“Whether she’s writing about gay or straight relationships, the dynamics of family ties or friendships, Beach-Ferrara’s exploration of the numerous types of love are spot-on in her debut short story collection.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Damn Love is much more than a collection of linked stories: it’s a collection of linked people, bound together in beautiful ordinary passion and rendered with exquisite generosity by a writer with a big, brave heart.”—Chris Adrian, author, The Great Night and The Children’s Hospital

“With remarkable authority, insight, and compassion, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara leads us through a web of intricately-related lives in stories that achieve what Eudora Welty said she set out to do: “not to point the finger in judgment, but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s human plight.” This is an extraordinary debut.”—Peter Turchi, author, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer As Cartographer

“Jasmine Beach-Ferrara’s linked stories will sneak up and steal your breath away with their clear and seemingly easy accumulation of grace. Damn Love is important for its delicate, honest portrayals of friends and relations, gay and straight, measuring the good, and trying to find acceptance in everyday American life.”—Tracy Winn, author, Mrs. Somebody Somebody

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert. Together, these stories report out from the fault lines of American life, uncertain territory where identity, risk, and desire co-mingle, and where reconciliation can be found in even the most flawed efforts to connect.

A 2010 NEA Literature Fellow, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Crazyhorse, The Harvard Review and other publications. She is a minister in the United Church of Christ and the executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, which promotes LGBT rights in the south. She and her wife, Meghann, live in Asheville, NC

“We place our first carbon footprints on the earth before we can even walk. This brilliant book shows how we can help create a habitable planet for our children to set foot on.”—Ed Begley, Jr.

“Kids born today will grow up amidst an accelerating warming of our earth. So it makes sense that their parents, intent on showing them many forms of their love, will make a serious effort to slow that warming down!”—Bill McKibben, 350.org

”If you are parent, or an expectant one, and care about the world we leave our children, then read this book. It will change the way you view your role as both a parent and a citizen of planet Earth.”—Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor, Penn State University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

“The Zero Footprint Baby is a fantastic resource for parents who want to raise a healthy, happy family while keeping our planet healthy and happy too. Keya is a wonderful example of a dedicated momma doing the best for her children—while helping other parents makes educated decisions about doing what’s best for their children too! Wonderful book!”—Pat Shelly, RN, MA, IBCLC, Founder and Director of the Breastfeeding Center for Greater Washington

In our culture, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing are deeply connected to consumption and resource use. From the baby shower to the minivan and the larger apartment or first house, the baby-raising years are the most hyper-consumptive of our lives, and can set a family on an unsustainable track for years to come.

The Zero Footprint Baby: How to Save the Planet While Raising a Healthy Baby shows how to raise a child with little to no carbon footprint. This timely book covers every issue new parents face, including pregnancy (what kind of birth has the lowest impact?); what to feed your baby (breastfeed, formula, or both?); childcare (who should take care of the baby, and how?); and of course, diapering. Using a mix of personal anecdotes, summarized research, and clear guidance on how to pursue the most sustainable baby-rearing options, environmental expert and new mom Keya Chatterjee has authored the ultimate resource for all new parents with green inclinations.

Keya Chatterjee is a Senior Director for Renewable Energy and Footprint Outreach at the World Wildlife Fund. Her commentary on climate change policy and sustainability issues has been quoted in dozens of media outlets, including USA Today, the New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and NBC Nightly News. She has also served as a Climate Change Specialist at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and worked at the NASA Earth Science Enterprise. She lives in Washington DC with her husband and son.

“A deliciously creepy and intense story.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Part detective story, part mystery, Strong’s second novel (after Burning the Sea) delivers complex, entertaining characters and will attract readers who enjoy genre-blending, cutting-edge fiction.”—Library Journal

“…a masterful exploration of longing and its consequences.”—Publishers Weekly

“Laced with sex and menace, carried along by Strong’s hypnotic prose, The Fainting Room takes the genre of suburban drama and turns it inside out. Tom Perotta would be proud. So might David Lynch.”—Brian Francis Slattery, author, Lost Everything

“Part noir, part romance, and part three-ring circus, The Fainting Room is filled with secrets: secret lives, secret desires, even secret skin. Like a high wire act, Strong keeps us on the edge of our seats, turning pages as quickly as we can and rooting for her three damaged, complicated, wonderful characters to succeed.”—Diana Wagman, author, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

Ray Shepard is a wealthy architect who has mystified his friends by marrying Evelyn, a woman who works at a nail salon. Evelyn, in turn, hides a secret past about her former life in the circus, her ex-husband’s mysterious death, and the colorful tattoos she carefully conceals under her clothes. When Evelyn starts to cave under the pressure of living in Ray’s rarified world, she suggests they take in Ingrid, a sixteen-year-old girl with blue hair, a pet iguana, and no place to stay for the summer. As Evelyn and Ray both make her their confidante, drawing her into the heart of what threatens their marriage, Ingrid increasingly adopts the noir alter ego of “Detective Slade”—fedora and all—in order to solve the mysteries that engulf all three characters.

Sarah Pemberton Strong is the author of the novel, Burning the Sea, and a collection of poems, Tour of the Breath Gallery, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Award. She is the poetry editor for New Haven Review, and her poetry has appeared in journals such as The Southwest Review, The Southern Review, Cream City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, RATTLE, and The Sun. She lives in Connecticut with her spouse and daughter.

“The authors of Crow after Roe combine their considerable journalistic and legal skills to offer a state of the art review of the numerous ways that abortion access is under threat in the United States.  All who are concerned about the challenges now facing abortion providers and patients alike should read this book.”—Carole Joffe, author, Dispatches From the Abortion Wars

“Crow After Roe is a must-read for anyone who cares about women’s rights. A comprehensive look at the never-ending war on women’s bodies, the book will shock and move you to action. Most importantly, though, Crow After Roe gives you hope and a roadmap for what we can do to change the current anti-woman tide.”—Jessica Valenti, feminist author and speaker, founder of Feministing.com and columnist at The Nation

2013 marks the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, one of the most divisive rulings ever to shape American politics. In recent years, attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade have reached a fevered pitch. Since 2010, hundreds of bills banning or putting up roadblocks to abortion access, contraception, and basic women’s health have been proposed across the United States, with nearly one hundred new laws going into effect. The goal is to create a law that will eventually be brought before the Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Crow After Roe: How “Separate But Equal” Has Become the New Standard In Women’s Health And How We Can Change That examines eleven states—Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Texas, Utah and Washington DC—that since 2010 have each passed a different anti-abortion or anti-women’s health law explicitly written to provoke a repeal of Roe v. Wade. The chilling effect of these laws has been to establish a reproductive health care system in these states that makes abortion legal in name only, and which places women—especially poor, rural, or those of color—into a separate health care class, with few choices or control. Featuring a foreword by Gloria Feldt.

Robin Marty is RH Reality Check’s senior political reporter, focusing primarily on state legislation restricting women’s reproductive rights. Her political, women’s rights, and reproductive articles have appeared in Ms. magazine, Truthout, AlterNet, and BlogHer.

Jessica Mason Pieklo is a senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check and the former Assistant Director of the Health Law Institute at Hamline University School of Law. An attorney and law professor, Jessica writes on issues of constitutional law and public policy. Her articles have appeared in Ms. magazine, Truthout, and AlterNet

“A brisk and vividly drawn kidnapping tale…

The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets” tilts on Winnie’s strength. In her, Wagman has constructed a magnetic figure who is easy to root for

The book also benefits from breathless pace and a dialogue-heavy structure that hints at Wagman’s screenwriting experience and keeps the pages turning.”

“Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue.”

Outerborough Blues received probably the greatest review ever in the history of reviewing in the fall issue of Mystery Scene Magazine:

“Outerborough Blues is as close to perfect as it gets. If you don’t read this, you’ll be missing one of the finest books to come around in a long, long time.”

The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets received a nice review in the 10/1 issue of Booklist. The review is not available online, but here is a little taste:

“Told from multiple points of view—everybody but the iguana is represented—the novel is a darkly humorous and occasionally violent exercise in suspense, and a dramatic exposition of the Stockholm syndrome. Wagman does a nice job of lending her characters psychological depth and creating a fast-paced, readable plot.”

“Wagman’s talent for imagery is well served by the subject matter, and the story is perfectly paced, with humorous breaks in the tension. A PEN Center USA Award winner (for Spontaneous), Wagman has crafted an unusual thriller for psychological crime devotees and fans of the peculiar.”