Stephanie Allen

Fiction. African & African American Studies. It's 1919, a time when traveling medicine shows can still find audiences eager to buy miracle "cures" and watch old-fashioned variety acts onstage. Stephanie Allen's novel TONIC AND BALM follows one such troupe, Doc Bell's Miracles and Mirth Medicine Show, as it winds through Pennsylvania, struggling to stay afloat amidst internal discord and dwindling revenues. Doc Bell's show, which features both black and white performers, includes a song-and-dance team whose marriage is fraying, a sword-swallower and her charming but fickle lover, and a medical doctor in a downward spiral of alcoholism. Performers and crew alike are caught off-balance when the show takes on a new addition, a young woman with hydrocephaly, who finds herself cast into a dismaying role as a sideshow exhibit. Set against a backdrop of rural poverty and a wave of anti-black violence, TONIC AND BALM examines the tenuous solidarity and shifting alliances of people on the fringes of society.

Tonic and Balm

Carolyn A. Zeiger

Liz Netzel

Tired of "doing-it-all-to-have-it-all?" In a gentle and wise way, this book shows how women can become whole, authentic individuals who can create and lead harmonious lives--where multiple roles can be fulfilled--and provides the encouragement and tools they need to make sound choices about investing their talents, energy, and passion. "A beacon of common sense".--Dr. Judith Briles (Woman to Woman). (New Perspectives Press)

A Woman's Guide to Harmony and Empowerment

Doing It All Isn't Everything

Leslie Parrott

Les Parrott

Tina Kuna

The facts are on the table. Dinnertime is truly the most important hour in a day that a family can spend together. Focusing on the family meal, this book will help strengthen families by showing them how to reclaim this important time in order to build relationships, draw closer to one another, and restore a sense of peace in their homes. Millions of parents in America can picture the kind of home life they want but don’t know how to make it a reality. The Hour That Matters Most will help readers strengthen and transform their own families—specifically around the dinner table.

Stephanie Allen

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