Collection: Shop Woman

Who hanged the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Hallowe'en Party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the viper-tongued Harold Medburn. Inspector Ramsay is convinced it was the headmaster's enigmatic wife but Jack Robson, school governor and caretaker, is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his restless enthusiastic daughter, Patty, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers a cesspit - of lies, adultery, blackmail and madness.

A playful romantic comedy featuring dueling delis, fake dating, a shockingly awesome ex, and just the right amount of amnesia

"[A] delightfully tropey rom-com . . . This is a sweet confection."--Publishers Weekly

Ellie Greco wishes she weren't stuck in Milborough. For a few brief, shining years, she escaped her hometown to pursue her dream career--designing beautiful, elaborate costumes for theater--until her father's death five years ago called her home to run the family's decades-old deli. Yes, she loves the place, but she'd always thought she was meant for more exciting things than stocking the right tinned fish. But when Ellie hears that a local landlord is planning to rent to Mangia, the glitzy gourmet food department store, the very existence of Greco's Deli is suddenly in jeopardy.

She tries to plead her case to Theo Taylor, scion of the property management firm that is about to put her out of business, but their meeting goes from bad (it's not her fault he's infuriating) to worse (no one expects the ceiling to literally fall in).

With Theo out cold, Ellie panics and claims to be his fiancée . . . and almost passes out herself when amnesia means Theo seems to actually believe her. Soon, the effects of the head injury wear off, but Theo proposes that their "engagement" stick around. If they manage to convince enough people, they might both get what they want: an end to the Mangia deal. Ellie doesn't trust him (after all, if Theo Taylor wants it, how can it be good for her?) but seeing no other option, she reluctantly agrees.

And miraculously, the fake engagement seems to be working--even Ted, Theo's shrewd, cold father seems convinced--that is, until Sam, Theo's ex-fiancée, reappears on the scene. Not only does she see through their ruse, but she proposes an arrangement of her own, forcing Ellie to decide between a blossoming friendship, her family legacy, and the burgeoning romance she frankly never asked for.

From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes "a smart, witty fairy tale for grownups" (Maureen Corrigan, NPR).

Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat.

Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents' house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She's just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. "Something horrible has happened," Val tells Addie, "and you're the only one who can help."

Best Friends Forever is a grand, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure; a story about betrayal and loyalty, family history and small-town secrets. It's about living through tragedy, finding love where you least expect it, and the ties that keep best friends together

A raw and bold memoir about abuse and addiction, and the power of expression and community that helped Stephanie Kuehnert, the author of Ballads of Suburbia and regular Rookie contributor, survive and thrive. Told in varied narrative styles, including journal entries, original illustration, and pages torn from her actual diaries and zines, this is the memoir of Stephanie's life as a struggling outsider who survived substance and relationship abuse to become a strong young woman after years and years trapped in a cycle that sometimes seemed to have no escape.

Finalist for the Inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award

Maisie Dobbs--one of the most complex and admirable characters in contemporary fiction (Richmond Times Dispatch)--faces danger and intrigue on the home front during World War II.

During the months following Britain's declaration of war on Germany, Maisie Dobbs investigates the disappearance of a young apprentice working on a hush-hush government contract. As news of the plight of thousands of soldiers stranded on the beaches of France is gradually revealed to the general public, and the threat of invasion rises, another young man beloved by Maisie makes a terrible decision that will change his life forever.

Maisie's investigation leads her from the countryside of rural Hampshire to the web of wartime opportunism exploited by one of the London underworld's most powerful men, in a case that serves as a reminder of the inextricable link between money and war. Yet when a final confrontation approaches, she must acknowledge the potential cost to her future--and the risk of destroying a dream she wants very much to become reality.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell's classic forensic thriller, featuring gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

A reclusive author, Beryl Madison finds no safe haven from months of menacing phone calls--or the tormented feeling that her every move is being watched. When the writer is found slain in her own home, Kay Scarpetta pieces together the intricate forensic evidence--while unwittingly edging closer to a killer waiting in the shadows.

Look for Robyn's new book, The Best of Us, a story about family, second chances and choosing to live your best life--order your copy today!

Discover #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr's popular Thunder Point--a heartfelt series that will make you laugh, make you sigh and make you fall in love with a small town filled with people you'll never forget

Nestled on the Oregon coast is a small town of rocky beaches and rugged charm. Locals love the land's unspoiled beauty. Developers see it as a potential gold mine. When newcomer Hank Cooper learns he's been left an old friend's entire beachfront property, he finds himself with a community's destiny in his hands.

Cooper has never been a man to settle in one place, and Thunder Point was supposed to be just another quick stop. But Cooper finds himself getting involved with the town. And with Sarah Dupre, a woman as complicated as she is beautiful.

With the whole town watching for his next move, Cooper has to choose between his old life and a place full of new possibilities. A place that just might be home.

In this exclusive authorized edition from the Queen of Mystery, a dead heiress on a train, a murdered recluse, and a wealthy playboy slain at a costume ball are but a few of the unfortunate victims of confounding crimes that Poirot investigates.

A beautiful heiress has been found dead on a train. A playboy has been stabbed through the heart during a costume ball. An elderly woman suspects that she is being slowly poisoned to death. A prince fears for his reputation when his fiancée is embroiled in another man's murder. A forgotten recluse makes headlines after he is shot in the head.

Who but Agatha Christie could concoct such canny crimes? Who but Belgian detective Hercule Poirot could possibly solve them? It's a challenge to be met--in a triumph of detection.

After a decade of heavy partying and hard drinking in London, Amy Liptrot returns home to Orkney, a remote island off the north of Scotland. The Outrun maps Amy's inspiring recovery as she walks along windy coasts, swims in icy Atlantic waters, tracks Orkney's wildlife, and reconnects with her parents, revisiting and rediscovering the place that shaped her.

A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016
Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller
New Statesman Book of the Year

In her third full-length collection, Dirt Songs, Kari Gunter-Seymour's poems are full-throated, raw, deceptively simple, and rippling with candor, providing readers an insider's lens into the larger questions surrounding the many aspects of Appalachian culture, including identity, the impact of poverty, generational afflictions, and the brunt of mainstream America's skewed regard for the region. Readers will discover a musicality of language, a stoic sense of honor, a richly detailed tapestry of experiences, and an inspiring display of humility and courage. Throughout the book there is an overarching determination to endure, to be the last truth teller left standing, arm raised in solidarity with the land and its people. Dirt Songs does what journalists and mainstream media have failed to do: provide a uniquely intimate look at landscape and family generated from within Appalachia, recognizing that one story cannot accurately represent a region or its people.

Illuminating accounts of how stripping and sex work informs writers' experiences of friendship, motherhood, teaching, working, creating art, and activism.

No one knows more than strippers about being looked at: as objects of desire, objects of curiosity, as angels or Jezebels or hookers with hearts of gold. In this anthology, twenty-three dancers whose careers span decades, geographies, and identities demand to be seen. Through stories from first nights on the job to the day they hung up their sky-high heels--or decided they never will--these writers offer glimpses into lives of camaraderie and celebration, joy, pride, despair, frustration, self-doubt, and fear.

Their unfiltered perspectives on their lives, onstage and off, are a powerful counternarrative to the whorephobia that shrouds the conventional portrayals of strippers in crime movies, TV shows, music videos, newspaper articles, and legislative debates. Each of these illuminating essays and interviews peels away tired myths and salacious speculation and presents the naked truth: that sex work is real work and strippers are real people.

Contributors:

Cookie Mueller - Kathy Acker - Jo Weldon - Susan McMullen - Maggie Estep - Chris Kraus - Jodi Sh. Doff - Terese Pampellonne - Jill Morley - Susan Walsh - Debi Kelly Van Cleave - Elissa Wald - Essence Revealed - Sassy Penny - Jacq Frances - Reese Piper - Lindsay Byron - The Incredible, Edible Akynos - Antonia Crane - Lily Burana - A M Davies - Kayla Tange - Selena the Stripper

WINNER, 2020 Whiting Award in Poetry!

Diannely Antigua's debut collection Ugly Music is a cacophonous symphony of reality, dream, trauma, and obsession. It reaches into the corners of love and loss where survival and surrender are blurred. The poems span a traumatic early childhood, a religious adolescence, and later a womanhood that grapples with learning how to create an identity informed by, yet in spite of, those challenges. What follows is an exquisitely vulgar voice, unafraid to draw attention to the distasteful, to speak a truth created by a collage of song and confession, diary and praise. It is an account of observation and dissociation, the danger of simultaneously being inside and outside the experiences that mold a life. Ugly Music emerges as a story of witness, a realization that even the strangest things exist on earth and deserve to live.

Carolanne wanted a perfect wedding, a perfect husband, a perfect family. She carefully performs her own roles (gal pal, bestie, girlfriend, wife, and expectant mother) and in trying to enact agency over her life, sacrifices it completely. Her desire to control the uncontrollable ultimately becomes her undoing. When things don't go her way, she exerts dominance over the one thing she does have total control over: her body; until that "betrays" her. After suffering a horrible loss, Carolanne spirals into a literal, all-consuming delusion that will engross comics readers and horror aficionados alike.

Chicago cartoonist and educator Beth Hetland's graphic novel debut is a brilliant psychological thriller that tears down the wall of a genre -- body horror -- so often identified with male creators. Heady and visceral, Tender uses horrific tropes to confront women's societal expectations of self-sacrifice despite those traditional roles often coming at the expense of female sexuality and empowerment.

In the third book in the Beautiful series, an agreement between a venture capitalist and a bookish woman quickly becomes a very NSFW version of My Fair Lady.

When Hanna Bergstrom receives a lecture from her overprotective brother about neglecting her social life and burying herself in grad school, she's determined to tackle his implied assignment: get out, make friends, start dating. And who better to turn her into the sultry siren every man wants than her brother's gorgeous best friend, Will Sumner, venture capitalist and unapologetic playboy?

Will takes risks for a living, but he's skeptical about this challenge of Hanna's...until the wild night his innocently seductive pupil tempts him into bed- and teaches him a thing or two about being with a woman he can't forget. Now that Hanna's discovered the power of her own sex appeal, it's up to Will to prove he's the only man she'll ever need.

It's Christmas many years ago, and topping young Hannah Swensen's wish list is becoming the go-to baker in Lake Eden, Minnesota. But as Hannah finds out, revisiting holiday memories can be murder . . .

With her dream of opening The Cookie Jar taking shape, Hannah's life matches the hectic December hustle and bustle in Lake Eden--especially when she agrees to help recreate a spectacular Christmas Ball from the past in honor of Essie Granger, an elderly local in hospice care. But instead of poring over decadent dessert recipes for the merry festivities, she instantly becomes enthralled by Essie's old notebooks--and the tale of a woman escaping danger on the streets of New York . . .

Hannah's surprised by Essie's secret talent for penning crime fiction. She's even more surprised when the story turns real. As Hannah prepares to run a bakery and move out of her mother's house, it'll be a true miracle if she can prevent another Yuletide disaster by solving a mystery as dense as a Christmas fruitcake . . .

Features Over a Dozen Cookie and Dessert Recipes from The Cookie Jar!

"Series fans will enjoy learning how the Cookie Jar bakery came to be."
--Publishers Weekly