Each book describes a classic novel and drama by explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.

    Consequently many women fail to play a full part in the healing and restoration of society. The church should take the lead. In this prophetic book Danielle observes: "We should be the ones who model an alternative approach to leadership. We are the ones with the Bible and the witness of the Holy Spirit who through Scripture, reason, tradition and experience has shown, over and over again His heart for the release of women to exercise their gifts." The book covers: The current situation (exploitation or subjugation); the historical situation (feminism and the Christian tradition); key biblical material; justice (the feminization of poverty); what does the future offer, and what should the church do?"

    Here is Eve brought to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed–as a wife, a mother, and a woman. With stunning intimacy, Elliott boldly reimagines Eve’s journey before and after the banishment from Eden, her complex marriage to Adam, her troubled relationship with her daughters, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons, Cain and Abel. From a woman’s first awakening to a mother’s innermost hopes and fears, from moments of exquisite tenderness to a climax of shocking violence, Eve explores the very essence of love, womanhood, faith, and humanity.

    According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path. Yael's mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Revka, a village baker's wife, watched the horrifically brutal murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Aziza is a warrior's daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and an expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier. Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power. The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets - about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love.

    And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment, she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife.Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life—along with the lives of others.Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the king, in the hopes that she will save them all.Following in the tradition of The Hours and The Red Tent, The Book of V. is a bold and contemporary investigation into the enduring expectations and restraints placed on women’s lives.

    Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

    Michiko Kakutani calls it “a book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go” in her New York Times review. And Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is “the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."In addition to the New York Times, Lit was named a Best Book of 2009 by the New Yorker (Reviewer Favorite), Entertainment Weekly (Top 10), Time (Top 10), the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Seattle Times.

    Fiercely determined to find out where she came from, Anna Maria embarks on a journey of self-discovery that carries her into a wondrous and haunting world of music and spectacle, bringing eighteenth-century Venice magically to life.

    Ride along with Little One in this version by Bill Harvey as she is carried away and taken to a foreign land. See her bravery as she faces her captors and tells them about God. Sense her helplessness as she is made a slave, and hear her prayers to God even when things are unsure.

    Faramedes finally found what he was looking for in a human baby, Faramedes was able to transfer some of his power but the ritual was interrupted and his conciousness never transferred over. The baby was taken by followers of the Goddess of Light and secreted away by one of her followers. Jason is a sixteen year old boy that has it all figured out, he is an apprentice blacksmith under his father, he is proficient with the sword and one day hopes to inherit the smithy his father owns in the small town of Gaol in the kingdom of Sapin. Jason's life is shattered when he runs afoul of the powerful Baron Dawson and he is forced to fight for his life. Initially thought to be headed to certain death by fighting in foreign lands, Jason grows up and soon Baron Dawson will learn what every other enemy of Jason's already know, to fear the Warrior from Sapin.

    Ida clings to her dream of returning to New York while weathering storms both meteorological and emotional, and comes to understand that nobody's luck—even hers—is all bad.Claudia Zuluaga's fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Lost Magazine, JMWW, Linnaean Street, and the Best of the Web series. Zuluaga is a lecturer in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) in New York City.

    Written as a narrative, Tree Spirited Woman takes you through one woman's intimate transformation from the death of her maternal grandmother to the establishment of a new and guiding friendship with a wise and mystical woman. With Tree Spirited Woman as her guide, she learns to ?let go and trust? in love, personal relationships, and, ultimately, death. Tree Spirited Woman will provide each reader with an abundant opportunity to grow alongside the book's main character. Simple philosophies for living flow through each of the chapters. This is a book that can be read and reread, with deeper understanding and personal awakening culled from each visit to its pages.

    The novel follows Peony, a Chinese bondmaid of the prominent Jewish family of Ezra ben Israel's, and shows through her eyes how the Jewish community was regarded in Kaifeng at a time when most of the Jews had come to think of themselves as Chinese.

    In each chapter, she names a different identity issue, such as: “I am invisible,” “I am worn out,” “I am undisciplined,” “I am ordinary,” and “I am afraid to dream.” With each honest admission, Angela teaches that God lovingly replies, “Yes, I know your heart. I see your struggle. Now…do you know who I AM?”Ultimately Angela reveals that the secret to being known and loved lies in an intimate understanding of who God is. Each identity struggle is answered with a short biblical study on the character of God that assures readers that their personal, spiritual, and eternal fulfillment is not dependent on getting themselves together. Rather, God has a purpose for them just as they are—broken, afraid, disappointed, disillusioned. Through vivid storytelling, biblical teaching, and practical application, readers will find the heartfelt answers they seek.

    Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary. Split into four sections—"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences—in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond—that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected. Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.