An old woman, so stubborn she won't leave her house and farm which are crumbling into the river, meets an equally stubborn little girl who wants her to leave.

Mutuwhenua is the story of Ripeka, who leaves her extended family and its traditional lifestyle to marry Graeme, a Pakeha schoolteacher. In the strange world of the city, Ripeka discovers that she cannot make the break from her whanau, that the old ways are too strong. The first novel by a Maori woman ever published, Mutuwhenua is a powerful, mo...

Georgia has produced some of the major figures of modern literature, including Carson McCullers, Erskine Caldwell and, most notably, Flannery O'Connor. While such writers are firmly established in American literary history, all too few readers are aware of how the state's tradition of literary excellence persists in the present day. The thirty stories in After O'Connor were written during the past fifteen years by authors who were born in Georgia or spent a significant part of their lives and careers in this state. Embracing the social, cultural, and ethnic variety in today's Georgia, After O'Connor both advances and helps redefine the great southern storytelling tradition.

The ballroom is the perfect setting for romance, as seductively handsome rogues dance away with women's hearts in this delightful trio of Regency novellas. Original.

Seventy-seven-year Maggie Campbell is stricken with dementia. This is the story of how her proud, independent way of life is inexorably eroded until she finally finds herself completely dependent on others. It is also the story of how her two sons: Scott and Ian suddenly have to shoulder the burden of their mothers care, while at the same time dealing with their own shock and grief. When Maggie is moved to Scotts home in Fredericton, Beth, his wife, becomes her mother-in-laws caretaker. Because of Maggies inability to accept needed help and Beths rigidity, the situation gradually becomes untenable, and Maggie is placed into three, separate institutions, resulting in more pain and confusion. The story is complicated by the fact that Ian, Maggies younger son, although very devoted to his mother, is not close to either Scott or Beth. Although, this is a sad, sometimes heart-breaking story, it is often lightened with humour and glimpses into Maggies rich past as a Saskatchewan woman coming of age during the forties and fifties.

When Wang Ping was nine years old, she secretly set about binding her feet with elastic bands. Footbinding had by then been outlawed in China, women’s feet “liberated,” but at that young age she desperately wanted the tiny feet her grandmother had–deformed and malodorous as they were. By first examining the root of her own girlhood desire, Wang unleashes a fascinating inquiry into a centuries-old custom. Aching for Beauty combines Wang’s unique perspective and remarkable literary gifts in an award-winning exploration of the history and culture surrounding footbinding. In setting out to demystify this reviled tradition, Wang probes an astonishing range of literary references, addresses the relationship between beauty and pain, and discusses the intense female bonds that footbinding fostered. Her comprehensive examination of the notions of hierarchy, femininity, and fetish bound up in the tradition places footbinding in its proper context in Chinese history and opens a window onto an intriguing culture.

One day, Frankie Roberts hears a preacher pronounce that a woman’s place is in the home, not in the pulpit. But this mother of four daughters and wife of a pastor in New Jersey won’t hear of it; she knows she has a special calling. In 1959, Frankie packs up her children, leaves her husband, and moves to Sioux City, Iowa, to start a ministry. In this memoir, one of Frankie’s daughters, the author Debra Roberts Torres-Reyes narrates her mother’s story. Availing herself of both humor and honesty, Torres-Reyes describes being raised by Pentecostal Holiness Ministers and living with a fanatical preacher mother who inflicts both physical and verbal abuse on her offspring. The author reflects on how the church’s views and actions—speaking in tongues, casting out demons, and dancing in the spirit—caused her to grow up with poor self-esteem, to suffer panic attacks, and to live in constant mental and emotional torment about The Rapture, demons, the devil, and hell. The Evangelical’s Daughter describes how Torres-Reyes ultimately breaks out of a self-destructive lifestyle, joins the military, and later attends college and law school, finally becoming an attorney. This is one woman’s true story about finding God and leaving religious dogma behind.