This Is Big


Book Description

From a contributor to The Cut, one of Vogue's most anticipated books "bravely and honestly" (Busy Philipps) talks about weight loss and sheds a light on Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch: "a triumphant chronicle" (New York Times). Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand. Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa, also a contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with Marisa's own journey through Weight Watchers, she chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The result is funny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation goes far beyond a number on the scale.




Moira


Book Description

That a woman's mind is akin to a labyrinth of impossibility, best left on its own, is but a common cliché of the day. Mihika Singh, our kind protagonist, the prodigal but overly sensitive child, grows up to be a woman ruthless in pursuing her ambitions, yet rooted to her moral soil while breathing life to her dreams. However, with a career par excellence, she grapples to hold on to the reins of her love life. We live her story with her as she holds a mirror to her own heart to reflect on her approach to propinquity, commitment and pain, trying to make sense of it all. She isn't perfect, she makes mistakes and owns them too, taking lessons out of each one of them. As the seasons of her love life change, she explores different facets of intimacy in love, and each time rediscovers herself in it. In this long, tumultuous journey of moving only but ahead, does she stop for someone finally for what it's worth? Or does destiny prove too strong a force to conquer? Let us hear it from her...




Moira's Birthday


Book Description

Moira’s afraid her parents might get upset if they find out she invited the whole school to her birthday party... so she just doesn’t tell them. The big day arrives, and grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, annnnd kindergarten all come knocking down her door. Before long, the house is a total disaster and Moira’s parents are going crazy trying to figure out how to get enough pizzas and birthday cake to feed everyone. Just leave it to Moira—she’ll figure it all out, and even get the house cleaned up in the process! A newly designed Classic Munsch picture book introduces this charming tale of the world’s most boisterous birthday to a new generation of young readers.




Resenting the Hero


Book Description

In a realm beset by natural disasters, only the magical abilities of the bonded Pairs—Source and Shield—make the land habitable and keep the citizenry safe. The ties that bind them are far beyond the relationships between lovers or kin—and last their entire lives… Whether they like it or not. Since she was a child, Dunleavy Mallorough has been nurturing her talents as a Shield, preparing for her day of bonding. Unfortunately, fate decrees Lee’s partner to be the legendary, handsome, and unbearably self-assured Lord Shintaro Karish. Sure, he cuts a fine figure with his aristocratic airs and undeniable courage. But Karish’s popularity and notoriety—in bed and out—make him the last Source Lee ever wanted to be stuck with. The duo is assigned to High Scape, a city so besieged by disaster that seven bonded pairs are needed to combat it. But when an inexplicable force strikes down every other Source and Shield, Lee and Karish must put aside their differences in order to defeat something even more unnatural than their reluctant affections for each other…




Labor of Love


Book Description

A brilliant and surprising investigation into why we date the way we do




Moira's Crossing


Book Description

An exquisitely wrought debut novel about sisterhood through three generations in Ireland and America. It is 1921 in Ireland. When their mother dies in childbirth, Moira and Julia O'Leary are left to rear their infant sister, Ann, while their father, a sheep farmer, despairs. After Ann dies, Moira and Julia depart Cork for Boston, but the painful secret behind Ann's death haunts their new lives and presages the confusion that will come to trouble the next generation. Moira and Julia have always been strikingly different, but theirs is a mercilessly dependable relationship-Moira's boldness is fortified by Julia's quiet inner purpose, while Julia lives vicariously through her sister's impulsive actions. Moira's Crossing charts their shared journey through marriage, children, and lobstering off the coast of Maine. At once an examination of the troubled intimacy of sisterhood and an inquiry into the meaning of faith, Moira's Crossing is also a story of what we leave behind and who we become because of it.




Moira's Scythe


Book Description

Jonathan Braithewaite settles in eastern North Carolina in 1727. He marries a sea captain's daughter and they found Jonathan's Landing, later renamed Wisharton. Half the town evolves into a harsh, Calvinist planter community represented by the Brandt family. The other half into a more liberal community scended from the Anglicans and represented by the Braithewaites. Tension grows between the two families who pass through a series of crises. The hero's wife dies of untreatable disease, followed by her husband who is killed in a duel. The slave community evolves from its Yoruban (African) roots tempered by an infusion of Christianity. The eldest Braithewaite daughter marries a school teacher and they open an academy. The Brandt son becomes a religious fanatic who slays his retarded mulatto daughter resisting his attempt at rape. His older slave mistress mediates between the planter family and the slaves. She, too, is carrying his child. Brandt's trial for murder in the death of the girl takes up the middle third of the story. He is sentenced to the pillory and dies there as he is being branded on the forehead with the mark of the serpent. The Brandt's slaves engage in a carefully-controlled rebellion, and the Braithewaite widow frees hers. The final third of the story is set in modern times. Graduate student Kareena discovers she is a direct descendant of a sister of the slave girl murdered 150 years earlier. Moreover, her graduate advisor is a direct descendant of the mad planter Brandt. Through this lineage she and her advisor both carry the Brandt genes. Strange events seem to happen that cannot be real. Flashbacks relating to their common heritage carry the story to a terrifying and surreal conclusion, bringing their mutual family curse to an end.




Moira's Birthday Early Reader


Book Description

Beloved Robert Munsch stories with text adapted for beginner readers, including a note from the author, reading tips, and reading activities. Moira’s afraid her parents might get upset if they find out she invited the whole school to her birthday party . . . so she just doesn’t tell them. The big day arrives, and grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, aaaaand kindergarten all come knocking down her door. Before long, the house is a total disaster and Moira’s parents are going crazy trying to figure out how to get enough pizzas and birthday cake to feed everyone. Just leave it to Moira—she’ll figure it all out, and even get the house cleaned up in the process! This high-interest and fun story is easily relatable for all kids: trying to pick who you invite to your birthday party is tricky for kids of any age!







Blood Red Road


Book Description

This fast-paced YA debut novel has it all: smart, savvy characters making their way through an eerily dystopian society, with all the requisite action, adventure and romance characteristic of the genre vividly and at times, chillingly, portrayed. In a wild and lawless future, where life is cheap and survival is hard, eighteen-year-old Saba lives with her father, her twin brother Lugh, her young sister Emmi and her pet crow Nero. Theirs is a hard and lonely life. The family resides in a secluded shed, their nearest neighbour living many miles away and the lake, their only source of water and main provider of food, gradually dying from the lack of rain. But Saba's father refuses to leave the place where he buried his beloved wife, Allis, nine years ago. Allis died giving birth to Emmi, and Saba has never forgiven her sister for their mother's death. But while she despises Emmi, Saba adores her twin brother Lugh. Golden-haired and blue-eyed, loving and good, he seems the complete opposite to dark-haired Saba, who is full of anger and driven by a ruthless survival instinct. To Saba, Lugh is her light and she is his shadow, he is the day, she is the nighttime, he is beautiful, she is ugly, he is good, she is bad. So Saba's small world is brutally torn apart, when a group of armed riders arrives five day's after the twin's eighteenth birthday snatch Lugh away. Saba's rage is so wild, that she manages to drive the men away, but not before they have captured Lugh and killed their father. And here begins Saba's epic quest to rescue Lugh, during which she is tested by trials she could not have imagined, and one that takes the reader on breathtaking ride full or romance, physical adventure and unforgettably vivid characters, making this a truly sensational YA debut novel.