To Hell With Drowning

A complex, haunting novel that explores a schizophrenic young artist’s struggles with her perception of reality… including an intriguing ghostly woman who appears to her in the most mysterious ways. India Morgan Phelps—Imp to her friends—is trying to write her memoir, but she struggles with the unreliability of her own mind. Suffering from schizophrenia, as well as comorbid anxiety and OCD, Imp has a difficult time separating fantasy from reality. But for her, it’s most important to tell her “truth.” And for Imp, that truth comes through a stream-of-consciousness tale of her love story with her transgender girlfriend, as well as Imp’s obsession with a mysterious woman whom she finds naked and mute at the side of the road. Imp must push past her mental illness—or work with it—to piece together her memories and tell her story. A rich exploration of mental illness, gender identity, and creative process, The Drowning Girl delivers an eerie and powerful story of a woman’s efforts to discover the truth that’s locked away in her own head. “Caitlín R. Kiernan moves firmly into the new vanguard […] of our best and most artful authors of the gothic and fantastic—those capable of writing fiction of deep moral and artistic seriousness.”—Peter Straub

In the gripping fantasy sequel to A Shadow Bright and Burning that Justine Magazine says is "a pinch of Potter blended with a drop of Infernal Devices (Cassandra Clare)", Henrietta wants to save her love, but his dark magic may be her undoing. “Devastatingly magical and monstrously romantic.” —Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of CARAVAL Henrietta wants to save the one she loves. But will his dark magic be her undoing? In the second book in the Kingdom on Fire series, Jessica Cluess delivers her signature mix of magic, passion, and teen warriors fighting for survival. Hand to fans of Victoria Aveyard, Sarah J. Maas, and Kiersten White. Henrietta came to London to be named the chosen one, the first female sorcerer in centuries. Instead, she discovered a city ruled by secrets. And the biggest secret of all: Henrietta is not the chosen one. Still, she must play the role in order to keep herself and Rook, her best friend and childhood love, safe. But can she truly save him? In order to try, Henrietta persuades Blackwood, the mysterious Earl of Sorrow-Fell, to travel up the coast to seek out new weapons. And Magnus, the brave, reckless flirt who wants to win back her favor, is assigned to their mission. Together, they will face monsters, make powerful allies, and discover that some old wounds are still full of poison. Praise for Jessica Cluess's A Shadow Bright and Burning, Kingdom on Fire, Book 1: “This is a novel that gives off light and heat.” —The New York Times “The magic! The intrigue! The guys! We were sucked into this monster-ridden alternative England from page one. Henrietta is literally a ‘girl on fire’ and this team of sorcerers training for battle had a pinch of Potter blended with a drop of [Cassandra Clare’s] Infernal Devices.” —Justine “Unputdownable. I loved the monsters, the magic, and the teen warriors who are their world’s best hope! Jessica Cluess is an awesome storyteller!” —TAMORA PIERCE, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Reprint of the original, first published in 1845.

From the author of The Rules of Magic: A novel of a Long Island family matriarch and her namesake granddaughter who discover the power the past holds over their present. Esther the Black is eighteen years old and ready to leave the Compound, the collection of cottages on the North Shore of Long Island where she has lived all her life. But as July turns to August and her family braces for the height of Drowning Season, she realizes that she may not be able to escape her family’s legacy. Her father will find a way through the locked sea-wall gate and try to drown himself in the harbor, her mother will be too hung over to leave her cottage for days at a time, and her grandmother will refuse to say a single kind word. Esther the White left home when she was just a girl, fleeing her abusive parents across a frozen Russian river with a pocketful of stolen jewels. Life has taught her to be cold and unyielding, but in the heat of another fraught summer at the Compound, she feels her resolve melting away. Cohen, the landscaper and chauffeur responsible for keeping her son out of the water, looks at her with a desire she finds harder and harder to resist. Her granddaughter’s name may be an insult to tradition, but does that mean the poor girl should never feel her grandmother’s love or know her story? Graceful, haunting, and wise, The Drowning Season “casts the spell of all great fairy tales. It takes daily life and transforms it into myth as we watch” (Chicago Sun-Times).

Jack is a young Australian, Susan an American girl. For them, it was love at first sight. But, when she becomes pregnant, her family takes Susan back to America, and it seems Jack will never see her again. However, Jack is not so easily dismissed. In the green hell of Vietnam, he finds the clue that will re-unite them. A story of love, war, and the strength of the human spirit. From Australia to Boston, Sydney to Saigon, Jack and Susan’s story will tug at your heartstrings.

In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run. Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him, but who walks his own dreams as a man of stone and clay, brought to life for the sole purpose of hunting witches.

This groundbreaking book offers the first full analysis of the long-neglected and controversial subject of female infanticide in China. Although infanticide and child abandonment were worldwide phenomena from antiquity down to the nineteenth century when massive numbers of children were still being abandoned in Europe, China was unique in targeting girls almost exclusively. Yet despite its persistence for two thousand years, little has been published on a practice that is deeply sensitive within China and little understood by outsiders. Drawing on little-known Chinese documents and illustrations, noted historian D. E. Mungello describes the causes and continuation of female infanticide since 1650 despite efforts by Confucian moralists, Buddhist teachings, government officials, and even imperial edicts to stop the practice. The arrival of Christian missionaries led to foreign involvement as well, with Catholic priests baptizing abandoned and dying infants in Nanjing and Beijing beginning in the early 1600s. Mission efforts peaked in the nineteenth century when the European-based Society of the Holy Childhood urged Catholic children to contribute their pennies to help neglected children in China. However, most of the infant victims were drowned at birth in the privacy of their homes, thereby escaping the scrutiny of the law and the public. Mungello brings this secretive practice to light with a nuanced and balanced analysis of the cultural, economic, and social causes of early infanticide and its contemporary manifestation in sex-selected abortion as a result of the government's one-child policy. Presenting female infanticide as a human rather than a distinctly Chinese problem, he estimates the tragic loss of girls in the millions.