From bra shopping to babysitting, from making close friends to making great grades, Girltalk has all the answers Upbeat and up-to-date, honest and hip, Girltalk is an "indispensable guide" (Working Mother) for girls ages eleven to eighteen. This Fourth Edition is the ultimate preteen and teen source for advice on: Body: looking and feeling your best Friendship: you don't like everybody -- why should everybody like youLove: falling in, falling out Sex: what you should know before saying yes Family: making the best of your nest Education: getting through school, getting into college Money: making it, saving it, spending it Smoking, Drinking, and Drugs: advice without lectures Quizzes: getting to know yourself

In 2005 Uzodinma Iweala stunned readers and critics alike with Beasts of No Nation, his debut novel about child soldiers in West Africa. Now his return to Africa has produced Our Kind of People, a non-fiction account of the AIDS crisis every bit as startling and original. HIV/AIDS has been reported as one of the most destructive diseases in recent memory tearing apart communities and ostracizing the afflicted. But the emphasis placed on death, destruction, and despair hardly captures the many and varied effects of the epidemic, or the stories of the extraordinary people who live and die under its watch.Our Kind of People opens our minds to these stories, introducing a new set of voices and altering the way we speak and think about disease. Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey through his native Nigeria, meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily to understand both the impact and meaning of HIV/AIDS. He speaks with people from all walks of life the ill and the healthy, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children. Their testimonies are by turns uplifting, alarming, humorous, and surprising, and always unflinchingly candid. Integrating his own experiences with these voices, Iweala creates at once a deeply personal exploration of life, love, and connection in the face of disease, and an incisive critique of our existing ideas of health and happiness.Beautifully written and heartbreakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of an unprecedented epidemic to show the real lives it affects, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's valiant struggle.

The critically acclaimed author of Good-bye and Amen, Leeway Cottage, and More Than You Know returns with a sharply perceptive and emotionally resonant novel about all the ways we talk about one another, the sometimes fine line between showing concern and doing damage, and the difficulty of knowing the true obligations of friendshipGossipBeth Gutcheon "Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is 'god-sibling'It's the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It's talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect."Loviah "Lovie" French owns a small, high-end dress shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Renowned for her taste and discretion, Lovie is the one to whom certain women turn when they need "just the thing" for major life events baptisms and balls, weddings and funerals or when they just want to dish in the dressing room. Among the people who depend on Lovie's confidence are her two best friends since boarding school: Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf. Outspoken and brimming with confidence, Dinah made a name for herself as a columnist covering the doings of New York's wealthiest and most fabulous. Shy, proper Avis, in many ways Dinah's opposite, rose to prominence in the art world with her quiet manners, hard work, and precise judgment. Despite the deep affection they both feel for Lovie, they have been more or less allergic to each other since a minor incident decades earlier that has been remembered and resented with what will prove to be unimaginable consequences. These uneasy acquaintances become unwillingly bound to each other when Dinah's favorite son and Avis's only daughter fall in love and marry. On the surface, Nick and Grace are the perfect match a playful, romantic, buoyant, and beautiful pair. But their commitment will be strained by time and change: career setbacks, reckless choices, the birth of a child, jealousies, and rumor. At the center of their orbit is Lovie, who knows everyone's secrets and manages them as wisely as she can. Which is not wisely enough, as things turn out a fact that will have a shattering effect on all their lives.An astute chronicler of everything that makes us human, Beth Gutcheon delivers her most powerful and emotionally devastating novel to date. Gossip is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship, competition, and motherhood that explores the myriad ways we use and abuse "information" about others be it true, false, or imagined to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another.

In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

In the autumn of 1598, Abraham, a melancholy young Jewish gem merchant, seeks his fortune far from the imprisoning ghetto walls of Venice. Traveling halfway across the world, he lands in the lush and exotic Burmese kingdom of Pegu—an alien place, yet one where the jewel trader is not shunned for his faith. There is a price for his newfound freedom, however. Local custom demands that Abraham perform a duty he finds troubling and barbaric . . . and thus Mya, barely more than a girl, arrives to share his bed. Gently banishing his despair, awakening something profound within him, Mya ultimately accepts Abraham's protection and, unexpectedly, his love. But great social and political upheaval threatens to violently transform the Peguan empire—with devastating consequences for Abraham and Mya and their dreams for the future.

From Dan Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, comes a gritty detective novel featuring JD Fiorella, an ex-private investigator who's bent on avenging his friend's murder.Failed private investigator JD Fiorella was a pro at finding trouble. Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.Now forty-six and sober, JD?is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.

Long-buried secrets go hand in hand with modern-day murder in this second thriller featuring attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir from Iceland's queen of crime fictionWhen the body of a young woman—badly beaten and with pins inserted into her feet—is found at a New Age health resort in a renovated farmhouse, lawyer and single mother of two Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is called upon to represent the chief suspect, the resort's owner. But upon her arrival she encounters more than a fresh corpse—local legend has it that the resort, located in the mystical region of Sn?fellsnes on Iceland's west coast, is haunted. At first Thóra dismisses the claims as nothing more than myth and superstition, but even she can't explain the bizarre occurrences she witnesses in her search for answers. As Thóra digs deeper into the farm's past, she discovers long-buried information on the property's disturbing history, and her once-solid view of reality begins to waver. Are the hauntings real, or just a case of folklore gone wildAnd, more important, does the farm's eerie past have something to do with the murderWhen another body is discovered—looking very much like the first—Thóra is forced to put aside her doubts and confront the horrors of the present before a twisted killer strikes again.With its confident plotting, chilling atmosphere, and smart, compelling heroine, My Soul to Take confirms Yrsa Sigurdardóttir as a new maven of mysteries.

In her very first novel, award-winning author Nevada Barr reveals another side to her remarkable storytelling prowess with this heart-wrenching yet tender tale of two women whose boundless devotion to each other is continually challenged in nineteenth century America.

Bea Frazier hoped she'd rediscover her incredible self after divorcing Jimmy. But being home alone with three daughters brings her demons back with a vengeance. The only solution is to reunite her family. The trouble is, her ex is about to marry someone else. Tessa King has finally found true love, but her knight in shining armor comes with three sullen daughters and an ex who doesn't seem nearly "ex" enough. After years of singledom, what does Tessa have to do to finally live happily ever afterAs the two women negotiate carpools, puberty, and family loyalties, each finds it almost impossible not to fall into the old cliché of the bitter first wife and the wicked stepmother. But if Bea and Tessa are brave enough, they just may find a friend where they once saw an enemy. . . . Absorbing and touching, humorous and honest, The Stepmother reminds us that there is always another side to the story.

Tragicomedy of the highest order, this stellar collection is Croatian writer Novakovich's best ever. Hailed as one of the best short story writers of the 1990s, Josip Novakovich was praised by the New York Times for writing fiction that has "the crackle of authenticity, like the bite of breaking glass." In his new collection, he explores a war–torn Balkan world in which a schoolchild's innocence evaporates in a puff of cannon smoke, lust replaces love, and the joy of survival overrides all other pleasures. As Serb, Croat, and Bosnian Muslim armies clash in the cities and countryside of the former Yugoslavia, it's hard to tell the front lines from the home front. The characters in Infidelities––soldiers and civilians alike––are caught in the ridiculous, often cruelly whimsical contradictions of war and the paranoia and folly of those who conduct it. In "Ribs," a Croatian woman whose husband has already been taken by the war will go to any length to keep her son out of the army, including sleeping with the draft officer, a tryst that leads to an unexpected, and disturbing, spiritual vision. A Buddhist soldier in the Bosnian Muslim military isly accused of being an informer to the enemy Serbs after his detachment ambushes itself in "Hail." A draft dodger is in the hospital for a transplant, in "A Purple Heart," when a high–ranking Croatian general steals the heart for himself (and dies) while the dodger suddenly discovers a new thirst for life. In "Spleen," a Bosnian émigré in America learns that even in the throes of passion she cannot find release from the haunting memories of her homeland. These stories cover a broad sweep of time, reaching back to the first shots of World War I in Sarajevo and forward to the plight of Balkan immigrants in contemporary America. Throughout, acts of compassion, gallows humour, even desire arise from a landscape devastated by tragedy.

Jane Fortune's fortunes have taken a downturn. Thanks to the profligate habits of her father and older sister, the family's money has evaporated and Jane has to move out of the only home she's ever known: a stately brick town house on Boston's prestigious Beacon Hill. Thirty-eight and terminally single, Jane has never pursued idle pleasures like her sibling and father. Instead, she has devoted her time to running the Fortune Family Foundation, a revered philanthropic institution that has helped spark the careers of many a budding writer, including Max Wellman, Jane's first—and only—love. Now Jane has lost her luster. Max, meanwhile, has become a bestselling novelist and a renowned literary lothario. But change is afoot. And in the process of saving her family and reigniting the flames of true love, Jane might just find herself becoming the woman she was always meant to be.

Twenty-three-year-old Jo Green knows that if she has to spend one more night in ultra-provincial Niblet-Upon-Avon she'll go completely bonkers! So she answers an ad in the paper, bids her devoted boyfriend Shaun adieu, and heads off to the big city. With a new job that offers excitement; a cool car; and her own suite with a TV, DVD player, and a cell phone, how can she go wrong?Then she meets . . . the Fitzgeralds -- Dick and Vanessa and their unruly brood of rugrats who have suddenly been entrusted into Jo's care. There's eight-year-old "psycho-babe" Cassandra; bloodthirsty Zak, the six-year-old Terminator; and timid little Tallulah.So what else could go wrongHow about the arrival of Dick's children from his first marriage: teenage Toby and (gulp!) all-grown-up-and-very-nicely-at-that Josh the accountantAnd now that she has to temporarily share her room with Josh, Jo's head is really in a spin -- because with her hometown beau still in the picture and a sexy possibility sleeping just a foot away, life has suddenly gotten very complicated indeed!

Despite being cursed with a boy's name, Kevin "Vi" Connelly is seriously female and a committed romantic. The affliction hit at the tender age of six when she was handed a basket of flower petals and ensnared by the "marry-tale." The thrill, the attention, the big white dress—it's the Best Day of Your Life, and it's seriously addictive. But at twenty-seven, with a closetful of pricey bridesmaid dresses she'll never wear again, a trunkful of embarrassing memories, and an empty bank account from paying for it all, the illusion of matrimony as the Answer to Everything begins to fray. As her friends' choices don't provide answers, and her family confuses her more, Vi faces off against her eminently untrustworthy boyfriend and the veracity of the BDOYL. Eleven weddings in eighteen months would send any sane woman either over the edge or scurrying for the altar. But as reality separates from illusion, Vi learns that letting go of someone else's story to write your own may be harder than buying the myth, but just might help her make the right choices for herself.

Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of quiet Los Angeles privilege, the wife of Hollywood executive Howard Rosenbaum and mother of their seventeen-year-old son, Sam. Years ago Anne and Howard met studying litera-ture at Columbia—she, the daughter of a British diplo-mat from London, he a boy from an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Now on sleek blue California evenings, Anne attends halogen-lit movie premieres on the arm of her powerful husband. But her private life is lived in the world of her garden, reading books.When one of Howard's friends, the head of a studio, asks Anne to make a reading list, she casually agrees—though, as a director reminds her, "no one reads in Hollywood." To her surprise, they begin calling: screen-writers; producers, from their bungalows; and agents, from their plush offices on Wilshire and Beverly. Soon Anne finds herself leading an exclusive book club for the industry elite. Emerging gradually from her seclu-sion, she guides her readers into the ideas and beauties of Donne, Yeats, Auden, and Mamet, with her brilliant and increasingly bold opinions. But when a crisis of identity unexpectedly turns an anguished Howard back toward the Orthodoxy he left behind as a young man, Anne must set out to save what she values above all else: her husband's love. At once fiercely intelligent and emotionally grip-ping, You or Someone Like You confronts the fault lines between inherited faith and personal creed, and, through the surprising transformation of one exceptional, unfor-gettable woman, illuminates literature's power to change our lives.

The summer of 1995 marks Kate Colter's fifteenth year in the small town of Hayden, Wyoming. She is a woman who is generally happy in her marriage and with her now predictable day-to-day life as wife, mother, and part-time breadwinner. Even though she is a New Englander at heart, Kate has reached a point where rodeos, summer heat, sharp light, and the vast, desolate beauty of the West have become almost second nature to her. She loves her husband and daughter, is fond of her neighbors, and enjoys the company of her mother-in-law. Yet, privately, she longs for the conversations and stories of her past, and she can't help but feel disconnected from the people around her.In walks Tom Baxter, Kate's mother-in-law's new suitor from "back East."Kate is immediately drawn to Tom—his gentle charm and engaging conversation spark an unusual companionship. Tom seems like the little piece of home that Kate so misses. She's curious about him and about his story, but finds unexplained gaps and inconsistencies that pique her interest to a new level. Then a series of peculiar and seemingly suspicious events leads Kate to a terrifying conclusion—a conclusion that could forever shatter her life and the lives of those she loves.In this debut novel, Dorie McCullough Lawson vividly captures a familiar American landscape. Filled with unforgettable characters and written in eloquent yet suspenseful prose, Along Comes a Stranger is a darkly humorous novel that examines the depth of identity and family life.

The critics have been effusive in their praise for Richard Bausch's Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea.His hardover sales have also never been higher.Taking its title from Walter Winchell's famous radio salutation, Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America opens in Washington, DC, in 1964, just after the Kennedy assassination, telling the story of Walter Marshall, an idealistic 19-year-old who lives with his widowed mother and studies to be a journalist like his hero, Edward R. Murrow. In this coming-of-age novel in the truest sense of the phrase, young Marshall fumbles toward manhood in a nation that is itself in the midst of cataclysmic change.With the same elegance and precision that has distinguished his other novels, Richard Bausch has evoked a sense of time and place in a different America and brings the last 30 years of history profoundly and vividly to life.

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North—offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.

While taking an evening stroll through one of London's most impoverished districts, author Bram Stoker spies a maddeningly familiar figure hurrying through the shadows. Little does he know that, only a few steps away, a vicious killer has claimed his first victim, a local prostitute. The crime spree of the century has begun—and the hapless writer is the prime suspect. Now, to clear his name, Stoker must enlist the aid of illustrious friends—including Walt Whitman, the wildly popular novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, and Lady Jane Wilde, mother of the most notorious literary notable of the day—to hunt down the fiend who is taunting and terrorizing London and calling himself Jack the Ripper.

Let's go crazy!Successful Claudia Barrett seems to be doing it all right. She's a vice president at her firm, with an engagement ring on her finger from the man who's loved her since high school. So what if she's been wearing it for five years -- and her classic, expensive, dull everyday outfits make her look like someone fatally allergic to a good time?What exactly is wrong with the girl?She's bored, for one thing. She's thirty years old and in a rut -- and best friend, Pam, thinks it's time Claudia got her freak on. It's time to inject a little action, adventure, and good old-fashioned lust into this sister's life. But practicing what Pam is preaching and going buck wild could have some serious consequences, especially when tall, dark, and dangerous Cody is added to the mix.

Italy, 1456. The Renaissance is in glorious bloom. A Carmelite monk, the great artist Fra Filippo Lippi acts as chaplain to the nuns of the Convent Santa Margherita. It is here that he encounters the greatest temptation of his life, beautiful Lucrezia Buti, who has been driven to holy orders more by poverty than piety. In Lucrezia's flawless face Lippi sees the inspiration for countless Madonnas and he brings the young woman to his studio to serve as his model. But as painter and muse are united in an exhilarating whirl of artistic discovery, a passionate love develops, one that threatens to destroy them both even as it fuels some of Lippi's greatest work.

All over Hollywood, men are dialing O—for orgasms. Her steamy naughty talk fills them with lust and longing, and helps them perform like the studs they claim to be.In truth, the industry's favorite "erotic phone operatrix" is Nina Harte, a struggling actress who has put her career on hold so that her husband, Nathan, can pursue his own dreams of stardom. When Nathan's career takes off, so does he, leaving Nina and their four-year-old son, Jake, for his diva costar, Katerina McPherson. Then "Kat 'n' Nat" are crowned the media's newest celebrity sweethearts, and Kat labels Nina an unfit mother in order to win custody of Jake, just so that she can have that highly-coveted celebrity accessory—an adorable child—sans any unsightly stretch marks. The one person who does care about Nina is Nathan's agent, Sam Godwin. In fact, he's in love with her. And because he has both a heart and a conscience, Sam feels guilty for having put Nat in Kat's path in the first place . . . Then again, how will he feel when he learns that Nina and O are one and the same?