Showing results by publisher "She Writes Press" in Literature & Fiction

Based on a true story, this is the tale of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of 18th-century Paris. With a beautiful rival who’s better connected and better trained than she is, Adélaïde faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves.

In the jubilant aftermath of Japan’s surrender in World War II, San Francisco erupts in celebration. But for Sandy Zimmer, the thirty-two-year-old widow publisher of the Prospect newspaper, the revelry masks a darker truth. In the chaos of the VJ-Day Peace Riot, eleven deaths and six rapes take place. Driven by journalistic integrity and battling her own instincts to maintain peace, Sandy directs her paper to investigate the riot.

After David Herron takes his life in the wake of the bursting lending bubble of 2008, those left behind—his wife and daughter, the detective who investigated the suicide, and the banker who called in the loan—learn, as they struggle to remake their worlds, that there is power in forgiveness and unlimited possibility in the unknown.

In the not-so-distant future, organs can be re-grown from a handful of stem cells. Even the most complex organ of all can be reproduced in the lab with nearly perfect accuracy. Nearly. Spurred by personal tragedy, scientist William Dalal works feverishly to improve the lives of brain regeneration patients. For every success however, there is a consequence, and the question arises in his mind: Are they worth it?

It's 1942. Cynical young gossip columnist Jane Benjamin joins FDR’s Office of War Information propaganda unit, aiming to replace big league gossip queen Hedda Hopper and get syndicated across the country. Jane scours the shipyard for a picture perfect Wendy-the-Welder poster girl to boost ship production by coaxing women into the workforce and to get her own name on newspapers everywhere. But when two top candidates die on the job, Jane’s got to choose between personal ambition and service, before the murderer kills another woman welder and America’s best chance of winning the war.

It’s the summer of 2017 in Wellington Beach, California, a suburban coastal town increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices—divisions that change the lives of five neighbors as they search for home and community in a neighborhood where no one can agree who belongs.

In 1660, Amsterdam is the trading and map-printing capital of the world. Anneke van Brug is one of the colorists paid to enhance black-and-white maps for a growing number of collectors. Her artistic talent brings her to the attention of the Blaeu printing house, and she begins to color for a rich merchant, Willem de Groot. But Anneke is not content to simply embellish the work of others; she longs to create maps of her own. Cartography, however, is the domain of men - so it is in secret that she borrows the notes her father made on a trip to Africa in 1642 and sets about designing a new map.

Andrea Hoffman is an overeducated, underemployed, and unmotivated recent college graduate until a harrowing robbery blasts her out of her funk and into a job in the finance world of early 1980s Chicago. At first, it seems like a bad fit. But the world of finance has its own weird charm, and she grows increasingly fascinated by the strange language of trading, the complexity of the stock market, and her colleagues, who navigate it all with ruthless confidence. Even though she has two strikes against her—Jewish and female—Andrea’s quick wit and strong work ethic propels her.

On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a tomboy cub reporter. By night, she struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie. Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring tennis phenom Tommie O’Rourke. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack.

In Weaving Myself Awake, Gail Warner takes us through an intimate inquiry into what is sacred. This book of spoken poems is a late-in-life weaving of heartfelt awareness and an inquiry into the divine feminine that was previously hidden. Accompanied by blended images that speak to the story or theme of a given poem, the book is divided into the following sections, all arenas of life that beckoned Warner’s curiosity and deeper inquiry: longing, birth, grief, grace, seeing, wonder, sanctuary, beauty, empowerment, collaboration, mystery, and joy.

It's 2014, and Amy Daughters is a 46-year old stay-at-home mom living in Dayton, Ohio. She returns to her hometown of Houston over the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss her parents’ estate and finds herself hurled back in time. Suddenly, it’s 1978, and she is forced to spend 36 hours in her childhood home with her nuclear family, including her 10-year old self.

Valeria Vose: A Novel takes a listener deep inside the cultural and emotional life of a 1970’s southern woman. Privileged, approaching age 40, her “perfect” life is shattered. Determined to survive, she’s forced to confront all preconceived values and expectations in order to find a path toward creative, spiritual independence and her true identity.

In 1933 in the Shenandoah Valley, there isn't a place for Lum (short for Columbia), a 33-year-old intersex woman. She travels by schedule from one branch of the family to another, assisting with cooking, childcare, and housework. Always an outsider, even in her own family, Lum secretly collects postcards of people like the Dog-faced Girl, imagining their stories, and nurtures her lifelong friendship with Smiley, an African-American man who sells furniture, odds and ends, and a little moonshine.

Katherine Murphy, a pediatric surgeon in San Francisco's premier medical center, UCSF, was raised in the ironic protection of her father's Irish pub by a patchwork family formed of misfits and orphans. She is book-brilliant, but unwise in the ways of love and life. When genuine love and deep passion present themselves in the form of Jake Bloom, a renowned "artist of the immediate", she is in far too deep before she discovers the treacherous dark side of his creative genius.

On the advice of a five-dollar psychic, Tina Martin, a zany, overworked mother of two, quits her high-powered job and moves her family to Shanghai. Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she’s always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns.

Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely disabled children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city.

People like Feeney Simms don’t die by suicide. Beautiful, charismatic, mother of two, wife to a handsome, successful husband, beloved by her friends—this is not the typical picture of a tortured soul. But one summer night, Feeney drives to the beach and swallows a handful of pills. No note, no explanation, nothing. Like that, she’s gone.

In this debut collection of richly evocative short stories, writer Linda Feyder portrays a diverse group of protagonists seeking fulfillment and connection in sunny California. She sketches her characters – of different ages, genders, and classes – with pitch-perfect honesty as they reassess their identities or confront the exact moment they face the fragility of life or themselves. A teenage girl travels to California from New York for an uneasy visit with the father she hasn't seen for years.

Marta and Kevin discover each other early in their lives, coming of age in the ’70s, only to be separated just when they are on the cusp of realizing the power of their young love. When Kevin’s family moves away, Marta grapples with this loss, as well as their dashed dreams. After high school, she journeys away from her small farm in New Jersey—a place where she was always out of step with those around her—and on to college and a career.

Like the braiding of three strands of brioche, three women whose lives have separately been touched by World Wars—a French mother, her adult daughter and their American friend—become inextricably intertwined once shared cups of coffee turn to revelations of wartimes past. After searching through old letters and diaries for clues, two of the women are compelled to travel throughout the French countryside in order to honor the dying wish of the third woman—“find my father.” Along with this quest to redeem her name, each woman is surprised to discover forgiveness and redemption awaiting her, one she risked revealing her own secrets.