A brave and ground-breaking anthology of queer women's life stories

A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir. “I cannot even begin to convey the clarity, the intensity, the power, the photographic storytelling of They Called Me a Lioness.”—Ibram X. Kendi, internationally bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Kirkus Reviews “What would you do if you grew up seeing your home repeatedly raided? Your parents arrested? Your mother shot? Your uncle killed? Try, for just a moment, to imagine that this was your life. How would you want the world to react?” Ahed Tamimi is a world-renowned Palestinian activist, born and raised in the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, which became a center of the resistance to Israeli occupation when an illegal, Jewish-only settlement blocked off its community spring. Tamimi came of age participating in nonviolent demonstrations against this action and the occupation at large. Her global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at sixteen years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. The video went viral, and Tamimi was arrested. But this is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the human-scale story of an occupation that has riveted the world and shaped global politics, from a girl who grew up in the middle of it . Tamimi’s father was born in 1967, the year that Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and he grew up immersed in the resistance movement. One of Tamimi’s earliest memories is visiting him in prison, poking her toddler fingers through the fence to touch his hand. She herself would spend her seventeenth birthday behind bars. Living through this greatest test and heightened attacks on her village, Tamimi felt her resolve only deepen, in tension with her attempts to live the normal life of a daughter, sibling, friend, and student. An essential addition to an important conversation, They Called Me a Lioness shows us what is at stake in this struggle and offers a fresh vision for resistance. With their unflinching, riveting storytelling, Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri shine a light on the humanity not just in occupied Palestine but also in the unsung lives of people struggling for freedom around the world.

A The Washington Post 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2019 "A work of comic genius." —Mary Norris, The New Yorker “Darkly humorous and deadly serious.” –Sibbie O'Sullivan, Washington Post “A compulsively interesting feminist memoir.” –Virginia Heffernan, Slate "Somehow hilarious, in the way that only E. Jean could have written it" –Leigh Haber, Oprah Magazine America's longest running advice columnist goes on the road to speak to women about hideous men and whether we need them. When E. Jean Carroll—possibly the liveliest woman in the world and author of the “Ask E. Jean” advice column in Elle Magazine, realized that her eight million readers and question-writers all seemed to have one thing in common—problems caused by men—she hit the road. Crisscrossing the country with her blue-haired poodle, Lewis Carroll, E. Jean stopped in every town named after a woman between Eden, Vermont and Tallulah, Louisiana to ask women the crucial question: What Do We Need Men For? E. Jean gave her rollicking road trip a sly, stylish turn when she deepened the story, creating a list called “The Most Hideous Men of My Life,” and began to reflect on her own sometimes very dark history with the opposite sex. What advice would she have given to her past selves—as Miss Cheerleader USA and Miss Indiana University? Or as the fearless journalist, television host, and eventual advice columnist she became? E. Jean intertwines the stories of the fascinating people she meets on her road trip with her “horrible history with the male sex” (including mafia bosses, media titans, boyfriends, husbands, a serial killer, and a president), creating a decidedly dark yet hopeful, hilarious, and thrilling narrative. Her answer to the question What Do We Need Men For? will shock men and delight women.

For over fifty years Margaret Laird has served her Lord in the heart of Africa. She entered French Equatorial Africa in 1922 and recounts in the book some of her many experiences in the school of faith. The stories are unforgettable and, in fact, you will find yourself repeating them to others. While this book is not a biography in the usual sense, it does permit us to look at missionary life through the windows of her experience. You will realize that miracles do happen in this generation and that we have a God who hears and answers prayer. - Foreword.

An Indie Next Pick! Avie Reveare has the normal life of a privileged teen growing up in L.A., at least as normal as any girl's life is these days. After a synthetic hormone in beef killed fifty million American women ten years ago, only young girls, old women, men, and boys are left to pick up the pieces. The death threat is past, but fathers still fear for their daughters' safety, and the Paternalist Movement, begun to "protect" young women, is taking over the choices they make. Like all her friends, Avie still mourns the loss of her mother, but she's also dreaming about college and love and what she'll make of her life. When her dad "contracts" her to marry a rich, older man to raise money to save his struggling company, her life suddenly narrows to two choices: Be trapped in a marriage with a controlling politician, or run. Her lifelong friend, student revolutionary Yates, urges her to run to freedom across the border to Canada. As their friendship turns to passion, the decision to leave becomes harder and harder. Running away is incredibly dangerous, and it's possible Avie will never see Yates again. But staying could mean death.From Catherine Linka comes this romantic, thought-provoking, and frighteningly real story, A Girl Called Fearless, about fighting for the most important things in life—freedom and love.

From REBELLER comes a new thriller by author Natasha Tynes. Jordanian student Siwar Salaiha is murdered on her birthday in Maryland,and her consciousness survives, finding refuge in the body of a Seattle baby. Stuck in this speech delayed three-year old body, Siwar tries but fails to communicate with Wyatt's parents, instead focusing on solving the mystery behind her murder. #### "Natasha Tynes had only recently sold her novel They Called Me Wyatt when she ran afoul of cancel culture for snitching on a rail worker who was breaking the rules by eating on a train. Look it up on Goodreads and--as of this writing--you'll discover nearly 2,000 one-star ratings and over a thousand reviews--many, if not most of them, from people who give the book one star despite admitting they never read it, parroting the lie that "Natasha Tynes hates black women." As a publisher myself, it's distressing that a book's reputation can be tanked by a horde of people who've never even seen the novel in question when so many authors struggle to generate any reviews from people who've actually taken the time to sit down and read the book they're reviewing. Tynes' work suffered for her bad behavior--unjustly, unfairly, and unread. Almost two thousand negative reactions--when only a few hundred copies were even ordered, and when Tynes' previous publisher stopped shipment on books after her tweet went viral. Tynes--again, a woman of color, mother of three, and immigrant to the United States --had her career ended before it began because the demons of outrage so decreed it. The problem is that They Called me Wyatt is a good book--a compelling, original thriller that, under other circumstances, would instead be praised for its unique and original voice, weaving together the stories and lives of people from a multitude of cultures and backgrounds for a one-of-a-kind espionage thriller. Tynes' literary voice captures a woman caught between multiple worlds: first, as a teenage immigrant to the US, and then as an adult woman trapped in the body of a young boy after her murder results in reincarnation. Growing up with an identity not her own--and struggling with what her identity even is--Tynes' protagonist goes on a journey fantastically reminiscent of so many immigrants to the United States who attempt to forge a new identity while remaining faithful to their own culture. All of this was lost, though, amidst the outrage. Readers were never given the opportunity to discover Tynes' work on its own terms, to be judged on its own merits. Until now. I've decided to publish They Called Me Wyatt because I believe in second chances. Natasha Tynes has since apologized for her tweet and acknowledged her bad behavior. I respect that. I believe in forgiveness and growth. I believe that people can learn from their past mistakes and move beyond them. I do not believe in the one-and-done brutality of Twitter's outrage police. I do not believe that one ignorant tweet should brand an individual forever and ruin their career. I do not believe an artist's work should be judged on the basis of one act of stupidity on the part of its creator. That's why, just like its protagonist, I've decided to reincarnate They Called me Wyatt as the first entry in the REBELLER literary imprint. REBELLER is about bucking the system--about seeing a good idea, being told it can't be done, and doing it anyway. It's about judging art on its merits and turning our backs on a Hollywood system and elitist mindset that would determine the worth--or worthlessness--of something based on arbitrary rules. It's about remaining calm in the face of certain fury that will be leveled on us by those most insecure and apoplectic from our confidence in our convictions. It's about something being dangerous and doing it anyway."- Dallas Sonnier

A National Best Seller! Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow. Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives. Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son's irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her. Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper—in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.

A nine-year-old girl's harrowing account of abuse at the hands of her parents. Her name is Avocet Jackson, but her mother called her Bird, naming both her children after birds, "her logic being that if we were named for something with wings then maybe we'd be able to fly above the shit in our lives."

Xat'sull Chief Bev Sellars spent her childhood in a church-run residential school whose aim it was to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings, forced separation from family and culture, and discipline. In addition, beginning at the age of five, Sellars was isolated for two years at Coqualeetza Indian Turberculosis Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia, nearly six hours' drive from home. The trauma of these experiences has reverberated throughout her life. The first full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, BC, Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. She tells of hunger, forced labour, and physical beatings, often with a leather strap, and also of the demand for conformity in a culturally alien institution where children were confined and denigrated for failure to be White and Roman Catholic. Like Native children forced by law to attend schools across Canada and the United States, Sellars and other students of St. Joseph's Mission were allowed home only for two months in the summer and for two weeks at Christmas. The rest of the year they lived, worked, and studied at the school. St. Joseph's Mission is the site of the controversial and well-publicized sex-related offences of Bishop Hubert O'Connor, which took place during Sellars's student days, between 1962 and 1967, when O'Connor was the school principal. After the school's closure, those who had been forced to attend came from surrounding reserves and smashed windows, tore doors and cabinets from the wall, and broke anything that could be broken. Overnight their anger turned a site of shameful memory into a pile of rubble. In this frank and poignant memoir, Sellars breaks her silence about the institution's lasting effects, and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner National Bestseller Lambda Literary Award Finalist NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys “Irreverent and original.” –New York Times “Magisterial.” –The New Yorker “An intoxicating writer.” –The Atlantic “A classic!” –Mary Karr “A true light in the dark.” –Stephanie Danler “An essential, heartbreaking project.” –Carmen Maria Machado A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.