Winston Churchill famously described the political alliance between the US and UK as a 'special relationship', but throughout the cultural history of these two countries there have existed transatlantic 'special relationships' of another kind - affairs between British and American citizens who have fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the history, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture. Looking at both historical and contemporary case-studies, drawn from across film, television, music, literature, news and politics, this is a timely intervention into the popular romantic discourse of US-UK relations, at a critical and transitional moment in the ongoing viability of the special relationship.

In this charming departure from Lake Wobegon, bestselling author Garrison Keillor tells a hilarious and heartwarming tale of ambition, success and failure, and the virtues of real love. Aspiring writer Larry Wyler leads a quiet, decent life with his do-gooder wife, Iris, in St. Paul, Minnesota, but he wants more. When his literary debut becomes a hit, he departs for a Manhattan apartment, a job at the New Yorker, and three- martini lunches with the great editor, William Shawn. But when his second novel bombs and he finds himself in the grip of writer's block, Wyler discovers that success—and the New York publishing scene—is a fickle mistress, indeed. Creatively barren, nearly destitute, and longing for Iris, he accepts a job writing "Ask Mr. Blue," a column doling out advice to the lovelorn. It may not be glamorous work, but through it Wyler discovers what's really important and sets out to win back the woman he left behind.

STUCK IN A corporate job rut and faced with an unraveling marriage at the age of thirty-six, Roz Savage sat down one night and wrote two versions of her own obituary -- the one that she wanted and the one she was heading for. They were very different. She realized that if she carried on as she was, she wasn't going to end up with the life she wanted. So she turned her back on an eleven-year career as a management consultant to reinvent herself as a woman of adventure. She invested her life's savings in an ocean rowboat and became the first solo woman ever to enter the Atlantic Rowing Race. Her 3,000-mile trial by sea became the challenge of a lifetime. Of the twenty-six crews that set out from La Gomera, six capsized or sank and didn't make it to the finish line in Antigua. There were times when she thought she had hit her absolute limit, but alone in the middle of the ocean, she had no choice but to find the strength to carry on. In Rowing the Atlantic we are brought on board when Savage's dreams of feasts are nourished by yet another freeze-dried meal. When her gloves wear through to her blistered hands. When her headlamp is the only light on a pitch-black night ocean that extends indefinitely in all directions. When, one by one, all four of her oars break. When her satellite communication fails. Stroke by stroke, Savage discovers there is so much more to life than a fancy sports car and a power-suit job. Flashing back to key moments from her life before rowing, she describes the bolt from the blue that first inspired her to row across oceans and how this crazy idea evolved from a dream into a tendinitis-inducing reality. And finally, Savage discovers in the rough waters of the Atlantic the kind of happiness we all hope to find.

Blazingly intelligent, wickedly funny, and piercingly honest, a memoir that captures the perils and pleasures of girlhood, womanhood, and life itself. “One of my favorite books of the last few years.” —Cheryl Strayed “Sentence for sentence, a more pleasure-yielding midlife memoir is hard to think of.” —The Atlantic At mid-life, Claire Dederer developed a sudden yearning for jailbreak. In this exuberant memoir, she reflects on two periods in her life uncannily similar in their emotional intensity: her present experience as a middle-aged mom in the grip of unruly and mysterious new hungers, and her recollections of herself as a teenager.

In 1896, two Norwegian immigrants from the New Jersey coast set out to attain their piece of the American Dream by risking their lives to achieve the seemingly impossible. Convinced that they had no bright future as clam diggers supplying the Fulton Fish Market in New York City, they conceived a plan to set a world record by becoming the first men to row across the Atlantic Ocean. To family, friends, and those intimate with the sea, the plan appeared suicidal; but to the two men, George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen, the crossing represented a way out of lives offering little promise. Their hope was to attract worldwide attention and lucrative lecture and exhibition fees if they succeeded.

“A perfect book”—and basis for the Maggie Smith film—about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune). “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn’t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie’s indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark’s masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature’s most iconic and complex characters—a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.

A Washington Post Notable Book of 2017. Deborah Tannen's bestselling You Just Don't Understand: Conversations Between Women and Men made us aware of the deep and subtle meanings behind the words we say. She has since explored the way we talk at work, in arguments, to our mothers and our daughters. Now she turns to that most intense, precious and potential minefield: women's friendships. Best friend, old friend, good friend, new friend, neighbour, fellow mother at the school gate, workplace confidante: women's friendships are crucial. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist or confessor. She can also be the source of pain and betrayal. From casual chatting to intimate confiding, from talking about problems to sharing funny stories, there are patterns of communication and miscommunication that affect friendships. Tannen shows how even the best of friends - with the best intentions - can say the wrong thing, how the ways women friends talk can bring friends closer or pull them apart, but also how words can repair the damage done by words. She explains the power of women friends who show empathy and can just listen; how women use talk to connect - and to subtly compete; how fears of rejection can haunt friendships; how social media is reshaping relationships. Exploring what it means to be friends, helping us hear what we are really saying, understanding how we connect to other people; this illuminating and validating book gets inside the language of one of most women's life essentials - female friendships.