A lesbian parolee re-integrates into life in DC in a dark comedy about the dangers and delights of humiliation. Desiree Schulman is home from federal prison--almost. When Des returns to Washington, DC under "conditional release," she wants three things: to repair her relationships, to practice humility, and to stay out of prison. So she reconnects with her local sadomasochists' group, and pursues an elusive ex. She takes a state-mandated job cleaning (and judging) other people's houses, flings a few prayers at whatever Higher Power might be listening, and spends her group therapy trying to justify her happy childhood to the women of her halfway house. But Des's downwardly-mobile skid through the gentrifying city is more dangerous than she realizes. Behind a high fence in wealthy Upper Northwest, a cult is preying on vulnerable women. And when Des discovers their secret, she'll have to find out whether she's willing to risk her own freedom for somebody else's. Set in the shadow of the 2016 elections, Punishment is a story about all the ways we surrender: the ridiculous ways and the sublime ways and the sad sordid ways; the ways which damage us and the ways which may, if we're lucky, heal us.

Abraham Mapu (1808-1867) was one of the first, & finest, of the novelists to write in Hebrew. Heavily influenced by a wide range of sources, the Bible, the Romantic Novelists, & renewed pride in ancient Jewish history, his works recall the finest works of writers such as Flaubert & other great romantic novelists.

Points out that a woman who likes numbers, figures things out precisely, and can see things in her head, has some of the skills needed to be an engineer.

Many of us never explore the effects WWII had on future generations and how all our lives might be different if there had been no war. More than 60 international writers have contributed their family's experiences to this anthology. Their stories include Allied and Axis veterans, POWs, partisans, women aviators, camp survivors, and civilians on the home front. Many of our writers had to overcome a great sadness as they wrote, but despite this felt it was important to document these, the darkest days of our history. The strength, courage, and perseverance in these stories reminds us that the human spirit will not be broken. Experience WWII through these stories of incredible men and women who lived it.

Sue is trying to forget a broken love affair when she meets Ross Bryant. Handsome and successful, he is everything any woman could want -- but Sue isn't just any woman. Although she allows Ross to make love to her, her whole being is still wrapped-up in the tortured affair with the married Paul. Bewildered and shattered, Sue contemplates the two men in her life -- the darkly handsome Ross, the debonair Paul who desperately wants her back. But how does a woman choose, or reject? How can she settle for a love less true and passionate than the one she knew?

While waiting in line for apple pie at a party, Imogene Gilfeather, a lingerie designer who does not understand the reason for romance, meets Wally Yez, a scientist whose business card says “An Answer for Everything.” Imogene is told that Wally is the perfect guy. (“Perfect,” she replies, “is not my type.”) He is told that her company, Featherware, manufactures intimates ( that gets his attention). Unfazed by Imogene’s indifference (who needs love when you have a career, friends, and an undemanding affair with a married man?), Wally resolves to win her over. E-mails turn into late-night phone calls; one date turns into two and then into more. Thus begins the most absurd and amusingly unbalanced relationship to grace the pages of a novel. Wally is certain he and Imogene are meant for each other (They both use mechanical pencils! Neither has had mumps! They are so alike!), but convincing his beloved is another matter. (“Do you know why it is I don’t have pierced ears?” she asks. “Because it’s too permanent.”) In defiance of the odds, or the gods, or perhaps just Imogene’s qualms, Wally and Imogene become a pair. They celebrate their anniversaries—the first time they touched each other on purpose, took public transportation together, saw the other with wet hair. But can they possibly end as happily as they’ve begun? (“Does he really have a cowlick? If yes, no bed will ever be big enough.”) Made up of hundreds of chaplettes, clever illustrations, and darkly funny commentary on getting together and staying the course, Starting from Happy is a cunning and sophisticated send-up of coupledom that showcases one of the finest comic writers of our time.

"Marjorie Agosin's intensely personal long poem The Light of Desire is both a secular and sacred meditation on love and its meanings in the land of Israel. Following the tradition of the Song of Songs and the secular poetry of Sepharad, the beloved in The Light of Desire is both physical and metaphorical. The lovers' bodies are the paths, the geography, leading not only from desire to sensual pleasure, but to memory and illumination. The light on the pink stones of Jerusalem, the sunlight of Galilee, from hills to the sea, the fragrant air and "mantle of stars," all become one in this tender, rhapsodic expression of longing and desire. This is not unrequited love, but rather a reciprocal passion that brings exquisite pleasure, pain, a sense of fragility, and the hope and belief in that which is eternal."--Jacket.

Hamlet tells Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. In Double Vision , philosopher and literary critic Tzachi Zamir argues that there are more things in Hamlet than are dreamt of--or at least conceded--by most philosophers. Making an original and persuasive case for the philosophical value of literature, Zamir suggests that certain important philosophical insights can be gained only through literature. But such insights cannot be reached if literature is deployed merely as an aesthetic sugaring of a conceptual pill. Philosophical knowledge is not opposed to, but is consonant with, the literariness of literature. By focusing on the experience of reading literature as literature and not philosophy, Zamir sets a theoretical framework for a philosophically oriented literary criticism that will appeal both to philosophers and literary critics. Double Vision is concerned with the philosophical understanding induced by the aesthetic experience of literature. Literary works can function as credible philosophical arguments--not ones in which claims are conclusively demonstrated, but in which claims are made plausible. Such claims, Zamir argues, are embedded within an experiential structure that is itself a crucial dimension of knowing. Developing an account of literature's relation to knowledge, morality, and rhetoric, and advancing philosophical-literary readings of Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet , and King Lear , Zamir shows how his approach can open up familiar texts in surprising and rewarding ways.

When George Bolton returns home to Devon at the end of the war, Rita assumes that her childhood sweetheart will marry her and that their future will be a reassuring continuation of their past. But the boy who joined the RAF has come back a man, and a man irrevocably changed by the horrors that he has seen. Unable to settle back into the sleepy seaside village, George resolves to spend a year on the family farm in Argentina, and, despite her disappointment, Rita promises to wait for him. Rita keeps her promise. But for George there are irresistible temptations, and an agonising choice to make ...

Surprise your mum with a chainsaw, be a bigger star than Tom Cruise, save the world with a plate of veggies, start your new life in a taxi, rescue your family with a tomato, send your dad into a panic with a tractor, do a good deed with a paper bag on your head pack your bags for a trip to the spleen, upset your auntie with ten kilos of chocolate, swap a bomb for three ice-creams on a train . . . and lots more.

"A community college professor whose career has stagnated, and a wife and mother whose marriage has tumbled into a spiral of apathy and distrust, Lena is frustrated at the seeming "impossibility of happiness." As Lena makes her way to present a paper at a remote New England conference, a chance encounter with an old schoolmate a once average-seeming teenager who has since achieved international fame as a human rights advocate-catapults Lena into memories of their life changing summer together, as counselors at a summer camp in the backwoods of rural Russia during the massive cultural changes of perestroika in the 1980s"--

AN IRRESISTIBLE PROPOSAL Allie Dickenson couldn't believe she was marrying her brooding boss, Lucas Taylor, the man she'd been fantasizing about for the past year. But when he proposed a temporary union in exchange for helping her with her ailing father, she couldn't say no ... A FAMILY TO CALL HIS OWN Lucas desperately wanted a child, and marrying his loyal secretary would get his foot in the adoption agency's door. Although the jaded millionaire swore no woman could melt his steely defenses, he found himself powerfully drawn to his beautiful bride-and their sizzling night of passion result.

WILL A READY-MADE FAMILY BRING HIM BACK FROM THE BRINK? After a tragic chain of events nearly destroyed his life, Jameson O'Connell returned to the one place that he'd ever considered home. However, as soon as the brooding bachelor set foot back in Hart Valley, he reeled from the discovery that one night of frenzied passion with the tantalizing Nina Russo had brought a beautiful little boy into the world. After the shock subsided, the tortured town outcast insisted on claiming Nina as his bride. But despite the insatiable hunger that elevated them to exquisite heights in each other's arms, y.