Elizabeth Young

Unmarried, thirty-year-old Sophy Metcalfe told a little white he to soothe her nagging mother. The white lies name was "Dominic," the ideal boyfriend: charming, successful, the kind of prospective son-in-law that would make any mother proud. But now that Sophy's thin and beautiful sister, Belinda, is getting married, Dominic is going to have to make an appearance in the flesh -- which should be a pretty neat trick ... since the genuine article vanished from Sophy's life after a single, singularly unmemorable evening. So she resorts to a very drastic measure -- aka Josh Carmichael, the escort she hires at the very last minute, sight unseen. But the trouble with white lies is that they tend to multiply. The trouble with rugged, too-sexy, and independent Josh is ... well, that Sophy's actually beginning to like him! Even if they make it through the Wedding Day from Hell together -- with its new intrigues, old flames, and all-too-familiar faces -- there's the night that follows... and, of course, the morning after. And that could end up being the biggest trouble of all! A hip, witty, and freshly fantastic delight, Asking for Trouble is the most hilarious and knowing novel to make the scene since Bridget Jones first set pen to paper to record her most intimate innermost thoughts.

A Novel

Asking for Trouble

From the fire-hot author of Asking for Trouble comes a second irresistibly funny and romantic novel, in which we meet the delightfully wicked Harriet and John, who are matched as perfectly as scones and clotted cream -- if only Harriet would let herself indulge. Up to her eyeballs in her friends' dramas, Harriet Grey has no time for her own, let alone getting entangled with John Mackenzie. And though it's been ages since she's met one of the most gorgeous men London has to offer, it seems John's entangled with someone else. Or is he? Though they say all's fair in love, Harriet isn't about to complicate her life -- or risk her heart. But the persistent John seems to pop up everywhere she turns, and soon she's agreeing to meet him for a cocktail to repay a favor. After all, what harm can come out of one innocent little drink? Maybe a few breathtaking kisses, some suspiciously lingering embraces, and a wonderful weak-kneed dizziness that most definitely is not the flu. And that's before she finds herself all alone with John at Christmas. .

A Promising Man (and About Time, Too)

Jane Bowles

Original and bizarre, Jane Bowles's writing embodied her life and personality. Truman Capote called her a genius and although Bowles's creative output was small it was of a dazzlingly brilliant quality. These stories, her only major collection of short fi

Plain Pleasures

Dogs Are Better Than Men They never brag about their ex's stunning cleavage. They don't moan or sulk if you're a half-hour late. They never tell you a Brazilian would really turn them on. After her most recent disaster with the King of the Unrepentant Jerks, Isabel "Izzy" Palmer is finally convinced that the only male she truly needs in her life is Henry, her lovable part wolfhound, part who-knows-what. Henry's faithful, he adores her madly, and he's great fun to sleep with. So who needs the additional heartache? But even armed with powerful knowledge and a new resolve, Izzy starts to feel that familiar itch ... and it's all because of Nick. He's a vet for goodness sake -- confident, handsome and compassionate -- if a bit rough around the edges. After teasing her about Henry's unusual looks and questioning her most recent choice in men, Nick then has the gall to turn halfway charming. But he doesn't stop at halfway, and though she already has a best friend, Izzy realizes it doesn't preclude her from having a perfect match, too.

A Girl's Best Friend

Abby Morland's been making mischief since she was not-so-sweet sixteen, when she spied gorgeous Guy from the neighborhood being attacked by curvaceous Cara, the "Topless Piranha." It was a racy, tasty, spicy piece of gossip Abby couldn't resist passing along. But years later, her indiscretion may be coming back to haunt her -- since she now wouldn't mind a little nibble of Guy herself. With four cousins, two weddings, and a re-emergent piranha in the offing, the recipe for making more mischief is at hand, and it might just turn Guy in Abby's direction at last!

Making Mischief

An irresistible first novel about a little white lie. Sophy is single and happy about it. She does, however, have an imaginary boyfriend, Dominic -- a little white lie designed to keep Sophy's mother off her back. Which is fine, until his presence is demanded at a family wedding. So does Sophy admit Dominic is a fantasy? Oh no, Sophy hires an escort. But when the distinctly delicious Josh Carmichael arrives on her doorstop, Sophy can tell things are going to get tricky. And the wedding day is only the beginning. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Jay Berg's life could have been better. He had recently separated from hiswife after losing his job at the factory where they both worked. His wife wasnow seeing another coworker, Jay was living in an apartment at a friend'shouse, and his days consisted of holding a traffic sign at a construction site. Then Jay saw the hand in the window¿ Could Jay make his brother-in-law, Vic Bartle, believe there was somethinggoing on at the vacant house near the work site? Would Vic think this was amerely a result of Jay's drinking? And when Jay's son went missing, wouldJay be able to help solve the mystery of the hand in the window¿

The Hand in the Window

Graham Caveney

A combination of cultural analysis and literary criticsm that reveals such books as Jay McInerney's Bright lights, big city and Bret Easton Ellis's Less than zero to be illuminating critiques, not merely products, of a society shaped by consumer capitalism and media saturation.

Essays on America's Blank Generation Fiction

Shopping in Space

Naomi Mitchison

Brian Johnson

John Ellis

Deepak Lal

Richard William Johnson

Laurence Whitehead

Nicholas Falk

David Edward Charles Eversley

David Bleakley

Jim Skinner

Rupert Greer

Society of Labour Lawyers. Housing Group

Haris Martinos

An Anti-white Paper

Defence Review

In a study that will radically shift our understanding of Civil War literature, Elizabeth Young shows that American women writers have been profoundly influenced by the Civil War and that, in turn, their works have contributed powerfully to conceptions of the war and its aftermath. Offering fascinating reassessments of works by white writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Mitchell and African-American writers including Elizabeth Keckley, Frances Harper, and Margaret Walker, Young also highlights crucial but lesser-known texts such as the memoirs of women who masqueraded as soldiers. In each case she explores the interdependence of gender with issues of race, sexuality, region, and nation. Combining literary analysis, cultural history, and feminist theory, Disarming the Nation argues that the Civil War functioned in women's writings to connect female bodies with the body politic. Women writers used the idea of "civil war" as a metaphor to represent struggles between and within women—including struggles against the cultural prescriptions of "civility." At the same time, these writers also reimagined the nation itself, foregrounding women in their visions of America at war and in peace. In a substantial afterword, Young shows how contemporary black and white women—including those who crossdress in Civil War reenactments—continue to reshape the meanings of the war in ways startlingly similar to their nineteenth-century counterparts. Learned, witty, and accessible, Disarming the Nation provides fresh and compelling perspectives on the Civil War, women's writing, and the many unresolved "civil wars" within American culture today.

Women's Writing and the American Civil War

Disarming the Nation

In Pet Projects, Elizabeth Young joins an analysis of the representation of animals in nineteenth-century fiction, taxidermy, and the visual arts with a first-person reflection on her own scholarly journey. Centering on Margaret Marshall Saunders, a Canadian woman writer once famous for her animal novels, and incorporating Young’s own experience of a beloved animal’s illness, this study highlights the personal and intellectual stakes of a “pet project” of cultural criticism. Young assembles a broad archive of materials, beginning with Saunders’s novels and widening outward to include fiction, nonfiction, photography, and taxidermy. She coins the term “first-dog voice” to describe the narrative technique of novels, such as Saunders’s Beautiful Joe, written in the first person from the perspective of an animal. She connects this voice to contemporary political issues, revealing how animal fiction such as Saunders’s reanimates nineteenth-century writing about both feminism and slavery. Highlighting the prominence of taxidermy in the late nineteenth century, she suggests that Saunders transforms taxidermic techniques in surprising ways that provide new forms of authority for women. Young adapts Freud to analyze literary representations of mourning by and for animals, and she examines how Canadian writers, including Saunders, use animals to explore race, ethnicity, and national identity. Her wide-ranging investigation incorporates twenty-first as well as nineteenth-century works of literature and culture, including recent art using taxidermy and contemporary film. Throughout, she reflects on the tools she uses to craft her analyses, examining the state of scholarly fields from feminist criticism to animal studies. With a lively, first-person voice that highlights experiences usually concealed in academic studies by scholarly discourse—such as detours, zigzags, roadblocks, and personal experience—this unique and innovative book will delight animal enthusiasts and academics in the fields of animal studies, gender studies, American studies, and Canadian studies.

Animal Fiction and Taxidermy in the Nineteenth-Century Archive

Pet Projects

Born into a Calvinist Scottish family, Elizabeth Young's life was turned upside down when she was given, at the age of 11, three American novels: Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, Ginsberg's Howl and Kerouac's On the Road. An exceptionally ghoulish child, obsessed with graveyards, owls, wolves and horror stories, she very early on decided to devote her life to books, reading and writing. Elizabeth Young's collected writings exhibit her singular attraction to the bizarre and her dedication to the high standards of a critic. Witty, incisive, wide-ranging and also moving, Pandora's Handbag chronicles the journey of a modern arts critic and Young's personal journey from childhood to critic. Each previously published article is presented in its entirety, with original titles and additional notes. This collection includes two of Young's crusading articles (on Drug Legislation and the Hepatitus C virus), which have become seminal texts.

Adventures in the Book World

Pandora's Handbag

For all the scholarship devoted to Mary Shelley's English novel Frankenstein, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to its role in American culture, and virtually none to its racial resonances in the United States. In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans. Black Frankenstein stories, Young argues, effect four kinds of racial critique: they humanize the slave; they explain, if not justify, black violence; they condemn the slaveowner; and they expose the instability of white power. The black Frankenstein's monster has served as a powerful metaphor for reinforcing racial hierarchy—and as an even more powerful metaphor for shaping anti-racist critique. Illuminating the power of parody and reappropriation, Black Frankenstein tells the story of a metaphor that continues to matter to literature, culture, aesthetics, and politics.

The Making of an American Metaphor

Black Frankenstein

Liz Young

An irresistible first novel about a little white lie. Sophy is single and happy about it. She does, however, have an imaginary boyfriend, Dominic -- a little white lie designed to keep Sophy’s mother off her back. Which is fine, until his presence is demanded at a family wedding. So does Sophy admit Dominic is a fantasy? Oh no, Sophy hires an escort. But when the distinctly delicious Josh Carmichael arrives on her doorstop, Sophy can tell things are going to get tricky. And the wedding day is only the beginning.

Jill B. Becker

Karen J. Berkley

Nori Geary

Elizabeth Hampson

James P. Herman

Within the basic and clinical biomedical research community, there is increasing recognition that differences between males and females across the lifespan affect an individual's health, his/her development of disease, signs and symptoms of pathophysiology, and response to therapy. This book is intended as a resource for scientists, clinicians, and students of the nervous system and behavior- a trove of practical information about how to study sex differences in the brain as well as a discussion of what is already known on the topic.

From Genes to Behavior

Sex Differences in the Brain

Sophy's single and happy about it. She does, however, have an imaginary boyfriend, Dominic, a little white lie designed to keep Sophy's mother off her back. Which is fine, until his presence is demanded at a family wedding. So does Sophy admit Dominic is a fantasy? Oh no. Sophy hires an escort. But when the distinctly delicious Josh Carmichael arrives on her doorstep, Sophy can tell things are going to get tricky. And the wedding is only the beginning...

The Wedding Date

For many years, Elizabeth Young has been one of the few critics in England to champion new writing and the avant-garde. Pandora's Handbag is a unique combination of autobiography, commentary, published journalism and writer's guide for would-be Arts journalists. A riveting read, the book contains revealing interviews with Herbert Huncke, Jayne County, Dennis Cooper, Edward Gorey and Poppy Z. Brite, amongst others. o Flyer Mailing to American fiction departments o Ad in The Nation Elizabeth Young is a critic, arts journalist, and the co-author of Shopping in Space: Essays on American "Blank Generation" Fiction published by Grove Atlantic.

Elizabeth Young

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