A woman reflects on her working-class roots, her unsuitable exes, and her accidental road to happiness in a memoir of "many delights" ( Atlanta Journal Constitution).A misfit in Spooner, Wisconsin, with its farms, bars, and strip joints, Debra Monroe leaves to earn a degree, then another, and another, and builds a career—if only because her plans to be a midwestern housewife continually get scuttled. Fearless but naive, she vaults over class barriers but n...

Debra Monroe has always written about the source of trouble, “that one incident you zero down to and everything bad that happens afterward happens because of it.” The illusion that every problem has a clear-cut cause and discernible solution is apparently her gateway drug. It Takes a Worried Woman explores the outer limits of her faith that all past hardship could have been prevented and all future hardship might still be.Yet one person’s trouble is often a small eddy in t...

Raised in the Delta of Mississippi, Jan Cowan is repeatedly molested by her mothers lesbian lover, Judy Christine Hays, a small-town cop. Immediately after finishing high school, Jan flees Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. Patterned after her molester, Jan embarks on a career with the Memphis Police Department where she becomes a noted homicide detective. At the age of thirty-three, an unexpected occurrence triggers Jans suppressed memories of having been molested. Unable to cope, Jans ch...

After moving to a humble cottage outside of a tiny Texas town, Debra Monroe rids herself of an abusive husband, battles sexist contractors and workers as she renovates her home, and finally, after several disheartening letdowns, is able to adopt her beautiful baby daughter, Marie. Though elated that her dream is coming true, Monroe faces trials that befall her not just as a single mother but as a white mother of a black child. In On the Outskirts of Normal, two-time National Book ...

Growing up can mean growing pains and the joys of new independence. With maturity comes the shift from infinitepossibilities to imminent realities. These thirteen stories describe the slow and subtle experience of growing up, allowing us to reflect upon the forces that pushed us toward adulthood and away from the familiar ground of youth that must be left behind if we are to learn how to soar on our own.

Love, in some of the infinite ways we may know it, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on love—and for planned anthol...

In this memoir by Flannery O'Connor Award winner Debra Monroe, the soon-to-be divorced Debra buys a dilapidated Texas cabin miles from her teaching job. While waiting to adopt a child, she refurbishes and expands the rude dwelling. She soon finds herself in the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by her being white and her adopted daughter being black. ". an engaging, poignant read."-Kirkus Reviews

What if the best morning of your life suddenly turned into your worst nightmare? Sam Case is about to find out. Saving Rachel is the story of what happens when killers force a man to choose between his wife and his mistress...and the one he rejects must die. "If Dean Koontz collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock at the circus, this would be their brain child." –Vintage DM Book Reviews

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick“I had been so engaged by Ann Patchett’s multifaceted story, so lured in by her confiding voice, that I forgot I was on the job. […] As the best personal essays often do, Patchett’s is a two-way mirror, reflecting both the author and her readers.” — New York Times Book ReviewBlending literature and memoir, New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonde...

**Hailed by David Sedaris as "perfectly, relentlessly funny" and by Colson Whitehead as "sardonic without being cruel, tender without being sentimental," from the author of the new collection Look Alive Out There.Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, this debut collection of literary essays is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory.**From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing...

Candid, outspoken, laugh-out-loud funny essays from much-loved Samantha Bee, host of TBS's uproarious late-night show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, executive producer and writer of TBS's comedy television series The Detour, and former The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s Most Senior Correspondent.In I Know I Am, But What Are You? she shares her unique and irreverent viewpoint on subjects as wide-ranging as:BARBIE’S DREAM H...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The iconic thriller series that inspired the upcoming streaming show on Prime Video, in development now!**The City of Angels has more than its share of psychopaths, and no one recognizes that more acutely than the brilliant psychologist and police consultant Dr. Alex Delaware. Despite that, Constance Sykes, a sophisticated, successful physician, hardly seems like someone Alex needs to fear. Then, at the behest of the court, he ...