Madam

"The simmering menace and mystery kept me absolutely gripped...a smoldering novel that I could not put down." ––Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne "Rebecca meets The Secret History: gloriously dark, gloriously Gothic." ––Sara Collins, bestselling author of The Confessions of Fannie Langton Named a Best Book of 2021 by Goodreads • Entertainment Weekly • Parade • PopSugar • Brit+Co • Romper • Frolic • Crime Reads • SheKnows.com • Women.com Discover the secrets of Caldonbrae Hall in this riveting, modern gothic debut set at an all girls' boarding school perched on a craggy Scottish peninsula. For 150 years, high above rocky Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat untouched, a beacon of excellence in an old ancestral castle. A boarding school for girls, it promises that the young women lucky enough to be admitted will emerge "resilient and ready to serve society." Into its illustrious midst steps Rose Christie: a 26-year-old Classics teacher, Caldonbrae’s new head of the department, and the first hire for the school in over a decade. At first, Rose is overwhelmed to be invited into this institution, whose prestige is unrivaled. But she quickly discovers that behind the school’s elitist veneer lies an impenetrable, starkly traditional culture that she struggles to reconcile with her modernist beliefs--not to mention her commitment to educating "girls for the future." It also doesn’t take long for Rose to suspect that there’s more to the secret circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of her predecessor--a woman whose ghost lingers everywhere--than anyone is willing to let on. In her search for this mysterious former teacher, Rose instead uncovers the darkness that beats at the heart of Caldonbrae, forcing her to confront the true extent of the school’s nefarious purpose, and her own role in perpetuating it. A darkly feminist tale pitched against a haunting backdrop, and populated by an electrifying cast of heroines, Madam will keep readers engrossed until the breathtaking conclusion. They want our silence... They want our obedience... Let them see our fire burn

The compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America. "A fast-paced tale of … Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip…. A breathless tale told through extraordinary research.” —The New York Times Book Review Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it. As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.

Sex is for sale 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in Nevada's legal brothels. Former madam Lora Shaner takes you into the parlour -- and bedroom -- of Sheri's Ranch, in this compelling account of the sex-for-money culture. Read about the nun turned prostitute, the errant wife, the happy-hooker tag team, the pro with the heart of gold, and the turn outs, part-timers, sex addicts, adventure-seekers, and other ladies of the house. The newly updated Madam includes eight pages of photos and a new section covering the complete renovation of Sheri's Ranch -- the legal Nevada brothel detailed in the book since Madam's original publication in 1994.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page. Featuring more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know her best—and a series of in-depth, news-making interviews with Pelosi herself—MADAM SPEAKER is unprecedented in the scope of its exploration of Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable life and of her indelible impact on American politics. Before she was Nancy Pelosi, she was Nancy D’Alesandro. Her father was a big-city mayor and her mother his political organizer; when she encour­aged her young daughter to become a nun, Nancy told her mother that being a priest sounded more appealing. She didn’t begin running for office until she was forty-six years old, her five children mostly out of the nest. With that, she found her calling. Nancy Pelosi has lived on the cutting edge of the revolution in both women’s roles and in the nation’s movement to a fiercer and more polarized politics. She has established herself as a crucial friend or for­midable foe to U.S. presidents, a master legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior. She took on the Democratic establishment to become the first female Speaker of the House, then battled rivals on the left and right to consolidate her power. She has soared in the sharp-edged inside game of politics, though she has struggled in the outside game—demonized by conservatives, second-guessed by progressives, and routinely underestimated by nearly everyone. All of this was preparation for the most historic challenge she would ever face, at a time she had been privately planning her retirement. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House, Nancy Pelosi became the Democratic counterpart best able to stand up to the disruptive president and to get under his skin. The battle between Trump and Pelosi, chronicled in this book with behind-the-scenes details and revelations, stands to be the titanic political struggle of our time.

Imagine an alternative Earth, where elves, imps, demons, and extraterrestrials coexist within the bounds of an unimaginably diverse, complex, and intricately structured society. The socialites are content with their relatively carefree existence filled with amusement, scheming, and gossip, until a mysterious circus performer arrives on the scene and challenges both the laws of physics and the core traditions of her world.

Mildred Clark Cusey was a whore, a madam, an entrepreneur, and above all, a survivor. The story of Silver City Millie, as she referred to herself, is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello businesswoman. Millie broke the mold in so many ways, and yet her life's story of survival was not unlike that of thousands of women who went West only to find that their most valuable assets were their physical beauty and their personality. Petite at five feet tall with piercing blue eyes, Millie captured men's attention by her very essence and her unmistakable joie de vivre. Born to Italian immigrant parents near Kansas City, she and her sister were orphaned early and separated from each other. Millie learned hard lessons on the streets, but she never gave up and she vowed to protect and support her ailing older sister. Caught in a domestic squabble in her foster home, Millie wound up in juvenile court with Harry Truman as her judge. This would be only the first of many brushes in her life with prominent politicians. When physicians diagnosed her sister with tuberculosis and recommended she move West to a Catholic home in Deming, New Mexico, Millie moved with her. Expenses ran high and after a brief stint waiting tables as a Harvey Girl, Millie found that her meager tips could easily be augmented by turning tricks. Thus, out of financial need and devotion to her sister, Mildred Cusey turned to a life of prostitution and a career at which she soon excelled and became both rich and famous.

The Madam is a drama series about a gorgeous and ambitious 16 year old girl who has been forced by her family to run a risky business left behind by her grandmother. Victoria soon finds out that picking the next year’s fashion trends isn’t all she’s responsible for while running her grandmothers fashion empire. Her grandmother leaves behind a multibillion dollar Corporation and a unscratched reputation that only Victoria can handle along with the staff that can help her run the business. As Victoria tries to adjust to her grandmother’s lifestyle, she finds out a lot more about her grandmother than she wanted and now it’s too late for her to back out. Little does Victoria know, her new job as the most feared woman in the Country has its wonderful perks and its horrible downfalls.

The “captivating” true story of the notorious Gilded Age madam who inspired the Belle Watling character in Gone with the Wind (The Wall Street Journal). Belle Brezing made a major career move when she stepped off the streets of Lexington, Kentucky, and into Jennie Hill’s bawdy house—an upscale brothel run out of a former residence of Mary Todd Lincoln. At nineteen, Brezing was already infamous as a youth steeped in death, sex, drugs, and scandal. But it was in Miss Hill’s “respectable” establishment that she began to acquire the skills, manners, and business contacts that allowed her to ascend to power and influence as an internationally known madam. In this revealing book, Maryjean Wall offers a tantalizing true story of vice and power in the Gilded Age South, as told through the life and times of the notorious Miss Belle. After years on the streets and working for Hill, Belle Brezing borrowed enough money to set up her own establishment—her wealth and fame growing alongside the booming popularity of horse racing. Soon, her houses were known internationally, and powerful patrons from the industrial cities of the Northeast courted her in the lavish parlors of her gilt-and-mirror mansion. Secrecy was a moral code in the sequestered demimonde of prostitution in Victorian America, so little has been written about the Southern madam credited with inspiring the character Belle Watling in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Following Brezing from her birth amid the ruins of the Civil War to the height of her scarlet fame and beyond, Wall uses her story to explore a wider world of sex, business, politics, and power. The result is a scintillating tale as enthralling as any fiction.