Our Sisters Keepers

In a tight, dramatic, two-character, two-act play Ted Allan, one of Canada's best-known playwrights, challenges us to think again about love and guilt, about madness and normalcy. My Sister's Keeper was first produced at the 1976 Lennoxville Festival in Quebec. (an earlier version, entitled 'I've Seen You Cut Lemons,' had been directed by Sean Connery at the Fortune Theatre in London in 1970.) It is a play about sensitivity and about victims; about what we do to each other and particularly about what society does to women; about what makes us able to love and what prevents us from allowing ourselves to love. One day 'schizophrenic' Sarah arrives--to stay--at the London flat of her successful, 'normal' brother. The ensuing confrontations lead us, when we can catch our breath, to ask just who it is that is insane, and why?

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister Kate can somehow fight the leukemia that has palgued her since childhood.

American culture has long had a conflicted relationship with assistance to the poor. Cotton Mather and John Winthrop were staunch proponents of Christian charity as fundamental to colonial American society, while transcendentalists harbored deep skepticism towards benevolence in favor of Emersonian self-reliance and Thoreau's insistence on an ascetic life. Women in the 19th century, as these essays show, approached issues of benevolence far differently than their male counterparts, consistently promoting assistance to the impoverished, in both their acts and their writings.

This study of prison reform adds a new chapter to the history of women's struggle for justice in America

When Margaret Moorman's older sister, Sally, was first hospitalized with schizophrenia in 1959, her family denied the truth to neighbors, friends -- and even themselves. Not until thirty years later, when their mother's death made her Sally's sole caretaker, did Margaret face the truth. Now, in this poignant memoir, she tells the brave story of her struggle to come to grips with the legacy of her sister's devastating disease and its effect on her own life and on her entire family. Margaret reveals her fears that she too would become ill and her ambivalence about having a family of her own. She writes about the difficulties of assuming the responsibility for Sally's care while trying to manage her own career, relationships, and the birth of her first child. And she tells how she and Sally finally learned to negotiate their relationship and accept each other. Candid, moving, and ultimately healing, My Sister's Keeper is a heartwarming story about two sisters and their love for each other. Hallmark has presented My Sister's Keeper as a film starring Kathy Bates, Elizabeth Perkins, and Lynn Redgrave. Book jacket.

This intimate study of prostitutes in New York City during the mid-nineteenth century reveals these women in an entirely new light. Unlike traditional studies, Marilynn Wood Hill's account of prostitution's positive attractions, as well as its negative aspects, gives a fresh perspective to this much-discussed occupation. Using a wealth of primary source material, from tax and court records to brothel guidebooks and personal correspondence, Hill shows the common concerns prostitutes shared with women outside the "profession." As mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives, trapped by circumstances, they sought a way to create a life and work culture for themselves and those they cared about. By the 1830s prostitution in New York was no longer hidden. Though officially outside the law, it was well integrated into the city's urban life. Hill documents the discrimination and legal harassment prostitutes suffered, and shows how they asserted their rights to protect themselves and their property. Although their occupation was frequently degrading and dangerous, it offered economic and social opportunities for many of its practitioners. Women controlled the prostitution business until about 1870, and during this period female employers and their employees often achieved economic goals not generally available to other working women. While examining aspects of prostitution that benefited women, Hill's vivid portrayal also makes evident the hardships that prostitutes endured. What emerges is a fully rounded study that will be welcomed by many readers.

In "I Am My Sister's Keeper," Amarin Trichanh details vignettes of her journey in the United States Army when at the beginning she tried to ignore and avoid sexual harassment only eventually to confront and expose it. Spanning thirteen years, including two tours to Iraq and one tour to Afghanistan, Amarin illustrates the numerous ways that the sexual coercion and exploitation of female soldiers was made possible at every level of command. A victim of military sexual abuse herself, Amarin advocates for the mental, emotional, and physical security and safety and women in the Armed Forces.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Alternatingly heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require.”—The Washington Post Look for Jodi Picoult’s new novel, By Any Other Name, available now! GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • PEOPLE’S BOOK OF THE WEEK • A POPSUGAR BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet she wonders if she can trust him completely. . . . Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in Ash, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her. Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

Return to the dark and haunting world of Rosemary’s Baby in Ira Levin’s beguiling sequel, Son of Rosemary. Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, one of the best-selling books of all time, is the iconic classic that ushered in the era of modern horror. This shocking and darkly comic sequel is set well after the harrowing events of the first book, and is just as compelling and suspenseful. It is now 1999, and Rosemary Woodhouse awakens from a decades-long coma to find herself in a drastically changed world. She soon discovers her son is already thirty-three years old, an a charismatic spiritual leader worshipped the world over, preaching a message of tolerance and peace. But is “Andy” the savior the troubled world so desperately needs, or is he his father’s son—the Antichrist? Master of suspense Ira Levin’s sardonic and thought-provoking exploration of good and evil, Son of Rosemary, finds Rosemary and her child reunited in a battle of wills that could determine not just the course of the new millennium—but the very fate of humankind.