Too young to get whisked away by a Stannah Stairlift, or to enjoy the luxury of a walk-in bath (but not so much that she doesn't enjoy comfortable shoes), Marie is all the same getting on in years - and she's thrilled about it. She's a bit preoccupied about whether to give up sex - Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! - but there are compensations, like falling in love with her baby grandson, and maybe falling in love with someone else too? Curmudgeonly, acute, touching and funny, this diary is what happens when grumply old women meet Bridget Jones.

The bonds of women's friendship can be more intimate than marriage, and just as essential to emotional health. From the childhood friend who broke your heart to the college roommate who witnessed you at your highest and lowest, from the lost friendship that ended bitterly to the devoted companion who is still in your life, from the bond that was forged due to shared grief to the shaky connection born with new motherhood, all women have stories to tell about their friendships. The HerStories Project: Women Explore the Joy, Pain, and Power of Female Friendship is a collection of essays from over 50 women writers, encompassing tales of friendship from the sandbox to the inbox. The book includes a foreword from Jill Smokler of Scary Mommy and several chapters on understanding friendship from friendship experts Shasta Nelson and Carlin Flora. In this book, you will read stories of childhood friendship, relationships between sisters, mothers, and daughters, grown-up friendships--both real life and online-- friendships during motherhood, and stories of friendship break-ups and losses. Whether you identify with the new mother who struggles with loneliness, the woman who looks forward to her social media notifications, the challenging and complex relationship of sisters, or the stories of friends that have drifted apart, you will recognize yourself somewhere in the pages of this book.

In this Queen Bees and Wannabes for the elementary and middle school set, child and adolescent psychotherapist Katie Hurley shows parents of young girls how to nip mean girl behavior in the bud. Once upon a time, mean girls primarily existed in high school, while elementary school-aged girls spent hours at play and enjoyed friendships without much drama. But in this fast-paced world in which young girls are exposed to negative behaviors on TV and social media from the moment they enter school, they are also becoming caught up in social hierarchies much earlier. No More Mean Girls is a guide for parents to help their young daughters navigate tricky territories such as friendship building, creating an authentic self, standing up for themselves and others, and expressing themselves in a healthy way. The need to be liked by others certainly isn't new, but this generation of girls is growing up in an age when the "like" button shows the world just how well-liked they are. When girls acknowledge that they possess positive traits that make them interesting, strong, and likeable, however, the focus shifts and their self-confidence soars; "likes" lose their importance. This book offers actionable steps to help parents empower young girls to be kind, confident leaders who work together and build each other up.

Read Virginia Ironside's posts on the Penguin Blog. A screamingly funny and poignant story about embracing life beyond middle age Marie Sharp is heading toward sixty and is just fine with it. She’s already had plenty of excitement in her life: sex and drugs in the freewheeling sixties, career and children, marriage and divorce. Now she’s ready to settle into a quiet, blissfully boring routine. No Italian classes or gym memberships or bicycle trips across Europe, thank you very much! Marie just wants to put her feet up and “start doing old things.” She’s even sworn off men! But as it turns out, life still has some surprises in store, the biggest of which is a new grandson on the way. What’s more, Archie, her old childhood crush, suddenly reenters her life, and her closest friend falls seriously ill. Armed with a biting sense of humor, Marie wrestles with a life that refuses to follow her plans—and may still offer more possibilities than she realizes.

The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition. Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from the earliest works of Hippocrates to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing. The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there’s no reason you can’t read and enjoy Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the “Great Books” without a guide and a plan. Bauer will show you how to allocate time to reading on a regular basis; how to master difficult arguments; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. In her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children; that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. Followed carefully, her advice will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title and a folder containing book sign out sheets.