In this embellished memoir, Baker shares how she navigated her bifurcated world, defying the Magnolia Code and finding role models in rebellious women.

“How many loves do you get in a lifetime?” She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved, and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain’s most photographed bad boy who broke her heart. Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of every sad endeavor to get over one another, it’s still each other they crawl back to. But now their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world they’ve built; a world where neither has ever let the other go completely. As the cracks start to show and secrets begin to surface, Magnolia and BJ are finally forced to face the formidable question they’ve been avoiding all their lives: How many loves do you really get in a lifetime?

The world of Magnolia Le Guin, like that of countless farm women, was defined by and confined to home and family. Born in 1869 into the rural, white, agrarian society of Georgia's central piedmont, she raised eight children virtually on her own, yet never in her life ventured farther than thirty miles from her birthplace. Her situation, however extreme, was not unique in her day. What distinguished Le Guin was her love of writing, her need to write about being a wife and mother--despite a daunting workload and burden of responsibilities that left her with little free time or energy. In a plain, idiomatic style, these diaries detail some of the most trying, but nonetheless fulfilling, years of her life. At the same time, A Home-Concealed Woman (her own self-descriptive phrase) provides a firsthand view of the hardships of subsistence farming, the material culture of rural society, and the codes to which Le Guin as a white woman, a southerner, and an evangelical Christian adhered. The most striking feature of Le Guin's world is that it was confined almost entirely to the indoors, from the bedrooms where her children were born and where her parents lay ill and died to the stove room where the daily meals were cooked and cleared. Her husband's prominence in their small community and the size of their extended families meant that Le Guin hosted an endless flow of callers and overnight guests--more than one hundred in the summer of 1906 alone. Managing an already busy household under these conditions so occupied her time that she treasured every respite: "I was truly glad when I felt the sprinkling of the rain. I was so glad I couldn't content myself indoors washing dishes, sweeping floors, making beds, etc etc, so I just postponed those things and churning too awhile and betook myself out in the misty rain with a new brushbroom and swept a lot of this large yard and inhaled the sweet air scented with rain-settling dust." Less idyllic sentiments also fill Le Guin's diaries, for the anger and anxiety she could not publicly express found a voice in their pages: "I feel rebellious once in awhile at my lot--so much drudgery and so much company to cook for and in meantime my own affairs, my own children, my little baby--all going neglected." Though condescending outbursts about her hired help reveal Le Guin's racial attitudes, her endemic prejudice is tempered by her many expressions of genuine concern for individual blacks close to her family. As writer Ursula K. Le Guin suggests in her foreword, the diary may be the best suited literary form for approximating "the actual gait of people's lives." In Magnolia Le Guin's diary, prayerful entreaties for strength and guidance mingle with daily news about her family, providing a constant background against which major events such as births and deaths, holidays and harvests take place. The reader's admiration for Le Guin will grow as the details of her life emerge and accumulate.

From the USA Today bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding comes a wonderfully entertaining book about what to do when life comes at you full swing. At forty-one, Vivian Armstrong Gray's life as an investigative journalist is crumbling. Humiliated after taking a bullet in her backside during an exposé, Vivi learns that she's pregnant, jobless, and very hormonal. This explains why she says 'yes' to a dreadful job covering suburban living back home in Georgia, a column she must write incognito. Down South, it's her sister's ballroom dance studio that becomes her undercover spot where she learns about the local life-and where unexpected friendships develop. As she digs up her long buried roots, she starts to wonder if life inside the picket fence is really so bad after all.

CHINA, 484 A.D. A Warrior in Disguise All her life, Mulan has trained for one purpose: to win the duel that every generation in her family must fight. If she prevails, she can reunite a pair of priceless heirloom swords separated decades earlier, and avenge her father, who was paralyzed in his own duel. Then a messenger from the Emperor arrives, demanding that all families send one soldier to fight the Rouran invaders in the north. Mulan’s father cannot go. Her brother is just a child. So she ties up her hair, takes up her sword, and joins the army as a man. A War for a Dynasty Thanks to her martial arts skills, Mulan is chosen for an elite team under the command of the princeling—the royal duke’s son, who is also the handsomest man she’s ever seen. But the princeling has secrets of his own, which explode into Mulan’s life and shake up everything she knows. As they cross the Great Wall to face the enemy beyond, Mulan and the princeling must find a way to unwind their past, unmask a traitor, and uncover the plans for the Rouran invasion…before it’s too late. Inspired by wuxia martial-arts dramas as well as the centuries-old ballad of Mulan, The Magnolia Sword is a thrilling, romantic, and sharp-edged novel that lives up to its beloved heroine.

From breakfast to dinner, plus breads, soups, and sides, Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Table, Volume 2 gives readers abundant reasons to gather together—an instant #1 New York Times bestseller! Following the launch of her #1 New York Times bestselling cookbook, Magnolia Table, and seeing her family’s own sacred dishes being served at other families’ tables across the country, Joanna Gaines gained a deeper commitment to the value of food being shared. This insight inspired Joanna to get back in the kitchen and start from scratch, pushing herself beyond her comfort zone to develop new recipes for her family, and yours, to gather around. Magnolia Table, Volume 2 is filled with 145 new recipes from her own home that she shares with husband Chip and their five kids, and from the couple’s restaurant, Magnolia Table; Silos Baking Co; and new coffee shop, Magnolia Press. The book is beautifully photographed and filled with dishes you’ll want to bring into your own home, including: Mushroom-Gruyére Quiche Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread Grilled Bruschetta Chicken Zucchini-Squash Strata Chicken-Pecan-Asparagus Casserole Stuffed Pork Loin Lemon-Lavender Tart Magnolia Press Chocolate Cake