of the returned goods is a significant issue in product recovery systems as it can affect both the type of recovery and costs associated with it. Quality in product recovery systems has not been adequately studied, with many authors either ignoring the possibility of receiving lower quality returns, or assuming they are disposed of rather than recovered. However, such assumptions ignore the possibility that the firm might be able to salvage value from lower quality returns by using them for parts or materials. This thesis presents four models that investigate the importance of considering the quality of returns in the management of inventory in a product recovery system, by examining the cost-effectiveness of recovering both high quality and low quality returns. The first model is a deterministic lot-sizing model of a product recovery system. It was found that performing both high and low quality recovery reduced the sensitivity of the optimal cost to operational restrictions on the choice of decision variables. The second model is a discrete-time, periodic-review model formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) and introduces uncertainty in demand, returns, and the quality of the returns. It was found that performing both types of recovery can lead to cost savings and better customer service for firms through an increased fill rate. The third model addresses those industries where produced and recovered goods cannot be sold on the same market due to customers' perceptions and environmental legalisation. Using an MDP formulation, the model examines a product recovery system in which produced and recovered goods are sold on separate markets. The profitability of offering two-way substitution between these markets was investigated. It was found that offering substitution can allow firms to increase both their profits and fill rates. The fourth model examines the issue of separate markets and substitution in the continuous time domain using a semi-Markov decision process. The continuous nature of the model allows more detailed examination of the substitution decision. It was found that offering substitution can allow firms to increase their profit and in some cases also increase their fill rate. In some cases, production is performed less frequently when downward substitution can be offered, and recovery is performed less often when upward substitution can be offered. The findings of this thesis could be used to help a firm that is currently recovering high quality returns assess the cost-effectiveness of also recovering lower quality returns. Recovering low-quality items, rather than disposing of them, may allow a firm to increase the amount it recycles. The findings highlight the importance of considering the quality of returns when managing a product recovery system as they show that economic gains can be achieved by reusing rather than refusing low quality returns.