In this collection of short fiction, ranging from North Africa to South American, Bowles explores her fascination with the hidden lives of apparently ordinary middle-aged women.

Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Here is a refreshing look at life as it ought to be. Bare feet, gardening, dawdling over the newspaper, oversleeping, and idle summer vacations are infinitely more satisfying than counting fat grams, eating only vegetables, and sitting behind that desk every day. So toss out the guilt and rebel. Don't just stop and smell the flowers--call in sick and lie among them, preferably with a good friend, a bottle of wine, and a handful of chocolates. Endangered Pleasures is a delightful reminder that rest and relaxation are more rewarding than a job performance review. After all, life's too short. Why not have some fun while you're supposed to be living it?

Young Amish homemaker Marianne Jantzi welcomes readers with wit and warmth in Simple Pleasures: Stories from my Life as an Amish Mother. Amid mothering four young children family and attending to the family’s sewing, cleaning, cooking, gardening, and Jantzi also works in the family’s shoe store—helping fellow Amish customers find everything from hardy Muck boots to Sketchers running shoes. Through her busy days, Jantzi finds strength in the simple pleasures of family, fellowship with her Amish community, and quiet time with God. The heart of a teacher shines through her memoir celebrating the innumerable ordinary and simple gifts of children, faith, and deep love. Hear straight from Amish people themselves as they write about their daily lives and deeply rooted faith in the Plainspoken series from Herald Press. Each book includes “A Day in the Life of the Author” and the author’s answers to FAQs about the Amish. Plainspoken series—real-life stories of Amish and Mennonites includes: Book 1 – Chasing the Amish Dream: My Life as a Young Amish Bachelor by Loren Beachy Book 2 – Called to Be Amish: My Journey from Head Majorette to the Old Order by Marlene Miller Book 3 – Hutterite Diaries: Wisdom from My Prairie Community by Linda Maendel Book 4 – Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother by Marianne Jantzi

A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree “An enchanting, sparkling book about the many meanings of sisterhood.” —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29 Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don’t), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self Agatha has lived every day of the last nine years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life. But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They take over the care of a halfway house, where they live alongside their charges, such as the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she has to reckon all on her own with what she sees and feels. Who will she be if she isn’t with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home. Or has she just been hiding? Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make.

Every once in a while, during the course of a busy everyday day, there occurs a moment when we stop to appreciate one of life's seemingly ordinary, often underappreciated, wonders: cookies and milk; sitting by the fire on a winter afternoon; the first whiff of coffee in the morning; listening to the waves of the ocean; homemade ice cream on a hot summer evening; the first snow of winter. As the world and our lives become more and more complicated, these simple pleasures always bring us back down to earth -- and they're often the things that make it all seem worthwhile. In this warmhearted little book, with its pleasurable thoughts and comforting recipes, John Hadamuscin shares 101 of these wonderful moments of escape, a chance to feel the warmth of spring in the dead of winter, to dunk cookies in milk with a childlike innocence, to savor a favorite food with those we love, or to merely relax and enjoy a few solitary moments of contentment. So, as John says in his foreword, "Here are a few thoughts, a few pictures, and even a few recipes for some of my own simple pleasures, and I'd guess, some of yours, too. And if something here sparks off a memory of a simple pleasure or two of your own, all the better."

In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. "With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.