New Releases by Nancy Freedman

In this finely drawn portrait, Sappho of Lesbos narrates her extraordinary life, from her childhood in war-torn Mitylene to her later relentless search for passionate love. Driven by the all-consuming fever of her Muse-inspired poetic gift, Sappho leads the reader on a journey that is at once turbulent and divine, desperate and sensuous. With breathtaking lucidity and great leaps of imagination, Nancy Freedman shows us a Sappho we have never known -- and one we will never forget. The toast of kings for her verse, Sappho was also a shrewd businesswoman, an educator, an advocate of women''s equality, and a rebel who was banished from her island home. Remembering her solely as a lesbian icon reveals only one aspect of her multifaceted personality. Here, finally, Nancy Freedman gives us the complete Sappho. She was arguably the most accomplished lyric poet of the ancient world, but her writing was all but destroyed by the early Church. Only in this century have fragments been uncovered, so that we too may glimpse the force of this strangely enigmatic woman. Contradictory in nature, she inspired equally passionate adoration and loathing; her fame brought her a series of obsessive loves. Her relations with women are well known, but it was for the love of a man that she set sail to face her destiny.

The story of a mother and daughter who never met, but whose lives were permanently intertwined. The mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, founder pf the feminist revolution with her epochal VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, died in childbirth. The daughter, Mary Shelley, lover and finally wife of England''s greatest Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and later author herself of the classic FRANKENSTEIN, turned at every crises to her dead mother, seeking the help, advice, and disciplined she imagined Wollstonecraft would have given. A riveting account of love, jealousy and conflict in a peak era of English literature.

All of her life, Kathy Little Bird has heard stories of her grandmother, Mrs. Mike, from her own mother, a Cree Indian nurse who married a wounded Austrian soldier during the waning years of World War II. Living with her mother and stepfather on the plains of St. Alban, Kathy takes the tradition of Cree music to heart—“singing” the wilderness and the people she knows so well. But Kathy longs for freedom from her sheltered life and takes her first chance to get away, marrying a charming con artist who promises her the world—and leaving behind her childhood sweetheart. Staying in seedy hotels and singing in run-down clubs, she slowly finds the fame she craves. But screaming fans and hit songs cannot fill the hole within her heart—the aching need she has for the native people she left behind, the father she never knew, and a love that will calm her restless soul. Brimming with hardship, hope, the struggles of the heart, and the turbulence of a world on the brink of change, this new novel is the moving story of one woman’s attempt to make her mark on the world—without losing herself. “This is a book the reader will be unable to put down until the last page is read.”—Library Journal “Mrs. Mike is an unforgettable story, not only because it portrays the deep abiding affection between a man and a woman, but because it pictures the austere beauty of a country where life is at once simple and free, yet complicated by danger and hardship.”—Boston Herald

In this long-awaited sequel to the “unforgettable” (Boston Herald) bestseller Mrs. Mike, Benedict and Nancy Freedman paint a portrait of the World War II era—as seen through the eyes of a young Cree woman on her own for the very first time… When her dear friend O Be Joyful died in a flu epidemic, Mrs. Mike Flanigan opened her home—and heart—to her orphaned child, Kathy Forquet. Over the years, young Kathy delighted in the Flanigans’ love—and suffered the pain of her schoolmates’ prejudice. But as the terrors of World War II drew closer to home, Kathy decided to leave her familiar home and do her part by going to a nursing school in Montreal. There her life fills with drama and excitement as she meets two very different men—a Native American who helps her understand her lost heritage, and a wounded Austrian soldier who shares fascinating stories of his exotic, embattled homeland. And as she learns about herself and the world beyond her hometown, she tries to find the elusive prize she has sought for so long: the meaning of true joy… Richly detailed and emotionally powerful, The Search for Joyful is the inspiring story of a young woman’s courageous search for fulfillment—and the long-awaited new novel by the authors of the beloved Mrs. Mike, praised by Library Journal as “a book the reader will be unable to put down until the last page is read.”

The bestselling author of Mrs. Mike has crafted a richly textured portrait of a family caught between tradition and change--a powerful epic afire with the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. Set in Japan and the U.S., spanning 1945 to the present, this is the story of three generations of a Japanese family--from a Kamikaze pilot to a modern-day business warrior. "Vivid, first-class storytelling".--Library Journal.