Collection: Shop Woman

The trailblazing book that influenced a generation of writers, and proves that mature reflection needn't be lacking in attitude.

In the beginning when everything was very sexual we talked about our fantasies. She thought about having a guy for some of it. She thought about having a gun. I had gone through a lot to get away from guys so I admit that the thought of going back to them, even for a little adventure, was surprising and disconcerting ...

Ann Rower's first book, If You're a Girl, published by Semiotext(e)'s Native Agents series in 1991 in tandem with Cookie Mueller's Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, cemented her reputation as the Eve Babitz of lower Manhattan.

Rower was fifty-three years old at the time. Her stories--urtexts of female autofiction--had long been circulating within the poetry and postpunk music scenes. They were unlike anyone else's: disarming, embarrassing, psuedoconfessional tales of everyday life dizzily told and laced with dry humor. In If You're a Girl, she recounts her adventures as Timothy Leary's babysitter, her artistic romance with actor Ron Vawter, and her attempts to evade a schizophrenic stalker.

Rower went on to publish two novels: Armed Response (1995) and Lee & Elaine (2002). After the 2002 suicide of her partner, the writer Heather Lewis, Rower stopped writing for almost two decades. And then she picked up where If You're a Girl left off. No longer a girl, she produced dozens of stories from her life in New York as an octogenarian.

This new, expanded edition includes most of the original book, together with selections from both her novels and her recent writings. If You're a Girl is a trailblazing book that manifests Rower's influence on a generation of writers, and proves that mature reflection needn't be lacking in attitude.

Drawn by South African political cartoonists the Trantraal brothers and Ashley Marais, Crossroads: I Live Where I Like is a graphic nonfiction history of women-led movements at the forefront of the struggle for land, housing, water, education, and safety in Cape Town over half a century. Drawing on over sixty life narratives, it tells the story of women who built and defended Crossroads, the only informal settlement that successfully resisted the apartheid bulldozers in Cape Town. The story follows women's organized resistance from the peak of apartheid in the 1970s to ongoing struggles for decent shelter today. Importantly, this account was workshopped with contemporary housing activists and women's collectives who chose the most urgent and ongoing themes they felt spoke to and clarified challenges against segregation, racism, violence, and patriarchy standing between the legacy of the colonial and apartheid past and a future of freedom still being fought for.

Presenting dramatic visual representations of many personalities and moments in the daily life of this township, the book presents a thoughtful and thorough chronology, using archival newspapers, posters, photography, pamphlets, and newsletters to further illustrate the significance of the struggles at Crossroads for the rest of the city and beyond. This collaboration has produced a beautiful, captivating, accessible, forgotten, and in many ways uncomfortable history of Cape Town that has yet to be acknowledged.

Crossroads: I Live Where I Like raises questions critical to the reproduction of segregation and to gender and generational dynamics of collective organizing, to ongoing anticolonial struggles and struggles for the commons, and to new approaches to social history and creative approaches to activist archives.

Stay strong and feel great as you move through the decades of your life with Age Strong: A Woman's Guide to Feeling Athletic and Fit After 40! Internationally renowned personal trainer Rachel Cosgrove will help you increase metabolism, lose body fat, decrease osteoporosis risk, boost stamina, and increase self-confidence as you move toward and through menopause.

With Age Strong you'll get pumped about setting goals, eliminating excuses, and meeting the aging process head on. Read about real clients of the author and how they built muscle and confidence through strength training. Get detailed instructions, accompanied by full-color photos, on how to safely perform 73 traditional strength exercises and 41 mobility and warm-up movements that will help strengthen your core, lower body, and upper body and help you develop power.

Follow the step-by-step plan that's worked for hundreds of women who have maintained their athleticism in their 40s, their 50s, and beyond. Start with the base phase of the program to address common imbalances and learn how to master basic movements. Then, bump up the intensity a bit with the build phase before moving on to the stronger phase, in which you'll build volume as you increase the number of reps and load for select exercises. The final phase, age strong, shows you how to work up to suggested strength standards for exercises such as push-ups, squats, and deadlifts.

Age Strong empowers you to take control of your body, gain muscle, improve body composition, and learn new skills so you can stay strong and feel capable for life!

Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes both the book and exam.

An in-depth, perceptive account of the unconventional life of the Moomins' beloved creator, now available in the United States

Tove Jansson achieved fame as the creator of the Moomins, beloved by generations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the Moomins were only part of the prodigious creative output of this Finnish-Swedish writer and artist. Jansson's work also includes short stories and five novels for adults, as well as paintings, murals, and book illustrations. In this acclaimed biography, Boel Westin relies on numerous conversations with Jansson and unprecedented access to her journals, letters, and personal archives to present an engrossing and comprehensive review of the life and world of Scandinavia's best-loved author.

As Westin's meticulous research makes clear, Jansson's artistic and literary works reflected what was most important to her: the love of family and nature and the desire to pursue her art. Guided by her personal motto, "Love and work," Jansson seized both with uncompromising joy. And while her romantic relationships with men proved unfulfilling, she found those with women--especially with her longtime partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä--both grounding and inspiring.

Westin weaves together the many threads of Jansson's rich, complex life: an education interrupted to help her family; the bleak war years and her emergence as a painter; the decades of Moominmania across books, newspaper comic strips, merchandise, and adaptations; her later fictions, including her popular The Summer Book; and her time with Pietilä on the solitary island of Klovharu. Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words offers fans and admirers around the world the most complete portrait of the writer Philip Pullman described as "a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry."

Will Ariel get to explore the human world? My First Princess Stories, written in rhyme, are just the right length for little ones! The soft padded cover makes it easy for small hands to hold.

Nancy Drew meets P-Valley as an Atlanta reporter investigates the gruesome ritualistic murder of a dancer at the female-owned strip club where she herself worked years before. Acclaimed author L. Divine makes her adult debut in this thrilling, sexy new series for fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Kirstin Chen's Counterfeit, and All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris.

When Keke starts looking into secretive stripper Monaka's grisly death, she's instantly caught between her past and her present. Through The Honey Pot club owner "Honey Mama" Thiboudeaux, Keke found refuge from the streets, earned much money from her stage persona "Brandy," and got a chance at a new life all her own. Her bombshell exposé about the club launched her reporting career. But it caused a bitter, seemingly irrevocable split between her, the only family she's ever known--and Drew, the one man Keke won't admit she's never gotten
over . . .

At Honey Mama request's, Keke goes undercover as Brandy to find the truth before political pressures shut the progressive club down for good. But Keke has to watch more than her back when she finds Monaka had an unshakable, dangerously elusive stalker, an illicit club sideline--and vicious conflicts with rival dancers. Even more explosive, Keke's persistence is putting her at odds with Drew, now a police detective working this case . . . and the secrets she herself can no longer hide.

Now with the clock fast ticking down, Keke must tantalize the killer with the one lure he--or she--can't resist. But using fantasy as a trap could put more than her pursuit of justice on the line--it risks ending her career and life for good . . .

"A polished and entertaining homage to Big Little Lies and Desperate Housewives... The denouement is bonkers, but satisfying."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A witty, wicked thriller packed with hidden agendas, juicy secrets, and pitch-perfect satire of the suburban dream."
--Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Never Here

GOOD MOTHERS...
Never show their feelings.
Never spill their secrets.
Never admit to murder.

The annual Halloween block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul-de-sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighborhood moms--known as the Ivy Five--plans the event for months.

Except the Ivy Five has been four for a long time.

When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the moms see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year's block party should be the best yet... until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighborhood's dark past--and the lengths they've gone to hide it.

As secrets seep out and the threats intensify, the Ivy Five must sort the loyal from the disloyal, the good from the bad. They'll do anything to protect their families. But when a twisted plot is revealed, with dangerous consequences, their steady foundation begins to crumble, leaving only one certainty: after this year's block party, Ivy Woods Drive will never be the same.

"Suspenseful, compulsively readable... Extremely fun to read." --ShelfAwareness

*Don't miss The Weekend Retreat, Tara Laskowski's next novel of suspense. Available now for preorder!

From the bestselling author of the Bookshop Cafe Mysteries, the first in an exciting new series featuring a young female entrepreneur who's just opened her dream business - a yoga studio filled with adorable, adoptable cats! If only helping humans fund balance and felines find homes didn't also require she investigate the purrfect murder...

Sure to appeal to fans of Miranda James, Cate Conte, Eileen Watkins, Laurien Berenson, and all lovers of cozy mysteries featuring animal companions!

Finding this killer will be a real stretch . . .

Ashley Branson has a lot to prove with her new cat yoga studio, A Purrfect Pose. It's a place for humans to find inner wellness--and adopt adorable cats from the local shelter. It's also a chance for Ash to run her own life, out from under her overbearing mother and a stifling relationship. So far, so successful. Until she discovers one of her new clients, a much-disliked college professor, dead in her studio, locked in child's pose . . .

To make matters worse, Ash's hapless always-in-trouble brother, Hunter, instantly becomes the cops' prime suspect. Determined to clear his name and save her business, Ash does a deep lunge into the surprising--and strange--connections the victim had with her other clients. But countless suspects, contradictory leads, not to mention people desperate to see her studio shut down, mean Ash will have to stretch to the max to outthink a clever killer who's ready to strike her red in tooth and claw . . .

Bells are ringing and alarms are sounding in Donna Andrews' latest cheery addition in the New York Times bestselling Meg Langslow series.

Meg's sister-in-law, Delaney is pregnant. Since her due date is on or around Christmas Day, this is putting a bit of a damper on the usual holiday festivities. Meg and Michael are NOT hosting the usual house full of relatives and parties. Instead, Meg, along with her mother, her grandmother, her cousin Rose Noire, and her good friend Caroline, are militantly doing everything they can think of to keep Delaney quiet and healthy. All the relatives are farmed out to friends and neighbors; all the parties are being held somewhere else, and while Delaney is bored and mutinous, she's doing well, and they're managing to maintain a serene, peaceful environment for her . . . until a body is found in Meg and Michael's yard. Can Meg still keep Delaney calm in the middle of a murder investigation, all while trying to catch the killer?

Full of her usual twists and turns, paired with relatable family holiday drama and Caerphilly's traditional Christmas merriment, Donna Andrews brings readers another joyful classic.

Welcome to Torte-a small-town family bakeshop where the treats are killer good.

It's the dead of winter in the sleepy town of Ashland, which means no tourists-and fewer customers-for Jules Capshaw and her bakery. But when she's asked to cater an off-season retreat for the directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, business starts heating up...until Jules finds a dead body in the freezer.

"An intriguing new series."-Reader to Reader

Someone at the retreat has apparently iced the bartender, a well-known flirt with a legendary temper-that is, before a killer beat him to the punch. Then, from out of nowhere, Jules's own ex-husband shows up at the shop-and soon becomes a suspect. With accusations piling up higher than the snow-and thicker than a chocolate mousse cake-Jules has to think outside the (recipe) box to find the real culprit...and make sure he gets his just desserts.

"A delectable tale of murder and intrigue."-Portland Book Review on Meet Your Baker

From Simon & Schuster, American Daughter Gone to War is Winnie Smith's story of being a 21-year-old student nurse joining the Army "to see the world" and was sent to Vietnam.

American Daughter Gone to War is the extraordinary story of how she was transformed from a romantic young nurse into a thoughtful, battle-scarred adult. It is a mirror for how our country dealt with the shattering experience and aftermath of the war.

From USA Today bestselling author Meredith Jaeger comes an emotionally resonant novel about two women whose lives intersect as one resists the gentrification of her San Francisco neighborhood, and the other, eighty years earlier, fights for her freedom in nineteenth-century America. . . .

1890, San Francisco. Seduced by her employer's nephew, Annie Gilmurray, an Irish maid, is accused of stealing the ring he promised her. Sentenced to one year in San Quentin, Annie is heartbroken and frightened among the inmates of the women's ward: prostitutes, murderers, and pickpockets. But Annie finds beauty and friendship in a brutal place, where the women look out for one another, dreaming of a better life after release. But their world inside San Quentin's walls is a dangerous one, and when the unthinkable happens, Annie makes a choice that will alter the course of her future forever.

1972, San Francisco. Aspiring photographer Judy Morelli is grappling with the searing betrayal of her husband's infidelity, subletting a San Francisco apartment while she pieces her life back together. When Judy discovers Annie's mugshot, she becomes fascinated and invested not just in Annie's fate but also in the history of her gentrifying South of Market Street neighborhood, joining the fight against redevelopment to maintain its rich community.

Exploring the different ways in which we are imprisoned and how we can break free, The Incorrigibles is a story of women reaching across the barriers of time, the unbreakable bonds of female friendship, and the forgotten histories of those pushed to society's margins.

It's Christmastime in Cabot Cove and murder is afoot in the newest entry in the USA Today bestselling Murder, She Wrote series.

The gossip lines are burning throughout Cabot Cove this holiday season. The annual Christmas Festival is getting closer and Cabot Cove is one of the towns being considered to become the premier Christmas Town in Maine's official tourist brochure. Mayor Jim Shevlin insists that the annual Christmas pageant play and the parade led by the Founders float are not enough to win a spot in the brochure so everyone is busy reviving old holiday traditions and developing new ones. Everyone, that is, except local realtor Eve Simpson, who has contracted to sell the old Jarvis homestead to Boston tycoon John Bragdon. The sale becomes complicated when Kenny Jarvis, a former student of Jessica's who has been missing and presumed dead for years, suddenly returns to Cabot Cove to prevent his sister from selling their childhood home.

While most of the townspeople are busy planning for the Christmas Festival, Eve organizes a welcoming dinner for John Bragdon, his wife, Marlene, and his business entourage so they can meet the town's leading citizens, including Jessica Fletcher, who notices tension among Bragdon's staff which only heightens when John's former intern shows up at the dinner. Then Kenny Jarvis accosts John's wife telling her she will never live in his house. When Marlene turns up dead a few days later, Jessica is convinced that Kenny had nothing to do with the murder, but can she prove his innocence?

Only in the darkest moments of our lives do the brightest stars appear.

An artist, mother, teacher, and rebel, Audrey Flack is counted among the most important American artists of the twentieth century. In With Darkness Came Stars, she recounts and reflects upon a life fully lived.

Flack came up in the New York art scene when the city was fast becoming a world arts center. She had a studio in the Bowery and frequented the Cedar Tavern, where she rubbed elbows with Jackson Pollock, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement. After leaving that scene and starting a family, she spearheaded Photorealist painting, alongside the likes of Chuck Close and Richard Estes.

Flack has lived a remarkable life, successfully navigating a vibrant and virulently sexist art world, escaping an abusive marriage, and reshaping the rules of art creation in the middle of the twentieth century--all while raising two children, one with severe autism. Her story is full of strife and striving, but as an artist, Flack has always been able to find the beauty in it.

Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely--and deeply researched--account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.

The history of adoption is rarely told from an adoptee's perspective. Wellington remedies this gap by framing the chronicle of adoption in America using her own life story. She describes growing up in a family with which she had no biological connection, giving birth to her own biological children, and then enduring the death of her sister, who was also adopted. As she reckons with the pain and unanswered questions of her own experience, she explores broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children.

According to Wellington, US adoption practices in America are shrouded in secrecy, for they frequently cast shame on unmarried women, women struggling with fertility, and "illegitimate" babies and children. As the United States once again finds itself embroiled in heated disputes over women's bodily autonomy--disputes in which adoption plays a central role--Wellington's book offers a unique and much-needed frame of reference.

"Hauntingly beautiful."
--Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

"A thrilling story, remarkably told."
--Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept

Julia White is struggling: her bartending job isn't cutting it and her first book has sold hardly any copies. She's broke, barely able to make ends meet while drowning in her late mother's medical bills and reeling after a one-night stand with her ex-boyfriend, who's now completely ghosted her. Enter Johnathan Aster, world-renowned photographer, with a proposal: he has a never-before-seen photograph of a woman falling from a train bridge, clutching what appears to be a baby. And he wants Julia to research the story.

Alternating between present-day Brooklyn and Kentucky as it enters the 1960s, the story unfolds as Julia races to find answers: Who was the woman in the photograph? Why was she on the bridge? And what happened to the baby? Each detail is more propulsive than the last as Julia unravels the mystery surrounding the Fairchilds of Gray Station and discovers a story more staggering than anything she could have imagined.