A Passionate Girl

Beautiful, rebellious Bess Fitzmaurice is mesmerized by Dan McCaffrey, an American of Irish descent who has come to Ireland to aid the Fenian revolt against British tyranny. He appears in her home on May Eve 1865, fleeing British forces. To Bess, Dan is the mythical Donal Ogue, the hero of a famous Irish poem, returned to rescue Ireland---but right now, he is an American Civil War veteran on the run. Bess and her brother, Michael, get Dan to a ship, and they flee to America. In 1865, America is a nation ravaged by four years of Civil War. Bess discovers that among the Irish-American Fenians money and power and patriotism are entangled in bewildering and demoralizing ways, while Dan McCaffrey surrenders to the corruption of New York City politics. The Fenians' invasion of Canada and their goal of holding the English colony hostage for a free Ireland become a pawn in a power struggle between Democrats and Republicans. When the American federal government double-crosses the Fenians, forcing thousands of Irish Civil War veterans to abandon the Canadian invasion after winning the first battle, acrimony engulfs the movement, leading to feuds, name-calling--and murder. In despair, Bess quits the Fenians and finds love in the arms of former Union General Jonathan Stapleton. Their idyll, however, is soon interrupted by Dan McCaffrey, who forces her to choose between him and her new lover. A Passionate Girl is a riveting novel that takes the reader into a forgotten chapter in Irish-American history and provides an eye-opening look at the devastating impact of America's Civil War. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Shojo manga are romance comics for teenage girls. Characterized by a very dense visual style, featuring flowery backgrounds and big-eyed, androgynous boys and girls, it is an extremely popular and prominent genre in Japan. Why is this genre so appealing? Where did it come from? Why do so many of the stories feature androgynous characters and homosexual romance? Passionate Friendship answers these questions by reviewing Japanese girls’ print culture from its origins in 1920s and 1930s girls’ literary magazines to the 1970s “revolution” shojo manga, when young women artists took over the genre. It looks at the narrative and aesthetic features of girls’ literature and illustration across the twentieth century, both pre- and postwar, and discusses how these texts addressed and formed a reading community of girls, even as they were informed by competing political and social ideologies. The author traces the development of girls’ culture in pre–World War II magazines and links it to postwar teenage girls’ comics and popular culture. Within this culture, as private and cloistered as the schools most readers attended, a discourse of girlhood arose that avoided heterosexual romance in favor of “S relationships,” passionate friendships between girls. This preference for homogeneity is echoed in the postwar genre of boys’ love manga written for girls. Both prewar S relationships and postwar boys’ love stories gave girls a protected space to develop and explore their identities and sexuality apart from the pressures of a patriarchal society. Shojo manga offered to a reading community of girls a place to share the difficulties of adolescence as well as an alternative to the image of girls purveyed by the media to boys and men. Passionate Friendship’s close literary and visual analysis of modern Japanese girls’ culture will appeal to a wide range of readers, including scholars and students of Japanese studies, gender studies, and popular culture.

Published by Semiotext(e) to critical acclaim in 1998, Michelle Tea's debut novel The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in Americaquickly established Tea as an exciting new literary talent and the voice of a new generation of queer, bisexual, transgendered, and straight youth. The Village Voicecalled Passionate Mistakes"the legacy of thirty years of feminism," and Eileen Myles, writing in the Nation,hailed the novel as "a hunk of lyric information that coolly, then frantically, describes the car wreck of her generation." The too-smart, caustic, and radiant narrator of Passionate Mistakesis, at twenty-seven, an ex-Goth, ex-drummer, ex-straight girl, ex-lesbian separatist vegan graduate of vocational high school in the working class town of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Written with lyrical precision and charm, the novel describes a journey with no final destination, a fast-paced and picaresque road trip that yields a redemptive vision of an America that has nothing left to offer its youth. This new edition of a Semiotext(e) classic includes critical essays by Brandon Stosuy and Eileen Myles that describe Michelle Tea's achievement as a literary innovator and cultural icon.

In her classic book, Elisabeth Elliot candidly shares her love story with Jim Elliot through letters, diary entries, and memories. She is honest about the temptations, difficulties, victories, and sacrifices of two young people whose commitment to Christ took priority over their love for each other. These revealing personal glimpses, combined with relevant biblical teaching, will remind readers that only by putting their human passion and desire through His fire can God purify their love. In a culture obsessed with dating, sex, and intimacy, the need for Elliot's freeing message is greater than ever. This beautifully repackaged edition will appeal to today's young people.

A doting mother finds it hard to accept that her son is leaving the fold to get married. On the morning of the wedding, she retreats to the attic where she relives her long lost youth and a passionate affair she enjoyed before becoming bogged down in a listless marriage. This provocative and heartfelt play enjoyed a long run in London.-1 woman, 3 men

One of the Best Feel-Good Books of 2021 by The Washington Post A hilarious and honest not-quite-self-help book in the vein of Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies and I Used to Have a Plan. Every person on the planet wants their life to mean something. The problem is that you’ve been told there’s only one way to find that meaning. In Unfollow Your Passion, Terri Trespicio—whose TEDx talk has more than six million views—questions everything you think you need: passion (fun, but fleeting), plans (flimsy at best), and a bucket list (eye roll), to name a few. Instead, she shows you how (and why) to flip society, culture, and the #patriarchy the bird so you can live life on your terms. Trespicio effortlessly guides you through her method of unhooking yourself from other people’s agendas, boning up on the skills to move you forward, and exploring your own creativity, memory, and intuition to unlock your unique path to meaning—while also confronting the challenges that stop you in your tracks, like boredom, loss, and fear. Unfollow Your Passion is a fresh and fearless “must-read for anyone looking for a more meaningful life” (Mel Robbins, author of The 5 Second Rule).

A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience. . . . She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft. . . . The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life. In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon–increased vitality in women’s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses. Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women–married and single–who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don’t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women–once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers–find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their “second adulthood” as a period of reawakening. Written in Sheehy’s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women’s sex lives. From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

Enjoy this sexy good girl meets bad boy story in this sensual romance from top-selling author Zuri Day, part of the Sin City Secrets series. She’s strictly off-limits but when their worlds collide, sparks fly… will they be engulfed by the flames? After a serious accident, worldly CEO Noah Breedlove’s family hires Damaris Glen as his live-in caretaker. She’s sheltered, far too innocent…and his instinct is to seduce her, even though he knows she’s forbidden fruit. As she heals the man, she heals his hardened heart, too. At least until their mutual attraction overrides logic, and she’s forced to choose between her family…and him. From Harlequin Desire: A luxurious world of bold encounters and sizzling chemistry. Sin City Secrets: Book 1: Sin City Vows Book 2: Ready for the Rancher Book 3: Sin City Seduction