Collection: Shop Woman

In this feisty new culinary cozy mystery from Agatha and Edgar Award-nominated author Valerie Burns, social media influencer Maddy Montgomery is adjusting to her new life after moving to small-town Michigan to run a bakery and take care of a gigantic English mastiff--all while solving the murder of a one-time nemesis...

The small town, fish-out-of-water, baking-themed mystery for fans of Jenn McKinlay, Mia P. Manansala, Abby Collette, Jennifer J. Chow, Danielle Arceneaux, and Joanne Fluke!

"Books, dogs and food -- and a well-structured sense of fun -- connect almost all of Valerie Burns's cozy mysteries." -- The New York Times

Thanks to Maddy's social media savvy, Baby Cakes Bakery is becoming a huge success--so much so that she's attracted the attention of her former nemesis, the fiancé-stealing Brandy Denton. When Brandy blows into New Bison like an ill wind and disrupts a vlog Maddy's filming, their argument goes viral. After Brandy's body is found at Baby Cakes, Maddy instantly goes from viral sensation to murder suspect.

As Maddy is still reeling from the murder, a stranger shows up in the bakery claiming to have been a friend of Octavia. He believes Maddy is in danger. When a second body washes up on the lake shore, it seems clear someone's out to kill to keep a secret--and it may have to do with her great aunt.

Maddy rallies her aunt's friends, the Baker Street Irregulars; Sheriff April Johnson; and her veterinarian boyfriend Michael--not to mention her English mastiff Baby--to do some digging and root out whoever's behind the killings . . .

​In 1969 Bernice Sandler was finishing her doctorate in Education at the University of Maryland, teaching part-time at the university, and trying to secure a full-time position. Despite her excellent credentials, it became clear she wasn't even being considered. But why? she wondered.

"Let's face it," a male colleague said, "you come on too strong for a woman."

Those fateful words brought sex discrimination home for Sandler. Facing it herself, front and center in her own workplace, meant she could no longer be ambivalent about women's rights. She could no longer buy the media coverage of feminists as "man-hating," "abrasive," and "unfeminine." But what could she do? Sandler soon discovered that none of the obvious laws prohibiting discrimination covered sex discrimination in education. Sandler's work led to the passage of Title IX--making it illegal, once and for all, for a federally funded institution to discriminate against someone based on their sex, including in education. This had a profound effect for women in the workplace, in school, and in sports.

Bernice Sandler and the Fight for Title IX that drives home the message that it doesn't take a person with power to make a difference. More often, it takes determination. When confronted with injustice, regular people can effect change. Also includes extensive backmatter about How To Be an Activist written by Know Your IX, a survivor- and youth-led project of Advocates for Youth that aims to empower students to end sexual and dating violence in their schools.

• 2022 FOREWORD INDIES FINALIST

Men may have fought the battles of the American Revolution, but women played an important part too. Some women fought the battle at home, speaking their minds about the British occupation or gathering supplies for their soldiers. Others fought openly for their cause, secretly joining the military or becoming spies. Get to know these heroic women and their importance to the colonists' victory during the Revolutionary War.

The fourth book in the delectable Deep Dish Mystery series, set in a Wisconsin pizzeria.

Pizza chef Delilah O'Leary and her kitty companion, Butterball, get into the holiday spirit as Geneva Bay, Wisconsin hosts the nation's premier snow sculpting championship. The annual event transforms the charming resort town into a wonderland of snow castles, ice rinks, and cozy cups of cocoa.

On the eve of the festival though, a too-good-to-be-true Chrismukkah catering gig brings some frosty tidings and heralds an unexpected visit from Delilah's high-intensity older sister. Suddenly it seems that the holidays may not be the hap-happiest season of all. And when a missing party guest's frozen corpse turns up inside one of the town's snowy sculptures, murder threatens to put the celebrations--and Delilah's crew--on ice for good.

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing clothing created from spun fibers. In Women's Work, archaeologist-linguist Elizabeth Wayland Barber "weaves the strands of mythology and literature, ethnology and documented history into a rich tapestry" (John Noble Wilford, New York Times Book Review), illuminating the vital role women held in preindustrial societies. With a distinctive and innovative approach to ancient remains, Barber examines ancient textiles from Stone Age string skirts and ancient Egyptian sleeved tunics to intricate Neolithic Swiss linens and colorfully patterned Minoan dresses, offering us captivating glimpses into the daily lives of women through the cloth they made and wore.

"A fascinating history and prehistory of the making of textiles, a craft, exclusive to women (including queens and goddesses), that preceded and made possible civilization itself."--New York Times Book Review

"Fortunately, this most distinctive of female occupations has a sympathetic and authoritative chronicler in Elizabeth Wayland Barber."--Mary R. Lefkowitz, New York Review of Books

Another delicious installment in the Bakeshop Series set in Ashland, OR!

It's late spring in Juliet's charming hamlet of Ashland. Spotted deer are nibbling on lush green grasses in Lithia Park, the Japanese maples are blooming, and Torte is baking a bevy of spring delights--lemon curd cupcakes, mini coconut cream pies, grapefruit tartlets, and chocolate dipped almond Tuiles.

Meanwhile, Juliet's friend Lance, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is taking center stage with his new theater troupe--the Fair Verona Players. Their performance in Uva's vineyard promises to be a modern, gender-bending twist on "The Taming of the Shrew," but as the curtain rises, so do the strange occurrences. Stage mishaps and internal bickering threaten to derail the production. But the real show begins when the leading actor, Jimmy Paxton, meets his final curtain call. Now, Jules is not only in the mix, but she's going to need to craft the perfect recipe for solving this theatrical whodunit.

"Wow, I loved this one so much! I didn't want it to be over because I was enjoying it so much, but I couldn't stop turning pages! House of Glass is a gripping thriller that was packed with surprises and compelling characters." -- Freida McFadden

The next thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass.

On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce - and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

The fourth book in the humorous, heartfelt, highly illustrated series about a girl who doodles to cope with her anxiety, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sara Shepard.

When fifth grader Penny Lowry and her classmates get invited to go to New York City for a weekend hosted by Billy J. Plumberry, the famous author her school is named for, Penny finds a lot to worry about. After all, isn't the city full of aggressive bike messengers ready to run kids over? And what if she gets stuck in an elevator for life? Not to mention all the pianos falling out of windows everywhere!

On the other hand, what if it might actually be fun to explore an exciting new place with some of her best friends?

When it soon becomes clear Billy J. Plumberry has a few surprises in store, can Penny find a way to face her fears--and her worries--in the biggest, bustling-est place she's ever been?

Autumn is in full swing for the town of Shady Palms--the perfect time for warm drinks, cozy cardigans, and...dead bodies?

The annual Shady Palms Corn Festival is one of the town's biggest moneymakers, drawing crowds from all over the Midwest looking to partake in delicious treats, local crafts, and of course, the second largest corn maze in Illinois. Lila Macapagal and her Brew-ha Cafe crew, Adeena Awan and Elena Torres, are all too happy to participate in the event and even make a little wager on who can make it through the corn maze the fastest--but their fun is suddenly cut short when a dead body is found in the middle of the maze...and an unconscious Adeena lies next to it, clutching a bloody knife.

The body is discovered to be a local politician's wife, and all signs--murder weapon included--point to Adeena as the culprit. But Lila knows her best friend couldn't have done this, so she and her crew put on their sleuthing caps yet again to find the killer who framed Adeena and show them what happens when they mess with a Brew-ha...

Librarian Kathleen Paulson is in for a spell of trouble when she finds a dead body, and only her reliable magical cats can help her tail a killer in the newest installment of this New York Times bestselling series.

Kathleen is busy running the library and planning her upcoming wedding to detective Marcus Gordon, when she suddenly stumbles across a body in the library. She is surprised to learn that the deceased was in the middle of an unlikely heist--it seems like he was trying to steal one of the paintings that had been in a box in the library's workroom. Kathleen never knew any of the library's rotating artwork was valuable and can't imagine what the dead man wanted with it.

But then an art history expert called in by the police identifies the almost-purloined painting as a piece that might have been part of a previous high profile art theft. Owen's and Hercules's whiskers are already twitching, and events soon make Kathleen realize that whoever killed the wannabe art thief has more than murder on their mind. Kathleen and her clever cats will have to work fast to prevent anyone else from getting hurt.

"Extraordinary... a raw, vulnerable, breath-stealing love you can feel as you read."
--Emily Henry

"Dazzling, tender, and romantic." --Carley Fortune

Lifelong best friends spend a fateful summer discovering what might happen if they were to be something more in this radiant, heart-clenching adult debut.

Laniah Thompson is a homebody who craves privacy. Issac Jordan is internet famous and spends his days followed by paparazzi. She runs a small business with her mom in her hometown. He runs an international brand.

And they've been best friends since childhood.

When Issac comes home to Providence for the first time in months and discovers Laniah's dream is slipping out of reach as she and her mom struggle to pay the bills at Wildly Green, their natural hair store, she refuses to take a dime from him. And so, he does what any self-respecting best friend would do: tells the world they're dating.

Suddenly business is booming, and Laniah agrees to his ridiculous plan to pretend to be lovers for the course of the summer. Just long enough to catch the eye of an investor and get her dream back on track, like she helped him do so many years ago, he reminds her.

Too soon, though, Laniah knows she's playing with fire, because for as long as they've been friends there's an undeniable pull they've never given in to. And as the lines between art and life--real and pretend--blur, it becomes harder and harder to see where friendship ends and something else begins....

Told over the course of three sizzling summer months, A Love Like the Sun is about shared history, those who make us our bravest selves, and love in its many forms.

Ali Smith melds the tale and the essay into a magical hybrid form, a song of praise to the power of stories in our lives

In February 2012, the novelist Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted--literally--by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.
A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith's heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.
Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights--on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature's worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.

Murder at an Alice in Wonderland-themed event threatens to send Theodosia Browning through the looking glass in the latest entry in this New York Times bestselling series.

During the Mad Hatter Masquerade, a fundraiser hosted by the Friends of the Opera on the grounds of the old Pendleton Grist Mill, Harlan Sadler, husband of Cricket Sadler, the chairwoman, is killed. He's been hit in the head with a croquet mallet, and his body hung on the chains and paddles of the grist mill. Nobody can figure out why since Harlan was much beloved by everyone. It's only after Cricket and Delaine beg Theodosia to investigate that she realizes the killer might have mistaken Harlan for his crazy son, Duke. After all, Duke is a slum landlord and recently injured a woman in a boating accident.

INCLUDES DELICIOUS RECIPES AND TEA TIME TIPS!

This miniature book contains a veritable garden of healing plants, specially chosen from Elizabeth Blackwell's Curious Herbal (1737-39). A talented artist, Blackwell published her herbal as a means of financial support after her husband landed in debtor's prison--and it quickly became a prized reference for doctors and apothecaries. Each of the 140 exquisite hand-colored engravings featured herein--from elderberry and chamomile to aloe and St. John's wort--is accompanied by Blackwell's description of its medicinal properties. The plants have been selected by the renowned garden writer Marta McDowell, who also contributes an introduction about Elizabeth Blackwell and the herbal medicine of her time. Healing Plants is the perfect little gift for anyone interested in herbalism, botany, or gardening.

In eighteenth-century England, a woman who was an intellectual, read constantly, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. But the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. They questioned the traditional womanly roles of wife, mother, and caregiver. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the extraordinary lives of these pioneering women, from Elizabeth Montagu, who established a salon that had everyone in society clamoring for an invitation, and her sister Sarah Scott, who set up a female utopian community, to Fanny Burney, the audacious novelist, and Catharine Macaulay, the prestigious English historian. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives. The Bluestockings uncovers how these remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of the patriarchy the world was not yet ready to hear.