The Lunar Housewife


Book Description

A stylish and suspenseful historical page-turner following an up-and-coming journalist who stumbles onto a web of secrets, deceptions, and mysteries at a popular new literary magazine--inspired by the true story of CIA intervention in Cold War American arts and letters. "Wonderfully entertaining and slyly subversive. Caroline Woods pens a story that will linger in the memory!" —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network Louise Leithauser's star is on the rise. She’s filing stories at her boyfriend Joe's new literary magazine and the novel she's writing is going swimmingly. But when she overhears Joe and his business partner fighting about listening devices and death threats, Louise can't help but investigate, and learns that someone is pulling Joe’s strings--someone who doesn't want artists criticizing Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, opportunities are falling in Louise's lap that she'd have to be crazy to refuse. Can Louise let doors keep opening for her, while the establishment censors her fellow writers? As her suspicions mount, Louise's novel is colored by her newfound knowledge. And when she’s forced to consider her future sooner than she planned, Louise needs to decide whether she can trust Joe for the rest of her life. Full of period detail and nail-biting tension, Caroline Woods channels 1950s New York glamour as Louise comes face to face with shocking secrets, brutal sexism, and life or death consequences. The Lunar Housewife is a historical thriller rich with meaning for modern readers.




Fraulein M.


Book Description

In this multilayered historical novel that explores family secrets and hidden identities, “Woods skillfully captures the disorienting mixture of heady freedom and mounting fear characterizing 1930s Berlin, and the political and gender issues she raises add contemporary relevancy” (Publishers Weekly). Berlin, 1931: Sisters raised in a Catholic orphanage, Berni and Grete Metzger are each other's whole world. That is, until life propels them to opposite sides of seedy, splendid, and violent Weimar Berlin. Berni becomes a cigarette girl, a denizen of the cabaret scene alongside her transgender best friend, who is considering a risky gender reassignment surgery. Meanwhile Grete is hired as a maid to a Nazi family, and begins to form a complicated bond with their son. As Germany barrels toward the Third Reich and ruin, one of the sisters must make a devastating choice. South Carolina, 1970: With the recent death of her father, Janeen Moore yearns to know more about her family history, especially the closely guarded story of her mother's youth in Germany. One day she intercepts a letter intended for her mother: a confession written by a German woman, a plea for forgiveness. What role does Janeen's mother play in this story, and why does she seem so distressed by recent news that a former SS officer has resurfaced in America? Fräulein M. abounds with hidden identities and family secrets. With its multilayered exploration of family ties, hard choices, and the weight of history in our lives, the novel shines light on a brilliant new voice.




How to Create the Perfect Wife


Book Description

A captivating tale of one man's mission to groom his ideal mate. Thomas Day, an 18th-century British writer and radical, knew exactly the sort of woman he wanted to marry. Pure and virginal, yet tough and hardy, and completely subervient to his whims. But after being rejected by a number of spirited young women, Day concluded that the perfect partner he envisioned simply did not exist in frivolous, fashion-obsessed Georgian society. Rather than conceding defeat and giving up on his search for the woman of his dreams, however, Day set out to create her. So begins the extraordinary true story at the heart of How to Create the Perfect Wife. A few days after he turned twenty-one and inherited a large fortune, Day adopted two young orphans from the Founding Hospital and, guided by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the principles of the Enlightenment, attempted to teach them to be model wives. Day's peculiar experiment inevitably backfired -- though not before he had taken his theories about marriage, education, and femininity to shocking extremes. Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism -- and deep contradictions -- at the heart of the enlightenment.




The Italian Wife


Book Description

The New York Times bestselling author of The Russian Concubine returns with a stunning new novel set in Mussolini’s Italy. Isabella Berotti is an architect, helping to create showpieces that will reflect the glory of her country’s Fascist leaders. She is not a deeply political sort, but designing these buildings of grandiose beauty helps her forget about the pain she’s felt since her husband was murdered years ago. One of her greatest accomplishments is the clock tower in the town of Bellina, outside Rome. But as she is admiring it one day, a woman approaches her, asking her to watch her ten-year-old daughter. Minutes later, to Isabella’s horror, the woman leaps to her death from that very clock tower. There are photos of the woman right after the suicide, taken by Roberto Falco. A propaganda photographer for Il Duce, he is expected to show his nation in the most flattering light. But what Roberto and Isabella have seen reflects a more brutal reality, and in a place where everyone is watching and friends turn on friends to save themselves, their decision to take a closer look may be a dangerous mistake.




Haunted Delaware


Book Description

"Experience a haunted tour of the First State with ten terrifying true tales of ghosts and the supernatural. This is a book of hair-raising entertainment, saturated with rich historical detail. Learn about the unsettled spirits of Woodburn, the governor's mansion, including the old man who steals only the cellar's best wines and the moaning spook who has been doomed to roam the gardens ever since the days when Woodburn was a station on the Underground Railroad. Also discover the stories behind the ghastly corpses found in one of Delaware's most beautiful mansions, the vile witch who guards a legendary sunken treasure off Cape Henlopen, and what made a certain baby-sitter shiver with fear on hot August night ..."--Back cover




Moon Phase Astrology


Book Description

A guide to understanding the phases of astrological Moon signs and their effects on emotions and personality • Describes the positive and negative character-defining traits of each of the 96 Moon phase/Moon sign combinations • Explains how to use your natal Moon’s sign and phase to predict how current and approaching Moons can affect you • Explores the universal challenges arising during each Moon phase throughout the year and ways to honor each phase as it passes The Moon’s ever-changing phases offer a way to deepen our understanding of our natal Moon sign as well as the Moon’s day-to-day influence on our emotional tides. Through its 8 phases and its wandering dance through each of the 12 signs of the Zodiac--from the Infant’s Moon (the New Moon in Aries) to the Storyteller’s Moon (the Full Moon in Gemini) to the Prophet’s Moon (the waning Balsamic Moon in Aquarius)--the Moon shares its story in 96 different ways. Telling the stories of the heart of all 96 Moon phase and Moon sign combinations, Raven Kaldera explains the creative gifts and emotional challenges bestowed upon those born under each Moon archetype as well as how to nurture the positive traits and improve--or at least discourage--the negative ones. Exploring the influences each Moon archetype has on us as it passes, the author reveals which Moons are the most difficult, what innate qualities each Moon brings out in us, and what we can do to honor each Moon. Including evocative quotes illuminating the nature of each Moon, Kaldera shows how to use your natal Moon’s astrological sign and phase to find your “hidden Moons”--the shadows cast by passing Moons--and predict how current and approaching Moons will affect you.




The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.




The Mesmerist


Book Description

A tightly plotted page-turner ripped from the headlines of history, as three very different women must work together to stop a killer and save the truest home they've ever known. Before hypnotism, there was Mesmerism. And in 1894 Minneapolis, in the wake of a national financial crisis, spiritualism of every stripe is all the rage, and women are dying under mysterious circumstances. But until a new guest lands at the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, refusing to speak or explain her arrival, the sordid stories of unexplained deaths seem unconnected. Faith’s reticence is quickly interpreted as malevolence, setting the house abuzz with whispers of dark magic. Abby, a staunch Quaker, lifelong supporter of progressive causes, and the Bethany Home’s treasurer, thinks the rumors of mystical powers swirling around Faith are nonsense, but she recognizes the danger of a good story. Unwilling to allow the Home’s important mission to be clouded by scandal, Abby tasks Faith’s roommate, May, with tracing Faith’s path to the Bethany Home. May is desperate to end her year at Bethany Home engaged and on track to her happily-ever-after—even if her prince charming is Hal, a man she’s not sure she can trust. She uncovers a Minneapolis she never expected as she begins digging into Faith’s shadowy background, and her investigation brings her closer to polite society and Hal than she could have dreamed. The more May learns, the more she’s forced to question the motives of everyone around her, including Abby and Faith, and as more women turn up dead, May must reevaluate the future she wants, and which lies she’s willing to tell, for whom. Rich with tension, suspicion, and sharply observed characters, Caroline Woods reimagines a classic American genre through the eyes of three bold, unforgettable women.




Camp Zero


Book Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick Libby Book Award Winner for Best Diverse Author In a near-future northern settlement, the fates of a young woman, a professor, and a mysterious collective of researchers collide in this mesmerizing and transportive debut that “delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart” (Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author). In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is break­ing ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp—but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she’ll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skill­fully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero’s inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo. Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.




Unsinkable


Book Description

“AN INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER” The Titanic was only the beginning. What she survived has become legend. Inspired by true stories of survival and resilience, Unsinkable entwines the lives of two women, one from World War 1 and another from World War 2, as they face adversity and take hold of the second chances given to them. Violet Jessop is Miss Unsinkable. After her mother becomes too ill to work, the responsibility to provide for the family falls to Violet as the oldest of nine. When the world enters the Great War, she serves as a nurse, helping men who could very well be her brothers. Working as a stewardess and wartime nurse, Violet not only survives a shipwreck but also two sinkings, one on the infamous Titanic. No one can understand why she would return to sea, but something keeps drawing Violet back to the tumultuous waters, where she struggles to put the tragedies of her past behind her and pursue a life and love all her own. Daphne has survived calamity of her own. Daphne Chaundanson grows up as an unwanted child after her mother died in a tragedy. She throws herself into education, collecting languages like candy in a desperate attempt to finally earn her father's approval. When the Special Operations Executive invites her to be an agent in France in World War II, her childhood of anonymity and her love of languages make her the perfect fit. She sees it as an opportunity to help the country she loves and live up to her father's expectations. But the dangers of war challenge Daphne in ways she never could have expected, and the secrets from her own past must be faced for her to truly have a future beyond the conflict--if she can survive it. Inspired by true stories of Violet Jessop and the thirty-nine women of the Special Operations Executive. Two unsinkable women. Two stories of survival, family, and finding one's own happiness. One connection that reshapes both their lives forever. Historical, stand-alone novel Themes of: true events, second chances, and happy endings Book length: approximately 103,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs