Best Selling Books by Elena

"Through the rich inner lives of two ordinary, unforgettable women, award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel brings a half-century of the feminist movement to life, revealing the simmering truth that money is ultimately the limiting factor in most women''s lives"--

Die. Die with me. Be mine forever. That''s what he had said.When fourteen-year-old Gemma Kramer''s broken body is found on the floor of St. Sebastian''s Church in a quiet London suburb, the official ruling is that she jumped to her death from the organ gallery. But when a witness claims to have seen Gemma kissing a much older man outside shortly beforehand, and a toxicology report reveals traces of a date-rape drug in the girl''s system, a murder investigation is launched.At the helm is Mark Tartaglia, a stubborn detective known for following his hunches. It''s Tartaglia''s first time in charge, and he walks right into a political minefield as the murder squad turns up three more suspicious deaths — all originally ruled suicides — involving vulnerable young women falling from high places. Can Tartaglia and his team connect the dots between victims in order to find a serial killer with a chilling predilection for lonely girls and deadly heights?

A novel in the bestselling quartet about two very different women and their complex friendship: “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it” (The Boston Globe). The follow-up to My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name continues the epic New York Times–bestselling literary quartet that has inspired an HBO series, and returns us to the world of Lila and Elena, who grew up together in post-WWII Naples, Italy. In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times), gives us a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging, a meditation on love and jealousy, freedom and commitment—at once a masterfully plotted page-turner and an intense, generous-hearted family saga. “Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you’ll have some idea of how explosive these works are.” —The Australian “Brilliant . . . captivating and insightful . . . the richness of her storytelling is likely to please fans of Sara Gruen and Silvia Avallone.” —Booklist (starred review)

Elena Murzello cannot imagine going to the grocery store without a list. As she strolls through the aisles, she relies on her list to make sure she gets her must-haves and to help keep her from grabbing items she does not need. It was with this theory in mind that, at age twenty-one, she created a list of characteristics for a potential lifelong mate that still guides her love choices to this day. In The Love List, Elena shares her real- life experiences as well as information gathered from more than a hundred single, divorced, and married men and women about the qualities they look for in a life partner. Abstracting details from her interviews she created a process that anyone can use to create his or her own lists. Along with introspective questions to ponder, Elena includes sample lists of characteristics, the top three traits both men and women seek in a partner, an exploration of different types of relationships, and ways to diversify a portfolio of suitors. The Love List provides practical tips and personal stories to encourage single people to look deep within, take risks, and learn to rely on their own unique lists while searching for the perfect mate.

“Nothing quite like this has ever been published before,” proclaimed The Guardian newspaper about the Neapolitan Novels in 2014. The first book in the series, My Brilliant Friend, was a New York Times bestseller. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay was a Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year, and was named a best book of 2014 twenty-five times including in The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Statesman, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and the Boston Globe. This fourth and final installment in the series gives validation to the New York Times Book Review’s opinion of its author, Elena Ferrante, as “one of the great novelists of our time.” Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults; life’s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable! Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations.

A remarkable novel that uniquely melds journalism with fiction, by Elena Poniatowska, the recipient of the prestigious 2013 Cervantes Prize Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution''s end in Mexico City, far from her native Oaxaca, abandoned by her husband and working menial jobs. So begins Jesusa''s long history of encounters with the police and struggles against authority. Mystical yet practical, undaunted by hardship, Jesusa faces the obstacles in her path with gritty determination. Here in its first English translation, Elena Poniatowska''s rich, sensitive, and compelling blend of documentary and fiction provides a unique perspective on history and the place of women in twentieth-century Mexico.

As heard on NPR''s Diane Rehm Show! Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia. Told entirely from Elena''s perspective over a five-year period and cowritten with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena''s memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.

Part of the bestselling saga about childhood friends following different paths by “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times). In the third book in the New York Times–bestselling Neapolitan quartet that inspired the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, Elena and Lila have grown into womanhood. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance, and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up for women during the 1970s. And yet, they are still very much bound to each other in a book that “shows off Ferrante’s strong storytelling ability and will leave readers eager for the final volume of the series” (Library Journal). “One of modern fiction’s richest portraits of a friendship.” —NPR

Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman''s headlong descent into what she calls an ''absence of sense'' after being abandoned by her husband. Olga''s ''days of abandonment'' become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. When she finds herself trapped inside the four walls of her apartment in the middle of a summer heat wave, Olga is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal again.

A “beautifully written” dark fable from a doll’s point of view—by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Lost Daughter and the Neapolitan Novels (The Washington Post). One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Readers of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter may recall the little doll—lost or stolen—around which that novel revolves. Here, Ferrante retells the tale from the doll’s perspective. Celina is having a terrible night, one full of jealousy for the new kitten, Minù; feelings of abandonment and sadness; misadventures at the hands of the beach attendant; and dark dreams. But she will be happily found by Mati, her child, once the sun rises . . . “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.” —The Boston Globe

This love story is about Rosellen McDavid’s and the champ’s experiences in Miami and New York City. The era is the 1960s, during the beginning of the civil rights movement. Many of the champions she met came out of the civil rights movement. She witnesses his transition from a young man to the world’s champion. The champ is a lover and a friend as well as a fighter. Cassius’s perseverance leads him to be the greatest of all time in his boxing career and political activism. He leaves his lover behind to pursue his lifetime vision. She continues to pursue her dreams and visions. They remain friends for a lifetime.

A woman goes home to Naples after her mother’s mysterious death in a “tour de force” by the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend (Seattle Times). Following her mother’s untimely and unexplained drowning, which was preceded by a series of strange phone calls, forty-five-year-old Delia leaves Rome and embarks on a voyage of discovery through the beguiling yet often hostile streets of her native Naples. She is searching for the truth about her family and the men in her mother’s life, past and present, including an abusive husband. What she discovers will be more unsettling than she imagines, but will also reveal truths about herself, in this psychological mystery marked by “tactile, beautifully restrained prose” (Publishers Weekly) about mothers and daughters and the complicated knot of lies and emotions that binds them. “Ferrante’s polished language belies the rawness of her imagery.” —The New Yorker “With the quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence . . . Troubling Love is vivid and powerful.” —Library Journal

The New York Times–bestseller set in a divided Naples—now a Netflix original series—from the acclaimed author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. A BEST BOOK OF 2020 The Washington Post·O, The Oprah Magazine·TIME Magazine·NPR·People Magazine·The New York Times Critics·The Guardian·Electric Literature·Financial Times·Times UK·Irish Times·New York Post·Kirkus Reviews·Toronto Star·The Globe and Mail·Harper’s Bazaar·Vogue UK·The Arts Desk Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape. “Another spellbinding coming-of-age tale from a master.” —People Magazine, Top 10 Books of 2020 “The literary event of the year.” —Elle “Ms. Ferrante once again, with undiminished skill and audacity, creates an emotional force field that has at its heart a young girl on the brink of womanhood.” —The Wall Street Journal

From WNBA MVP, Olympic gold medalist, and global ambassador to the Special Olympics Elena Delle Donne comes the fifth novel in a middle grade series with as much heart as there is game. Elle has been having a lot of fun on the volleyball team, a mentality she has decided to take with her to basketball once she rejoins the team. But even though Elle has decided she wants to return…will her teammates and coach welcome her back with open arms? It may take more than a swish to make this a winning decision!

The photographs of Las Soldaderas and Elena Poniatowska’s remarkable commentary rescue the women of the Mexican Revolution from the dust and oblivion of history. These are the Adelitas and Valentinas celebrated in famous corridos mexicanos, but whose destiny was much more profound and tragic than the idealistic words of ballads. The photographs remind Poniatowska of the trail of women warriors that begins with the Spanish conquest and continues to Mexico’s violent revolution. These women are valiant, furious, loyal, maternal, and hardworking; they wear a mask that is part immaculate virgin, part mother and wife, and part savage warrior; and they are joined together in the cruel hymn of blood and death from which they built their own history of the Revolution. The photographs are culled from the vast Casasola Collection in the Fototeca Nacional of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.

Wilkes-Barre, located along the Susquehanna River in the Wyoming Valley, is the county seat of Luzerne County. The city was founded in 1769 by John Durkee and was named for John Wilkes and Isaac Barr, both members of the British Parliament and supporters of the Colonists fight for liberty. The city was incorporated as a borough in 1806 and as a city in 1871. Wilkes-Barre has undergone many changes in its long history, evolving from a farming community into the industrial city it is now. Many changes occurred as a result of the Susquehanna River, which was once a source of both trade and tourism. It runs through the city and splits the Wyoming Valley in half. Through vintage postcards, Wilkes-Barre chronicles the evolution of this community and surrounding towns.

The unmissable romance from Elena Armas, bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception and The American Roommate Experiment. A disgraced soccer exec reluctantly enlists the help of a retired soccer star in coaching a children''s team in this small-town love story in the vein of Ted Lasso and It Happened One Summer. Adalyn Reyes has something to prove. After years of working at her father''s football club she wants to make a name for herself. But not for the wrong reasons. When an embarrassing video of Adalyn goes viral, her father sends her to a small town to turn around their struggling soccer team. She arrives armed with plans to kick them into shape only to find a group of nine-year-old girls. One person is there to help: Cameron Caldani, a goalkeeping legend who is also inexplicably in town. After an unfortunate incident involving a rooster, the two find themselves on opposing sides. Adalyn thinks Cameron is a surly, scowling brute. Cameron thinks Adalyn needs to take life less seriously. Despite their differences, the two need to play nice and remember they''re on the same team. After all, it''s a long game...

Elena Ferrante is the bestselling author of The Days of Abandonment, which the New York Times described as “stunning,” Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. Her most recent novel, the first in a trilogy, is My Brilliant Friend . Frantumaglia is a collection of interviews and letters in which she discusses her controversial decision to remain out of the public eye, her thoughts on the art of writing, and the authors and books she admires. It is a free eGift from Europa Editions.

The author of "The Days of Abandonment" pens her most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood yet.

One of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year: Personal writings by the anonymous author who became a literary phenomenon with My Brilliant Friend. The writer known as Elena Ferrante has taken pains to hide her identity in the hope that readers would focus on her body of work. But in this volume, she invites us into Elena Ferrante’s workshop and offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk—those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and the four installments of the Neapolitan Novels, the New York Times–bestselling “enduring masterpiece” (The Atlantic). Consisting of over twenty years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, it is a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing. In these pages, Ferrante answers many of her readers’ questions. She addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. She discusses her thoughts and concerns as her novels are being adapted into films. She talks about the challenge of finding concise answers to interview questions. She explains the joys and the struggles of writing, the anguish of composing a story only to discover that that story isn’t good enough. She contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies. The result is a vibrant and intimate self-portrait of a writer at work. “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.” —The Boston Globe

Ilona Lakova''s darked skinned illiterate Gypsy father fell in love with her pale skinned Polish mother whilst a prisoner in Russia during the First World War. They returned to his mothers house in a Gypsy settlement on the edge of the village of Saris in Slovakia where their family of nine grew up, despised and mocked by the peasants on whom they depended for work. Ilona describes in simple unaffected language what it was like to be part of a tight knit community bound together by language, customs, music and a love of family, the spirit of Romipen.

Based on an extensive research, this practical teaching resource provides instructional and assessment guidelines for strengthening students’ higher-order thinking and reasoning skills.

"This book will astonish and inspire you. One woman''s shocking true story of abduction, war and survival." - Brian Whitney, author of SUBVERSIVEIn the fall of 1994, 21-year-old Elena Nikitina disappeared. Drugged and kidnapped by a group of Chechen gangsters, she was driven through the night to Chechnya. Kept prisoner in a tiny room, she waited while the gang tried to ransom her back to her mother. But a few weeks after the abduction, war broke out between Russia and Chechnya. Life became very cheap, very quickly, and tiny Chechnya became an apocalyptic killing zone. All contact was cut off. There was no electricity. There was no telephone service. There could be no negotiations for Elena¿s release. Elena was one lost soul, powerless, and at the mercy of hardened criminals who now fancied themselves patriotic freedom fighters. And she was their enemy ¿ the face of the Russian invader. Through eight horrifying months of captivity, trapped in a land where countless people were dying every day, Elena fought desperately to stay alive, stay sane, and not lose the one thing that kept her going - hope. GIRL, TAKEN is her powerful memoir of that time. It is the harrowing yet stirring tale of a young woman whose courage, determination, and inner strength ultimately delivered her back to her life and her loved ones.

Genealogical Fictions examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the Spanish notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) over time and how the concept''s enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings came to shape the region''s patriotic and racial ideologies.

The first comprehensive textbook on political psychology, this user-friendly volume explores the psychological origins of political behavior. Using psychological concepts to explain types of political behavior, the authors introduce a broad range of theories and cases of political activity to illustrate the behavior. The book examines many patterns of political behaviors including leadership, group behavior, voting, race, ethnicity, nationalism, political extremism, terrorism, war, and genocide. Text boxes highlight current and historical events to help students see the connection between the world around them and the concepts they are learning. Examples highlight a variety of research methodologies used in the discipline such as experimentation and content analysis. The "Political Being" is used throughout to remind the reader of the psychological theories and concepts to be explored in each chapter. Introduction to Political Psychology explores some of the most horrific things people do to one another for political purposes, as well as how to prevent and resolve conflict, and how to recover from it. The goal is to help the reader understand the enormous complexity of human behavior and the significant role political psychology can play in improving the human condition. Designed for upper division courses on political psychology or political behavior, this volume also contains material of interest to those in the policymaking community.

A self-guided journal experience with 31 empowering and inspiring exercises designed to get you in touch with your authentic self. It can be done daily, weekly or sporadically and scrap-booking, drawing as well as writing are encouraged. This is a journal for YOU.

Inspired by the beloved Halloween movie classic, this cookbook creates fun for the whole family through festive, tasty recipes that will have everyone cooking like a Sanderson sister, including ring of salt pretzels, Massachusetts baked beans, and witch''s broom donuts.

"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a sixty-year friendship between the brilliant and bookish Elena and the fiery, rebellious Lila with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four books in this novel cycle constitute a long, remarkable story, one that Vogue described as "gutsy and compulsively readable," which readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.

Do you find it difficult to obey God when you don’t understand what He is doing in your life? Elena R. Jordan tells her own story of reluctantly following God’s instructions to relocate to another state. Having to leave her hometown and family behind to start anew seemed unfathomable. Unforseen circumstances landed her in a homeless shelter. A place she never thought she would end up. Instead of having faith and trusting God in the transition, she finds comfort in a forbidden relationship to escape her lonliness and uncertanties. What you will take away from Rivers In The Desert is to stay on the path that God has for you and trust the process that He’s taking you through. Having faith and obeying God is the key to all of God’s blessings.

Work isn’t what it used to be. Leaders need a field guide that equips them with what to say and do as they face the new culture expectations of today’s employees. Many employees now show up for work not just to do their jobs but also to discover, debate, and digest important social issues. A growing number of workers want to have an impact in the world, and their preferences are a prompt for employers to be more mindful of the role of business in driving societal change, starting with what people experience at work. Felicia Joy and Elena Grotto, experts on behavioral science, business strategy, and organizational culture, share practical guidance to help organizations rise to these new standards by advancing seven behaviors, including the surprising—and perhaps most important—new business skill for high-performing cultures: forgiveness. Managers today are asked to operate as both business leaders and community leaders within the workplace—and the latter skillset is new to many. I Don’t Just Work Here helps managers leverage culture to bolster business results as they replace anxiety with confidence and lead with greater purpose in providing the expanded support employees need to develop and perform. Organizations that take heed, elevate people managers, invest in building a strategic culture, and lead with clear values and behaviors are more likely to have a decisive competitive advantage and greater business impact for years to come.

A wartime memoir through the eyes of a Russian child.

Taking on existing interpretations of "Peruvian exceptionalism," this book presents a multi-sited ethnographic exploration of the local and transnational articulations of indigenous movements, multicultural development policies, and indigenous citizenship in Peru.

In poet and artist Elena Botts new poetry collection: epochs of morning light, we see a shimmering, variegated new voice; we hear: where the trees still talk to each other, and winter feels like a song... (from When I have died we will be here). We feel the weather of her emotions; a contract with the ethereal and the visceral, as when we stand within the short but large poem: blossoms back to under the earth: I felt your ghost move through me out past the Baltic as though you had been in my heart the whole time. In this sensual canvas, beauty never suffers from loneliness, nor the sublime. Each poem herein as Botts wanders memory and weaves tapestries of word worlds, reveals a true and original voice in modern poetry: allowing light to conquer darkness; darkness to defy the estate of the sun, and colors mixed in ways only an artist of the pen could fathom - Robert Milby, Hudson Valley New York poet, Poet Laureate, Orange County, NY 2017-2019

A contemporary classic, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls reinvents fairy tales, inspiring girls with the stories of 100 heroic women. Readers will rule ancient Egypt with Cleopatra, make groundbreaking discoveries with Marie Curie, fly through the sky with Amelia Earhart, and defy gravity with Simone Biles. Illustrated by 60 female artists from every corner of the globe, this is the most funded original book in the history of crowdfunding. Plus, scannable codes inside unlock audio stories from the Rebel Girls app!

The story of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI. In this work of historical fiction, all of the characters were actual people The incidents, situations and conversations are based on reality. It is the story of the martyred King Louis XVI and his Queen, Antoinette. The fruit of years of research, the book corrects many of the popular misconceptions of the royal couple, which secular and modernist historians have tried so hard to promote. Louis and Antoinette can only be truly understood in view of the Catholic teachings to which they adhered and within the context of the sacrament of matrimony. It was the graces of this sacramental life that gave them the strength to remain loyal to the Church, and to each other, in the face of crushing disappointments, innumerable humiliations, personal and national tragedy, and death itself. Theirs is not a conventional love story; indeed it is more than a love story. The fortitude they each displayed at the very gates of hell is a source of inspiration for all Christians who live in troubled times. Hardcover, smythe-sewn, cream paper, 205 pages.