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When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt
This riveting paperback explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra, and shines a piercing light on perceptions of powerful women today. Female rulers are a rare phenomenon--but thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, women reigned supreme. Regularly, repeatedly, and with impunity, queens like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra controlled the totalitarian state as power-brokers and rulers. But throughout human history, women in positions of power were more often used as political pawns in male-dominated societies. Why did ancient Egypt provide women this kind of access to the highest political office? What was it about these women that allowed them to transcend patriarchal obstacles? What did Egypt gain from its liberal reliance on female leadership, and could today's world learn from its example? In this captivating narrative, celebrated Egyptologist Kara Cooney delivers a fascinating tale of female power, exploring the reasons why it has seldom been allowed through the ages--and why we should care. -
Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations
A New York Times 6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week
A Los Angeles Daily News 25 Must Read Best Books of 2023
A Ms Magazine September 2023 Reads For The Rest of Us "The impression left by The Last Interview is of an indomitable woman who made her way through persistence and diligence." -- Dave Luhrssen of the The Shepherd Express "I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction." - Octavia E. Butler Octavia E. Butler's work broke innumerable barriers and helped open the field of science fiction to writers and readers it had never had before. As the first Black writer to win the coveted Nebula and Hugo Awards, her courage and vision left a peerless legacy for fans not just of science fiction, but of American literature. In this collection of 10 interviews, 3 of them never published, Butler speaks with candor and openness about her work, her imaginative mission, and the barriers she faced as a Black woman working in a genre dominated by white men. The book features an original introduction by science fiction legend Samuel R. Delany, in which he discusses his personal relation with Butler, providing unparalleled insight into her work and life. -
The Good Sister
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"A stunningly clever thriller made doubly suspenseful by not one, but two unreliable narrators."--People Sally Hepworth, the author of The Mother-In-Law delivers a knock-out of a novel about the lies that bind two sisters in The Good Sister. There's only been one time that Rose couldn't stop me from doing the wrong thing and that was a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights, and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous. When Rose discovers that she cannot get pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple. Fern's mission will shake the foundations of the life she has carefully built for herself and stir up dark secrets from the past, in this quirky, rich, and shocking story of what families keep hidden. -
Paper Cuts: An Enchanting Cozy Mystery
The New York Times bestselling author returns with a mystery with a touch of magical realism and a strong, female bookstore owner and bibliotherapist at its heart. Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is famed for its healing springs. But bookstore owner Nora Pennington has a tendency to land in a different kind of hot water. Though she loves to practice bibliotherapy by finding the perfect books for her customers while listening to their secrets, she also likes to bury her nose in the occasional local crime... Nora escaped her past a decade ago. So it feels like a visit from another world when Kelly Walsh--the woman her ex-husband left her for--walks through the door of Miracle Books along with her son, a sweet, serious boy with a talent for origami. Kelly hasn't come to gloat, though. As it turns out, she's been dumped too. She's also terribly ill, and all she wants from Nora is forgiveness. Shockingly, however, this woman who's been the victim of so much misfortune is about to become a murder victim. Who would do such a thing? Certainly not Nora, but that doesn't stop the gossip and suspicion--especially after Kelly's brother claims that he saw the two women arguing. In seeking justice for Kelly, The Secret, Book, and Scone Society joins forces with the sheriff's department, but they've barely begun their probe when life throws another wrench. After serving a twenty-year sentence, Estella's father returns to Miracle Springs. And when his past comes back to haunt him, it might be more than the four friends can handle. "Red herrings abound along with plenty of tips on choosing books." --Kirkus Reviews -
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2022
In this brilliant selection of essays--including three new pieces--the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopia to the importance of how to define granola--and seeks answers to Burning Questions such as... - Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? Including thoughts on the writing of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, Oryx & Crake, and Atwood's other beloved works.
- How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
- How can we live on our planet?
- Is it true? And is it fair?
- What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In more than fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic. From when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to Atwood's views on the climate crisis, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe. -
Mi Little Golden Book Sobre Frida Kahlo (My Little Golden Book about Frida Kahlo Spanish Edition)
Una biografía Little Golden Book acerca de la pintora mexicana Frida Kahlo, escrita para niños de edad preescolar. Este Little Golden Book capta la esencia de Frida Kahlo para los más pequeños lectores. Desde como superó enfermedades, fue una de pocas niñas admitidas a su escuela en México, y alcanzó a ver sus pinturas expuestas en museos, el libro sirve de inspiración a futuros pioneros, así como a sus padres. Presenta un informativo texto e ilustraciones llenas de colorido inspiradas por el arte de Frida.
A Little Golden Book biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, written for preschoolers. This Little Golden Book captures the essence of Frida Kahlo for the youngest readers. From overcoming illness, to being one of only a handful of girls at her school in Mexico, to having her paintings hanging in museums, this is an inspiring read for future trailblazers and their parents! Features informative text and colorful illustrations inspired by Frida's own artwork. Look for more Little Golden Book biographies:
- Misty Copeland
- Iris Apfel
- Bob Ross
- Queen Elizabeth II
- Harriet Tubman -
Dances
A ballerina at the height of her powers becomes consumed with finding her missing brother in this "striking debut" (Oprah Daily). "A compelling novel about the spiritual and bodily costs of the dogged pursuit of art."--Raven Leilani, author of Luster At twenty-two years old, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer when she's promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. She's instantly catapulted into celebrity, heralded for her "inspirational" role as the first Black ballerina in the famed company's history. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, Cece remains haunted by the feeling that she doesn't belong. As she waits for some feeling of rightness that doesn't arrive, she begins to unravel the loose threads of her past--an absent father, a pragmatic mother who dismisses Cece's ambitions, and a missing older brother who stoked her childhood love of ballet but disappeared to deal with his own demons. Soon after her promotion, Cece is faced with a choice that has the potential to derail her career and shatter the life she's cultivated for herself, sending her on a pilgrimage to both find her brother and reclaim the parts of herself lost in the grinding machinery of the traditional ballet world. Written with spellbinding beauty and ballet's precise structure, Dances centers around women, art, and power, and how we come to define freedom for ourselves. -
The Other Miss Bridgerton: A Bridgerton Prequel
#1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn presents the third novel of the delightful Bridgerton Prequel series in a stunning new package.
There were Bridgertons before the eight alphabetically named siblings, and in this novel, we go back to where it all began. . .
She was in the wrong place...
Fiercely independent and adventurous, Poppy Bridgerton will only wed a suitor whose keen intellect and interests match her own. Sadly, none of the fools from her London season qualify. While visiting a friend on the Dorset coast, Poppy is pleasantly surprised to discover a smugglers' hideaway tucked inside a cave. But her delight turns to dismay when two pirates kidnap her and take her aboard a ship, leaving her bound and gagged on the captain's bed...
He found her at the wrong time...
Known to society as a rascal and reckless privateer, Captain Andrew James Rokesby actually transports essential goods and documents for the British government. Setting sail on a time-sensitive voyage to Portugal, he's stunned to find a woman waiting for him in his cabin. Surely, his imagination is getting the better of him. But no, she is very real--and his duty to the Crown means he's stuck with her.
Can two wrongs make the most perfect right?
When Andrew learns that she is a Bridgerton, he knows he will likely have to wed her to avert a scandal--though Poppy has no idea that he is the son of an earl and neighbor to her aristocratic cousins in Kent. On the high seas, their war of words soon gives way to an intoxicating passion. But when Andrew's secret is revealed, will his declaration of love be enough to capture her heart...?
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Fight Night
"Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year"
"Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women. "You're a small thing," Grandma writes, "and you must learn to fight." Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send. Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms. -
The Lager Queen of Minnesota
A National Bestseller! "The perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day."
--Washington Post
"[A] charmer of a tale. . . Warm, witty and--like any good craft beer--complex, the saga delivers a subtly feminist and wholly life-affirming message."
--People Magazine
A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself. With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots. It's Blotz." Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential savior close to home. . . if it's not too late. Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up--will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family? Here we meet a cast of lovable, funny, quintessentially American characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted. -
Women in Politics: Breaking Down the Barriers to Achieve True Representation
"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made."
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words reflect a reality that has plagued the United States for centuries: We have work to do when it comes to gender-political parity.
Still, trailblazing women in government have laid the groundwork for other women to follow in their footsteps, one inspirational example at a time.
In Women in Politics, award-winning author and healthcare leader Mary Chung Hayashi offers a riveting exploration of the strides made by women in government. This essential, contemporary analysis bridges the gap between past and present, blending Mary's personal journey as an Asian American immigrant and former California State Assemblymember with the inspiring stories of trailblazing women in political leadership.
Featuring interviews and insightful discussions, Mary brings to life the trials and triumphs of these women, showcasing their invaluable contributions to political landscapes and the transformative power of their perseverance. Her work sheds light on the ongoing struggles for
gender-political parity and serves as a call to action: we must actively participate in shaping our democracy. Women in Politics is not just a book; it's a tribute to women's political journey and a compass guiding us all toward a future of inclusive leadership and a truly representative democracy.
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Women Don't Owe You Pretty
WRITER AND ACTIVIST FLORENCE GIVEN TELLS YOU HOW FEMINISM IS GOING TO RUIN YOUR LIFE (IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE). A vibrantly illustrated primer on modern feminism for the Instagram generation encouraging us to question the insidious narratives that would hold us back from self-acceptance, self-love, and our own power. With her refreshingly audacious voice and unmistakable art style, Florence Given explores all corners of the conversation, from overcoming insecurity projection and the tendency to find comfort in other women's flaws to how to recognize and fight against the male gaze and other toxic cultural baggage and embracing sex and body positivity. Women Don't Owe You Pretty is here to remind us that everyone is valuable as they are and we owe the world nothing, least of all pretty. -
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and of the Goodreads Choice Award for History & Biography
The award-winning, best-selling book that changes the narrative of the "Ripper" murders forever
Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from some of London's wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods, from the factory towns of middle England, and from Wales and Sweden. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink dust from printing presses and escaped human traffickers.
What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. Now, in this gripping narrative of five lives, Hallie Rubenhold finally sets the record straight and gives these women back their stories. -
Information Desk: An Epic
New York Times Book Review Edtitors' Choice "Among the year's highlights . . . groundbreaking, epic . . . Like visitors exiting the Met's galleries, readers will emerge from Information Desk bedazzled by the transformative horizons of art." --Washington Post "An effluvial rush of memory, desire, data, and metaphor . . . It's bracing to encounter a mind so voracious, so unapologetic in its intelligence." --New York Review of Books A book-length poem set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from a writer whose work offers "something few poets ever discover: a vision of the whole world" (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker) Robyn Schiff's fourth collection is an ambitious book-length poem in three parts set at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's information desk, where Schiff long ago held a staff position. Elaborately mapping an interconnected route in and out of the museum through history, material, and memory, Information Desk: An Epic takes us on an anguished soul-quest and ecstatic intellectual query to confront the violent forces that inform the museum's encyclopedic collection and the spiritual powers of art. Novelistic in its sweep, frantically informative, and deeply intimate in its private recollections, Information Desk: An Epic wayfares with riveting lyric intensity through an epic array of topics and concerns, including illusion, deception, self-deception, complicity, lecherous coworkers, the composition of pigment, the scattering of seeds, ideas, and capital, and insect infestations spreading within artwork. Along the way, Schiff pauses to invoke three terrifying muses--parasitic wasps--in desperate awe of their powers of precision and generative energy. Information Desk: An Epic undertakes a hemorrhaging ekphrastic journey through artifice and the natural world. -
Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love
The Instant National Bestseller and #1 Indie Next Pick In the vein of the classic 84, Charing Cross Road, this witty and tender novel is a sensuous experience of food and a deep friendship between two very different women in 1960s America. Two strangers. One recipe. A friendship for the ages. Creamy risotto alla Milanese. Mussels in a hot, buttery broth. Chicken spiced with cinnamon and cloves. Joan Bergstrom and Imogen Fortier understand the key to a savored life--delicious food. Young Joan is just discovering herself as a foodwriter in bustling Los Angeles, while experienced columnist Imogen is settled in her decades-long marriage on Camano Island outside Seattle. When Joan sends a fan letter to Imogen with an enclosed packet of saffron and a recipe, their journey of culinary exploration and soul-deep friendship begins. A long-lost flavor surfaces buried memories, and a quest to make carne asada opens the doors of a sheltered life. Into this beautiful, intimate world comes the ultimate test of their friendship, and of their belief that food and love can sustain us during our darkest hours. -
The Mother-Daughter Puzzle: A New Generational Understanding of the Mother-Daughter Relationship
From the sales desk to the boardroom, too many women feel as though they are "giving from a place of empty," constantly putting their wants and needs last in a culture that expects them to give and never take. If this describes you, take heart! The source of your dilemma might well spring from the relationship you have (or had) with your mother, your daughter, or both.
In The Mother-Daughter Puzzle, Rosjke Hasseldine, an internationally recognized expert on the mother-daughter relationship, Huffington Post blogger, and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, provides a step-by-step guide on how to connect the dots between what's happening in your mother-daughter relationship and how society and your generational family treats women. Rosjke's book teaches you how to map your mother-daughter history, an eye-opening way to help provide answers to your dilemma. From this mapping, you'll also learn how to raise your entitlement to speak and be heard, and to challenge and change harmful sexist beliefs and cultural stereotypes, so you can enjoy an emotionally connected, mutually supportive mother-daughter bond.
"In The Mother-Daughter Puzzle, Rosjke Hasseldine explores one of the most influential relationships in women's lives. Her stories vividly demonstrate the dynamic nuances of this grounding relationship, and how those dynamics shape the way women relate to themselves, their work, and how they engage in other interpersonal relationships. She challenges readers to assess the mother-daughter dynamic in a new way and engage in processes that foster equality and structure egalitarianism."
Helen LaKelly Hunt PhD, author of And the Spirit Moved Them: The Lost Radical History of America's First Feminists.
"This is a very important book. It can help us all to understand the mother-daughter relationship and guide us to create a positive one. A must-read."
Gloria Feldt, former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead, author of No Excuses.