style="font-size:20px;line-height:20px;">“Have You Forgotten? I Am Your Mother. You Are Under My Protection.” “There is a promise Holy Mother makes to us,” proclaims Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, “that any soul needing comfort, vision, guidance, or strength can cry out to her, flee to her protection, and Blessed Mother will immediately arrive with veils flying. She will place us under her mantle for refuge, and give us the warmth of her most compassionate touch, and strong guidance about how to go by the soul’s lights.” Untie the Strong Woman is Dr. Estés invitation to come together under the shelter of The Mother—whether she appears to us as the Madonna, Our Lady of Guadalupe, or any one of her countless incarnations. In this unforgettable collection of stories, prayers, and blessings, Dr. Estés shares: “The Drunkard and the Lady”—a story of unexpected miracles that arise from the mud and soil • “Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven”—a poem of resistance and hope • “No One Too Bad, Too Mean, or Too Hopeless”—the fierce Mother that never gives up on us • “The Shirt of Arrows”—a love that is invincible no matter how many times we are wounded • “The Black Madonna”—she who stands at the juncture between two worlds and protects us as we enter the dark places Why does the face of Our Lady appear in the most humble and unexpected places? Why does she burst forth into every culture no matter how hard authority tries to suppress her? It is because no bonds can restrain the power of her love, nor prevent her from returning to those who need her most. With Untie the Strong Woman, Dr. Estés invites you to encounter the force of Immaculate Love—“So that your memory of Her is renewed, or that the knowledge of her miraculous, fierce, enduring ways is drawn into your heart for the very first time.”

The telling of several interlinked stories to illustrate the theme that love can triumph over loss. This book guides the reader to the realization that of all the gifts that people can give to one another, the most meaningful and long-lasting are strong love and the gift of story. Clarissa Pinkola Estes is the author of Women Who Run With Wolves.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One million copies sold! “A deeply spiritual book [that] honors what is tough, smart and untamed in women.”—The Washington Post Book World Book club pick for Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

“An autobiographical account of how a psychiatric nurse specialist became a folk medicine healer; this also explains the origins and practice of one of the oldest forms of medicine in the New World.″—Kirkus Praise for WOMAN WHO GLOWS IN THE DARK “This is a book that we’ve been awaiting for years—one that unites the best medicine from the ancient past with the deepest needs of the contemporary heart and soul.”—Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., author of Women Who Run with the Wolves, The Gift of Story, and Faithful Gardener “Elena Avila’s book is a combination manual, memoir, and healing chant. I’m so glad these stories and secrets – which have been known orally by our culture for ages – are finally down on paper.” —Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents “Avila shatters myths about curanderismo and reminds us that it’s just as important today as it was centuries ago.”—The Austin Chronicle “In this age of impersonal and technologic health care, Elena Avila’s book gives the reader permission to rely on what has all too often been forgotten. Her message—that healing cannot occur without the heart, instincts, wisdom, and compassion of the healer—is given with grace and simplicity.”—Barbara Dossey, R.N., M.S., HNC, FAAN, Director, Holistic Nursing Associates “Truthful, often painful, always riveting, WOMAN WHO GLOWS IN THE DARK reveals how the practices of curanderismo can heal the soul sickness not addressed by Western medicine.”—Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima “Grounded in the earth, at home in both modern and indigenous medicine, Elena Avila is a true emissary of healing, casting a brilliant glow into the dark of all medicine that denies the soul. As a human, I cherish Elena’s light. As a psychiatrist, I welcome her insight.”—Judith Orloff, M.D., author of Second Sight and The Genius of Empathy “Avila is entertaining and often humorous...Without climbing on a soapbox, [her] narrative demonstrates what’s missing from most American medical practices, and how many patients could be helped so much more than they are now.”—Kirkus Reviews

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., the internationally known poet, psychoanalyst, and author of the seminal classic Women Who Run With The Wolves (99 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, translated into eighteen languages, and a bestseller worldwide), touches our lives anew, rendering in the strong and lyrical voice for which she has become known a powerful series of her signature healing stories. These elegantly interlocked tales of loss, survival, and fierce rebirth center around Dr. Estes's uncle, a war-ravaged Hungarian peasant farmer and refugee, a faithful gardener, and a storehouse of stories who was one of the "dancing fools, wise old crows, grumpy sages, and 'almost saints' who made up the old people" in Estés's childhood. Told with graceful simplicity, deep feeling, generous humor, and profound optimism, The Faithful Gardener is, at its captivating core, the story of an open-hearted child who listened well to her old-country elders and who grew up to remember, to bear witness, and, as one of the premier storytellers of our times, to remind readers and listeners of all ages of "that magisterial life force within all things that strengthens us in times of turmoil or transition, that faithful force which can never die."

In Cecilia Grant’s emotionally rich and deeply passionate Regency romance debut, a deal with a rumored rogue turns a proper young woman into . . . A Lady Awakened. Newly widowed and desperate to protect her estate and beloved servants from her malevolent brother-in-law, Martha Russell conceives a daring plan. Or rather, a daring plan to conceive. After all, if she has an heir on the way, her future will be secured. Forsaking all she knows of propriety, Martha approaches her neighbor, a London exile with a wicked reputation, and offers a strictly business proposition: a month of illicit interludes . . . for a fee. Theophilus Mirkwood ought to be insulted. Should be appalled. But how can he resist this siren in widow’s weeds, whose offer is simply too outrageously tempting to decline? Determined she’ll get her money’s worth, Theo endeavors to awaken this shamefully neglected beauty to the pleasures of the flesh—only to find her dead set against taking any enjoyment in the scandalous bargain. Surely she can’t resist him forever. But could a lady’s sweet surrender open their hearts to the most unexpected arrival of all . . . love?

Peony has neither seen nor spoken to any man other than her father, a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Nor has she ever ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the family villa. As her sixteenth birthday approaches she finds herself betrothed to a man she does not know, but Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a theatrical troupe to perform scenes from The Peony Pavilion, a Chinese epic opera, in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. 'Unmarried girls should not be seen in public,' says Peony's mother, but her father allows the women to watch from behind a screen. Here, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately bewitched. So begins her unforgettable journey of love, desire, sorrow and redemption.