Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair

Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair
Author: June Gervais
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2023-06-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593298810

“I adored this novel. It’s a story about being an awkward, misfit girl with big dreams in a man’s world. It made me laugh out loud, and it made me really, really want a tattoo.” —Clare Pooley, New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project An uplifting, feminist coming-of-age love story about a young woman who dreams of becoming a tattoo artist, and living life on her own terms Introvert Gina Mulley is determined to become a tattoo artist, and to find somewhere she belongs in her conventional Long Island town. But this is 1985, when tattooing is still a gritty, male-dominated fringe culture, and Gina’s whimsical style is far from the norm. Luck is on her side: Gina’s older brother Dominic owns a tattoo shop, and he reluctantly grants her one year to prove herself. Gina devotes herself to perfecting her craft, but her world is turned upside down when a mysterious psychic and his striking assistant, Anna, arrive on the scene. Anna’s friendship opens Gina’s eyes to thrilling possibilities: finally stepping out of her brother’s shadow and embracing her own quirky self, both in her art and beyond. The tattoo shop is rocked by a crisis just as Gina finds herself falling in love with Anna. When Dominic gives Gina an ultimatum, she’s faced with an impossible choice: Is this newfound independence and a shot at romance worth sacrificing her dreams? Or can she find a way to have it all?

Looking for Miss America

Looking for Miss America
Author: Margot Mifflin
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1640092242

From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals—and how the pageant, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress Looking for Miss America is a fast–paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change—the post–suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever–changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations. Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s. In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.

Love in the Time of Contagion

Love in the Time of Contagion
Author: Laura Kipnis
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0593316282

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.

Milk Blood Heat

Milk Blood Heat
Author: Dantiel W. Moniz
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802158161

“Moniz sings of Florida, girlhood, family, loss, and the glorious, ecstatic, devastating human body. A gorgeous debut from a wickedly talented new writer.” —Lauren Groff, New York Times–bestselling author Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlantic, TIME, Washington Independent Review of Books, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, Library Journal, Literary Hub, Audible, Largehearted Boy, Entropy, Millions, and Tampa Bay Times Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story in Milk Blood Heat delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another. A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them. Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star. “A fresh feel for the intensity and contradictions of girlhood sings across tough stories.” —Entertainment Weekly

Outstanding Books for the College Bound

Outstanding Books for the College Bound
Author: Angela Carstensen
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2011-05-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 083899315X

More than simply a vital collection development tool, this book can help librarians help young adults grow into the kind of independent readers and thinkers who will flourish at college.

As Good as Dead

As Good as Dead
Author: Elizabeth Evans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 162040298X

When Esme, the woman she betrayed twenty years ago, arrives on her doorstep, bringing with her a past she thought was buried forever, Charlotte is faced with a choice of redeeming the old friendship or give in to the fears of the past.

The Painted Girls

The Painted Girls
Author: Cathy Marie Buchanan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2013-01-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101603798

A heartrending, gripping novel about two sisters in Belle Époque Paris and the young woman forever immortalized as muse for Edgar Degas’ Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. 1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir. Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. There she meets a wealthy male patron of the ballet, but might the assistance he offers come with strings attached? Meanwhile Antoinette, derailed by her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde. Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of “civilized society.” In the end, each will come to realize that her salvation, if not survival, lies with the other.

The Lost Child

The Lost Child
Author: Caryl Phillips
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473569826

Discover this heartrending story of orphans, outcasts and the grip of the past from award-winning novelist Caryl Phillips – inspired by Wuthering Heights. It is the 1960s. Isolated from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, Monica Johnson raises her sons in the shadow of the wild Yorkshire moors. But when her younger son Tommy, a loner who is bullied at school, disappears, the family bond is demolished – with devastating consequences. Deftly intertwined with this modern narrative is the story of the ragged childhood of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys. Recovering the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, The Lost Child is an exquisite novel about exile, freedom and what it is to belong. ‘Heartbreaking...compelling’ Independent

The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention

The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention
Author: Pamela Mitchell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2009-12-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1101171170

Reinvention is the key to success in these volatile times—and Pamela Mitchell holds the key to reinvention! In The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, America's Reinvention Coach® Pamela Mitchell offers every tool readers need to navigate the full arc of career change. Part I introduces the Reinvention Mindset, with what you need to know to be prepared mentally to get started. In Part II, you read the real-life stories of ten individuals who successfully made the leap to new and unexpected careers, using the 10 laws: The 1st Law: It Starts With a Vision for Your Life The 2nd Law: Your Body Is Your Best Guide The 3rd Law: Progress Begins When You Stop Making Excuses The 4th Law: What You Seek is on the Road Less Traveled The 5th Law: You’ve Got the Tools in Your Toolbox The 6th Law: Your Reinvention Board is Your Lifeline The 7th Law: Only a Native Can Give You the Inside Scoop The 8th Law: They Won't "Get" You Until You Speak Their Language The 9th Law: It Takes the Time That it Takes The 10th Law: The World Buys Into an Aura of Success Each story is followed by an in-depth lesson that explains how to adapt these laws to your own career goals, and what actions and precautions to take. The lessons answer all your tactical concerns about navigating the roadblocks, getting traction and managing your fears. The final section provides workbook exercises for fine-tuning your reinvention strategies for maximum results. Clear-headed, calming, practical, and thorough, this is the ideal action plan for getting through any career crisis and ending up securely in the lifestyle you've always dreamed of having.

The Resistance Man

The Resistance Man
Author: Martin Walker
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345804805

Another delightful installment in the internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno. It's summer in St. Denis for chief of police Bruno Courrèges, and that means a new season of cases. This time there are three weighing on his mind. First, there’s the evidence that a veteran of the French Resistance is connected to a notorious train robbery; then, the burglary of a former British spymaster's estate; and, finally, the murder of an antiques dealer whose lover is conveniently on the lam. As Bruno investigates, it becomes clear that they are connected--however, figuring out how will take every skill he possesses. Add in juggling the complex affections of two powerful women, maneuvering village politics, and managing his irrepressible puppy, Balzac, and Bruno has his hands full once again.