Seven-year-old Anna has her first encounter with racism in the 1960s when an African American nun comes to teach at her parochial school.

Elizabeth of Lancaster Sister. Wife. Traitor. One betrayal is all it takes to change history... June, 1380: Elizabeth Plantagenet – seventeen years old, spoilt, headstrong, fun-loving and intelligent — is about to be married. The Earl of Pembroke is an advantageous choice for all concerned, except Elizabeth, as the Earl is only eight years old. June, 1386: Scandalously pregnant by Sir John Holland, Duke of Exeter, whilst still married to the Earl, Elizabeth is hastily married again. As half-brother to King Richard II, Sir John is a man known to all for both his charm and self-interested scheming. Soon Elizabeth is drawn into the heart of a dangerous rebellion with her brother, King Henry IV, on one side, and her husband on the other. As tensions become a matter of life or death, Elizabeth is presented with an impossible choice of where to give her loyalty... “One of the best writers around... she outdoes even Philippa Gregory.” — The Sun “Extremely compelling historical fiction.” — Cosmopolitan “...packed with powerful emotions and tumultuous unfolding of an affair that changed the course of royal history, this is a novel in which to enjoy the past in all it rich colour and dramatic detail...” — Lancashire Evening Post “Anne O'Brien has joined the exclusive club of excellent historical novelists.” — Sunday Express

Four women seeking the promise of salvation and prosperity in a new land.

A boy with an abusive father grows up and fears that he has the same potential for violence as his father has.

“Fascinating . . . What is remarkable about this book is that a history of knitting can function so well as a survey of the changes in women’s rolse over time.”—The New York Times Book Review An historian and lifelong knitter, Anne Macdonald expertly guides readers on a revealing tour of the history of knitting in America. In No Idle Hands, Macdonald considers how the necessity—and the pleasure—of knitting has shaped women’s lives. Here is the Colonial woman for whom idleness was a sin, and her Victorian counterpart, who enjoyed the pleasure of knitting while visiting with friends; the war wife eager to provide her man with warmth and comfort, and the modern woman busy creating fashionable handknits for herself and her family. Macdonald examines each phase of American history and gives us a clear and compelling look at life, then and now. And through it all, we see how knitting has played an important part in the way society has viewed women—and how women have viewed themselves. Assembled from articles in magazines, knitting brochures, newspaper clippings and other primary sources, and featuring reproductions of advertisements, illustrations, and photographs from each period, No Idle Hands capture the texture of women’s domestic lives throughout history with great wit and insight. “Colorful and revealing . . . vivid . . . This book will intrigue needlewomen and students of domestic history alike.”—The Washington Post Book World

Kathy fell into her sister's embrace in the hospital lobby. "Just give me the road," she whispered. "I don't care how long it takes, just give me the road." Less than 12 hours earlier, Kathy's 18-year old son Conor was hit by a car and suffered a life-threatening brain injury while crossing the street in downtown Chicago.

A memoir of friendship and literature chronicling a search for meaning and comfort in great books, and a beautiful path out of grief. Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had been forced to flee her home during Hurricane Katrina, and had witnessed cancer take her beloved father. Before she met her husband, Brad, he had suffered his own trauma, losing his partner and the mother of his son to cancer in her young thirties. "How do we keep moving forward," Anne asks, "amid all this loss and threat?" The answer: "We do it together." Anne and Brad, in the midst of forging their happiness, found that their friends had been suffering their own losses and crises as well: loved ones gone, rocky marriages, tricky child-rearing, jobs lost or gained, financial insecurities or unexpected windfalls. Together these resilient New Orleanians formed what they called the Existential Crisis Reading Group, which they jokingly dubbed "The Futilitarians." From Epicurus to Tolstoy, from Cheever to Amis to Lispector, each month they read and talked about identity, parenting, love, mortality, and life in post-Katrina New Orleans, In the year after her father's death, these living-room gatherings provided a sustenance Anne craved, fortifying her and helping her blaze a trail out of her well-worn grief. More than that, this fellowship allowed her finally to commune with her sisters on the page, and to tell the story of her family that had remained long untold. Written with wisdom, soul, and a playful sense of humor, The Futilitarians is a guide to living curiously and fully, and a testament to the way that even from the toughest soil of sorrow, beauty and wonder can bloom.