Blush

From acclaimed author Jamie Brenner comes a stunning new novel about three generations of women who discover that the scandalous books of their past may just be the key to saving their family's future. For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on the North Fork of Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface. For matriarch Vivian, she fears that this summer season could be their last—and that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she's harbored for decades. Meanwhile, her daughter, Leah, who was turned away from the business years ago, finds her marriage at a crossroads and returns home for a sorely needed escape. And granddaughter Sadie, grappling with a crisis of her own, runs to the vineyard looking for inspiration. But when Sadie uncovers journals from Vivian's old book club dedicated to scandalous novels of decades past, she realizes that this might be the distraction they all need. Reviving the "trashy" book club, the Hollander women find that the stories hold the key to their fight not only for the vineyeard, but for the life and love they've wanted all along. Blush is a bighearted story of love, family, and second chances, and an ode to the blockbuster novels that have shaped generations of women.

Billie Livingston’s second novel leads us to consider the nature of our hidden lives and desires—and to question whether the sky would really fall if we admitted our true needs and ceased to blush. As Cease to Blush opens, Vivian is late to her own mother’s funeral. Wearing a tight red suit, Vivian stands out like a pornographer’s dream amongst the West Coast intellectuals mourning the death of prominent feminist Josie Callwood. But for all of her bravado, Vivian finds herself emotionally numb and spiraling downward. Vivian and her mother were in constant conflict, with Josie disapproving of her daughter’s lifestyle; her inclination to use her body instead of her brain, and her so-called acting career, which has amounted to little more than playing prostitutes and the odd dead body. For her part Vivian has been invested in antagonizing her mother’s feminist ideology. As the story opens Vivian’s career, as well as her relationship with boyfriend Frank, is taking an unsavoury turn as she wades into the quick cash scheme of Internet porn with herself cast in the lead. But Josie has left a big surprise for her troubled daughter: a trunk full of mementoes from her own past, all of which point to a secret life more exotic than anything Vivian has been able to pull off. Puzzling together bits and pieces, Vivian learns that her mother was at one time a burlesque performer named Celia Dare who rubbed shoulders with the flashiest celebrities of the sixties. Vivian becomes determined to uncover the true story of her mother’s life. Chasing rumours, Vivian sets off down the Pacific coast and soon finds out that truth is a slippery snake. With only a few of her mother’s letters, some guarded anecdotes from Josie’s former confidant and a slew of books about the sixties, Vivian begins to re-create her mother’s life, placing her at the heart of some of the biggest events and scenes of the era. From the protests and beat coffeehouses of Haight-Ashbury to the frenzied nightlife of Rat Pack Vegas, from the political soirées of New York to mob meetings in glitzy Miami hotels, Celia Dare saw and did it all. Yet the glamour hid an ugly underbelly, and as Vivian peels away the layers of the past she begins to uncover her own emotional truths as well. Cease to Blush drives the bumpy road from the burlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to the bedroom Internet porn business, exploring just how far women have really come. In Vivian, Livingston has created the perfect character through which to explore what it means to be an independent woman today; with Celia/Josie, it’s clear that things weren’t so cut and dry in her day either. Though Celia’s story is told vividly here, its accuracy is impossible to gauge and the ghosts are not talking. But maybe this is Celia’s gift to Vivian: the ability of the past not only to illuminate the future, but to re-imagine it.

Exposes shame as a valuable emotion essential to our humanity.

“I promise: you will be transported,” says Bill Moyers of this memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl named after Shirley Temple entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950”s and ‘60’s. With gentle humor and clear-eyed affection the author, who grew up to become a college president, tells the story of her first encounters with the “glittering world” and her desire for “fancy” forbidden things she could see but not touch. The reader enters a plain Mennonite Church building, walks through the meadow, makes sweet and sour feasts in the kitchen and watches the little girl grow up. Along the way, five other children enter the family, one baby sister dies, the family moves to the “home place.” The major decisions, whether to join the church, and whether to leave home and become the first person in her family to attend college, will have the reader rooting for the girl to break a new path. In the tradition of Jill Ker Conway’s The Road to Coorain, this book details the formation of a future leader who does not yet know she’s being prepared to stand up to power and to find her own voice. The book contains many illustrations and resources, including recipes, a map, and an epilogue about why the author is still Mennonite. Topics covered include the death of a child, Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, the role of bishops in the Mennonite church, the paradoxes of plain life (including fancy cars and the practice of growing tobacco). The drama of passing on the family farm and Mennonite romance and courtship, as the author prepares to leave home for college, create the final challenges of the book.

Desperate for the freedom and respect that her wealth, privilege, and beauty cannot buy, Augusta Featherstone undertakes a desperate gamble by arranging for her own abduction, but her captor is a mysterious stranger with his own dangerous agenda.

Popular poet and author of the acclaimed memoir Paradise Piece by Piece, Molly Peacock tracks the vicissitudes of midlife marriage in her saucy, vulnerable, philosophical sixth collection, her first to be published in Canada. These lyrical, playful, moving poems focus on illuminating the territory of relationships, while always revolving around the deeper questions about how we love and how love affects the way we live. Published in the U.S. by W.W. Norton.

What he wants from you will make you...Blush Amanda Thomas is hopelessly in love with Jackson Paris, but he will never see her as anything more than his sweet and innocent bestie. After being virgin-adjacent for too long, Mandy is officially ready to move on. She wants to learn about hot, dirty sex, so she joins an online dating app where the enigmatic Mr. Dark promises to fulfill all of her wicked fantasies... Jackson Paris has been keeping secrets from his stunning, too-innocent best friend—like forbidden sexual proclivities and his membership at the exclusive Black Rose Underground club. But Mandy has decided she needs an education—the filthy kind. As Mr. Dark, Jackson can safely give her a taste of what she wants—and deter her from pursuing more—without revealing his identity. But in the dim, provocative atmosphere of Black Rose Underground, there are no secrets. Here, every wicked appetite is satisfied. And for the first time, Mandy will discover who her best friend really is...just in time to shock him with a secret of her own. Each book in the Black Rose series is STANDALONE: * Blush * Bloom * Blossom

Extravagant visual tribute to the spandex, rouge and eyeliner days of 80s glam rock glory. Colour photographs, interviews, lyrics and keepsakes of the uninhibited teased-hair days of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Steven Blush edited the successful punk rock history American Hardcore (Feral House) and also wrote the screenplay to the feature-length documentary of the same name that debuted at Sundance and will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.