One woman shares hilarious personal stories of her obsession, frustration, reflection, and fun with knitting. An obsessed knitter who can’t seem to put the needles down, author Stephanie Pearl-McPhee reveals the tangled and sometimes maniacal path of her knitting triumphs and disasters in Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter. Sharing both humorous and poignant tales of knitting escapades, such as fleeing from a yarn-thieving squirrel, dismantling a car to find a vital needle, and what it feels like to wrap a newborn baby in the work of your own hands. Yarn Harlot exposes the extreme sport of knitting, and adventure that can be fulfilling, exasperating, and wickedly funny. From the moment Stephanie’s family discovers that she has taken to storing yarn in the piano to her attempts to foist knitted socks on a friend with a wool “allergy,” Yarn Harlot looks at knitting with humor, insight, and sympathy for the obsessed. “Stephanie Pearl-McPhee turns both typical and unique knitting experiences into very funny and articulate prose.” —Meg Swansen, Schoolhouse Press “An intimate view of the passionate knitter’s psyche: a transport of hilarity for knitters and the knitted-for; I laughed until my stitches fell helplessly from my needles!”—Lucy Neatby, author of Cool Socks Warm Feet “A sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting—laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it’s not cracking you up.” —Library Journal

At a time when the cry of witchcraft leads to certain death, Jessie's future looks bleak. Until one man offers her a way out of the gutter. Gregor plans to mould Jessie into the perfect weapon: she will seduce and destroy his bitterest enemy. But in a society where innocence is for fools, Gregor fails to predict the shattering impact of his own sudden, forbidden craving.

Sex. Violence. Scandal. These are words we rarely associate with the sacred text of the Bible. Yet in this brilliant new book, Jonathan Kirsch shows that the Old Testament is filled with some of the most startling and explicit stories in all of Western literature. These tales of seduction and rape, voyeurism and exhibitionism, intermarriage and illegitimacy, assassination and murder have been suppressed by religious authorities throughout history precisely because they are so shocking. "You mean that's in the Bible?" is the common reaction of the contemporary reader to the stories that Kirsch retells and explores. In The Harlot by the Side of the Road, Kirsch recounts these suppressed and mistranslated tales in the grand storytelling tradition. Here is the tale of Dinah, the young Israelite daughter raped by a princely suitor. The price for her hand in marriage? The circumcision of every man in his kingdom. Here, too, is the story of Lot's daughters, who, when faced with the possibility that they are the last survivors on earth, must copulate with their drunken father to continue their race. And the story of Tamar, the harlot by the side of the road, who must disguise herself as a prostitute and seduce her father-in-law in order to bear the child who has been promised her. Kirsch places each story within the political and social context of its time, and delves into the latest biblical scholarship to explain why each story was originally censored. He also brings to light when and where each story was first written down, and how it found its way into the Bible. And he shows how these stories have something important to say to contemporary readers who might never pick up a Bible. Kirsch reveals that the Bible's real power lies in its unflinching lessons in human nature. And he illuminates the surprising modernity of the Bible's characters: these were, like us, people delicately balanced between their destructive and generous natures. Certain to excite controversy and ignite intellectual debate, The Harlot by the Side of the Road will undoubtedly be one of the year's most talked-about books.

Vicious rumors and rapier wit make for a heated rivalry—until the sparks start flying in this Regency romance by the award-winning author. Maggie, Lady Hawkins, had a debut she'd rather forget—along with her first marriage. Today, she’s a fierce political cartoonist writing under the male pseudonym Lemarc, and her favorite object of ridicule is Simon Barrett, Earl of Winchester. He's a rising star in Parliament—and a former confidant of Maggie's who decided to believe a salacious rumor that vexes her to this day. Still crushed by Simon's betrayal, Maggie has no intention of letting the ton crush her as well. In fact, Lemarc's cartoons have made Simon a laughingstock. But now it appears that Maggie was wrong about what happened years ago, and that Simon has been secretly yearning for her since . . . forever. Could it be that the heart is mightier than the pen and the sword?

Few poets' roots go deeper than the Romantics; Jill Alexander Essbaum's reach all the way to the Elizabethans. In her Harlot one hears Herbert and Wyatt and Donne, their parallax view of religion as sex and sex as religion, their delight in sin, their smirking penitence, their penchant for the conceit, their riddles and fables, their fondling and squeezing of language. But this "postulant in the Church of the Kiss" is a twenty-first century woman, a "strange woman" less bowed to confession than hell-bent on fairly bragging of threesomes and more complications than were wet-dreamt of in Mr. W. H.'s philosophy. - H. L. Hix

The New York Times–bestselling author of Yarn Harlot returns with more witty stories about knitting, motherhood, friendship, and more. In this all-new collection of yarns, New York Times–bestselling author and self-proclaimed yarn Harlot Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is all wound up about life, motherhood, losing her beloved washing machine, and, of course, knitting. With trademark humor and wit that have sustained her through thick and thin, including a few misshapen sweaters and an indoor water balloon fight among her otherwise darling daughters, Pearl-McPhee deftly examines knitting, parenting, friendship, and—gasp!—even crocheting in essays that are at times touching, often hilarious, and always entertaining. Praise for Yarn Harlot “A sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting—laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it’s not cracking you up.” —Library Journal “Pearl-McPhee turns both typical and unique knitting experiences into very funny and articulate prose.” —Meg Swansen, Schoolhouse Press “I laughed until my stitches fell helplessly from my needles!” —Lucy Neatby, author of Cool Socks Warm Feet

Camilla Hearst is a Harlot.God forgives little girls who don't obey, but he forsakes women who surrender their bodies to desires of the flesh.Raised to believe her very existence was a sin, Camilla escaped her father's iron fist and chased the sun to Grand Haven, California, where one thing was for certain: It's a man's world.She was prepared to live in it until the day Camilla met the highest paid escort in the city-exposing an underground world where women rule like queens. Now Camilla finds herself offering her body to the highest bidder.Falling for Grand Haven's golden-boy and mafia attorney, Wilder Ridge, only strengthens her desire to break free from her dark past and control her own destiny. But in a society where everything has a price tag, she discovers her body isn't the only thing for sale.So is her life