Bar Maid

Now a USA Today Bestseller! A sparkingly witty, poignant debut novel that is a Bright Lights, Big City for a post-Reagan, pre-Y2K Philadelphia—for readers of Normal People, Sweetbitter, Modern Lovers, and Less. It’s September 1987. Charlie Green is an eighteen-year-old romantic and aspiring alcoholic, whose great wish is to fall in love with a light-eyed girl on his first day of college and never look back. Charlie believes in the magic of bars and girls. He believes he can use these talismans to finally feel at home, an assurance his dim and privileged childhood did not provide. At the Sansom Street Oyster House, he meets Paula Henderson, a beautiful and deceptively soulful waitress who is the most overqualified bar maid in all the city—and perhaps the most alluring. But there are obstacles in the Philly night between Charlie and his full heart. Drunks, louts, boyfriends—heroes too. And in Paula’s eyes, Charlie becomes one. When she takes him home to New Hope, PA, to meet her very Catholic mother, the young couple must contend with the consequences of their pure love. In this darkly comedic coming-of-age novel, Charlie Green needs to grow up fast. At stake is his soul.

Taken in and trained by her uncle to be a freedom fighter after her parents were murdered, Cassidy O'Hara leads a dual life in the mountains and forests of Manchuria. Part-time guerilla, part-time saloon girl, Cassidy is about to be pulled into a plot that will affect the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the very outcome of World War II!

In The Barmaid's Brain, Jay Ingram explores some of the little known quirks of human behaviour, including why we laugh and how we see mirages; he reports on science's various attempts to reexamine history, including startling theories about the Salem witches, a psychiatric profile of Joan of Arc and the raging debate about the first-ever map of the New World; he brings our attention to remarkable battles, from the parasitic nastiness of cowbirds, to the tiny but deadly guerrilla attacks of ant lions; and he introduces us to the sometimes odd concerns of the scientist, for instance whether it is possible that early humans spent their lives in water instead of on land, and just how does slinging drinks affect the memory and the perception of the barmaid's brain? Weird, witty and always edifying, The Barmaid's Brain serves up a splendid cocktail of fact, theory and anecdote in twenty-one of Jay Ingram's favourite tales from the world of science.

"Cordelia is not happy with Lucy, the playful new barmaid at your local. That night sees the two girls become friends. Then enemies. Then friends again. Then enemies again. Until neither one can sit down." Cordelia & Lucy. The adventures of two young women whose principal interests are fabulous outfits, threesomes, and light S&M. We don't waste words. Every detail's delicious. Every scene's a sex scene.

Countless wanted posters have been blessed with the roguishly handsome face of Captain Francis Doon. The notorious sky pirate has a reputation for wickedness, and he wouldn't trade it for the world. He's a sharpshooter, a schemer, and his skills with a sword are unparalleled. His people skills, however, leave something to be desired. Doon's biggest pay day arrives when he finds the runaway Princess Lyneah in a dodgy Lundun pub. Her feet are bare and her hair's chopped off, but he knows he's found the princess. Eager to reap a reward for Lyneah's safe return, he whisks her away on his airship. But there's one major problem. He's taken the wrong girl. Doon's princess is actually Kitt Lake, a barefoot barmaid from the Lundun slums. And she isn't happy about it. The Barefoot Barmaid is a swashbuckling adventure with steampunk elements. It is the first book in the Belles & Bullets series.

Once seen as a relatively marginal figure, George Gissing (1857-1903) persists in sparking interest among new generations of radical critics who continue to be inspired by his work and to develop fresh approaches to it. This essay collection, bringing together British, European, and North American literary critics and cultural historians with diverse specialities and interests, demonstrates the range of contemporary perspectives through which his fiction can be viewed. Offering both closely contextualized historical readings and broader cultural and philosophical assessments, the contributions will engage not only the specialist but those interested in the diverse themes that absorbed Gissing: the cultural and social formation of class and gender, social mobility and its unsettling effects on individual and collective identities, the place of writing in emerging mass culture, and the possibilities and limits of fiction as critical intervention.