Shadows, which was not only the debut of Jill Emerson but my own very first novel, is the story of a young woman, Jan Marlowe, who comes to New York fresh out of college, takes an apartment in the Bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, and seeks to find herself—and specifically to come to terms with the puzzling question of sexual identity.Well then...One morning in the spring of 1958 I woke up in my room at the Hotel Alexandria with a paralyzing hangover (whi...

SO THIS GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR... ...and when she walks out there's a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She's been doing this for a while, and she's good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her. She starts writing down names...

THIRTY, as intensely erotic a book as I'd ever written, is what happened after I stopped writing erotica.Beginning with CARLA in 1958, I spent half a dozen years laboring in the vineyards of Midcentury Erotica, writing no end of books for Midwood, Nightstand, Beacon, et.al. It was a wonderful training ground, a comfortingly forgiving medium, and I've never regretted the timer I spent there, although for a time I wanted to disown the work I produced. (That changed with the passage o...

Here's what someone wrote as the book description for an earlier edition of ENOUGH OF SORROW:"From master storyteller Lawrence Block comes one girl's journey toward self-discovery and sexual freedom....Karen Winslow is starting over. But she's not sure how to move forward when her deepest secret haunts her and keeps her from enjoying her carefree youth. She's a sweet but troubled young thing, and not until she meets Rae, a confident young lesbian, does she realize what she's been m...

After spending her girlhood writing gentle and thoughtful novels of the lesbian experience (SHADOWS, WARM AND WILLING, ENOUGH OF SORROW), Jill Emerson reinvented herself in the early 1970s, just when contemporary literature was experiencing an enormous flowering of sexuality. Even as the whole culture rocked with the sexual revolution, popular fiction echoed this change with a flinging off of censorship and a surge of sexual candor.And Jill wrote three books for Berkley.The...

Jill Emerson, whose first three works were gentle explorations of the lesbian experience, took a sharp turn toward candor in THIRTY, her first book for Berkley. As I've explained in the book description for that novel, around the time Berkley came calling (via my agent) I'd become disenchanted with the whole notion of fiction recounted by some disembodied third- or first-person narrator. It struck me as artificial, and my response was to pile artifice upon artifice and produce a novel in t...

I can trace the origin of A Week as Andrea Benstock to two distinct sources. The first inspired my attempting the book, while the second inspired its form.Let me consider the second first. In 1949, the Belgian author Georges Simenon published a novel called Four Days in a Lifetime. All I remember of the book is its structure.Each of its four parts took place entirely within a single day of its protagonist's life. And those four days gave you the full picture of the man's existence ....

In early 1969, I moved with my wife and daughters to an 18th century farmhouse on twelve rolling acres a mile east of the Delaware River. We kept a variety of animals and grew things in the garden, and this was as I'd expected. But there were two things I did not anticipate. One was that I would have to go away from there, all the way back to New York City, to get any work done. The other was that I'd open an art gallery.The art gallery was in New Hope, right across the river from ...

This book is a Divinely guided message of hope, purpose & love spoken through the hearts of two earth angels, Wendy & Jillian and written down by Gwen Michalek under the counsel of the Holy Spirit. It is a sacred invitation to remember who we truly are and why we are here. In a world that feels dark and confusing this book brings light, hope, and joy. It is a simple yet profound message for both the religious and non-religious. It is like being given a roadmap to what your soul has been se...

Young Clarissa dreams of becoming a Pirate, but her brothers laugh at her and tell her that "Girls can't be Pirates!"Join Clarissa as she dares to prove them wrong by joining the crew of the pirate ship Kestrel and finding treasure of emeralds that match the color of her mother's eyes. In her journey, Clarissa finds new friends, develops new skills, and learns just what she is capable of.

When a mother and her baby are found dead in their car, a small New England town is forced to confront its secrets. As the news settles and rumours spread, the mother of young family must grapple with the new understanding that this town is not the safe and peaceful place it pretends to be.About the AuthorJill McCorkle is the author of six novels, most recently Life After Life, and four story collections. Her work has appeared in numerous periodicals and four of her short s...

The largest UK research study on poverty and social exclusion ever conducted reveals startling levels of deprivation. 18m people are unable to afford adequate housing; 14m can’t afford essential household goods; and nearly half the population have some form of financial insecurity.Defining poverty as those whose lack of resources forces them to live below a publicly agreed minimum standard, this text provides unique and detailed insights into the nature and extent of poverty and so...