Venus wasn't planning on falling for someone else. Her heart always belonged to Jake Parson, the enviable hot boy, starting from the moment he swept her off her feet with an impromptu proposal and a surprise wedding she never expected. Not a dull moment in the Parson household to say the least. Their heat and attraction could spark a flame in a cold wet room. But marriage, children, and too much distance, along with the constant swirling rumors of Jake's infidelities have put their relationship to the test. What started out as a friendly encounter turns into a real attraction that Venus can't deny makes her happy for the first time in a long while. Before she can make the decision that will change their lives forever, Jake does something unimaginable to prove he'll do anything to keep his family together.--Publisher's description.

The final novel in the Nappily trilogy! Nappily Every After now a NETFLIX ORIGINAL movie starring Sanaa Lathan. Airic and his famous televangelist wife, Trevelle Doval, make the evening news when Airic is accused of domestic battery and his life is suddenly turned upside down. But when Venus and Jake try to suspend Airic's visitation rights with Mya, they discover that Airic isn't willing to go down without a fight. Meanwhile, Jake's best friend, Legend, turns up on his doorstep with trouble not far behind. The past is back with a vengeance, including blackmail, murder and enemies who are looking for payback. But everything takes a dangerous new turn when Venus goes missing. For Jake it's now a race against time to save the woman he loves.

Venus is ecstatic about her husband's new career as a movie star thanks to a role in a searing romantic drama with co-star Sirena Lassiter. Jake and Sirena's relationship, Venus quickly learns, goes back further than Jake wants to admit. Venus isn't happy when the new "it" team's hectic promotion schedule takes them to exotic locations while Venus must stay behind with a business to run and a daughter to raise. However, it's not long before Venus senses danger. When she receives advice from her one time arch enemy, Trevelle Doval the queen of late night evangelical TV, Venus, in her trademark style, decides to save her marriage by any means necessary. But when the paparazzi get involved, all hell breaks loose. Will Venus be able to keep her man or has she lost Jake forever?

NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM STARRING SANAA LATHAN What happens when you toss tradition out the window and really start living for yourself? Venus Johnston has a great job, a beautiful home, and a loving live-in boyfriend named Clint, who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date with Tina, who keeps Venus's long, processed hair slick and straight. But when Clint--who's been reluctant to commit over the past four years--brings home a puppy instead of an engagement ring, Venus decides to give it all up. She trades in her long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends Clint packing. It's a bold declaration of independence--one that has effects she never could have imagined. Reactions from friends and coworkers range from concern to contempt to outright condemnation. And when Clint moves on and starts dating a voluptuous, long-haired beauty, Venus is forced to question what she really wants out of life. With wit, resilience, and a lot of determination, she finally learns what true happiness is--on her own terms. Told with style, savvy, and humor, Nappily Ever After is a novel that marks the debut of a fresh new voice in fiction.

"The seventh book in the Nappily series"--Publisher.

This collection brings together ten of the most distinguished feminist scholars whose work has been celebrated for its excellence in helping to lay the foundation of feminist communication and media research. This edited volume features contributions by the first ten renowned communication and media scholars that have received the Teresa Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship from the Feminist Scholarship Division (FSD) of the International Communication Association (ICA): Patrice M. Buzzanell, Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Radha Sarma Hegde, Dafna Lemish, Radhika Parameswaran, Lana F. Rakow, Karen Ross, H. Leslie Steeves, Linda Steiner, and Angharad N. Valdivia. These distinguished scholars reflect on the contributions they have made to different subfields of media and communication scholarship, and offer invaluable insight into their own paths as feminist scholars. They each reflect on matters of power, agency, privilege, ethics, intersectionality, resilience, and positionality, address their own shortcomings and struggles, and look ahead to potential future directions in the field. Last but not least, they come together to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, marginalized people, and vulnerable populations, and to underline the crucial need for feminist communication and media scholarship to move beyond Eurocentrism toward an ethics of care and global feminist positionality. A comprehensive and inspiring resource for students and scholars of feminist media and communication studies.

A young woman pays a devastating price for freedom in this heartrending and breathtaking novel of the nineteenth-century South. 1850. I was six years old the day Lewis Holt came to take me away. Born into slavery, light-skinned Dahlia never knew her mother--or what happened to her. When Dahlia's father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she's desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither. Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she's white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him. She knows the danger of being found out. She also knows she'll never have this chance at freedom again. Ensconced in the Ross mansion, Dahlia soon finds herself held captive in a different way--as the dutiful wife of a young plantation owner who has set his sights on a political future. But when Bo arrives on the estate in shackles, Dahlia decides to risk everything to save his life. With suspicions of her true identity growing and a bounty hunter not far behind, Dahlia must act fast or pay a devastating price.

Venus Johnston returns with another misadventure in the joys and pains of love, motherhood and marriage in Trisha R. Thomas's Nappily Faithful, third in the series that began with Nappily Ever After--now a Netflix Original movie starring Sanaa Lathan. Hoping to get away from emotional baggage in Los Angeles, Venus and Jake move to Atlanta. Yet the constant cloud of the past follows them: a difficult pregnancy and Jake being charged for the murder of his accountant. Though Jake never spent one night in jail, he fears the case will be reopened and he'll once again have to fight for his freedom. And the timing couldn't be worse since Airic, the biological father of Venus' daughter Mya, suddenly demands parental rights with the child he hasn't seen since her birth. A nasty custody battle ensues. Airic's new wife, Trevelle Doval, a famous TV evangelist--may be behind his sudden interest. Venus is in for the biggest fight of her life.

Trisha R. Thomas's Nappily Married is the sequel to Nappily Ever After, which is now a NETFLIX ORIGINAL movie starring Sanaa Lathan. Venus Johnston debuted with brazen personality and spirited humor in Nappily Ever After as she searched for the holy grail of marriage. Blessed with a beautiful baby daughter and a husband who is a former rap star with his own multi-million-dollar clothing company, her long journey to find love has finally come to fruition. But life as a stay-at-home wife and mother is hardly the end of the rainbow. In fact she's ready to do anything to jump start the career she's put on the back burner for the last two years. Against her good sense and her husband's wishes, she applies for a high profile PR job to help save a struggling city hospital manned by none other than her former boyfriend, Dr. Clint Fairchild, the very one and same who dumped her and married long-silky haired bombshell, Kandi Treboe. Venus soon finds out the two women are vying for the same job. This time competition between she and her old nemesis turns into a battle Venus is determined to win by any means necessary. With an unhappy hubby at home, a nanny who's becoming mommy in her child's eyes, while forming an uncomfortably close relationship with her husband, and a deviant at work sabotaging the hospital, Venus may have taken on much more than she can handle.