“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends. Imaginative literature is otherness and as such, alleviates loneliness.”
The Agate staff is working remotely. When we aren’t making books, we take comfort in reading and hope you do too. So for the rest of the month, we’re offering a 50% discount on all ebooks purchased from our website at www.agatepublishing.com with the code READINGIN. From cookbooks and pocketbooks to sweeping fiction and no-nonsense advice, we have enough books to keep you reading through this week and beyond. Cozy up with an ebook—or two or three!
Here are some titles to get you started!
Making Marriage Work
As the judge starring on the hit nationally syndicated television show Divorce Court, Lynn Toler witnesses, en masse, the thematic mistakes made in American marriages. She herself has also been wed for 22 years and has seen both the highs and lows of matrimony in her own marriage as well as the marriages of those close to her. While the national divorce rate hovers around the 50% threshold, there is a lot of chatter that marriage as we know it is an outdated institution–that we are too selfish, too unwilling to make sacrifices, and too misguided by elevated expectations of happiness to make marriage work.
While these points may hold some validity, a lot of this chatter is nothing new. So what’s causing so many divorces and, perhaps even more importantly, what are we to do about it if we want marriage to survive?
Replete with simple, no-nonsense rules, Divorce Court anecdotes, and stories about Judge Toler’s own union, Making Marriage Work contains invaluable information couples can use today to secure their marital tomorrow.
My Mother’s Rules
In this unique, profoundly inspirational memoir, Judge Lynn Toler shares her mother’s wisdom for learning to conquer anger and become immune to insult. Toler credits her mother’s “rules” for life – a life that saw her grow up the daughter of a poor teen mother and endure a husband who suffered mental illness and alcoholism – with providing the grounding for her own success and happiness. Toler shows how the mindset of “a black woman who knew how to make things work” taught her the power of knowing how to manage one’s emotional business—lessons that this book offers in wrenching stories written in spare and graceful prose. My Mother’s Rules is an unforgettable book that will captivate readers with its illustrations of how to rise above the most difficult circumstances and find peace and success in life.
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of essays by author Kiese Laymon, one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American writing. From his biting critiques of race politics to revelations of his own internal struggles with American “blackness,” Laymon taps into an ongoing conversation that is played out consciously and subconsciously across all of our artistic, cultural, political, and economic realities. In this explosive first work, Laymon deals in depth with his own personal story, which is filled with trials (and reflections on those trials) that illuminate under-appreciated aspects of contemporary American life.
The Last Thing You Surrender
Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s newest historical page-turner explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender follows three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States. This crucial novel asks questions that are difficult but essential: What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?