Set in the contemporary Paris of American  expatraites, liasons, and violence, a young man finds  himself caught between desire and... conventional  morality. James Baldwin's brilliant narrative delves  into the mystery of loving with a sharp, probing  imagination, and he creates a moving, highly  controversial story of death and passion that reveals the  unspoken complexities of the heart.

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With... a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

Considered an 'audacious' second novel, "Giovanni's Room" is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic... story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

Brett Shadle's Girl Cases examines the impact of mature colonialism in East Africa on the Gusii and on their strategies to maintain wealth in a era of... rapid social change. Girl Cases is a marvelous social history of the epidemic of "girl cases" that seemed to challenge the very nature of Gusii concepts of wealth and security. In an era of increasing bridewealth and stagnating wages, Gusii elders increasing turned to the native courts to control both young women and young men. Employing a sophisticated methodology for mining the transcripts of the regions local courts, Shadle uncovers precious detail on the changing meanings of marriage and strategies of young women and men to define their own futures. - Richard Roberts; Professor and Director of Center for African Studies; Stanford University Beginning in the late 1930s, a crisis in colonial Gusiiland developed over traditional marriage customs. Couples eloped, wives deserted husbands, fathers forced daughters into marriage, and desperate men abducted women as wives. Existing historiography focuses on women who either fled their rural homes to escape a new "dual patriarchy"-African men backed by colonial officials-or surrendered themselves to this new power. "Girl Cases": Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya 1890-1970 takes a new approach to the study of Gusii marriage customs and shows that Gusii women stayed in their homes to fight over the nature of marriage. Gusii women and their lovers remained committed to traditional bridewealth marriage, but they raised deeper questions over the relations between men and women. During this time of social upheaval, thousands of marriage disputes flowed into local African courts. By examining court transcripts, "Girl Cases" sheds light on the dialogue that developed surrounding the nature of marriage. Should parental rights to arrange a marriage outweigh women's rights to choose their husbands? Could violence by abductors create a legitimate union? Men and women debated these and other issues in the courtroom, and Brett L. Shadle's analysis of the transcripts provides a valuable addition to African social history.

For some time, reality TV, talk shows, soap-operas, and sitcoms have turned their spotlights on women and girls who thrive on competition and nastiness.... Few fairytales lack the evil stepmother, wicked witch, or jealous sister. Even cartoons feature mean and sassy girls who only become sweet and innocent when adults appear. And recently, popular books and magazines have turned their gaze away from ways of positively influencing girls' independence and self-esteem and towards the topic of girls' meanness to other girls. What does this say about the way our culture views girlhood? How much do these portrayals affect the way girls view themselves?In Girlfighting, psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown scrutinizes the way our culture nurtures and reinforces this sort of meanness in girls. She argues that the old adage “girls will be girls”—gossipy, competitive, cliquish, backstabbing— and the idea that fighting is part of a developmental stage or a rite-of-passage, are not acceptable explanations. Instead, she asserts, girls are discouraged from expressing strong feelings and are pressured to fulfill unrealistic expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find their way in a society that still reinforces gender stereotypes and places greater value on boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it less risky to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls instead of challenging the ways boys treat them, the way the media represents them, or the way the culture at large supports sexist practices. Girlfighting traces the changes in girls' thoughts, actions and feelings from childhood into young adulthood, providing the developmental understanding and theoretical explanation often lacking in other conversations. Through interviews with over 400 girls of diverse racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds, Brown chronicles the labyrinthine journey girls take from direct and outspoken children who like and trust other girls, to distrusting and competitive young women. She argues that this familiar pathway can and should be interrupted and provides ways to move beyond girlfighting to build girl allies and to support coalitions among girls.By allowing the voices of girls to be heard, Brown demonstrates the complex and often contradictory realities girls face, helping us to better understand and critique the socializing forces in their lives and challenging us to rethink the messages we send them.

Then He Kissed Me, He's A Rebel, Chains, Stop! In the Name of Love all these songs capture the spirit of an era and an image of "girlhood" in... post-World War II America that still reverberates today. While there were over 1500 girl groups recorded in the '60s--including key hitmakers like the Ronettes, the Supremes, and the Shirelles - studies of girl-group music that address race, gender, class, and sexuality have only just begun to appear. Warwick is the first writer to address '60s girl group music from the perspective of its most significant audience--teenage girls--drawing on current research in psychology and sociology to explore the important place of this repertoire in the emotional development of young girls of the baby boom generation. Girl Groups, Girl Culture stands as a landmark study of this important pop music and cultural phenomenon. It promises to be a classic work in American musicology and cultural studies.

"Searle uses her signature zany brilliance to turn suburbia, adultery, parenting, politics, and even terrorism into something new and insightful. Move... over John Cheever! Elizabeth Searle has arrived!"—Ann HoodA mother tries to deal with complex relationships, race, and fear in the days following 9/11 while her teenage son attempts to rescue a girl that may be trapped in a house filled with a family of terrorists.Elizabeth Searle is the author of Celebrities in Disgrace, which was produced as a short film in 2010. Her theater works have been featured on Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, and NPR.

Girlhood, interdisciplinary and global in source, scope, and methodology, examines the centrality of girlhood in shaping women's lives. Scholars study... how age and gender, along with a multitude of other identities, work together to influence the historical experience.Spanning a broad time frame from 1750 to the present, essays illuminate the various continuities and differences in girls' lives across culture and region--girls on all continents except Antarctica are represented. Case studies and essays are arranged thematically to encourage comparisons between girls' experiences in diverse locales, and to assess how girls were affected by historical developments such as colonialism, political repression, war, modernization, shifts in labor markets, migrations, and the rise of consumer culture.

What happens when a classically-trained New York chef and fearless omnivore heads out of the city and into the wild to track down the ingredients for... her meals? After abandoning Wall Street to embrace her lifelong love of cooking, Georgia Pellegrini comes face to face with her first kill. From honoring that first turkey to realizing that the only way we truly know where our meat comes from is if we hunt it ourselves, Pellegrini embarks on a wild ride into the real world of local, organic, and sustainable food. Teaming up with veteran hunters, she trav­els over field and stream in search of the main course—from quail to venison and wild boar, from elk to javelina and squirrel. Pellegrini’s road trip careens from the back of an ATV chasing wild hogs along the banks of the Mississippi to a dove hunt with beer and barbeque, to the birthplace of the Delta Blues. Along the way, she meets an array of unexpected characters—from the Commish, a venerated lifelong hunter, to the lawyer-by day, duck-hunting-Bayou-philosopher at dawn—who offer surprising lessons about food and life. Pellegrini also discovers the dangerous underbelly of hunting when an outing turns illegal—and dangerous. More than a food-laden hunting narrative, Girl Hunteralso teaches you how to be a self-sufficient eater. Each chapter offers recipes for finger-licking dishes like: wild turkey and oyster stew stuffed quail pheasant tagine venison sausage fundamental stocks, brines, sauces, and rubs suggestions for interchanging proteins within each recipe Each dish, like each story, is an adventure from begin­ning to end. An inspiring, illuminating, and often funny jour­ney into unexplored territories of haute cuisine, Girl Hunter captures the joy of rolling up your sleeves and getting to the heart of where the food you eat comes from.

This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades.... The professor swears it is a Vermeer—but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Susan Vreeland's characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable.

One the irrepressibly inventive Jonathan Lethem could weld science fiction and the Western into a mesmerizing novel of exploration and otherness, sexual... awakening and loss. At the age of 13 Pella Marsh loses her mother and her home on the scorched husk that is planet Earth. Her sorrowing family emigrates to the Planet of the Archbuilders, whose mysterious inhabitants have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel—and a civilization that and frightens their human visitors.
 On this new world, spikily independent Pella becomes as uneasy envoy between two species. And at the same time is unwilling drawn to a violent loner who embodies all the paranoid machismo of the frontier ethic. Combining the tragic grandeur of John Ford's The Searchers and the sexual tension of Lolita and transporting them to a planet light years, Girl in Landscape is a tour de force. 

Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in a psychiatric hospital... in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The memoir's title is a reference to the Vermeer painting Girl Interrupted at her Music. While writing the novel Far Afield, Kaysen began to recall her almost two years at McLean Hospital. She obtained her file from the hospital with the help of a lawyer.
In 1999, the memoir was adapted into a film of the same name starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. It was directed by James Mangold.

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day,... Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. Watch a Video

From the astonishingly talented writer of The Accidental and Hotel World comes Ali Smith’s brilliant retelling of Ovid’s gender-bending myth of... Iphis and Ianthe, as seen through the eyes of two Scottish sisters. Girl Meets Boy is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, and the absurdity of consumerism, as well as a story of reversals and revelations that is as sharply witty as it is lyrical. Funny, fresh, poetic, and political, Girl Meets Boy is a myth of metamorphosis for a world made in Madison Avenue’s image, and the funniest addition to the Myths series from Canongate since Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.

The child of a Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, Lauren F. Winner chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But even as she was observing... Sabbath rituals and studying Jewish law, Lauren was increasingly drawn to Christianity. Courageously leaving what she loved, she eventually converted. In Girl Meets God, this appealing woman takes us through a year in her Christian life as she attempts to reconcile both sides of her religious identity.Here readers will find a new literary voice: a spiritual seeker who is both an unconventional thinker and a devoted Christian. The twists and turns of Winner’s journey make her the perfect guide to exploring true faith in today’s complicated world.Praise for Girl Meets God:“A passionate and thoroughly engaging account of a continuing spiritual journey within two profoundly different faiths.” –The New York Times Book Review“A charming, humorous, and sometimes abrasive recollection of a religious coming-of-age . . . a compelling journey from Judaism to Christianity.”–The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“A book to savor . . . Winner is an all-too-human believer, and the rest of us can see our own struggles, theological and otherwise, in hers.”–Fort Worth Star-Telegram“[A] memoir, literary and spiritual, sharing Anne Lamott’s self-depreciating intensity and Stephen J. Dubner’s passion for authenticity . . . Winner’s record of her own experiences so far is a page-turning debut by a young writer worth watching.”–Publishers Weekly (starred review)“[The] narrative’s real strength . . . is its addictive readability combined with the author’s deep knowledge of, delight in, and nuanced discussion of both Christian and Jewish teachings. . . . Intriguing, absorbing, puzzling, surprisingly sexy, and very smart.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)