Fiction

Description: "For many women, becoming a mother is the strongest expression of love they know, for others the conscience choice to not have children empowers them to live their truth. Motherhood looks different for all of the women in Kim Hooper’s All the Acorns On the Forest Floor. Alex is pregnant with her second child, fearful because her first pregnancy ended at 16 weeks. Deb is reckoning with the fact that she was abandoned as a newborn by her mother. Wendy is wrestling with her early feelings on having children. These stories are interwoven into the stories of other women who are intentionally childless, adults reckoning with adoptions, and unwed women who had to make difficult choices. This novel-in-stories is designed to tug at the heart strings, but also provide hope, comfort, and insight into the true nature of women’s shared experiences with the narrative of motherhood and society’s expectations. We see the women at their most vulnerable, making decisions that will forever change the course of their lives. As each character’s narrative unfolds, the book illustrates how small and connected people’s lives really are, no one’s circumstances are as unique as they feel" --Provided by publisher.

Description: Ex-pro boxer-turned-bodyguard Oscar Oliveira couldn't help falling for the (straight guy) filmmaker Jack Highland. But for the first time, he just got rejected. In a complicated and confusing turn of events, Oscar and Jack will be spending more time together. With options as to how to treat each other now--after a rejected kiss--and their romantic lives in unrest, the pair's personal and professional worlds become tumultuous.

Description: "Lake Superior--its people and places--feature in this anthology of short stories by nine writers from Minnesota and Wisconsin. The power of stories lures an aging man on a road trip back home, north on Highway 61. Through her painting of a river, an Ojibway woman teaches a historian about himself and her culture's connections to the land and water. A woman confronts a suicidal man on Stoney Point, led by the mystical power of water to magnify her psychic abilities. Another woman finds meaning in the intricate curves and fiery bands of an agate. A shoreline boulder offers its magical views on human life. A ship captain from long ago faces a coldwater death in Whitefish Bay. Life comes full circle in the currents of the lake for a young man from Two Harbors. A ghostly fur trapper haunts Madeline Island. A family's powerful saga unfolds on the shores of Lake Superior" --Back cover.

Description: "This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories. Here, readers will discover bioengineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, mother ships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492" -- Provided by publisher.

Description: On June 23, 1911 -- a summer day so magnificent it seems as if God himself has smiled on the town -- Fall River, Massachusetts is reveling in its success. The Cotton Centennial is in full swing as Joseph Bartlett takes his place among the local elite in the parade grandstand. The meticulously planned carnival has brought the thriving textile town to an unprecedented halt; rich and poor alike crowd the streets, welcoming President Taft to America's ''Spindle City.'' Yet as he perches in the grandstand nursing a nagging toothache, Joseph Bartlett straddles the divide between Yankee mill owners and the union bosses who fight them. Bartlett, a renegade owner, fears the town cannot long survive against the union-free South. He frets over the ever-present threat of strikes and factory fires, knowing his own fortune was changed by the drop of a kerosene lantern. When the Cleveland Mill burned, good men died, and immigrant's son Joseph Bartlett gained a life of privilege he never wanted. Now Joseph is one of the most influential men in a prosperous town. High above the rabble, as he stands among politicians and society ladies, his wife is dying, his sons are lost in the crowd facing pivotal decisions of their own, and the differences between the haves and have-nots are stretched to the breaking point. Spindle City delves deep into the lives, loves, and fortunes of real and imagined mill owners, anarchists, and immigrants, from the Highlands mansions to the tenements of the Cogsworth slum, chronicling a mill town's -- and a generation's -- last days of glory.

Description: "When Kathrin's mother dies, Kathrin immigrates to America where she is reunited with her cousin Lotte and begins work at a mill sewing flour bags. Soon Kathrin meets the Jeliniks, the owners of a small bookstore. While Jan, a compassionate, elderly man, loves his bookstore, his nephew John would rather see it reopened as something more profitable, a testament to the American dream of prosperity for which he so desperately hungers. Jan introduces Kathrin to Violet Waverly, who offers Kathrin a job typing and translating a book of fairy tales that her husband was compiling before he died. Violet invites Kathrin to live with her in her mansion on Summit Avenue, the richest neighborhood in Saint Paul. Both women, left wounded and alone in different circumstances, find increasing solace and warmth in each other. Although Violet can offer Kathrin love, compassion, and a glimpse of the dizzying heights of wealthy upper-class grandeur, she cannot fully disguise the painful secrets hiding behind the glitter. As Kathrin comes closer to the heart of Violet's mysterious past, she discovers that life, like a fairy tale, is often based on illusion" --Amazon.