For the better part of three decades romance comics were an American institution. Nearly 6000 titles were published between 1947 and 1977, and for a time one in five comics sold in the U.S. was a romance comic. This first full-length study examines the several types of romance comics, their creators and publishing history. The author explores significant periods in the development of the genre, including the origins of Archie Comics and other teen publications, the romance comic "boom and bust" of the 1950s, and their sudden disappearance when fantasy and superhero comics began to dominate in the late 1970s.

Let's face it, when a white coat touting doctor and her posse deliver a breast cancer diagnosis, your life has a way of turning upside down and even a little sideways. And when you're a 39 year old single, working mother of two, the roller coaster ride that ensues will either lead you to a straight jacket or a back brace. Connie Bramer gives laugh out loud humor to her adventure, along with poignant moments of self-discovery as she blogs her way to good health. Follow along with her adventure and bare witness to her crazy antics, the comments of love she received, and the unwaivering support of her friends and family that helped to get her through...

The said town was hard on the borders of a wood which men held to be mighty great or maybe measureless; though few indeed had entered it and they that had brought back tales wild and confused thereof.

You are so lucky to have a friend like me, Carol Diane Bond. I’m sharing with you my poetry, and my simplicity of what love is. I’ve expressed my inner most feelings to you for your pleasure. These treasures of true’s will send you into a mystical, magical world of head spinning, heart throbbing, electrifying dreams and fantasies. Feel the heat, imagine the love, experience the heart break, and lose yourself in passionate romance. I started writing poetry as a high school assignment. “Means of Faith” began my debut for writing about “Love and Romance”. Searching into the depths of my soul I expressed myself through words like no novel I’ve read. “Partners in Parade” is an anthology of poetry that puts a mirror before your eyes. It speaks words of love and romance that every woman should speak to her man and every man should speak to his woman.

Charlie Hanson has a clear vision of his future. A senior at Brighton School of Mathematics and Science, he knows he'll graduate, go to MIT, and inevitably discover solutions to the universe's greatest unanswered questions. He's that smart. But Charlie's future blurs the moment he reaches out to touch the tattoo on a beautiful girl's neck. The future has never seemed very kind to Charlotte Finch, so she's counting on the present. She's not impressed by the strange boy at the donut shop—until she learns he's a student at Brighton where her sister has just taken a job as the English teacher. With her encouragement, Charlie orchestrates the most effective prank campaign in Brighton history... Now Charlie is falling hard for Charlotte—and faster than 32 feet per second squared. Her gravitational pull is quickly becoming irresistible. But Charlotte has a few secrets of her own...and it’s only a matter of time before Charlie’s carefully-executed future comes crashing down.

This New York Times bestselling book is filled with hundreds of fun, deceptively simple, budget-friendly ideas for sprucing up your home. With two home renovations under their (tool) belts and millions of hits per month on their blog YoungHouseLove.com, Sherry and John Petersik are home-improvement enthusiasts primed to pass on a slew of projects, tricks, and techniques to do-it-yourselfers of all levels. Packed with 243 tips and ideas—both classic and unexpected—and more than 400 photographs and illustrations, this is a book that readers will return to again and again for the creative projects and easy-to-follow instructions in the relatable voice the Petersiks are known for. Learn to trick out a thrift-store mirror, spice up plain old roller shades, "hack" your Ikea table to create three distinct looks, and so much more.

"Sharp and dangerous and breathtaking.... A defiant story about a young woman choosing the life and motherhood that is best for her, without apology.” —Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist Marie is a waitress at an upscale Dallas steakhouse, attuned to the appetites of her patrons and gifted at hiding her private struggle as a young single mother behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. It’s a world of long hours and late nights, and Marie often gives in to self-destructive impulses, losing herself in a tangle of bodies and urgent highs as her desire for obliteration competes with a stubborn will to survive. Pulsing with a fierce and feral energy, Love Me Back is an unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood and the herald of a powerful new voice in American fiction.

In the late 1940s, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ― creators of Captain America ― set the comics world on fire with the creation of a new genre that resulted in some of the best-selling American comic books of all time: the romance comics. The stories they created were exciting, innovative, and beautifully drawn, and remain a high point in both artists’ careers, even as Kirby went on to become the unrivaled King of Comics and co-creator (along with Stan Lee) of many of the most iconic characters in American history.

By turns amusing and disturbing, this collection of 1960s romance comic strips provides a provocative window into male-female power dynamics as conceived by one of mid-century America's foremost comic book artists. Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics. He is perhaps best remembered for co-creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney’s hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying—and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.