In her novel At The Breakers, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall presents Jo Sinclair, a longtime single mother of four children. Fleeing an abusive relationship after a shocking attack, Jo finds herself in Sea Cove, New Jersey, in front of The Breakers, a salty old hotel in the process of renovation. Impulsively, she negotiates a job painting the guest rooms and settles in with her youngest child, thirteen-year-old Nick. As each room is transformed under brush and roller, Jo finds a way to renovate herself, reclaiming a promising life derailed by pregnancy and a forced marriage at age fourteen. At The Breakers is a deeply felt and beautifully written novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. In Jo's words, she is "trying to find the right way to live" as a long-suffering woman who is put through the fire and emerges with a chance at a full, rich life for herself and her children, if only she has the faith to take it.

Judy Young (1940--2015) was a gifted but private poet. Over the years, she established provisional collections of her best work but refrained from seeking publication due to her trepidation with sharing her deeply personal poems with an audience. She found her voice in a collective group of creatives that included Susan Starr Richards, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, and the late Donna Boyd, Jane Gentry, Audrey Robinson, and Carolyn Hisel. This illustrious circle of friends met monthly for almost thirty years and gave her the courage to share her work -- a lyrical medley of pain, beauty, strength, and redemption. Revealed is the story of a woman's inner life -- an intimate tale of abuse and personal struggle -- from a traumatic childhood through marriage, parenthood, and lifelong friendships. Based on the final manuscript that was drafted before the author's death, this compilation traces the path of a woman finding her poetic voice in middle age, returning to an often-harrowing upbringing while closely observing the natural world -- especially the populations of birds moving through the space between her back porch and the lake below -- and meditating on the nature of creativity. With a submerged narrative behind the poems and several calls to nature through repeated motifs, the poet shares seminal emotions and experiences. A Careful Hunger is the last creative testament of this extraordinary artist -- her final act of fearlessness in a troubled yet joyful life. In the words of the poet: "I am alive and must say so / one way or another."

"Soon or a little too lateeverything you never knewyou always wanted turns uphereat The Breakers" -- from the book In her new novel At The Breakers, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, author of the widely praised and beloved Come and Go, Molly Snow, presents Jo Sinclair, a longtime single mother of four children. Fleeing an abusive relationship after a shocking attack, Jo finds herself in Sea Cove, New Jersey, in front of The Breakers, a salty old hotel in the process of renovation. Impulsively, she negotiates a job painting the guest rooms and settles in with her youngest child, thirteen-year-old Nick. As each room is transformed under brush and roller, Jo finds a way to renovate herself, reclaiming a promising life derailed by pregnancy and a forced marriage at age fourteen. Jo's new life at the hotel features a memorable mix of locals and guests, among them Iris Zephyr, the hotel's ninety-two-year-old permanent boarder; Charlie, a noble mixed-breed dog; Marco, owner of a nearby gas station/liquor store, who may become Jo's next mistake; and enigmatic Wendy, her streetwise eighteen-year-old daughter, who signs on as housekeeper. Irrepressible Victor Mangold, Jo's former professor and a well-known poet some twenty years her senior, invites himself to Thanksgiving dinner and into her life, his passion awakening Jo's yearning for art and love. At The Breakers is a deeply felt and beautifully written novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. In Jo's words, she is "trying to find the right way to live" as a long-suffering woman who is put through the fire and emerges with a chance at a full, rich life for herself and her children, if only she has the faith to take it.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall's highly acclaimed first novel, Come and Go, Molly Snow, introduces us to Carrie Marie Mullins, a gifted Kentucky bluegrass fiddler and singer in the Hawktown Road band. After moving to Lexington to develop her talents, Carrie becomes infatuated with the band's leader, Cap Dunlap. Her romantic distraction prevents Carrie from saving her five-year-old daughter, Molly, when she careens down the driveway and is killed by a truck. Overwhelmed with grief, Carrie breaks down. Cap finds Carrie in this state of distress and takes her to Ona and Ruth Barkley, two elderly sisters living in an old farmhouse. It is on the sisters' farm that Carrie is able to slowly come to terms with her heartache and guilt over Molly's death. As she picks up the pieces of her shattered life, Carrie draws on the two women's friendship, her inner strength, and finally, the healing power of music.

What does psychology have to do with affirmative action? In the author's opinion, questioning the relevance of psychology to an issue such as affirmative action is, unfortunately, not an uncommon query, even among many people within the field of psychology. When most people, both within and outside the field, make an association between psychology and affirmative action, it is in terms of the debate over racial differences in performance on intelligence tests. Thus, the decision to write this book was based upon what was seen as a need to demonstrate and highlight the substantive contribution that psychology can make in terms of improving our understanding of why it is that people respond to affirmative action with a variety of reactions and emotions. The primary goal of this book is to discuss empirical research and theoretical work on affirmative action from a psychological perspective. The intended audience is academics, including undergraduate and graduate students, and social science researchers.

Women have been thoughtful readers and interpreters of scripture throughout the ages, yet the standard history of biblical interpretation includes few women's voices. To introduce readers to this untapped source for the history of biblical interpretation, this volume analyzes forgotten works from the nineteenth century written by women-including Christina Rossetti, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others-from various faith backgrounds, countries, and social classes engaging contemporary biblical scholarship. Due to their exclusion from the academy, women's interpretive writings addressed primarily a nonscholarly audience and were written in a variety of genres: novels and poetry, catechisms, manuals for Bible study, and commentaries on the books of the Bible. To recover these nineteenth-century women interpreters of the Bible, each essay in this volume locates a female author in her historical, ecclesiastical, and interpretive context, focusing on particular biblical passages to clarify an author's contributions as well as to explore how her reading of the text was shaped by her experience as a woman. The contributors are Amanda Benckhuysen, Elizabeth Davis, Christiana de Groot, Rebecca G. S. Idestrom, Donna Kerfoot, Bernon P. Lee, Marion Taylor, Heather Weir, and Lissa M. Wray Beal. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)