Pocket Shop

In one of the most significant slave narratives ever written, Harriet Jacobs, born a slave to mulatto parents in 1813 North Carolina, recounts her remarkable story. From her sale to an abusive master, to her bid for freedom as the lover of a white man, to her ultimate and harrowing emancipation, this work is an outstanding example of a woman's extraordinary courage--and one of the most provocative first-person accounts of slavery in American history.

Afterword by Myrlie Evers-Williams

"One of the major autobiographies of the Afro-American tradition."-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

American feminist leader and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was also an outspoken critic of the Bible because the scriptures often portray women as inferior and have been used by men to justify unequal treatment of women in society. The 1870 revision of the Authorised English Version of the Bible prepared by an all-male committee from the Church of England so greatly dissatisfied Stanton that in response she courageously decided to compile a commentary by prominent feminists on the many Bible passages that refer to women. The result was "The Woman's Bible", a fascinating book that explores, among other things, the documentation that Jesus believed in equal rights for men and women; the ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy on the part of the church hierarchy; and the slaughter of women who were slaves, wives of drunkards, or were believed to be witches. The insight that Stanton and her fellow commentators provide into biblical writings and into the minds of women of her era is enlightening and serves as an inspiration to today's feminist movement.

Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and bestselling author, recounts the astounding revolution in women's lives over the past 50 years, with her usual "sly wit and unfussy style" (People).

When Everything Changed begins in 1960, when most American women had to get their husbands' permission to apply for a credit card. It ends in 2008 with Hillary Clinton's historic presidential campaign. This was a time of cataclysmic change, when, after four hundred years, expectations about the lives of American women were smashed in just a generation.

A comprehensive mix of oral history and Gail Collins's keen research--covering politics, fashion, popular culture, economics, sex, families, and work--When Everything Changed is the definitive book on five crucial decades of progress. The enormous strides made since 1960 include the advent of the birth control pill, the end of "Help Wanted--Male" and "Help Wanted--Female" ads, and the lifting of quotas for women in admission to medical and law schools. Gail Collins describes what has happened in every realm of women's lives, partly through the testimonies of both those who made history and those who simply made their way.

Picking up where her highly lauded book America's Women left off, When Everything Changed is a dynamic story, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone for which this beloved New York Times columnist is known. Older readers, men and women alike, will be startled as they are reminded of what their lives once were--"Father Knows Best" and "My Little Margie" on TV; daily weigh-ins for stewardesses; few female professors; no women in the Boston marathon, in combat zones, or in the police department. Younger readers will see their history in a rich new way. It has been an era packed with drama and dreams--some dashed and others realized beyond anyone's imagining.

The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.

"A Journey of the Heart [Book II] shows the same strong storytelling ability of the first book. The language is still almost musical and wraps its sweet spell around you.… Storylines that were just starting to grow in the first book are also very well developed here. Intrigue and conflict are fleshed out and take some surprising twists. All that I had hoped for, reading the first book, begins to bloom.…"
--from a review by Kate Genet on the website, Kissed By Venus

"Catherine Wilson creates a magical sense of place, and of belonging to that place. Within that, she also tells how it feels to not belong. … Ms. Wilson’s is a tale of bone wisdom. It whispers of what we remember when we sleep at night and dream. It calls us to remember that women had, and still have, a wise and powerful place in the world."
--from a review on the blog, The Rainbow Reader, by Baxter Clare Trautman, author of The River Within

"In this book we see Tamras’ world open from the House of Merin and its immediate environs into the lands beyond its borders. She meets other peoples, whose ways are different from those she knows. Similarly Tamras’ inner life expands as well: the feelings within her blossom into the romantic love that will be the linchpin her life will hinge on…"
--from a review by Charles Ferguson on the Goodreads website

In Book II of the trilogy, Tamras’s apprenticeship as a warrior isn’t turning out quite the way she expected. Her unconventional choices lead to her crossing swords, almost literally, with Vintel, the war leader of Merin’s house. She finds herself embroiled in a power struggle she is doomed to lose, but the loss sends her on a journey that will change her destiny and decide the fate of her people.

Presented here are all four chapters of Mill's essay written in 1861, which address the legal subordination of women as manifested in their exclusion from the political process and their lack of any rights within marriage. Principally considered is the relation of the sexes within the family structure as a paradigm of, and the seedbed for, the general social and political structure that surrounds it. Edited by Sue Mansfield, this carefully annotated volume also contains an introduction, a list of principal dates in the life of John Stuart Mill, and a bibliography.

"In Book II, Tamras moved from her home into the lands beyond its border. In Book three, the stage widens further: she deals with the struggles of whole peoples. Caught up in intrigues that would once have been far above her, the heroine risks everything unless she can not only learn to swim in treacherous waters, but to master them. The heroine’s inner journey continues to match her outer one. She must confront the meaning not only of personal love, but the love that extends beyond oneself and those we hold dear. Catherine Wilson’s skill at tackling the big issues of love, meaning, and humanity is so deft that it all seemed, to me at least, to flow naturally from her narrative in a way I found technically quite breathtaking.…"
--from a review by Charles Ferguson on the Goodreads website

"Being the third and last volume in a series I enjoyed immensely, I knew that I could expect this last book to deliver a happy and satisfying ending. What I didn’t expect was the intricate and daring storyline of this last volume. It is bigger and broader than what has come before, and it is spectacular. … this time the story unfolds on to a whole new level. More characters, more intrigue, greater losses, wonderful reunions. … There’s no taking the easy road here—the story opened up into unimagined dimensions to tell a tale that really is that of a hero.
"… When Women Were Warriors manages to blend mythic storytelling with characters who feel so real you could imagine stepping into the pages and having a conversation with them. A Hero’s Tale skilfully weaves the questions of love, faith and fairness into a dramatic story; not only of a relationship between the main characters, but of a quest so much bigger it takes the breath away. There is everything you could wish for here – power struggles, forces for good and evil, dramatic tests of faith, daring rescues, fatal rivalry, but it is managed with such a deft hand that in the end it is all one beautiful story. What else is there to say? This is not just lesbian fiction, but a story about being human. It’s not to be missed.
--from a review by Kate Genet on the website, Kissed By Venus

In Book III of the trilogy, Tamras must make her own hero’s journey. She ventures into the unknown and encounters a more formidable enemy than any she has ever faced. Character is destiny, and the destiny of Tamras and all her people will depend upon choices that come less from the skills she has been taught than from the person she has become, from her own heart.

Forty years ago, most Americans said they didn't know anyone who was homosexual and claimed to know little or nothing about homosexuality. Today, there's hardly a sitcom without a prominent gay character, movies like Milk and Brokeback Mountain have won Oscars, and even People magazine celebrated the marriage of Ellen Degeneres and Portia DeRossi. A Queer Thing Happened to America chronicles the amazing transformation of America over the last forty years, and addresses the question head-on: Is there really a gay agenda, or is it a fiction of the religious right? Written in a lively and compelling style, but backed with massive research and extensive interaction with the GLBT community, this forthright and yet compassionate book looks at the extraordinary impact gay activism has had on American society. This could easily be the most controversial book of the decade. Read it and find out why the publishing world was afraid to touch it.