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Showing 7561 - 7580 of 9286 items
By Caroline Muir. 2011
Tantra Goddess is Caroline Muir's memoir of her personal journey from innocent Kansas girl to skilled sexual and spiritual healer…
and leader. She shares the experiences that shaped her and lessons learned over a lifetime of searching for, and most often finding, love. While pioneering the now burgeoning Tantra movement in the United States and abroad, she experiences the highs and lows of the polyamorous, Tantric lifestyle, finds peace at last in a sexually monogamous relationship, and a new found sense of herself.By Patrick McDonnell. 2011
Holding her stuffed toy chimpanzee, young Jane Goodall observes nature, reads Tarzan books, and dreams of living in Africa and…
helping animals. Jane grew up to help change the world! Includes biographical information on the prominent zoologist. Grades K-3. 2011.By Helen Weaver. 2009
". . . [Weaver] paints a romantic picture of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and '60s, when she worked in…
publishing and hung out with Allen Ginsberg and the poet Richard Howard and was wild and loose, getting high and falling into bed almost immediately with her crushes, including Lenny Bruce. . . . Her descriptions of the Village are evocative, recalling a time when she wore long skirts, Capezio ballet shoes and black stockings,' and used to sit in the Bagatelle and have sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist of lemon.' Early on, she quotes Pasternak: You in others: this is your soul.' Kerouac's soul lives on through many people -- Joyce Johnson, for one -- but few have been as adept as Weaver at capturing both him and the New York bohemia of the time. He was lucky to have met her." --Tara McKelvey, The New York Times Book Review"There is a tendency for memoirs written by women about The Great Man to be self-abnegating exercises in a kind of inverted narcissism-the author seeking to prove her worth as muse, as consort, as chosen one. Not so with Helen Weaver's beautiful, plainspoken elegy for her time spent with Jack Kerouac, who suddenly appeared at her door in the West Village one white, frosty morning with Allen Ginsberg, who knew Weaver's roommate, in tow."-New York Post"Helen Weaver's book was a revelation to me! . . . This is the most graphic, honest, shameless, and moving documentary of what the newly liberated women in cities got up to-how they lived, loved, and created. Who knew? It is time they did! And here's how."-Carolyn Cassady"The book recounts her affair with Kerouac in 1956 during the period when he signed his literary contract for On the Road, butBy Kelly Dinardo. 2007
Blond and beautiful, Lili St. Cyr shimmied across the country's nightclubs as one of the century's great sirens. She inspired…
future femme fatales including Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Dita Von Teese. She helped cultivate the modern-day impression of striptease. And, with stage routines featuring themes from fantasy, history and literature, she scandalized and seduced millions, influencing pop culture for decades.Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique explores the life of the last real queen of burlesque. Born into a poor family, abandoned by her parents, and raised by her grandmother, she used her ambition, beauty, and charm to escape her small-town life. Upon becoming the top burlesque dancer of her era, she amassed legions of famous fans, including Betty Grable, Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, and Humphrey Bogart. During her reign, one reporter called her "the rich man's Gypsy Rose Lee" and Marilyn Monroe took cues from her acts. After she retired, Mike Wallace wrote that his television interview with her remained one of the most fascinating he had ever conducted.The private Lili was considerably more troubled, however. Despite being married six times, Lili found love elusive; she was involved in affairs with wealthy businessmen and rumored to have dalliances with celebrities including Orson Welles, Victor Mature and Yul Brynner. She had as many as ten abortions, attempted suicide several times, and became reliant on sleeping pills and, ultimately, heroin.A searing look at American sexuality in the twentieth century, Gilded Lili immortalizes the legend with verve and grace. Lili's era - which see-sawed between McCarthyism and puritanical humor - is presented with vibrancy, intelligence, and commentary on the ever-changing dynamics between sex and commerce. Based on exhaustive research and filled with rare photographs, Gilded Lili reveals a portrait of a woman who made the century sizzle.By Laurie Lisle. 1996
Without Child challenges the stigma of childlessness by offering childless women the lifeaffirming story of themselves. Beginning with the difficult…
inner journey a woman faces before finally deciding or realizing she will not bear children, Without Child explores the myth of the childless woman's rejection of the maternal instinct. It also examines the childless woman's relationship to mothers and mothering, to her femininity, to men, to achievement, to her body,and to old age.Laurie Lisle contends that childless women are part of an ancient and respectable cultural tradition that includes biblical matriarchs, celibate saints, and nineteenth-century social reformers. However, like other aspects of women's history, this tradition has been forgotten and, in the process, maligned. Without Child bring childless women out of obscurity and places them back in women's history.Without Child brings scope and depth to a subject that has long been misunderstood. Weaving rich materials from history, literature, religion, and sociology with the author's own and other stories, this groundbreaking book does what no other has done before-presents childlessnessin a multifaceted and positive light.Most women grow up thinking they will become mothers, and many do follow that path. But for those women who are willingly or unwillingly without children, childlessness is a way of life that many of them must constantly defend. Without Child explores the facts and fallacies behind childlessness,what it means for women and society, and reminds us of how women can and do embrace this choice.In the shadow of a culture that claims to adore the child, Without Child bring a long forbidden topic into the light. Wide-ranging, yet intimate, philosophical, yet clear~sighted, this important book will reassure millions of women that they are not alone, not unusual, and, in fact, are part of a long and honorable tradition.Laurie Lisle is the author of four other books besidesWithout Child: two biographies of women artists, a history of a girls'school, and a memoir from the point-of-view as a gardener. Raised in Rhode Island, she lives with her husband in Litchfield County,Connecticut and in Westchester County, New York. For more information, please see her website at www.laurielisle.com.By Catherine E. Mckinley. 2002
Suffused with longing, this rueful, passionate memoir about an adopted woman's search for her birth parents explores themes of race…
and family. Catherine McKinley was one of only a few thousand African American and bi-racial children adopted by white couples in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raised in a small, white New England town, she had a persistent longing for the more diverse community that would better understand and encompass her. In an era shaped by the rhetoric of Black Power and Black Pride, McKinley's coming of age entailed her own detailed investigation into her birth history, a search complicated by the terms of a closed adoption that denied her all knowledge of the circumstances of her birth. THE BOOK OF SARAHS traces McKinley's own time of revelations: after a five-year period marked by dead ends and disappointments, she finds her birth mother and a half-sister named Sarah, the name that was originally given to her. When she locates her birth father and meets several of his eleven other children she begins to see the whole mosaic of her parentage-African American, WASP, Jewish, Native American-and then is confronted with a final revelation that threatens to destabilize all she has uncovered. At the center of the narrative is McKinley's angry passion for her two mothers and her quest for self-acceptance in a world in which she seems to herself to be always outside the bounds of social legitimacy. In telling of her struggles both to fit into and to defy social conventions, McKinley challenges us to rethink our own preconceptions about race, identity, kinship, loyalty, and love. Catherine McKinley is the author of The Book of Sarahs and Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught Creative Nonfiction, and a former Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, West Africa. She lives in New York City. "McKinley writes beautifully in this debut memoir, never resorting to sentimentality or easy emotions within this tangled web of emotional and family secrets."- Publishers Weekly"In recounting her long and arduous journey in search of her birth parents, McKinley (Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing) draws us into a page-turning treasure hunt. Along the way she skillfully describes her upbringing as a black (or so she believed) child adopted by a white family during the 1960s, her tenacious efforts to winnow information out of the bureaucratic agency that handled her adoption and her often startlingly candid reactions to each new revelation about her background. Ultimately, she discovered that her parentage includes African American, WASP, Jewish, and Native American forbears. The multiple Sarahs of the title are just another confounding bit of information in this painful, funny, and very human memoir about race and family. In the end, the treasure McKinley seems to have discovered is her own independent self. Recommended for all libraries."- Library Journal"In elegant, original prose that springs from a mind and heart at turns spirited and pensive, Catherine McKinley tells her dramatic story with defiant candor, precocious wisdom, and courageous sensitivity."- Sarah Saffian, Author of Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Bing FoundBy Laurie Lisle. 2005
Twenty years ago, Laurie Lisle bought an old New England clapboard house with an awkwardly shaped backyard. As she worked…
to transform it into a graceful garden, she also found herself digging into her feelings about love and loss, work and play, roots and rootlessness, solitude and sociability. Now, in these intimate essays, Lisle explores the fascinating connections among one's interior landscape, village life, and the natural world.By Marijane Meaker. 2003
Patricia Highsmith, author of classics such as The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt, was a lesbian who…
defied categorization during the postwar period. Her dynamic, often difficult life coupled with her sinister crime stories and upbeat lesbian pulp fiction challenged popular stereotypes about homosexuality as well as women writers. To aspiring young novelist Marijane Meaker, however, Highsmith was more than a role model. During their two-year romance amidst the bohemian set of Greenwich Village and the literary crowd of the Hamptons, the pair navigated the underground lesbian bar scene, lunched with literary stars like Janet Flanner, shared intimacies, gossiped with abandon, and maintained a steady routine of writing and heavy drinking. Written with wit and brassy candor, this is a rare and revealing look at the life and loves of a controversial icon of popular American fiction.By Marcia Gloster. 2014
Marcia Gloster was a college student traveling through Europe in the summer of 1963. When she arrived in Salzburg, Austria…
to study at Oskar Kokoschka's School of Vision, she envisioned a month of intensive painting, never expecting to find herself swept into a passionate affair. Nor did she imagine her lover to be a married instructor with a long history of indiscretions. Even at a young age, Marcia knew how to protect her heart. But it had never been taken by a man as overwhelming and sensual as Bill Thomson.31 Days is the story of Marcia and Bill in Salzburg. 31 days that would redefine love, sex, passion, and permanence for a woman of twenty; and a month that would resonate in her life forever.Deeply sensual, intensely vivid, and achingly beautiful 31 Days is a memoir that lives in all of us.By Rachel Kramer Bussel. 2013
In popular culture, anal sex is often thought of as strictly a female receptive act-receptive to a penis, that is.…
Truth is, there's a wide range of anal pleasure to be had for people of all genders. In Between the Cheeks, that range is explored, savored, enjoyed. Each element of preparation, from fantasy and anticipation to tension, humiliation, curiosity and sheer delight, is drawn out, while all kinds of touch get their due.I hope these stories excite, arouse and encourage you to explore anal eroticism-talking and fantasizing about it, as well as engaging in it, with whatever body parts and sex toys (and plenty of lube!) you desire.By Alison Weir. 2007
Recounts one of the love stories of medieval England. This is a tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who…
became first the mistress, and later the wife, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 2007.By Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb. 2013
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and…
fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. Bestseller. 2013.By Sara Corbett, Amanda Lindhout. 2013
Freelance journalist Lindhout recounts her career, tracing its roots to her childhood in Alberta, Canada, where she grew up reading…
National Geographic. Describes her worldwide travels; experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other hot spots; and 2008 kidnapping and fifteen-month captivity in Somalia. Violence and some strong language. Bestseller. 2013.By Chris Stewart, Elizabeth Smart. 2013
On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in…
the middle of the night by religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, sexually abused, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life. She tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convince them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Bestseller. 2013.By Alison Weir. 2003
No English monarch had a greater influence on his or her people than Queen Elizabeth I. Yet despite her extremely…
public life, she closely guarded her secrets, which are finally revealed in this epic biography. The Life of Elizabeth I is history at its most entertaining and thought-provoking. 2003.By Sarah Thyre. 2009
Best known for her role on the Comedy Central show "Strangers with Candy," Sarah Thyre is an accomplished actress and…
writer. In this snappy memoir about growing up poor in the Deep South, Thyre relays vivid memories of her wacky parents, losing her virginity, and being infamously called "the family liar." 2009.Recounts the author's experiences caring for a flock of chickens on a farm north of San Francisco, documenting her personal…
discovery, political commitment, and the joys of relating to animals. 2011.By Jane Christmas. 2013
Bestselling author Jane Christmas decides to enter a convent to discern whether she is, as she puts it, "nun material".…
But just as she convinces herself to take the plunge, her long-term partner surprises her with a marriage proposal. Determined not to let her monastic dreams get sidelined, Christmas puts her engagement aside and embarks on an extraordinary year-plus adventure to four convents—one in Canada and three in the U.K. c2013.By Phyllis Grosskurth. 1999
When Phyllis Grosskurth was a girl, she imagined herself growing up to be a detective, a sleuth on the trail…
of the wicked, the dangerous, the ones who didn’t want to be found out. Some time later her ambition changed to that of writer. Her destiny combined both; today she is the tireless discoverer of secret lives, whose international reputation for daring scholarship has made her, in the words of one critic, "Canada’s premier biographer." This is her autobiography. c1999.By Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb. 2013
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and…
fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. Bestseller. 2013.