For more than 10 years, thoroughly Protestant Kathleen Norris had been an oblate at a Benedictine monastery. In The Cloister Life, the celebrated author turns to the priory as her spiritual landscape, as she takes us through a liturgical year, inspiring us to evaluate our own lives and values. Norris provides tremendous insight into the languages, customs, ceremonies, and sexuality of the men and women who have chosen the cloistered life. With insight and lyrical grace, Norris exa...

A “hilarious” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of essays, articles, observations—and even some country-music lyrics—that offer a rare overview of the eclectic sensibility of an American original“[Tom] Robbins is fearless, original, mind-expanding, and funny as hell.”—San Diego Union-Tribune“Part philosopher, part court jester, Robbins uses sparkling phrases mixed with over-the-top puns to impart his Zenl...

Gloria Steinem—writer, activist, organizer, and one of the most inspiring leaders in the world—now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of how her early years led her to live an on-the-road kind of life, traveling, listening to people, learning, and creating change. She reveals the story of her own growth in tandem with the growth of an ongoing movement for equality. This is the story at the heart of My Life on the Road.Includes an introduction...

***Bloomsbury lead summer fiction 2014 Mary Byrd Thornton could understand how a reporter couldn' t resist the story: a nine-year-old boy sexually molested and killed on Mother's Day, 1966. A suspect to whom nothing would stick. A neighborhood riddled with secrets. No one, especially the bungling or complicit authorities, had been able to solve the crime. Now, thirty years later, the reporter' s call will reel a reluctant Mary Byrd from Mississippi back to Virginia where she must confront ...

A Children's Book About Beer?Yes, believe it or not—but B Is for Beer is also a book for adults, and bear in mind that it's the work of maverick bestselling novelist Tom Robbins, inter-nationally known for his ability to both seriously illuminate and comically entertain.nce upon a time (right about now) there was a planet (how about this one?) whose inhabitants consumed thirty-six billion gallons of beer each year (it's a fact, you can Google it). Among those affec...

"A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book" about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Cloister Walk (The New York Times Book Review)."With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota remind...

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"A tantalizing mystery and a tender coming-of-age story...Unputdownable."—Oprah.comIn the summer of 1989, a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom is rocked by a violent crime when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—is attacked late one evening near h...

In 2004, the body of a young Perth woman was found on the grounds of a primary school. Her name was Rebecca Ryle. The killing would mystify investigators, lawyers, and psychologists - and profoundly rearrange the life of the victim's family. It would also involve the author's family, because his brother knew the man charged with the murder. For years, the two had circled each other suspiciously, in a world of violence, drugs, and rotten aspirations. A MURDER WITHOUT MOTIVE is a police proc...