Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on her 25 years of experience as a pastor's wife and her scholarship as a historian to trace the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers. Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.

BEHIND EVERY HERO, THERE'S A HISTORIANAn ambitious young scholar is sent to research the mysteries of an adventurer's inn – only to uncover a centuries-old secret in this heart-warming and poignant fantasy.Mount Vengeance is legendary, a monumental climb with a dragon at its peak.For most, it’s an adventure, or a quest to prove themselves worthy of fame and glory.For Ainsworth, it’s perfect thesis material.Ainsworth Gladsly, ambitious young scholar, research fellow and up-and-coming historian is finally ready to make his mark on the world. When his supervisor learns of a rustic inn at the foot of the legendary Mount Vengeance, she send him to be the first to to document the exploits of the bold adventurers who face the perils of the mountain – and the dragon said to inhabit it.But the inn is far from the sophisticated city life he’s grown to love, and even as he grudgingly warms to its rustic charm – and its lovely innkeeper, Honey – the mystery of the mountain refuses to reveal itself. Worse, Ainsworth can’t find evidence that anyone has ever undertaken the climb – every adventurer comes to the inn, stays for a single night, and then returns home.And with Ainsworth’s reputation as an academic on the line, it’s a mystery he can’t allow to remain unsolved – even if he has to push the adventurers up the mountain himself.

For eighteen-year-old squire Kaelen, the crown prince is everything—ruthlessly clever, disciplined, devoted to his siblings, and a man Kaelen has hopelessly loved since childhood. Richard, however, barely notices his existence. When the king invites the Estaran royal family for marriage talks, the court rejoices. Richard's refusal to share his bed with any man or woman has, to them, long been a strange defect—one that a political marriage would solve. But Kaelen is left heartbroken. Worse, when the Estaran prince—Richard’s intended consort—boasts his crude intentions, Kaelen retaliates with his fist. The single punch explodes into a diplomatic crisis. Caught in the middle, Kaelen soon realises that worse than losing his life— he may lose his prince.

Book One of an epic MM romantasy quartet set in the queer-normative fantasy realm of Ardenia, featuring an asexual king, the knight who loves him and the people they must protect. Burdened with an inability to desire others, King Richard of Ardenia still finds peace in his unruly siblings, his loyal circle, and even in his young knight, Sir Kaelen, whose yearning stares he has spent years ignoring. But when Richard rides to a borderland village to investigate eerie happenings, all peace shatters. The veil containing Gloamvarn, a neighbouring realm filled with fell beasts and unimaginable horrors, is cracking. Sooner or later, it will fall. As Richard hunts for a way to safeguard his kingdom, Kaelen stays close, a constant, protective presence that stirs a strange tenderness Richard doesn’t dare name. For the monsters have a new ruler. And the tyrant hungers not only for Ardenia. But its king, too.

Ladies of the Knight is a collection of works by illustrator FionaCreates featuring the valiant and noble beknighted ladies of a quasi historical League of Knights. The League is a remnant of when knights were soldiers, only such acts of war are no longer necessary so the skills remain as sports and the Knights are famous, and bountiful participants (if you’re good at it that is!) The illustrations, sketches and short comics will mostly follow the Knight Serafina, her overenthusiastic squire, Georgiana, and her patroness and long term partner, the Lady Minerva. Read at: ladiesoftheknightcomic.com

The mind and the body. The heavens and earth. God and animal. The speaker in God had a body considers how the image of a higher power is presented to her, beginning with a Catholic upbringing in Kentucky. Speckled with stars and peopled with creatures, these poems employ a trinity of sequences that address a present, past, and possible future―from a troubled reckoning with belief to loss and promise still ahead. In this debut collection from Jennie Malboeuf, we observe undercurrents of violence and power, the dynamics of memory, gender, marriage, and miscarriage. At times, God is brutal. At times, delicate. Through true stories of animal savagery, God had a body unravels human behavior and undoes the opaque and cryptic mysteries of faith.

Effusive new poems by Stephanie Burt, “perhaps our greatest poet of having yet more to say” (Boston Review) Stephanie Burt’s poems in We Are Mermaids are never just one thing. Instead, they revel in their multiplicity, their interconnectedness, their secret powers to become much more than they at first seem. In these poems, punctuation marks make arguments for their utility and their rights to exist. Frozen isn’t simply another Disney animated musical but “the Most Trans Movie Ever.” Mermaids, werewolves, and superheroes don’t just fret over divided natures and secret identities, but celebrate their wholeness, their unique abilities, and their erotic potential. Flowers in this collection bloom into exactly what they are meant to be—revealing themselves, like bleeding hearts, beyond their given names.With humor and insight, Burt’s poems have always cherished and examined the things of this world, both real and imagined objects of fascination and desire. In this resplendent new collection, her observation and care flourish into her most fulfilled book yet. These poems shake off indecisiveness and doubt to reach joys through romance and family, through nature (urban and otherwise), and through imaginative community. We Are Mermaids is a trans book, a fangirl book, a book about coming together. It’s also Burt’s best book.

A delirious and gripping story of fatherhood and masculinity, told through the reimagined destinies of Greek mythic figures Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, and the Minotaur. Daedalus of Crete is many things. The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus—plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos. Now that Daedalus is dead, he seeks to reunite with Icarus in the Underworld. Daedalus will confront any terror to see his son again—whether it be the vengeful spirit of Minos, the cunning Queen Persephone, or even the insatiable ghost of the Minotaur. But a shocking realization follows in his wake. As Daedalus encounters the souls from his past, he begins to worry that his identity as a husband and father, mentor and friend was all a lie. And that the truth, stalking him in the labyrinth of his own heart, might be too monstrous for him to bear.

In their bold debut poetry collection, Akwaeke Emezi—award-winning author of Freshwater, PET, The Death of Vivek Oji, and Dear Senthuran—imagines a new depth of belonging. Crafted of both divine and earthly materials, these poems travel from home to homesickness, tracing desire to surrender and abuse to survival, while mapping out a chosen family that includes the son of god, mary auntie, and magdalene with the chestnut eyes. Written from a spiritfirst perspective and celebrating the essence of self that is impossible to drown, kill, or reduce, Content Warning: Everything distills the radiant power and epic grief of a mischievous and wanting young deity, embodied.

Brunehaut lives a dangerous existence as her village wise woman, brewing abortion potions and body-altering elixirs for women like her, despite the townsfolk's growing suspicion of her unconventional ways. When her childhood best friend Théoderic suddenly crashes back into her life after years of separation, everything she's built threatens to crumble. Like Brunehaut, Théoderic has shed his past, but he's chosen a more dangerous path, now posing as nobility while peddling false remedies to her very clients, threatening to shatter the delicate trust she's worked years to build. Yet beneath his deception, Théoderic is captivated by Brunehaut's transformation into the woman she was always meant to be, and desperately longs for the same miraculous change for himself. As Théoderic embraces his true identity, Brunehaut finds herself drawn to her old friend in ways she never expected, rediscovering the boy she once knew in the man he's becoming. Their time together reawakens feelings long buried, but as their bond deepens, they must navigate a world that would condemn them both for daring to live as their authentic selves. A T4T F/M childhood best friends to lovers medieval romance novella between a HRT-brewing bisexual wise woman and the gray-aroace scammer who walks back into her life.

The gods are dead. All that’s left are the Players… The performers of the Playhouse are as worshipped as they are feared, their enchanting shows bending hearts, minds, and even reality itself. Vicious, godlike, lethal. Eighteen-year-old Riven Hesper knows the dangers better than anyone, after her own encounter with a Player resulted in a curse that is slowly killing her. When the Playhouse announces the spectacle of a lifetime—a chance for one mortal to steal a Player’s immortality—Riven sees her last chance to live. Desperate for answers, she infiltrates the competition. There, she finds Jude, the Playhouse’s brilliant, merciless Lead Player, whose charm is as dangerous as his Craft, and strikes a deadly bargain to save her life. But with time running out and the Playhouse’s secrets unraveling into a disturbing picture, Riven faces a grim possibility: she might not be the hero of her story after all. In fact, she may be the villain. Because the Playhouse doesn’t just tell stories. It rewrites them. And Riven’s might end in blood. Caraval meets One Dark Window in this lush and dark fantasy.