Whether you travel for business, pleasure, or a combination of the two, the ever-popular "Culture Shock!" series belongs in your backpack or briefcase. Get the nuts-and-bolts information you need to survive and thrive wherever you go. "Culture Shock!" country guides are easy-to-read, accurate, and entertaining crash courses in local customs and etiquette. "Culture Shock!" practical guides offer the inside information you need whether you're a student, a parent, a globetrotter, or a working traveler. "Culture Shock!" at your Door guides equip you for daily life in some of the world's most cosmopolitan cities. And "Culture Shock!" Success Secrets guides offer relevant, practical information with the real-life insights and cultural know-how that can make the difference between business success and failure.

Each "Culture Shock!" title is written by someone who's lived and worked in the country, and each book is packed with practical, accurate, and enjoyable information to help you find your way and feel at home.

Instead of growing up to become a missionary as her mother has planned for her, Jess Debden falls in love with another girl, rejects the strident evangelism of her family and walks out of her small Lancashire home town to go to Oxford. Other work by the author includes "Sexing the Cherry".

In a fantastic world that is not 17th-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. Rescued by the Dog Woman, a murderous gentle giant, the baby soon grows up to discover that the strangest wonders are the ones spun out of his own head. "Fuses history, fairy tale, and metafiction into a fruit . . . of a memorably startling flavor".——"New York Times Book Review".

PARENTS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN GIRL WORLD

Do you feel as though your adolescent daughter exists in a different world, speaking a different language and living by different laws? She does.

This groundbreaking book takes you inside the secret world of girls’ friendships, translating and decoding them, so parents can better understand and help their daughters navigate through these crucial years. Rosalind Wiseman has spent more than a decade listening to thousands of girls talk about the powerful role cliques play in shaping what they wear and say, how they feel about school, how they respond to boys, and how they feel about themselves. In this candid and insightful book, Wiseman discusses:

• Queen Bees, Wannabes, Targets, Torn Bystanders, and others: how to tell what role your daughter plays and help her be herself
• Girls’ power plays, from birthday invitations to cafeteria seating arrangements and illicit parties, and how to handle them
• Good popularity and bad popularity: how cliques bear on every situation
• Hip Parents, Best-Friend Parents, Pushover Parents, and others: examine your own parenting style, “Check Your Baggage,” and identify how your own background and biases affect how you relate to your daughter
• Related movies, books, websites, and organizations: a carefully annotated resources section provides opportunities to follow up on your own and with your daughter

Enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and parents and a welcome sense of humor, Queen Bees and Wannabes is compelling reading for parents and daughters alike. A conversation piece and a reference guide, it offers the tools you need to help your daughter feel empowered and make smarter choices.

John Galardi is a loner, unable to express his feelings except in the pages of his zine, "Bananafish." He finds inspiration in another zine, "Escape Velocity," created by Marisol Guzman, a self-proclaimed "rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted-and-talented writer virgin." Her sharp observations make John laugh out loud and he decides he must meet this witty author. By planting himself in Tower Records the day she drops off the latest issue, John manages to arrange a coffee date that extends over several Saturday mornings. They discuss everything from John's inability to feel and his parent's divorce to Marisol's problems with her suffocating adoptive parents. When Marisol casually tells John that she likes him, he is flabbergasted: "Honest to God a shiver ran through my body... Nobody ever said that they liked me. Ever. Not even [my friend] Brian, who probably actually doesn't." After a disastrous "just friends" junior prom date and a weekend zine conference spent together, John realizes that his feelings for Marisol are more than platonic. And Marisol, who is exploring her identity as a young lesbian, has no idea how to let John down gently without losing her new best friend.

Like Barbara Wersba's Whistle Me Home, Hard Love tackles the delicate issue of unrequited love between a straight and gay teen. But what sets this novel apart from similarly themed books is Wittlinger's choice to present the story from John's straight male point of view. Funny and poignant first-person narration will engender empathy for John as he attempts to connect with his emotionally distant parents and an understanding of how his need for their affection has manifested itself in romantic feelings for a girl he knows is unavailable to him. Hard Love is a thoughtful and on-target addition to the growing canon of gay and lesbian coming-of-age stories. (Ages 12 and older) —Jennifer Hubert

In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women.

Part memoir, part exposé, Promiscuities is Naomi Wolf's (author of The Beauty Myth and Fire with Fire) perspective on the confusion surrounding female sexuality. According to Wolf, promiscuous is "a word that holds within it the mixed message girls today are given about sex: 'You're promiscuous if you do anything, but you are a prude if you do nothing.'" Thus, still polarized on the spectrum between virgin and whore, adolescent girls are allowed little information and even fewer healthy outlets for their normal sexual desires. Wolf shatters the illusion that good girls and professional women are not sexual, and boldly embarks on redefining female sexuality outside of men's experience and assumptions. Wolf's own coming of age in the post-sexual revolution of Haight-Ashbury, serves as an evocative tool for revealing the naked and admirable truth of female sexuality.

An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn by her husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, others that are clearly writing exercises; accounts of people and scenes relevant to the raw material of her work; and comments on books she was reading. Edited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf; Indices.

Publisher Comments: Understand yourself, your lover, your family and friends. Discover what kind of people you attract, and why. Read about astrology and health, the sun signs in love, the influence of the planets in your destiny. Learn how to anticipate trends and opportunities. Review: "Truly lives up to its title." United Press International Synopsis: This astrology guide book gives step-by-step instructions and astrological tables to cast one's own birth chart and describes the characteristics of each sun sign, moon sign and ascendant. Chapters include "Sun Signs in Love" and "Astrology and Health."

For every woman who wants to be as tough as Lara Croft, as nimble as the Bionic Woman, and as babe-a-licious as Charlie's Angels, The Action Heroine's Handbook shows how to conquer the bad guys in virtually any situation. This sequel to The Action Hero's Handbook (more than 150,000 copies in print!) features step-by-step illustrations and instructions on profiling a serial killer, going undercover as a beauty queen, navigating white water rapids, outwitting a band of house invaders, and more. All the information is reality based and comes from a host of experts (including stuntwomen, jujitsu instructors, and primatologists). Special sections and appendices highlight the top action heroine hairdos, handbag essentials, and the best footwear for every action situation.

Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era.