Good Girls Blush

Maria Magliani, a forty-something single mom, finds fate to be unfair and unkind. Since her husband Michael died -- purportedly by his own hand -- she and son, Chip must fend for themselves, relying on acquired skills and experiences from a parochial Irish-Italian background. She and her cousin, Rocco, a Des Moines detective, partner to investigate a string of drug-related sexual assaults with altar boys. The drama elevates and tempers sizzle as the two discover lewd and licentious conduct by a young priest -- or so it seems. At the same time, Maria leaps into the middle of a love triangle -- a provocative dalliance with high school honey, Frankie, and fire-fighter, Clancy. “Good Girls Blush” will keep you intrigued and immersed in this riveting read.

As the most sought-after and successful Christian speaker on fashion and beauty, Shari Braendel uses her twenty plus years of experience in the fashion field to inspire and motivate women of all ages and sizes to 1) learn to appreciate themselves regardless of what they look like or how much they weigh, and 2) understand exactly how they can look their best.

A sharp-edged, supremely twisty thriller about three women who find themselves trapped inside stories they know aren’t their own, from the author of Alice and Near the Bone. Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers… Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong… Maggie just wants to be home with her daughter, but she’s in a dangerous situation and she doesn’t know who put her there or why. She’ll have to fight with everything she has to survive… Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.

For Anyone Who's Ever Been a Teenager Who's teenage years weren't terrible? Remember the scary older kids? The sadistic gym teacher? The smelly kid who sat next to you in science class? Your first fumbling kiss? That time you threw up in the cafeteria? Your first attempt at putting on a condom? The period that arrived unexpectedly? That awful fight with your parents? The first time you got drunk? That note you wrote that you shouldn't have written? The day you forgot to zip your fly? That monster zit? When, you wondered, would it all end? In When I Was a Loser, John McNally, author of the novel America's Report Card, assembles twenty-five original essays--often hilarious, sometimes tenderhearted, always evocative--about defining moments of high school loserdom. Brad Land, Julianna Baggott, Owen King, Johanna Edwards, and many more fresh, talented writers explore their own angst, humiliation, heartache, and other staples of teen life. These essays perfectly capture what it was like to be in high school: to experience so many things for the first time, to assert independence while desperately trying to fit in, to feel misunderstood and unable to articulate the wild swings between heartbreak, anger, and euphoria. One writer recalls how his grandmother helped him with his home perm in preparation for the Senior Class picture; another recounts her discovery, sometime after hitting puberty, of the power she held over boys and men, while at the same time she felt herself at their mercy; a third remembers the casual cruelties visited on him by the cooler kids, and the cruelties he, in turn, inflicted on kids below him on the social ladder. Utterly candid and compulsively readable, these essays conjure up and untangle those raw and formative years. The writers cringe and laugh at the teenagers they were, but at the same time, they honor their adolescence and the way it shaped their lives. Because, in truth, beneath the layers of adult respectability, we all still carry a little bit of our teenage selves around with us.