The word "bitch" conjures many images for many people but is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn’t refer to gender at all—it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy, which simply meant “housewife,” or slut, which meant “untidy” and was also used to describe men. These words are just a few among history’s many English slurs hurled at women.  Amanda Montell, feminist linguist and staff features editor at online beauty and health magazine Byrdie.com, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women form gaining equality. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women use the word “like” as a filler? Or why certain gender neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or even how linguists have historically discussed women’s speech patterns? Wordslut is no stuffy academic study; Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound.

Regulus Black was fifteen the first time his name was called at a reaping. He's twenty-five when it happens to him again. A lot has changed in that time, and one of them is that he's ready to do whatever it takes to make it home. Nothing or no one will stop him, not even James Potter. James Potter has no plans to stop Regulus Black from making it home. In fact, his plans revolve around the opposite. He has his reasons, but he's made his choice to get Regulus out of the arena, even knowing it'll be the last thing he ever does. Sirius Black was sixteen when he volunteered to take his little brother's place in the arena. At twenty-six, without the option to do it again, he has no choice but to be a mentor to his brother and best friend, knowing that only one of them can make it back out. Two names called, a mentor on the verge of falling apart, and more secrets and grief between all of them than they know how to handle. None of them are prepared for what comes next, or how far they'll go to make it through.

'A joy -- at once a gripping mystery that confidently spans centuries, and a hauntingly beautiful exploration of what makes us human.... it kept me up all night!' MADELINE MILLERSix hundred years. Five interlocking lives. One computer game.And the many paths that can lead us home.It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. In the meantime, she has work to her uncle, the only person who understood her, has left her a half-finished game to complete.What Becks is coding will outlast her by centuries and shape the lives of a scientist, an astronaut and a desperate sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. It will connect these four pioneering women across time, vast oceans and far-distant planets and introduce them to a remarkable robot destined to gather together this disparate crew and bring them home.Homebound is a coming out and coming-of-age story, a wild and precarious sea adventure, a space odyssey. As it slips through time, loss, creativity, found family, it journeys deep into humanity’s future and capacity for love.

‘Perhaps all this time I was merely an origami of a happy woman. Complicated to put together, easy to rip to shreds.’ Gwynne Hogg is an enviable woman – until she discovers her beloved dad is a serial killer. As her dad’s decades-old secrets finally catch up with him, Gwynne struggles to reconcile the man she trusted most with the crimes he’s accused of. She tries to process it all while keeping the wheels of her ‘normal’ life turning. That means caring for her depressed mum, enduring the stares of other parents on the nursery run, and showing up for clients at her PR firm, all under the relentless gaze of the media. But as the court case unfolds, Gwynne can’t shake the fear that a murderous gene might live inside her too. Her thoughts grow darker, her once-happy life unravels, and she begins to wonder what she herself might be capable of …