Renee Morgan and Angela Marie Delveccio, two post-divorce women, single-parents, and best friends are taking a stand. No longer willing to slide through life, they’re determined to shake things up. Accepting how far they’ve come will be an eye-opening experience. Facing full-figured bodies and dulled, lackluster features is only the beginning. Those things are easy to fix. It’s the deeper issues that need the most work. Starting with a celebratory fat dance, these women learn to reinvent their lives. Mayhem ensues when they venture into the dating world and find less than stellar results which force more realistic goals. Through their daily journey, Renee and Angela discover they don’t need successful romantic relationships to achieve happiness. With the combined strength of their alliance and a group of compassionate girlfriends they’ve aptly named The Chicken Club, they find that this delightful group will band together to take on the world, one problem at a time. And sometimes, learning to love yourself is the hardest lesson of all.

When Debbie the cow learns of the Secret Chicken Club, she is inspired to start a Secret Cow Club. Of course, she is the only cow on the farm, and even Debbie knows you cannot have a club with only one member. Could she join the chickens' club? "Heavens no," clucks Blanche, the club president, "it's only for chickens." And so a wacky series of events ensues as one by one the animals on the farmthe goat, the sheep, the duckjoin the Secret Chicken Clubor do they? George Shannon's gentle tongue-in-cheek humor and Deborah Zemke's delightfully comic pictures once again combine to create a club all young readers will clamor to join.

Lust, sex, and symbolism. Deep joy and horrific fear. It could be anything. Bizarre and haunting, this collection of dream-like short stories are pivotal moments in time, fleeting, intense, forever changing our ways of seeing. You'll want to read them more than once.

Edwin "Bud" Shrake is one of the most intriguing literary talents to emerge from Texas. He has written vividly in fiction and nonfiction about everything from the early days of the Texas Republic to the making of the atomic bomb. His real gift has been to capture the Texas Zeitgeist. Legendary Harper's Magazine editor Willie Morris called Shrake's essay "Land of the Permanent Wave" one of the two best pieces Morris ever published during his tenure at the magazine. High praise, indeed, when one considers that Norman Mailer and Seymour Hersh were just two of the luminaries featured at Harper's during Morris's reign. This anthology is the first to present and explore Shrake's writing completely, including his journalism, fiction, and film work, both published and previously unpublished. The collection makes innovative use of his personal papers and letters to explore the connections between his journalism and his novels, between his life and his art. An exceptional behind-the-scenes look at his life, Land of the Permanent Wave reveals and reveres the life and calling of a writer whose legacy continues to influence and engage readers and writers nearly fifty years into his career.

When Moira Darling opens the deli on Mother's Day morning, she assumes that the roses she finds on the counter are from her daughter ... until she finds the stranger's body slumped behind the counter. while Darling's DELIcious Delights is closed for the police investigation, Moira has nothing to do but ponder the mystery of the dead man and the flowers. When the police discover a strange connection between him and Moira, she is frightened and horrified beyond belief. Questions haunt her day and night. Who was the man in the deli, why had he been killed, and what did all of it mean? Would she be next?