Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage--after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures--Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time--until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does--but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.

    Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora manages to set things right.

    Magazine and consciousness raising. As the post-World War II era of peace, prosperity, and pointy bras gives way to the life-expanding changes of the women’s movement, four women meet and over the course of two decades, create a space that allows them all to thrive, with humor and irreverence, as they each struggle to reconcile the realities of adult life with the expectations of youth. “Virginia DeLuca’s captivating novel, 'As If Women Mattered', fuses compelling social drama with page-turning storytelling. Four women, whose consciousness-raising group becomes a life-long, life-saving family of the heart, wrestle with marriage, motherhood, careers and sex, during a time when no one knew the rules anymore, and it was all up for grabs. The entwined stories of these women will keep you up way past midnight, experiencing the extraordinary era when women rose up and found their voices, and each other.” Randy Susan Meyers, International Bestselling Author of "The Murderer’s Daughters" and "The Comfort of Lies" “'As If Women Mattered' takes me vividly back to my own experiences in the early second-wave women’s movement and, in its characters’ lives, highlights many of the dynamics and issues that made those years so fascinating, so fraught and so fruitful. Thank you especially, Ginny DeLuca, for following the ongoing friendship between these four women over time.” Wendy Sanford, cofounder and coauthor, "Our Bodies, Ourselves"

    But the emperor hides an ugly secret: his bastard son, Don Julius, is afflicted with a madness that pushes the young prince to unspeakable depravity. Desperate to stem his son’s growing number of scandals, the emperor exiles Don Julius to a remote corner of Bohemia where the young man is placed in the care of a bloodletter named Pichler. The bloodletter’s task: cure Don Julius of his madness by purging the vicious humors coursing through his veins.When Pichler brings his daughter Marketa to assist him, she becomes the object of Don Julius’s frenzied --and dangerous-- obsession. To him, she is the embodiment of the women pictured in the Coded Book of Wonder, a priceless manuscript from the imperial library that was the mad prince’s only link to sanity. As the prince descends further into the darkness of his mind, his acts become ever more desperate, as Marketa, both frightened and fascinated, can’t stay away.Inspired by a real-life murder that threatened to topple the powerful Hapsburg dynasty, The Bloodletter’s Daughter is a dark and richly detailed saga of passion and revenge.

    His name was Death and Hell was following close behind...Book zero of the America Falls series is an action-packed novella that tells the story of a mysterious traveler with a hook hand who travels the post-apocalyptic eastern states of America spreading a message of hope about 'The Cities' and the budding rebirth of the United States.It isn't always smooth travelling at the end of the world though, and when he stumbles across a gang of cannibals out for the blood of the innocent, he must decide whether to interrupt his mission and risk death at the hands of psychopaths to help someone in need.

    Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to this protective bubble, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal. Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricable coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras sheds light on the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.

    When Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine her ideas about their forty-year marriage. Joel’s children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling discovery themselves, but for the time being, they are grappling with their own dilemmas. Rosa is being pressed to make a commitment to religion. Karla is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper concession and Lenny is back on drugs. In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to re-examine long-held articles of faith and to decide what – if anything – they still believe in.

    Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities—she knows she’ll never see her possessions again.Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all. Then, a chance encounter with a film crew provides an intriguing opportunity: A producer sizes her up and asks, would she be willing to be the body-double for a movie star filming in the city? And so begins a strange journey in which she’ll become a stand-in—both on-set and off—for a reclusive celebrity who can no longer circulate freely in society while gradually moving further away from the person she was when she arrived in Morocco.Infused with vibrant, lush detail and enveloped in an intoxicating atmosphere—while barely pausing to catch its breath—The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is a riveting, entrancing novel that explores freedom, power and the mutability of identity.

    I was born part precious metal, part pirate."), an orphaned girl who is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of a lighthouse on the Scottish coast. Pew tells Silver stories of Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit and a private one bathed in the light of passionate love. For Silver, Dark's life becomes a map through her own darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love.One of the most original and extraordinary writers of her generation, Jeanette Winterson has created a modern fable about the transformative power of storytelling.

    Mouse’s world is constrained by a number of factors: her mother is dead, her father – the admired country doctor – is emotionally distant, her housekeeper Sal is prejudiced and narrow, and her grandmother and aunt, Big Louie and Little Louie, the only life-affirming presences in her life, live in another city. Enter Gentleman John Pilkie, the former NHL star who’s transferred to the mental hospital in Madoc's Landing, where he is to serve out his life-sentence for the murder of his wife and daughter. John becomes a point of fascination for young Mary, who looks to him for the attention she does not receive from her father. He, in turn, is kind to her – but the kindness is misunderstood. When Mary figures out that the attention she receives from the Hockey Killer is different in kind and intent from the attention her Aunt Little Louie receives, her world collapses. Set against the beautiful and dramatic shore of Georgian Bay, the climax will have readers turning pages with concern for characters they can’t help but love.Praise"Mouse Bradford is a unique and luminous creation... Gentleman John Pilkie, the hockey killer with a heart of gold, is dressed and ready to become a legend." — Paul Gross

    A ‘nervous breakdown’ would be a politer phrase, but really she is being driven mad by her life and her madness is exacerbated by everyone’s indifference to her plight.

    Haunted by illness and obsessed with death, he moves to Mumbai from his village Udali, breaking away from his feudal roots. He encounters young men frustrated by the system but refuses to become one of them. Suddenly, he takes a fancy to education and pursues masters in Arts, without his family knowing about it.Bidhar is the story of a pessimist who struggles to move on in life.

    But innocence lasts for only so long--and dreams, no matter how vivid and powerful, cannot slow the relentless incursion of the real world.

    When her mother dies, Melissa is offered a home by wealthy Lilian Winterton, but she soon realises Lilian wants an unpaid seamstress. Treated as a servant by the Wintertons, Melissa is befriended by Reenie, a kitchen maid, and they enjoy dressing up in Lilian’s cast-off clothes. Wearing finery, Melissa meets handsome young artist James Pennington, but she runs away, frightened he will guess her true status. Scandal follows and Melissa is unfairly thrown out on to the streets. Can the rags of her life be sewn into riches...?

    The invitations summon home the group of people Violet Aird has cared for most in her long life. The oldest, strongest and wisest of them all, she sees Alexa, her vulnerable granddaughter, find love for the first time, while the decision to send her little grandson away to school is driving parents Edmund and Virginia even further apart. Far from them all is Pandora, the glamorous, exciting girl who ran away twenty years before. All will converge on Scotland this September.