A heart-wrenching novel in verse about a poor girl surviving the Irish Land Wars, by a two-time Newbery Honor-winning author. For Anna, the family farm has always been home... But now, things are changing. Anna's mother has died, and her older siblings have emigrated, leaving Anna and her father to care for a young sister with special needs. And though their family has worked this land for years, they're in danger of losing it as poor crop yields leave them without money to pay their rent. When a violent encounter with the Lord's rent collector results in Anna and her father's arrest, all seems lost. But Anna sees her chance and bolts from the jailhouse. On the run, Anna must rely on her own inner strength to protect her sister--and try to find a way to save her family. Written in verse, A Slip of a Girl is a poignant story of adversity, resilience, and self-determination by a master of historical fiction, painting a haunting history of the tensions in the Irish countryside of the early 1890s, and the aftermath of the Great Famine. A Junior Library Guild Selection A Bank Street Best Book of the Year

My Mom died when I had just turned 15 - leaving me, my 5 year old brother and our Dad to cope with life on a Northern MN farm during the 40's, 50's and 60's. Farm work is hard,tough work as I struggled to cook all meals on our wood burning cook stove, hand carry from a distance all water for our home, weekly cleaned our entire 2 story home, baked all bread for next week and washed all the clothes for our family. Which had to be hung on outdoor lines - summer or winter where they froze on the line I had to bring back into the house to hang wherever to finish drying. Electricity brought only one appliance - an iron. Our farm did not have: a phone, frig or a freezer which was an unknown item to our farm family. Trying to balance being a high school teenager with all of my farm/family responsibilities was difficult as I loved and respected my family and at same time wanted to be more involved with school activities and friends. A college education was my dream, I never discussed this with my Dad as he was struggling with lack of income and available job opportunities. My college education became a reality much later in my adult life when I realized I alone had the total financial responsibly for my 4 young children. However difficult this was, lessons learned during my growing up years prepared me for life challenges. And unfortunately there were almost over whelming situations to live through and onward.

Sadie Hunt isn't perfect-but her husband is. Nathan Hunt has her coffee waiting every morning. He holds her hand until the last second. He worships the Manhattan sidewalk she walks on. Until one day, he just...stops. And Sadie finds herself in the last place she ever expected to be. Lonely in her marriage. When rugged and sexy Finn Cohen moves in to the apartment across the hall, he and Sadie share an immediate spark. Finn reveals dreams for a different life. Sadie wants to save her marriage. Their secrets should keep them apart, not ignite a blistering affair. But while Sadie's marriage runs colder by the day, she and Finn burn hotter. Her husband doesn't want her anymore. The man next door would give up everything to have her. "Slip of the Tongue is a standalone forbidden romance. Please note it contains adultery themes that may be triggers for some people."

Very good friends, her poetry notebooks, and a mysterious "ninja of nice" give 17-year-old Rae the strength to face her mother's neglect, her stepfather's increasing abuse, and a new boyfriend's obsessiveness.

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

A Paris Review Staff Pick and an Amazon Editors' Pick. Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. "Bold, witty, ominous and vulnerable . . . How to Wrestle a Girl shines in its propensity to magnify small moments, challenge our presumptions and dissect the beauty, danger and wonder of girlhood." --The New York Times Book Review Hilarious, tough, and tender stories from a farseeing star on the rise Venita Blackburn’s characters bully and suffer, spit and tease, mope and blame. They’re hyperaware of their bodies and fiercely observant, fending off the failures and advances of adults with indifferent ease. In “Biology Class,” they torment a teacher to the point of near insanity, while in “Bear Bear HarvestTM,” they prepare to sell their excess fat and skin for food processing. Stark and sharp, hilarious and ominous, these pieces are scabbed, bruised, and prone to scarring. Many of the stories, set in Southern California, follow a teenage girl in the aftermath of her beloved father’s death and capture her sister’s and mother’s encounters with men of all ages, as well as the girl’s budding attraction to her best friend, Esperanza. In and out of school, participating in wrestling and softball, attending church with her hysterically complicated family, and dominating boys in arm wrestling, she grapples with her burgeoning queerness and her emerging body, becoming wary of clarity rather than hoping for it. A rising star, Blackburn is a trailblazing stylist, and in How to Wrestle a Girl she masterfully shakes loose a vision of girlhood that is raw, vulnerable, and never at ease.

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST • An audacious and wryly funny coming-of-age story about a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers. Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial. She's grieving the death of her father, avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled-covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.