Barbara Wilson

Sjoholm was interested in exploring her childhood fantasy of Lapland based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, "The Snow Queen," and decided to research the budding phenomenon of winter tourism. The Palace of the Snow Queen is the result of Sjoholm's travels in Lapland, starting with her visit to Kiruna, Sweden, to observe the construction of the Ice Hotel. Over the next three years, she spent each winter in the North, meeting ice artists and snow architects, reindeer herders, and Sami writers and activists.

While visiting relatives in Seattle, twelve-year-old Willa explores the ethnic diversity of her family and investigates the pollution of a salmon stream.

"A collection of sensuous, vividly rendered stories of women coming together and drifting apart. An American art professor who dreams of changing her life falls in love with a painter during an idyllic week on a remote Swedish island. Two women with lovers at home are pulled dangerously close at a conference. And in the four captivating pieces that close the book, Wilson rewrites little-known fairy tales, including, 'The Princess in the Suit of Leather,' and 'The Woman Who Married Her Son's Wife.'"--AUTHOR'S WEBSITE

From Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christian Science, to Deepak Chopra, Americans have struggled with the connection between health and happiness. Barbara Wilson was taught by her Christian Scientist family that there was no sickness or evil, and that by maintaining this belief she would be protected. But such beliefs were challenged when Wilsons own mother died of breast cancer after deciding not to seek medical attention, having been driven mad by the contradiction between her religion and her reality. In this perceptive and textured memoir, Wilson surveys the complex history of Christian Science and the role of women in religion and healing.

Southern California in the 1950s. Polly Winter has left the Midwest and her strict Christian Scientist upbringing to raise her daughter Cory differently, with the warmth and tenderness she never received. But by the time Cory is ten, Polly has disappeared from her life, leaving Cory, her brother and her father to navigate their lives alone. Twenty-five years later, accountant and amateur watercolorist Cory struggles to come to terms with memories of the childhood she has carefully locked away. A slowly developing relationship with a woman she meets in her painting class, Rosemary Reardon, helps Cory rediscover the joy of her past as well as its sorrows. As her memories bring new light to her life, Cory finds both a passage through her losses and a greater understanding of what family is and can be.

"Cassandra Reilly is a footloose Irish-American based in London, currently in the midst of translating a magic realism novel about the search for a lost mother. When she gets an offer from a San Franciscan femme fatale to look for her husband in Barcelona, Cassandra can't resist, and she chases people of all genders in this high-spirited comic thriller."--Author's web page ( viewed August 29, 2009.

"Printer sleuth Pam Nilsen is back, looking for teenaged prostitute Trish Margolin and the murderer of Trish's best friend. Her search brings her into the world of teenage runaways and prostitutes on the streets of Seattle and Portland, and with the people who try to help or exploit them. A suspensful psychological thriller, Sisters on the Road probes the issues of prostitution and violence against women."--Www.chaptersindigo.ca.

After taking a ride in a balloon, two young sisters no longer find their geography lessons boring.

Perhaps it was strange that George Gaymer should have become a friend of Henry Fortescue at Oxford in the last years of the 19th century. Politically they were poles apart. Henry, already President of the Union, had a brilliant future before him; George was good hearted but mediocre. Above all, Henry was a homosexual; George was not. Yet George's loyal friendship stood many tests across more than forty years, and was reliable when that of Henry's own kind proved transitory or even treacherous. Absorbed in Eastern politics and Empire problems, Henry suppressed his homosexual inclinations. Regarding discretion as impossible, he chose complete self-denial, for he had no intention, as he once confided to George, of walking about on thin ice. Thus, for years after he got into Parliament, he was caution incarnate. But his failure to gain Cabinet office was so bitter a disappointment that, in search of some anodyne, he was tempted to throw discretion to the winds. As the scene changes from London to Morocco, from Hampshire to Kenya, and then to the Seychelles and Somerset, we follow the course of Henry's life through the perplexed, often apprehensive, eyes of George Gaymer. And we cannot but admire Compton Mackenzie's extraordinarily delicate handling of his theme, the skill with which he evokes the passage of eventful years and maintains suspense to the very end. Seldom have his outstanding gifts as a novelist been displayed to such advantage.