At 41, Vivian Armstrong Gray learns that she's pregnant, jobless, and very hormonal. This explains why she accepts a dreadful job back home in Georgia. As she digs up her long buried roots, she starts to wonder if life inside the picket fence is really so bad after all.

Offering a fresh perspective on women's fiction for a broad reading audience—fans as well as librarians—this book defines and maps the genre, and describes hundreds of relevant titles. Women's Fiction: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests celebrates the books in this broad genre—titles that explore the lives of female protagonists, with a focus on their relationships with family, friends, and lovers. After a brief introductory history and a chapter that defines the characteristics of women's fiction, the author showcases annotations and suggestions of approximately 300 titles by more than 100 authors. She explains how women's fiction differs from romance fiction, enabling readers to appreciate this rich body of literature that encompasses titles as diverse as Meg Cabot's lighthearted chick lit to the more serious novels of Elizabeth Berg and Maeve Binchy. The book identifies some of the most popular and enduring women's fiction authors and titles, and provides invaluable reading lists and readalike suggestions that will be appreciated by both librarians and general readers.

A comprehensive guide that defines the literature and the outlines the best-selling genre of all time: romance fiction. More than 2,000 romances are published annually, making it difficult for fans and the librarians who advise them to keep pace with new titles, emerging authors, and constant evolution of this dynamic genre. Fortunately, romance expert and librarian Kristin Ramsdell provides a definitive guide to this fiction genre that serves as an indispensible resource for those interested in it—including fans searching for reading material—as well as for library staff, scholars, and romance writers themselves. This title updates the last edition of Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre, published in 1999.While the emphasis is on newer titles, many of the important older classics are retained, keeping the focus of the book on the entire genre, instead of only those titles published during the last decade. Specific changes include new chapters on linked and continuing romances, a new section on "Chick Lit" in the Contemporary Romance chapter, an expansion of coverage on the alternative reality subset. This is THE romance genre guide to have.

This eBook includes the full text of the book plus an exclusive additional chapter from Chip and Joanna that is not found in the hardcover. An exclusive look at America's first family of renovation! Taking you behind the scenes, Chip and Joanna Gaines share the story of how they met, the ups and downs of being an entrepreneurial couple, and how they built a life they love. The Magnolia Story is the first book from dynamic husband-and-wife team Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. Offering their fans a detailed look at their life together, they share everything from the very first renovation project they ever tackled together to the project that nearly cost them everything; from the childhood memories that shaped them, to the twists and turns that led them to the life they share on the farm today. While they both attended Baylor University in Waco, their paths didn’t cross until Chip checked his car into the local Firestone tire shop where Joanna worked behind the counter. Even back then Chip was a serial entrepreneur who, among other things, ran a lawn care company, sold fireworks, and flipped houses. Soon they were married and living in their first fixer upper. Four children and countless renovations later, Joanna garnered the attention of a television producer who noticed her work on a blog one day, leading to the incredible Fixer Upper phenomenon. In The Magnolia Story, fans will finally get to join the Gaines family behind the scenes and discover: The time Chip ran to the grocery store and forgot to take their new, sleeping baby Joanna’s agonizing decision to close her dream business to focus on raising their children When Chip buys a houseboat, sight-unseen, and it turns out to be a leaky wreck Harrowing stories of the financial ups and downs as an entrepreneurial couple Memories and photos from Chip and Jo’s wedding The significance of the word magnolia and why it permeates everything they do The way the couple pays the popularity of Fixer Upper forward, sharing the success with others, and bolstering the city of Waco along the way And yet there is still one lingering question for fans of the show: Is Chip really that funny? “Oh yeah,” says Joanna. “He was, and still is, my first fixer upper.”

If the soaring quotes of Elizabeth Gilbert, Marianne Williamson and other contemporary and classic creative luminaries were to fly together in a beautifully minimalist landscape amongst vintage-inspired dresses, holy boots and top hats, you would have this book. Part memoir, part fairy tale and all inspiration, Magnolia Pearl's "And the Stars go With You" is far beyond your typical fashion tome. Delving deep into creator-visionary Robin Brown's childhood, influences and ethos, the book is a vital volume on a mission to spark a revolution. The fashion is featured in context amidst landscapes and showrooms dotting the countryside in Fredericksburg, Texas that Brown and the Magnolia Pearl family inhabit. 240 pages of images richly convey Magnolia Pearl's aesthetic as a sense of time and place as opposed to a blip on the radar of an industry. Timely quotes from beloved masters and contemporary seers tie the pages together into a narrative with the feel of a movement; contributions from Magnolia Pearl's rebel sidekicks such as Donavon Frankenreiter sail this movement further towards the horizon. Magnolia Pearl is a "horizonal" brand-a work in progress instead of a destination, an elusive sense of a beauty that adheres to a curve even as others insist on a line. "And the Stars go With You" is a pair of binoculars and a backstage pass to the journey. You're already on it anyway, might as well bring a friend.