Harlem. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers-- especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. Mami is determined to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, and Xiomara understands...

Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you're fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girls' magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Only then can her true life as a thin person finally begin. Then, when a mysterious woman starts following her, Plum finds herself falling down a rabbit hole and into an underground community of women who live...

Follows Lizzie, a young woman growing up in Mississauga, as she fights her way from fat to thin, but who still, even as a married adult woman, sees herself as a fat girl. Lizzie has never liked the way she looks. She starts dating guys online, but she's afraid to send pictures. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends,...

Savvy Sheldon knows it's time for some renovations: her high-stress low-thanks job, her clueless boyfriend, and the falling-apart kitchen she inherited from her grandma. Starting from the outside in she tackles the kitchen, her relationship with her body, her work-life balance (or lack thereof) and, last but not least, her love life. It turns out that the contractor she hires is the same sexy stranger she unintentionally offended by judging based...

"...The third novel in the Horsemen Trilogy, in which a proper lady discovers just how desirable she really is after one very improper night... Sophia Armitage does not consider herself attractive. Even her late husband treated her more as a companion than a lover when she accompanied him to war. But Sophia hopes to enjoy a Season in London as her niece makes her social debut until, that is, her hopes are dashed when she is faced with a threat...

Linda Zook, 32, works part-time at the Lancaster Grand Hotel. As the sole survivor of a buggy accident that left her orphaned at age four, she was raised by her unwilling Uncle Reuben. Linda longs to be worthy of someone, but the life-long effects of her injuries and her upbringing under the care of her embittered uncle have destroyed her self-worth. Aaron Ebersol, 32, left the Amish community 17 years ago when he could no longer bear the restrictions...

Rhyming text expresses a prayer for a girl to be protected from such dangers as nightmares at age three or false friends at fifteen, and to be granted clearness of sight and other favors.

When a plague sweeps over the earth killing everyone except children under twelve, ten-year-old Lisa organizes a group to rebuild a new way of life.

A heat wave in Manhattan is enough to drive a girl crazy, and for Tracey Spadolini, a 24-year-old New York transplant who's been "left behind" for the summer, there's even more to sweat about. Her Slightly Significant Other, Will, will be returning from summer stock in September, to pick up where they left off. (Or will he?) But, in the days after Will's departure, Tracey decides it's time for a reality check. Her un-air-conditioned East Village apartment...

At seventeen, June Hardie is everything a young woman in 1951 shouldn't be--independent, rebellious, a dreamer. June longs to travel, to attend college and to write the dark science fiction stories that consume her waking hours. But her parents only care about making June a better young woman. Her mother grooms her to be a perfect little homemaker while her father pushes her to marry his business partner's domineering son. When June resists, her whole...