Showing results by narrator "Renata Friedman" in All Categories

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.

Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.” But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape—and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline’s next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls’ clandestine activity.

During the perils of World War II in Alexandria, Egypt, two people from different worlds will find their way back to each other time and time again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, James and Yvette establish roots in England hoping for a new beginning, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them and the path back to each other is one they both must be brave enough to face. Decades later, and ten years after his wife’s death, James moves to the English village of Upton seeking change.

Michael and Megan Fitzgerald are siblings who share a terrifying past. Both adopted, and now grown — Michael is a long-haul truck driver, Megan a college student majoring in psychology — they trust each other before anyone else. They've had to. Their parents are public intellectuals, an Ivy League clinical psychologist and a renowned psychiatrist, and they brought up their adopted children in a rarefied, experimental environment. It sheltered them from the world's harsh realities, but it also forced secrets upon them, secrets they keep at all costs.

Avery Bloom, who's bookish, intense, and afraid of many things, particularly deep water, lives in New York City. Bett Devlin, who's fearless, outgoing, and loves all animals as well as the ocean, lives in California. What they have in common is that they are both 12 years old and are both being raised by single, gay dads. When their dads fall in love, Bett and Avery are sent, against their will, to the same sleepaway camp. Their dads hope they will find common ground and become friends - and possibly, one day, even sisters.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.

On paper, Jazmine, Judith, Erin, and Sara have little in common - they’re very different people leading very different lives. And yet at book club meetings in an historic carriage house turned bookstore, they bond over a shared love of reading (and more than a little wine) as well as the growing realization that their lives are not turning out like they expected.

Most of us have at some point in our lives felt like an outsider, sometimes considering ourselves "too weird" to fit in. Growing up as a Russian immigrant in West Texas, Olga Khazan always felt there was something different about her. This feeling has permeated her life, and as she embarked on a science writing career, she realized there were psychological connections between this feeling of being an outsider and both her struggles and successes later in life.

With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity.

Camille Prescott has it all. A doting husband, two children, a charming home in a seaside enclave, and a beautiful, fixed smile that exudes normalcy. But behind her polished mask lurks a much different Camille—one with a padlocked vault of secrets. Raised by a vindictive and psychotic woman, Camille has gone to great lengths to bury her past and for good reason: if her mother ever finds her, she will kill her.

A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.

Lilly Bly desperately wants to have a baby. She is struggling with infertility and bad spending habits when her husband, Jack, gets a new job that moves them from Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin. Impractical Lilly falls in love with a decrepit mansion well out of their price range—she is convinced that she will finally get pregnant and have a baby in this house—and Jack agrees to it. But when Lilly learns that her dream house was the site of a gruesome triple homicide/suicide in the 1950s, she begins to experience strange occurrences that soon lead her to believe the house is haunted.

An eight-year-old trauma victim is enlisted as an underground courier, rushing frozen organs through the alleys of Eastern Europe. A young janitor transforms discarded objects into a fantastical, sprawling miniature city until a shocking discovery forces him to rethink his creation. A brazen child tells off a pack of schoolyard tormentors with the spirited invention of an 11th commandment. A wounded man drives eastward, through tears and grief, toward an unexpected transcendence.

Snake Oil has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Who are the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron? If you need to ask then you have not been anywhere near a television, computer, or disco recently. No other superheroes are as dedicated or dazzling as these gals. Some of them tuck, some of them are pure trout, but they all kick ass in high heels and rollerskates. A.C. Wise's debut collection of heroic tales is half whimsy and half 1950s pulp reborn for the 21st century.

Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books.

As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Colshares is plucked from her too-tame existence when she is invited to tour as the only White backup singer for Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes. The exciting years she spends as a Shakette are a mixed blessing, however, because when she ultimately submits to a conventional life of marriage and children, she finds herself stuck in bittersweet recollections of life on the road.

In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator. Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most.

For 30 years, Nadine Kingsley has kept a heart-wrenching secret. When a letter arrives threatening to reveal the truth that could destroy her tight-knit family, Nadine embarks on a difficult journey to explain her painful decision, especially to her youngest daughter, Autumn.