Humorous essays on drinking with Dorothy Parker, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Erma Bombeck, The Bronte Sisters, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Margaret Mead, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Margaret Mitchell, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Sylvia Plath, Ayn Rand and Virginia Woolf. Most early female writers used pen names because women weren't regarded as competent writers. Margaret Mitchell wrote only one published novel in her lifetime, but Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 and sold more than 30 million copies. Emily Dickinson was so paranoid that she only spoke to people from behind a door. Carson McCullers wrote The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter at age 22. Her husband wanted them to commit suicide in the French countryside, but she refused. Ambrose and Turner explore these and other intriguing facts about the most famous (but departed) women in literary history.

“It’s wild writing: sexy, unguarded, raw, and ardent … highly recommended.”—The Millions After a decade of heavy partying and hard drinking in London, Amy Liptrot returns home to Orkney, a remote island off the north of Scotland. The Outrun maps Amy’s inspiring recovery as she walks along windy coasts, swims in icy Atlantic waters, tracks Orkney’s wildlife, and reconnects with her parents, revisiting and rediscovering the place that shaped her. A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller New Statesman Book of the Year

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An unflinching examination of how our drinking culture hurts women and a gorgeous memoir of how one woman healed herself.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety. We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but. When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it. Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER They met over their dogs. Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story) became best friends, talking about everything from their love of books and their shared history of a struggle with alcohol to their relationships with men. Walking the woods of New England and rowing on the Charles River, these two private, self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with cancer. With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion, and courage in this gorgeous memoir about treasuring a best friend, and coming of age in midlife. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of the profound transformations that come from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.

These humorous and inspirational blog posts from 45 of the best midlife bloggers offer proof that tumbling over the far side of 45 is worth the journey. This anthology includes the true story of the middle-aged woman who attempted to give her husband a lap dance in the kitchen but the result was anything but steamy. Another writer describes how you’re allowed to teach your grandchild descriptive words such as “dingleberry” and “fartcake” without an ounce of guilt. Other bloggers offers poignant stories about aging, caregiving, and how to celebrate Mother’s Day after the children are grown and live far away. These feisty females will encourage you to keep your chins up and your reading glasses handy!

Film critic and food writer Alissa Wilkinson sits down with a hypothetical table of smart, engaging, revolutionary women of the twentieth century to explore the ways food centered each woman's creative work. As we meet these multifaceted women, we learn how to live with courage, smarts, saltiness, and sometimes feasting--even in uncertain times.

Written with unexpected humor and great warmth, The Widower's Notebook is a portrait of a marriage, an account of the complexities of finding oneself single again after losing your spouse, and a story of the enduring power of familial love. "This is deeply moving ... beautifully written and modulated, with a dollop of droll, black humor. It is such an achievement, like running uphill against a strong wind."--Joyce Carol Oates On a summer day in New York Jonathan Santlofer discovers his wife, Joy, gasping for breath on their living room couch. After a frenzied 911 call, an ambulance race across Manhattan, and hours pacing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor finally delivers the fateful news. Consumed by grief, Jonathan desperately tries to pursue life as he always had--writing, social engagements, and working on his art--but finds it nearly impossible to admit his deep feelings of loss to anyone, not even his to beloved daughter, Doria, or to himself. As Jonathan grieves and heals, he tries to unravel what happened to Joy, a journey that will take him nearly two years.

A heartwarming collection of stories about the cats and the lives they’ve touched around them, previously published in the anthology The Little Book of Puppy Love Sometimes, animals come into our lives just when we need them most. In these true stories about the powerful connections between people and their cats, Jo Coudert and Jennifer Basye Sander uncover the simple joys of loving and being loved by our favorite feline companions. In this book you’ll meet the lost cat who comforts a grieving woman, the orange tabby with psychic abilities, the purring kitten rescued from a freeway overpass, the litter of strays who made “cat people” out of their resistant owners, and many, many more. These animals don’t just bring us comfort—they save our lives. Coudert and Sander celebrate the everyday miracles that happen when we form bonds with animals. This new edition combines charming stories into a perfect collection for anyone who melts at every kitty meow.

The PEN Award-winning essay collection about queer lives: “Gorgeously punk-rock rebellious.”—The A.V. Club The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas; a doomed lesbian biker gang; recovering alcoholics; and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human figures populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we too often try to forget. But in the process of excavating and documenting these queer lives, Michelle Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways. Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is the first-ever collection of journalistic writing by the author of How to Grow Up and Valencia. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life. “Eclectic and wide-ranging…A palpable pain animates many of these essays, as well as a raucous joy and bright curiosity.” —The New York Times “Queer counterculture beats loud and proud in Tea’s stellar collection.” —Publishers Weekly (starred) “The best essay collection I've read in years.”—The New Republic Winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Devika has an unstable mind, or so the doctors have been saying. While working on her second book, she starts receiving letters from an enigmatic woman who was already dead. While a bewildered police force investigates mysterious cases happening around town, Devika decides to unfold the true story behind these strange psychotic incidents and the purpose of those letters. Is there more to all this than what meets the eye? Is all this real at all, or just a figment of her imagination? In her search for truth, Devika cannot trust anybody, not even herself. Struggling between her volatile mind and a personal crisis that saps every bit of sanity out of her, Devika has to find answers. She has to take the journey which could take her to the doorstep of a complete mental breakdown…a wild ride between the real and the paranormal world to find the truth behind The Dead Woman Writing.