Burciaga is deeply rooted in the indigenous realities."--Carlos Santana

    When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

    As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures.

    Lincoln’s Dressmaker, novelist Jennifer Chiaverini presents a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history. In March 1861, Mrs. Lincoln chose Keckley from among a number of applicants to be her personal “modiste,” responsible not only for creating the First Lady’s gowns, but also for dressing Mrs. Lincoln in the beautiful attire Keckley had fashioned. The relationship between the two women quickly evolved, as Keckley was drawn into the intimate life of the Lincoln family, supporting Mary Todd Lincoln in the loss of first her son, and then her husband to the assassination that stunned the nation and the world. Keckley saved scraps from the dozens of gowns she made for Mrs. Lincoln, eventually piecing together a tribute known as the Mary Todd Lincoln Quilt. She also saved memories, which she fashioned into a book, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Upon its publication, Keckley’s memoir created a scandal that compelled Mary Todd Lincoln to sever all ties with her, but in the decades since, Keckley’s story has languished in the archives. In this impeccably researched, engrossing novel, Chiaverini brings history to life in rich, moving style.

    From the spark of possibility and jolt of creativity in High Summer, to the need for release from anxiety and pressure during Monsoon, to the desolation and numbness of Winter, Thapp implores us to consider the seasons of our own emotional journeys.Articulating and validating the range of feelings we all experience, this is a book that allows us to feel connected and comforted by the experiences that make us human.

    Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there’s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde—fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes—but without the dying young bit.By sixteen, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.But what happens when Johanna realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks, enough to build a girl after all?Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

    He has forty children, and all of them have different mothers..."Jack Woodson was a thermal design engineer for four years until he was laid off from his job. Now, as a teacher, he faces new challenges. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, Jack now passes out report cards. The only thing that hasn't changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding him all day.Learn Me Good is Jack's hilarious retelling of his harrowing rookie year, written as a series of emails to Fred Bommerson, his former engineering coworker. Inspired by real-life experiences of rambunctious and precocious children, lesson plans gone awry, and incredibly outrageous quotes, this laugh a minute page turner will give you a new appreciation for educators. Jack holds a March Mathness tournament, he faces a child's urgent declaration of "My bowels be runnin'!", and he mistakenly asks one girl's mother if she is her brother. With subject lines such as "Irritable Vowel Syndrome," "In math class, no one can hear you scream," and "I love the smell of Lysol in the morning," Jack fills each email with sarcastic (yet loving) humor, insightful observations, and plenty of irreverent wit.If you've ever taught, you will undoubtedly recognize aspects of your own students in Jack's classroom. If you've never set foot in a classroom, you will still appreciate the funny quirks, behaviors, and quotes from the kids and adults alike."I teach, therefore I am...poor!"

    At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York's prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges.At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrant's story, Almost a Woman is Santiago's triumphant journey into womanhood.  "A universal tale familiar to thousands of immigrants to this country, but made special by Santiago's simplicity and honesty." --The Miami Herald"A courageous memoir. . . . One witnesses. . .the blessings, contradictions and restraints of Puerto Rican culture." --The Washington Post Book World

    With work that ranges from the laugh out loud funny to the silence and rage of loss, Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Self-Destruction is a must read. As the book unfolds Jared guides the reader through fresh takes on the discussion of body image and body positivity side by side with all too familiar discussions of mental health, anxiety and suicide. It explores the complex cloth that is American culture and New York in particular, taking extra time to examine his identity as a Jewish American and how that underpins the authors daily experience. Forgive Yourself is a modern handbook for finding yourself and your place without losing your way.

    And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life. Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.

    She poses the eternal question: Can you heal once you’ve been marked by a monster, or will the sun always sting?

    Except for this month's Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which isn't so much a glossy centerpiece as it is an addictive pictorial of the godmother of punk's life as a poet, activist, mother, style icon, and all-around kick-ass front woman." ~Elle "With the Rizzoli imprint, we have come to expect certain things: perfect printing, the highest quality papers, flawless binding, superior layouts and type. This historic book is no different." ~SoHo Journal

    Yet Cummings could also be difficult, truculent, opinionated, wrong-headed, emotional, bigoted and egotistical. Dubbed by Ezra Pound as "Whitman's one living descendant," Cummings sang of himself and of America in a unique voice, as resonant now as it was a half-century ago. Charismatic and famous among the famous, Cummings always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and was a major presence wherever he resided, whether in Cambridge, Europe or New York. He counted some of the most important artists of his time as friends: Pound, Hemingway, Dylan Thomas and many more. "Sawyer-Lau�anno emphasizes the relation of the private man to his work, offering fresh insights into the grand optical arrangement of Cummings's books."--Starred Library Journal ReviewbrbrFor nearly half a century, the personal papers, journals and diaries of Edward Estlin Cummings were kept from public view. These documents reveal far more about the inner life of the famous poet and painter than has ever been known. Now, noted biographer Christopher Sawyer-Lau�anno presents the first, definitive, revelatory life story of E.E. Cummings (1894 1962), an American original. brbr"Well-researched, comprehensive, and essential to understanding the artist and the artistry."--Starred Kirkus ReviewsbrbrFor E.E. Cummings#58; A Biography, the author had unprecedented access toall of Cummings's papers-anguished diary entries, reflections on consultations with two psychoanalysts, an autobiographical novel, and a carefully prepared manuscript containing more than one hundred blatantly erotic poems. brbrIn the words of William Corbett, author of Boston Vermont and Don't Think Look, "E.E. Cummings, Yankee individualist and, rare for an American poet, satirist is here in full. This means warts and all, but Sawyer-Lau�anno has not come to judge. In this readable and absorbing life he has paid Cummings the honor of clear-eyed candor." Christopher Sawyer-Lau�anno paints a full and memorable portrait of this extraordinary American poet.

    It is also the story of a boy who, exiled from the island because he could not abide by its sexist laws, looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness and wonders: Why does God have to be a woman? Celebrated prose poet Nin Andrews creates a world both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women.Nin Andrews's books include The Book of Orgasms and Sleeping with Houdini.

    In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.