North Carolina author Traci Claywell has released a satirical allegory, Cinderella Claps Back: The Reckoning, about two opposing forces in today’s American politics: female voters and MAGA. In the story, when the Fairy Bureau of Investigation uncovers a plot to overthrow the Palace on Charlotte’s Dark Web, Queen Ella and her cabinet of ministers must devise a plan to keep Rumplestiltskin and his horde of angry, brown-coated wolves at bay. “He gimped back and forth slowly from one end of the stage to the other, clapping back to the audience, his minions, his all-adoring tools. He knew they would believe anything he said. He was the only character who said things outwardly that they believed privately but were too hesitant to say out loud. He removed the plugs from their private jugs of resentment, stirred their pots of bitterness, and electrified their disappointments into a blaze of self-deluded victimhood. In a nutshell, he validated their hate. And they adored him for it. “Rumpelstiltskin licked his slobbery lips as his eyes glazed with power. Seconds turned to minutes as the chanting continued. Rumpelstiltskin returned to the middle of the stage and, with his head held way back, eyes closed as if standing under a shower of golden rain, he raised both arms into the air in the form of a cross and soaked it up. The wolves howled even louder, eventually reducing his quadric-syllabic name to just one word.” Traci Claywell is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she earned her B.A and M.A. in Psychology and Counselor Education, respectively. She worked with children and adolescents as a school counselor before migrating to Beaufort, North Carolina, where she launched and published two community newspapers: The Beaufort Gam and The Venture of Carteret County. Using both observation and imagination, Claywell presents one possible scenario for the burning quandary of the day: what’s going to happen to our country? In Cinderella Claps Back: The Reckoning, the answer to that serious question is played out by a team of familiar childhood characters using their vision, intelligence, and grit. Cinderella Claps Back: The Reckoning will launch Sunday, September 22 in both soft cover and eBook format. For more information about Traci Claywell visit cinderellaclapsback.com .

A thrilling gothic horror novel about biracial twin sisters separated at birth, perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and The Vanishing Half As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors—the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie's beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia—and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares—and Jim Crow segregation. The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse—and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

I know that it might be, like, gauche of me to spill the secrets of my chic brethren, but the rest of the world has a right to know. So I've gone ahead and compiled a really long list of some tactics that I have observed my friends and colleagues employ in order to lose weight. And I'm, like, a really good source because I went to a super legit fashion school and I did a bunch of internships at really fancy places. ... Just so you know, this book is totally just FYI and is completely satirical. Like, I just want to make you laugh, or something. No one should take any of this to heart ... I really love the people in my life, but ... they're obvi unhinged and their habits should definitely not be emulated.--Foreword, page 8.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Considering a trip to a quaint English village? You’ll think twice after learning about the countless murderous possibilities lurking behind the bucolic façades, thanks to this illustrated guide from #1 bestselling author Maureen Johnson and illustrator Jay Cooper—perfect for fans of cozy mysteries. A weekend roaming narrow old lanes, touring the faded glories of a country manor, and quaffing pints in the pub. How charming. That is, unless you have the misfortune of finding yourself in an English Murder Village, where danger lurks around each picturesque cobblestone corner and every sip of tea may be your last. If you insist on your travels, do yourself a favor and bring a copy of this little book. It may just keep you alive. Brought to life with dozens of Gorey-esque drawings by illustrator Jay Cooper and peppered with allusions to classic crime series and unmistakably British murder lore, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village gives you the tools you need to avoid the same fate, should you find yourself in a suspiciously cozy English village (or simply dream of going). Good luck! And whatever you do, avoid the vicar.

The book is full of great ideas about amusing children and adults indoors in stormy and cold evenings. It offers funny, fascinating, and little-known games that were played by our grandparents in their childhood and remains attractive to a contemporary reader today.

NAMED ONE OF THE TOP 10 ROCK MEMOIRS OF ALL TIME BY ROLLING STONE From Chic to Daft Punk, Nile Rodgers is the creative force behind some of the biggest hits ever recorded. Here is the story of how global pop’s greatest genius transformed his own dramatic life into the brilliantly joyful playlist of a generation. You will hear a Nile Rodgers song today. It will make you happy. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nile Rodgers wrote and produced the songs that defined the era and everything that came after: “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” “We Are Family,” “Like a Virgin,” “Let’s Dance,” “I’m Coming Out,” “Rapper’s Delight”—and worked with every influential pop star to create a string of enduring hits, from Diana Ross and Madonna to Duran Duran and David Bowie. Even today, he is still musically relevant: writing and performing record-breaking hits like “Get Lucky” with Daft Punk and Pharrell. But before he reinvented pop music, Nile Rodgers invented himself. From jamming with Jimi Hendrix in a Greenwich Village haze to the decadence of the disco era to witnessing the birth of Madonna on the Danceteria dance floor, Le Freak traces one of the greatest musical journeys of our time. Praise for Le Freak “[An] amazing memoir . . . steeped in the incestuous energy of the times: Punk, funk and art rock mixed it up in the downtown clubs, where musicians partied together and shared ideas. . . . Le Freak has plenty of sex and drugs. But it’s the music that makes it essential. . . . Rodgers gave those dreams a beat—and helped invent pop as we know it today.”—Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone “This book is an absolute knockout: exhilarating, warm, and courageous, deeply moving and deeply funny. Le Freak is as much about the greatness of life as it is about Nile Rodgers’s extraordinary musical journey. As Rodgers well knows, the best music is the stuff we feel, the stuff that speaks to us and won’t let go. Le Freak does all that and much more. This is truly one of the best books ever written about art, music, life, and the way we grow to be exactly who we are. Actually, one of the best books period.”—Cameron Crowe “A coming-of-age tale every bit as impressive as the musical insights and star-time chronicles that follow.”—The New York Times Book Review “Consistently entertaining . . . His legacy as a funk-rock visionary is assured, and his autobiography serves as further proof that disco does not suck.”—San Francisco Chronicle “An unforgettable, gripping book.”—The Sunday Times (UK) “Name a star and you can bet they’re in this book, playing or partying with Rodgers. But far from being a succession of name-dropping anecdotes, this autobiography is a wonderfully funny, moving and wise reflection upon the important things in life: the people you love and the things you create.”—The Sunday Telegraph (UK) “Rodgers’s page-turning memoir is packed with emotionally charged vignettes of a tumultuous childhood and equally dramatic adulthood that found him awash in cash, cars, and celebrities. . . . His storytelling skills propel the reader through the book, making the ending all the more jarring. Remarkable for its candor, this rags-to-riches story is on the year’s shortlist of celebrity memoirs.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)