The Mad Women S Ball

A New York Times best historical novel of the year, adapted as a major film for Amazon Prime, this feminist literary thriller is set in Paris's infamous Salpêtrière asylum—now in paperback The Salpêtrière Asylum: Paris, 1885. Dr. Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad and cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated—these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, wayward daughters, or girls born from adulterous relationships. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is the Lenten ball—the Mad Women’s Ball—when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpêtrière dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugénie has a secret: she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about, The Book of Spirits, Eugénie is determined to escape from the asylum—and the bonds of her gender—and seek out those who will believe in her. And for that she will need Genevieve's help . . .

ONE OF GRAZIA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2021 'I loved it. Atmospheric and so good' MARIAN KEYES 'A dark, bewitching and captivating read that had my heart in my mouth by the ending' JENNIFER SAINT, author of ARIADNE Lancashire, 1620. Young Sarah Haworth and her family live as outcasts. They are 'cunning folk', feared by the local villagers by day, but called upon under cover of darkness for healing balms and spells. Against the odds, love blossoms when Sarah meets Daniel, the local farmer's son. But when a new magistrate arrives to investigate a spate of strange deaths, his gaze inevitably turns to Sarah and her family. In a world where cunning women are forced into darkness by powerful men, can Sarah reckon with her fate to protect all she holds dear? 'Fans of intensely atmospheric historical fiction will love this' STYLIST 'Elizabeth Lee's debut novel is timely in its depiction of hysteria and persecution, and beautifully evokes a historical period poised between dark ignorance and long-overdue enlightenment' OBSERVER 'Wonderfully original . . . devastating . . . and fabulously atmospheric' ELODIE HARPER, author of THE WOLF DEN

From the author of the National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the WINNER of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings "An undeniable success.” — The New York Times Book Review A true triumph of voice and storytelling, The Book of Night Women rings with both profound authenticity and a distinctly contemporary energy. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they- and she-will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings, desires, and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. But the real revelation of the book-the secret to the stirring imagery and insistent prose-is Marlon James himself, a young writer at once breath­takingly daring and wholly in command of his craft.

"In the year 2018, it seems as if women's anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's March, and before the #MeToo movement, women's anger was not only politically catalytic--but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women's slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men"--

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World

“Passions, the edge of madness, forbidden obsessions, runaway libidos and dangerous desires . . . a thinking man’s Fatal Attraction” (Chicago Sun-Times). In A Woman Run Mad, John L’Heureux delivers a novel that is part comedy of manners and part psychosexual thriller. Blocked writer, accidental scholar, inattentive husband, all J.J. Quinn wants is peace, and he has gone to buy his wife an expensive handbag to accomplish it. As the bag in question walks out the door under the arm of a beautiful, aristocratic shoplifter, though, Quinn’s curiosity leads him deep into mystery and danger. The shoplifter is Sarah Slade, a Boston Brahmin attempting to ditch a past as bloody as Medea’s. Compared to Quinn’s hypercompetent, Euripides-scholar wife, Claire, the unhinged Sarah is an alluring breath of fresh air—but, of course, Quinn has no idea of the Pandora’s box he’s opened. Acclaimed by Newsweek as “witty and literate . . . Grand Guignol for grown-ups,” A Woman Run Mad is an unsettling, deeply satisfying novel. A New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. “A superior suspense story . . . that might well have appealed to a writer like Patricia Highsmith, a drama of interlocking obsessions.” —The New York Times “What a wonderfully hideous, gruesome, grueling horror-marathon of a book! A cross between a Henry James novel and the Texas chain saw massacre. I loved it.” —Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America “Normality—as our time understands the word—and monstrosity are L’Heureux’s poles, and he joins them with extraordinary dexterity . . . The ending is not to be revealed.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Abby Abernathy is re-inventing herself as the good girl as she begins her freshman year at college, which is why she must resist lean, cut, and tattooed Travis Maddox, a classic bad boy.

'Professor Marwala has sought to understand what good leadership should mean by drawing on the collective experience of authors who have written on many topics.' – Former President of South Africa, THABO MBEKI We cannot underestimate how critical strong leadership is in all aspects of our lives. It enables us to run our lives, homes, communities, workplaces and nations. Given its importance, it is pertinent to ask: What is the source of good leadership? Albert Einstein once said, 'The only source of knowledge is experience.' Many philosophers have observed this and, if we accept experience as the only source of knowledge, can we extend this conclusion to leadership? Or is the basis of good leadership intuition or instinct? Or is it perhaps a combination of these? In Leadership Lessons From Books I Have Read, Tshilidzi Marwala adopts the thesis that the source of good leadership is knowledge, and the source of knowledge is experience, which can take many forms: reading widely, listening, and engaging in discussion and debate with other knowledge seekers. If leadership is derived from knowledge and knowledge is derived from experience, the 'experience' in this book is from 50 books that Tshilidzi has read, and so the source of knowledge informing leadership is the collective experience of the more than 50 accomplished authors who wrote those books including, among others, Chinua Achebe, Thomas Sankara, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nelson Mandela, Mandla Mathebula, Eugène Marais, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Daniel Kahneman, Karl Marx, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nassim Taleb and Aristotle. Divided into four sections, Tshilidzi shares his leadership lessons in the areas of Africa and the diaspora, the search for the ideal polity, science, technology and society, and the leadership of nations. 'Those who do not read, should not lead.' – THILIDZI MARWALA