From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Clique comes Lisi Harrison's debut adult novel about four modern-day strangers who inherit a dirty book club that was started in the 1960s. M.J. Stark's life is picture-perfect—she has a dream job as a magazine editor, a sexy doctor boyfriend, and a glamorous life in Manhattan. But behind her success, she can't shake a deep sense of loneliness, so when her boyfriend offers her a completely new life in California, she decides to give it a try. Once there, M.J. is left to fend for herself in a small California beach town, with only the company of her elderly neighbor, Gloria. One day M.J. receives a mysterious invitation and a copy of Prim: A Modern Woman's Guide to Manners. She recognizes the book as an outdated classic, but when she opens it, she discovers that it's actually a copy of Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and the invitation is to join Gloria's secret book club—one that only reads erotic books. Out of curiosity, M.J. goes to the meeting at a local bookstore, and discovers three other women who have also been selected by the club's original members—who have suddenly left the country to honor a fifty-year-old pact. As these unlikely friends bond over naughty bestsellers, each woman shares not only the intimate details of her own sex life, but all areas of her life. Inspired by the characters in the novels they read—and the notes passed down by the club's original members—the new members of The Dirty Book Club help each other find the courage to rewrite their own stories and risk it all for a happy ending.

In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition. William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers. Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present. This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.

A wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson’s time controlling some of Chicago's most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. In 1987, the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the law—he had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixties—but nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss. Dirty Waters is the wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson’s time controlling some of the city’s most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. Nelson takes us through Chicago's beloved “blue spaces” and deep into the city’s political morass, revealing the different moralities underlining three mayoral administrations and navigating the gritty mechanisms of the city’s political machine. Ultimately, Dirty Waters is a tale of morality, of what it takes to be a force for good in the world and what struggles come from trying to stay ethically afloat in a sea of corruption.

In this moving tale of intimacy, redemption, and trust by a New York Times–bestselling author, a woman’s new relationship forces her to face her past. For a long time, Elle Kavanaugh has defined herself by her professional success and her unapologetic attitude for the personal choices she’s made. She’s never wanted intimacy—doesn’t need the mess it brings with it. She’s been hit on plenty of times, mostly by men who think that what’s between their legs makes up for what they lack between their ears. Sometimes, she gives herself over to it—as long as there are no strings attached. But after meeting Dan Stewart, Elle starts wanting things she never has before. And the problem with wanting is that can be like pouring water into a vase full of stones—it fills you up before you know it, leaving no room for anything else . . . Originally published under the title Dirty.

DOWN AND DIRTY Faced with a choice between bad-boy detective Dean Ryker and sexy power player Parker Anderson, Sage Reece fought the law--and the law won. But while Ryker's sizzling touch may rule her nights, Sage's days belong to Parker's cool, calculating intensity. . . . Both Ryker and Parker are determined to protect Sage from a brutal enemy who'd use her to pay for their mistakes. Yet when the usually on-point Ryker is distracted by ghosts from his past, Parker seizes his opportunity to get Sage's attention--and keep it in ways beyond her wildest dreams. Now, caught between a mobster out for revenge and two men who were once best friends, Sage must play to win--even if it means getting dirty. . . .