Promising Young Women

Jane Peters is an adrift twenty-something by day, and a world-weary agony aunt by night. But when an office party goes too far, Jane dissolves into the high-stakes world of being the Other Woman: a role she has the right advice for, but not the smarts to follow through on. What starts out as a drunken mistake quickly unravels as Jane discovers that sex and power go hand-in-hand, and that it's hard to keep your head when you've become someone else's dirty little secret. And soon, her friendships, her sanity and even her life are put into jeopardy...

Caroline O'Donoghue

Literature & Fiction

virago press uk

'Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!' MARGARET ATWOOD (via Twitter)\nThis brilliant and bitingly funny novel-in-stories, set in and around a single crumbling apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine, heralds the arrival of a major new talent.\nA cast of unforgettable characters--citizens of the small industrial town of Kirovka--populate Maria Reva's ingeniously entwined tales that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Weaving the strands of the narrative together is an unforgettable, chameleon-like young woman named Zaya: an orphan turned beauty-pageant crasher who survives the extraordinary circumstances of her childhood through a compelling combination of ferocity, intelligence, stubbornness and wit.\nInspired by her own family's history, Reva's Good Citizens Need Not Fear takes us from paranoia to tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history.\n'A comic triumph' GLOBE AND MAIL\n'Bang-on brilliant' MIRIAM TOEWS\n'Luminous' YANN MARTEL\n'Outstanding' ANTHONY DOERR\n'Maria Reva's enthralling debut of interlinked short stories achieves the double effect of timelessness and timeliness' KAPKA KASSABOVA, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY

Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Reva, Maria

Humor & Satire

A searing debut novel that explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through an immigrant family in Alaska\nIn Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of five struggling to make ends meet in rural Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman, while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When eleven-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.\nRoutine takes over for the grieving family: the siblings care for each other as they befriend a neighboring family and explore the woods; distance grows between the parents as they deal with their loss separately. But things spiral when the father, increasingly guilt-ridden after Ruby’s death, is sued for not properly installing a septic tank, which results in the death of a little girl. In the ensuing chaos, what really happened to Ruby finally emerges.\nWith flowing prose that evokes the terrifying beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, Lin explores the fallout after losing a child and the way in which a family is forced to grieve in a place that doesn’t yet feel like home. Emotionally raw and subtly suspenseful, The Unpassing is a deeply felt family saga that dismisses the American dream for a harsher, but ultimately more profound, reality.

The Unpassing

Lin, Chia-Chia

'There is so much to love and admire in these stories - their understanding of heartbreak, their attention to affection and love across many divides' KAMILA SHAMSIE\n'Listen to me, child. You will be a woman soon and must behave well and with modesty. The Kazi will ask you three times whether you will marry Kalloo Mian. Now don't you be shameless, like these modern girls, and shout gleefully "Yes". Be modest and cry softly and say "Hoon".'\nA marriage is arranged between a little servant girl and a middle-aged cook with an opium habit; an idealistic political worker faces disillusionment; a man returns from years studying in England to a wife he scarcely knows; a conventional bride has her first encounter with her husband's 'emancipated' friends.\nTelling of the lives of servants and children, of conflict between the old traditions and new ways, and exploring the human repercussions of the Muslim/Hindu divide, these twelve stories present a moving and vivid picture of life in India in the mid-twentieth century. To each episode Attia Hosain brings a superb imaginative understanding and a sense of the poignancy of the smallest of human dramas.\nAttia Hosain published only two books, but her writing has influenced generations of writers. Discover Sunlight on a Broken Column, Hosain's acclaimed only novel - a coming-of-age story set against the turbulent background of Partition, also published in Virago Modern Classics.

Phoenix Fled

Hosain, Attia

Contemporary

8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster: The International Bestseller

Mirinae Lee

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

maya-angelou

Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names--Astarte, Isis, Ishtar, among others--she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. Beyond being worshiped for fertility, she was revered as the wise creator and the one source of universal order. Under her, women's roles differed markedly from those in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Women bought and sold property, traded in the marketplace, and the inheritance of title and property was passed from mother to daughter.How did the change come about? By documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmas, Merlin Stone details a most ancient the patriarchal re-imaging of the Goddess as a wanton, deprave figure. This is the portrait the laid the foundation for one of culture's greatest shams--the legend of Adam and fallen Eve.

The Paradise papers: The suppression of women's rites

Stone, Merlin

Religion & Spirituality

"Wealth, celebrity, sexuality and a tangled web of secrets. . . . Oh boy, what a mix. And it works. . . . It was my first introduction to this writer and I'll be coming back for more."—Irish Examiner
"A fine piece of writing . . . a powerful talent . . . a tough, poignant book."—Guardian (UK)
"Highly entertaining . . . offers a salutary corrective to the airbrushed picture presented by the Hollywood publicity machine."—Daily Mail
They say the truth matters. Not in Hollywood, it doesn't. In Hollywood you need to lie because Hollywood doesn't need lesbians. That's the deal, and Yana Ivanova is Hollywood's biggest star. So Yana Ivanova has a boyfriend called Jimmy. And a personal assistant called Penny. But hey, they live in a very glamorous closet.
But then letters start to arrive. From a writer who knows the truth. Yana fears blackmail, but she is terrified of bad publicity. And she clearly has a lot to lose.
And soon there's an accident—or maybe it's murder. Not that it matters—this is Hollywood. And more than anything else, the show must go on. All anyone expects—from other people, and even from themselves—is what Hollywood needs: Parallel Lies.
Stella Duffy is an acclaimed writer of both crime fiction and literary fiction. She has won the Short Story Dagger Award, and she was named Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008.

Parallel Lies. Stella Duffy

Duffy, Stella

Fascinating, incisive, intelligent and never afraid of being controversial, Elaine Showalter introduces us to more than 250 writers. Here are the famous and expected names, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Paley, Toni Morrison, and Jodi Picoult. And also many successful and acclaimed yet little-known writers, from the early American bestselling novelist Catherine Sedgwick to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Glaspell. A JURY OF HER PEERS is an irresistible invitation to discover great authors never before encountered and to return to familiar books with a deeper appreciation. It is a monumental work that enriches our understanding of American literary history and culture.

A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx

Politics & Social Sciences

Showalter

Women's Studies

As a general rule I try to maintain a balanced and realistic approach to life. I'm convinced that the best place for a rabbit's foot is at the end of a rabbit's leg. And if there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, they go about their business and I go about mine. But although this approach keeps life on an even keel and prevents the stress of both over-excitement and grave disappointment, I do find that the perfectly mundane existence that I strive for and attain can occasionally seem a little flat, a bit lacking in absurdity. So from time to time, when a rattling cliche, or a good thumping banality presents itself, I'm inclined to give it a run for its money. Hand me a candle and I'll burn it at both ends, give me a cart and I'll put it before the horse.'In her inimitable style, coupled with her sharp wit and idiosyncratic views, Diski reviews her own experiences, an array of key historical figures and pertinent topics. Ranging from 'The Sexual Life of Catherine M.' and her ponderings on the thrill of guilt, to the biblical role of water in 'Did Jesus walk on water because he couldn't swim?' this is vintage Diski.

A View From The Bed And Other Observations

Diski, Jenny

Essays & Correspondence

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