Brooke O'Connor--elegant, self-possessed, and kind--has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke's high school boyfriend, Alex--now divorced and mourning the death of his young son--unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair. For fifteen years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial. With her marriage--and her emotional equilibrium--at stake, Brooke must confront what she has been unwilling to face for so long. But the truth is not what Brooke believes it to be.

The Lost Daughter

Literature & Fiction

Ferriss, Lucy

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

New from the author of The Lost Daughter Afia Satar is studious, modest, and devout. The daughter of a landholding family in northern Pakistan, Afia has enrolled in an American college with the dream of returning to her country as a doctor. But when a photo surfaces online of Afia holding hands with an American boy, she is suddenly no longer safe—even from the family that cherishes her. Rising sports star Shahid Satar has been entrusted by his family to watch over Afia in this strange New England landscape. He has sworn to protect his beloved sister from the dangerous customs of America, from its loose morals and easy virtue. Shahid was the one who convinced their parents to allow her to come to the United States. He never imagined he’d be ordered to cleanse the stain of her shame... READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

A Sister to Honor: A Novel

BERKLEY

Longing to escape her dreary Hudson River home, Gwyn Stickley finds the fabric of her life changing when her best friend becomes pregnant and a local storekeeper is accused of child molestation. 15,000 first printing.

Against Gravity: A Novel

Simon&Schuster

After Roe vs. Wade is overturned in 2011, Phoebe performs illegal "misconceptions" in her basement, until the suicide of a twelve-year old incest victim betrays her to the police, and she must decide between anonymity and moral righteousness. 12,500 first printing.

The Misconceiver: A Novel

NY 1985 first edition. Schocken. hardcover octavo. 184p. ISBN 0-8052-3976-6. Fine in VG plus dj. no owner marks.

Philip's Girl

See Description

Sleeping With the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren (Southern Literary Studies)

To her self-posed questions “What is a woman’s narrative?” and “Why Warren?” Lucy Ferriss responds with an acutely perceptive examination that is groundbreaking in two regards. Sleeping with the Boss opens up the feminist critical project by showing that author gender has no bearing on the creation of feminine-structured narrative. Moreover, by exposing a considerable “female consciousness” in the major fictional works of Robert Penn Warren, it departs dramatically from previous criticism of Warren.
Ferriss, a novelist as well as a critic, expands on narrative poetics to suggest that female subjectivity is the central concept in defining a woman’s narrative. Specifically, the subjective voice of a female character is present to such a degree that the traditional structures of masculine narrative (described as linear, forward moving, and authoritative) can no longer hold. Leapfrogging over existing feminist theory, she asserts that such female consciousness may permeate the writing of men as well as women.
Within Warren’s traditional masculine narrative style, Ferriss detects the complicating presence of female voice, with its potential to alter the focus and direction of the plot. As she demonstrates, the degree to which Warren distances himself from or steps inside his female characters’ consciousness varies enormously across his career. Still, his novels reveal the consistent pattern of a major woman character in a liaison with a wealthy or powerful man; those sexual relationships, Ferriss maintains, are pivotal in establishing female personae whose subjective effect on the narrative disturbs or overturns conventional readings of the novels’ meaning. For example, she presents a startlingly subversive analysis of the character Amantha Starr (Band of Angels), heretofore viewed as a simpering victim by critics. 
In addition to nine of Warren’s novels, Ferriss critiques his book-length poem, Brother to Dragons, which in the powerful voice of Lucy Lewis exhibits the moral and narrative limitations of the male speakers even as that female voice is itself thwarted and cut off. She also explores Warren’s frequent motif of the female empty-handed gesture, reading in it the author’s own assumption of the feminine perspective by expressing his abdication of narrative authority and ambivalence toward ascribing meaning.
Sleeping with the Boss represents a new generation of Warren scholarship, revitalizing the poet-novelist’s complex oeuvre in light of contemporary concerns. It provokes a radical rethinking of some of the plot elements taken for granted by other critics of Warren’s work and offers a wide range of new ways to encounter his female characters.

History & Criticism

LSU Press

Business & Money

Economics

In the autumn of 1972, Lucy Ferriss, then a college student in California, was preparing for the Veiled Prophet Ball at which she was to be presented to St. Louis society. Once the largest cotillion in the country, the invitation-only ball was unique among society events not only for the legend and mystery surrounding its namesake but also for its setting in a public, taxpayer-funded arena and for its accompanying parade. In the late sixties and early seventies, with racial tensions at a boiling point and urban renewal failing, the exclusively white male Christian membership of the Veiled Prophet Society and the Veiled Prophet’s costume—eerily reminiscent of a Klansman’s—attracted the ire of ACTION, a militant civil rights group. Before the 1972 ball, ACTION founder Percy Green, himself a native St. Louisan, sent letters inviting all of the debutantes to join in the protest: “ACTION understands that you hate being part of this upcoming white racist Veiled Prophet Ball as we hate you being forced to participate by your parents.” The letter didn’t persuade Ferriss, who felt she owed it to her father to participate. She wrote back: “Don’t you have bigger fish to fry? This is just a stupid party. We are slaughtering people in Southeast Asia. Let this one go. It will fall of its own weight.” But ACTION did not let this one go. On the night of the ball, as Ferriss bowed in obeisance to the crowd and took her place on the stage, a woman swooped down onto the stage and knocked off the Veiled Prophet’s hat and veil, revealing his identity. In the era of monumental Vietnam War protests, unmasking a wealthy and powerful old man might have seemed a feeble act of revolution, but this act forever changed the Veiled Prophet Ball in St. Louis. Ferriss’s memoir blends regional history, national history, and her own personal history to create a fast-paced narrative that follows two time lines. One is the dramatic and often funny story of her attending the exclusive ball, having eaten half a pan of marijuana brownies beforehand, with a Jewish hippie who smelled of “unwashed beard.” The other story takes place thirty years later as Ferriss returns to St. Louis from her home on the East Coast to track down some of ACTION’s principal activists as well as key figures in the Veiled Prophet Society. Over the course of this engaging story, Ferriss undergoes her own unveiling, as she discusses and comes to terms with her family; the past, present, and future of St. Louis; and the cultural politics that frame young women’s entrance into society.

Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante (Volume 1)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

University of Missouri

Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories

Mid List Pr

Brooke O'Connor-elegant, self-possessed, and kind-has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke's high school boyfriend, Alex-now divorced and mourning the death of his young son-unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair.For fifteen years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial. With her marriage-and her emotional equilibrium-at stake, Brooke must confront what she has been unwilling to face for so long.But the truth is not what Brooke believes it to be.

Women's Fiction

Tantor Media, Inc.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ferriss, Lucy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ferriss, Lucy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ferriss, Lucy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Lost Daughter

A Sister to Honor: A Novel

Against Gravity: A Novel

The Misconceiver: A Novel

Philip's Girl

Sleeping With the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren (Southern Literary Studies)

Sleeping With the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren (Southern Literary Studies)

Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante (Volume 1)

Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories

The Lost Daughter