A young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960s in this captivating novel inspired by shockingly true events. Keep sweet no matter what, for this is the way to be lifted up Keep sweet with every breath, for it is a matter of life or death 1964. Fifteen-year-old Daisy Shoemaker dreams of life beyond her small, isolated fundamentalist Mormon community of Redemption on the Canada—US border—despite Bishop Thorsen’s warning that the outside world is full of sin. According to the Principle, the only way to enter the celestial kingdom is through plural marriage. While the boys are taught to work in the lucrative sawmill that supports their enclave, Daisy and her best friend, Brighten, are instructed to keep sweet and wait for Placement—the day the bishop will choose a husband for them. But Daisy wants to be more than a sister-wife and a mother. So when she is placed with a man forty years her senior, she makes the daring decision to flee Redemption. Years later, Daisy has a job and a group of trustworthy friends. Emboldened by the ideas of the feminist and counterculture movements, she is freer than she has ever been…until Brighten reaches out with a cry for help and Daisy’s past comes hurtling back. But to save the women she left behind, Daisy must risk her newfound independence and return to Redemption, where hellfire surely awaits. For readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ami McKay’s The Virgin Cure comes an arresting coming-of-age novel about a fearless young girl’s fight for freedom at a time of great historic change.

This volume completes Keith McMahon’s acclaimed history of imperial wives and royal polygamy in China. Avoiding the stereotype of the emperor’s plural wives as mere victims or playthings, the book considers empresses and concubines as full-fledged participants in palace life, whether as mothers, wives, or go-betweens in the emperor’s relations with others in the palace. Although restrictions on women’s participation in politics increased dramatically after Empress Wu in the Tang, the author follows the strong and active women, of both high and low rank, who continued to appear. They counseled emperors, ghostwrote for them, oversaw succession when they died, and dominated them when they were weak. They influenced the emperor’s relationships with other women and enhanced their aura and that of the royal house with their acts of artistic and religious patronage. Dynastic history ended in China when the prohibition that women should not rule was defied for the final time by Dowager Cixi, the last great monarch before China’s transformation into a republic.

Inspired by the history of the British “brideships,” this captivating historical debut tells the story of one woman’s coming of age and search for independence—for readers of Pam Jenoff's The Orphan's Tale and Armando Lucas Correa’s The German Girl. Tomorrow we would dock in Victoria on the northwest coast of North America, about as far away from my home as I could imagine. Like pebbles tossed upon the beach, we would scatter, trying to make our way as best as we could. Most of us would marry; some would not. England, 1862. Charlotte is somewhat of a wallflower. Shy and bookish, she knows her duty is to marry, but with no dowry, she has little choice in the matter. She can’t continue to live off the generosity of her sister Harriet and her wealthy brother-in-law, Charles, whose political aspirations dictate that she make an advantageous match. When Harriet hosts a grand party, Charlotte is charged with winning the affections of one of Charles’s colleagues, but before the night is over, her reputation—her one thing of value—is at risk. In the days that follow, rumours begin to swirl. Soon Charles’s standing in society is threatened and all that Charlotte has held dear is jeopardized, even Harriet, and Charlotte is forced to leave everything she has ever known in England and embark on a treacherous voyage to the New World. From the rigid social circles of Victorian England to the lawless lands bursting with gold in British Columbia’s Cariboo, The Brideship Wife takes readers on a mesmerizing journey through a time of great change. Based on a forgotten chapter in history, this is a sparkling debut about the pricelessness of freedom and the courage it takes to follow your heart.

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain. Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense. It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife. Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’ s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith. Praise for The 19th Wife “This exquisite tour de force explores the dark roots of polygamy and its modern-day fruit in a renegade cult . . . Ebershoff brilliantly blends a haunting fictional narrative by Ann Eliza Young, the real-life 19th “rebel” wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, with the equally compelling contemporary narrative of fictional Jordan Scott, a 20-year-old gay man. . . . With the topic of plural marriage and its shattering impact on women and powerless children in today's headlines, this novel is essential reading for anyone seeking understanding of the subject.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A riveting memoir of life inside one of North America's most notorious polygamous cults.

Set during the tumultuous first sixty-year history of the Mormon church, Celestial Wife Club is an epic story of one man´s journey through the complicated world of polygamy. It started in his hometown of Kirtland, Ohio when out of survival, he was forced to become a Mormon. The story follows Tom as he earns the trust of the two most powerful leaders of the church and becomes a church "insider." Following the doctrines of the Prophet, under his threat of eternal damnation, Tom is later forced to become a polygamist. After joining the church leaders in an elite esoteric society called the Celestial Wife Club, his life becomes filled with deep, dark secrets. The religious principles of the Mormons were constantly challenged. They established thriving communities in three different states, but each time angry vigilante mobs and government threats of extermination forced them to abandon their homes and start over again. While continuing to build his harem of wives, Tom played a vital role in the Mormon´s long and difficult migration west to the desolate Salt Lake Basin. Unwillingly he joined in the battle against the Native Ute Indians, and a traumatic confrontation with a renegade Indian named Whitehorse would haunt Tom for the rest of his life. The church quickly gained complete control over the Utah Territory and the practice of polygamy among Mormon´s became common knowledge throughout the country. When the federal government enacted a series of anti-bigamy laws, the "Most Wanted Polygamist List" was created. As a target of "polygamy hunters," Tom and the church leaders were forced to play a dangerous cat and mouse game while hiding in the Mormon underground to elude federal marshals. Throughout his years of hardship, prosperity, and personal tragedies, Tom underwent a constant struggle with his decision to become a polygamist. The question in his mind was always the same - How had he allowed Joseph Smith, a self-proclaimed prophet, a man who many considered to be a charlatan, to convince him to be unfaithful to his wife and family? Tom eventually tries to break free of his complicated lifestyle, and the story concludes with an explosive and shocking ending that reveals the last bizarre secrets in Tom ́s clandestine life. www.celestialwifeclubbook.com

Mary Patten, the wife of a clipper ship navigator, finds herself in the world's most dangerous ocean waters off Cape Horn and in command of the ship's mutinous crew when her husband falls ill.