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In 1773, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry that challenged Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, and her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters. Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley's "age" - the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley's relationship to black people and their individual "mercies" is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In 1773, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry that challenged Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, and her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters. Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley's "age" - the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley's relationship to black people and their individual "mercies" is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Donte wishes he were invisible. As one of the few black boys at Middlefield Prep, he feels as if he is constantly swimming in whiteness. Most of the students don't look like him. They don't like him either. Dubbed the "Black Brother, " Donte's teachers and classmates make it clear they wish he were more like his lighter skinned brother, Dre. Quiet, obedient. When an incident with "King" Alan leads to Donte's arrest and suspension, he knows the only way to get even is to beat the king of the school at his own game: fencing. With the help of a former Olympic fencer, Donte embarks on a journey to carve out a spot on Middlefield Prep's fencing team and maybe learn something about himself along the way.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• God
• Basics
• Fan fiction
• Ollie the Owl
• The treasurer
• Cassiopeia
• Hell
• Safe spaces.

In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything. Fraternity celebrates the debauched kinship of boys and girls straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, solemn confessions, and romantic encounters that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each episode lies the dread of exclusion. The closeted Oprah's hero worship gives way to real longing. A combat veteran offers advice on hazing. An alienated young woman searches for a sanctuary. And the shadow of assault hovers over every sexual encounter.

"In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic"-- Provided by publisher.
In the 1600s, Maria was abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, who recognizes that Maria has a gift, she learns about the 'Unnamed Arts.' When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. She invokes a curse that will haunt her family for generations. And she learns the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life: Love is the only thing that matters. -- adapted from jacket

"In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government's emergency protocols are faltering. Dr. Ramola "Rams" Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie's husband has been killed - viciously attacked by an infected neighbor - and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie's only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child. Natalie's fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares - terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink."--Amazon.

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley"-- Provided by publisher.

"Mark Sternum returns from PERFECT AGREEMENT to his work as a professor of creative writing in Boston. He is someone in love with his work and in love with the classroom. He is devoted to his students, even to those who don't exactly deserve his devotion. His lifelong partner is away for an extended stay in Europe, and Mark finds himself waiting anxiously on his return and somewhat in disarray whenever he is not actually in the familiar ground of teaching. And then a departmental "crisis" occurs as the department chair challenges Mark's grade for a student"-- Provided by publisher.

"Nevin Montgomery, a young lawyer with a prestigious Boston law firm, is dispatched to the Cape Cod compound of Andrew Windsor, the most acclaimed artist in America, to update Windsor's will. Nevin arrives to the news that a woman, who had secretly modeled for Windsor for decades, has been found dead. Nevin, who is battling a hidden drug addiction, is asked to remain at the Windsor compound to complete his assignment because the health of his law firm's most famous client is deteriorating rapidly. Nevin is introduced to the secretive art world, and he becomes smitten along the way with Catina Cruz, a beautiful young Portuguese-American woman he meets at the compound. Nevin eventually learns that Catina models for James Windsor, Andrew Windsor's son. James is a painter in his own right, albeit not nearly of the stature of his father. When Andrew Windsor finally dies, a will contest ensues. At Andrew's request, Nevin had cut Andrew's wife and son out of the will and they challenge the will in court. Nevin is instructed by his law firm to defend the will, but he has some further investigating to do before he can: investigating that reveals more than he ever wanted to know about the woman he has come to love...and about himself."-- Back cover.

Boston, 1992. David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won't even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Unless he tests into the city's best public high school--which, if practice tests are any indication, isn't likely--he'll be friendless for the foreseeable future. Nobody's more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar's a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave's own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave's assumptions about black culture: He's nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics obsessive whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird. Before long, Mar's coming over to Dave's house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar's. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he's been given--and that Mar has not.--Provided by Publisher.

The home of a family of five is now a crime scene: four of them savagely murdered, one--a sixteen-year-old girl--missing. Was she lucky to have escaped the carnage? Or does her absence speak of something more sinister? Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren is on the case--but so is survivor-turned-avenger Flora Dane. Seeking different types of justice, they must make sense of the clues left behind by a young woman who, whether as victim or suspect, is silently pleading: Look for me-- From dust jacket.

"Boston, 1976. Daniel Fitzsimmons is just sixteen years old and totally on his own--his parents are long dead, and his beloved brother, Harry, is off at Harvard, the star of the football team. When Harry is murdered, Daniel wrestles not only with inconsolable grief but with strange new powers he never knew he possessed. Powers he's not sure he can control. Detectives William Barkley 'Bark' Jones and Tommy Dillon are assigned to Harry's case. The veteran partners thought they'd seen it all, but they are stunned when Daniel wanders into the crime scene. Even stranger, Daniel claims to have known the details of his brother's murder before it ever happened. The investigation leads the detectives deep into the Fitzsimmons brothers' past. They find heartbreaking loss, sordid characters, and metaphysical conspiracies. Even on the rough streets of 1970s Boston, Jones and Dillon have never had a case like this"--Dust jacket.

• Acknowledgments ix Introduction
• 1
• 1. Factory Fictions: Lowell Mill Women and the Romance of Labor
• 33
• 2. Factory Labor and Literary Aesthetics: The Lowell Mill Girl, Popular Fiction, and the Proletarian Grotesque
• 73
• 3. Narrating Female Dependency: The Sentimental Seamstress and the Erotics of Labor Reform
• 113
• 4. Harriet Wilson's Our Nig and the Labor of Race
• 153
• 5. Hidden Hands: E.D.E.N. Southworth and Working-Class Performance
• 180
• 6. Writing Mexicana Workers: Race, Labor, and the Western Front
• 219 Postscript. Looking for Antebellum Workingwomen
• 247 Notes
• 251 Works Cited
• 285 Index 303.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In Archives of Labor Lori Merish establishes working-class women as significant actors within literary culture, dramatically redrawing the map of nineteenth-century US literary and cultural history. Delving into previously unexplored archives of working-class women's literature-from autobiographies, pamphlet novels, and theatrical melodrama to seduction tales and labor periodicals-Merish recovers working-class women's vital presence as writers and readers in the antebellum era. Her reading of texts by a diverse collection of factory workers, seamstresses, domestic workers, and prostitutes boldly challenges the purportedly masculine character of class dissent during this era. Whether addressing portrayals of white New England "factory girls, " fictional accounts of African American domestic workers, or the first-person narratives of Mexican women working in the missions of Mexican California, Merish unsettles the traditional association of whiteness with the working class to document forms of cross-racial class identification and solidarity. In so doing, she restores the tradition of working women's class protest and dissent, shows how race and gender are central to class identity, and traces the ways working women understood themselves and were understood as workers and class subjects.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

'Harper Lee has a worthy successor. Wolk is a big new talent' - The Times Crow has lived her whole life on a tiny, starkly beautiful island. Her only companions are Osh, the man who rescued her from a washed-up skiff as a baby and raised her, and Miss Maggie, their neighbour across the sandbar. But it is only when a mysterious fire appears across the water that an unspoken question of her own history forms in Crow's heart, and an unstoppable chain of events is triggered. Crow sets out to find her lost identity - and, ultimately, to learn what it means to be a family. Vivid and heartfelt, Beyond the Bright Sea is a gorgeously crafted, gripping tale of buried treasure and belonging.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Moccasin print
• Colonial village
• American canal
• Transition
• Port Concord
• Wild waters
• River sojourns
• Consultant
• Mapmaker
• Genius
• Saving the meadows
• Reversal of fortune.

The Boatman gives readers a Thoreau for the Anthropocene epoch. As a backyard naturalist and river enthusiast, Thoreau was keenly aware of the way humans had altered the waterways and meadows of his beloved Concord River Valley. And he recognized that he himself--a land surveyor by trade--was as complicit in these transformations as the bankers, lawyers, builders, landowners, and elected officials who were his clients. Robert Thorson tells a compelling story of intellectual growth, as Thoreau moved from anger, to lament, to acceptance of the way humans had changed the river he cherished more than Walden Pond.In his twenties, Thoreau had contemplated industrial sabotage against a downstream factory dam. By the mid-1850s he realized that humans and an "imperfect" nature were inseparable. His beliefs and scientific understanding of the river would be challenged again when he was hired in 1859 as a technical consultant for the River Meadow Association, in America's first statewide case for dam removal--a veritable class-action suit of more than five hundred petitioners that pitted local farmers against industrialists. Thorson offers the most complete account to date of this "flowage controversy, " including Thoreau's behind-the-scenes investigations and the political corruption that eventually carried the day.In the years after the publication of Walden (1854), the river boatman's joy in the natural world was undiminished by the prospect of environmental change. Increasingly, he sought out for solace and pleasure those river sites most dramatically altered by human invention and intervention--for better and worse.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood's imaginary worlds and painful adult reality-crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Ben Carver returns for the spring semester at the exclusive Natick School in Massachusetts determined to put his relationship with Rafe Goldberg behind him and concentrate on his grades and the award that will mean a full scholarship--but Rafe is still there, there is a girl named Hannah whom he meets in the library, and behind it all is his relationship with his distant, but demanding father.