The Beantown Girls

First Published by Lake Union Publishing, 2019.

Anna Cavanaugh is a restless young widow and brilliant French teacher at a private school in Washington, DC. Everything changes when she's recruited into the Office of Strategic Services by family friend and legendary WWI hero Major General William Donovan.

A novel based on the Red Cross women in London who served doughnuts and hot coffee, and provided Big Band music and much more to welcome airmen as they returned from missions during World War II.

If a Richard Russo protagonist went on a bender in Vegas, the result would be something like Swimming with Bridgeport Girls: an uproarious romp about a lovesick gambler and his against-all-odds quest to win back his ex-wife. Ray Parisi is in trouble. Fired from his anchor job at ESPN after one too many public humiliations, he is holed up in a motel and in desperate need of a break. His ex-wife is shacking up with another guy in his old house, a Cambodian bookie wants to kill him, and he’s wanted by the New York State Police. A few days before the Fourth of July, he unexpectedly receives an inheritance from his long-lost father, and it seems like all of his problems might be solved. Determined to get his life back together, Ray hatches an imaginative but highly suspect plan to win back his wife, dashing from Connecticut to Las Vegas to Memphis in an attempt to secure his future before the past runs him down. The cast of characters he meets along the way is as loveable as it is absolutely insane. Sure to please fans of sophisticated romantic comedies like Seating Arrangements and Silver Linings Playbook, Swimming with Bridgeport Girls is a hilarious, heart-wrenching, and unexpectedly powerful tale about one man’s mission to—against all odds—finally get it right.

"They say this land is bound, cursed since the beginning of the world. And it'll be freed one day by a man with war-torn hands." Rosamund Lacey has crossed a continent to marry Archer Scott because she believes he is a man set apart-a man with a destiny. But Alexander Mortimer, Outlaw King of the western territory, believes in only one kind of destiny: winner takes all. Determined to reign supreme, Mortimer kidnaps the governor's bride and wreaks havoc on the land around Glory Mesa. But when Archer refuses to choose between the woman he loves and the land he has sworn to protect, he is forced into a showdown that may cost more than his life.

For the young women living in Boston's North End in 1908, the Saturday Evening Girls Club is an escape from the drudgery of daily life. For Caprice, Ada, Maria and Thea, it's the one time each week the friends can be together. They support each other's dreams and help each other navigate romances and family clashes, cultural prejudices, loss and heartbreak. Through it all one thing is certain - they could not get through it all without their friendship, and the Saturday Evening Girls Club.

“The French Revolution comes alive through the eyes of six diverse and complex women, in the skilled hands of these amazing authors.”--Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls A breathtaking, epic novel illuminating the hopes, desires, and destinies of princesses and peasants, harlots and wives, fanatics and philosophers—seven unforgettable women whose paths cross during one of the most tumultuous and transformative events in history: the French Revolution. Ribbons of Scarlet is a timely story of the power of women to start a revolution—and change the world. In late eighteenth-century France, women do not have a place in politics. But as the tide of revolution rises, women from gilded salons to the streets of Paris decide otherwise—upending a world order that has long oppressed them. Blue-blooded Sophie de Grouchy believes in democracy, education, and equal rights for women, and marries the only man in Paris who agrees. Emboldened to fight the injustices of King Louis XVI, Sophie aims to prove that an educated populace can govern itself--but one of her students, fruit-seller Louise Audu, is hungrier for bread and vengeance than learning. When the Bastille falls and Louise leads a women’s march to Versailles, the monarchy is forced to bend, but not without a fight. The king’s pious sister Princess Elisabeth takes a stand to defend her brother, spirit her family to safety, and restore the old order, even at the risk of her head. But when fanatics use the newspapers to twist the revolution’s ideals into a new tyranny, even the women who toppled the monarchy are threatened by the guillotine. Putting her faith in the pen, brilliant political wife Manon Roland tries to write a way out of France’s blood-soaked Reign of Terror while pike-bearing Pauline Leon and steely Charlotte Corday embrace violence as the only way to save the nation. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive--unless unlikely heroine and courtesan’s daughter Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe can sway the man who controls France’s fate: the fearsome Robespierre.

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE SUMMER BY POPSUGAR, FROLIC, PARADE, TRAVEL & LEISURE, SHE KNOWS, and SHE READS! NAMED A REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOK OF 2020 (SO FAR). “Fast Girls is a compelling, thrilling look at what it takes to be a female Olympian in pre-war America...Brava to Elise Hooper for bringing these inspiring heroines to the wide audience they so richly deserve.”—Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics and The House Girl Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany. Perfect for readers who love untold stories of amazing women, such as The Only Woman in the Room, Hidden Figures, and The Lost Girls of Paris. In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything. Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team. From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life. These three athletes will join with others to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin.