Girl Friday Books

Winner of 5 major book awards, including the Publishers Weekly U.S. 2021 Selfies Award for Best Adult Fiction and winner of the IndieReader 2021 Discovery Award.

“L’Origine got me hooked—what a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world.” —Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final Transgression

The riveting odyssey of one of the world’s most scandalous works of art.

In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a woman’s exposed genitals. Audaciously titled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year.

As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet’s The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the painting’s intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the painting’s riveting clandestine history with readers beyond the confines of the art world.

L’Origine is an entertaining and superbly researched work of historical fiction that traces the true story of the painting’s unlikely tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas, and nefarious Nazi captains. But L’Origine is more than a riveting romp through history—it also sheds light on society’s complex relationship with the female body.

The 90s live on in this edgy offstage glimpse of the indie musical artists that shaped a decade.

The music of the 1990s shaped more than one generation. It was the music Generation X came of age listening to and the songs millennials cut their teeth on. In Lived Through That, professional photographer and music enthusiast Mike Hipple shares intimate and unique photographic portraits of dozens of the greatest artists from the '90s. Accompanied by in-depth interviews throughout, this behind-the-scenes image-driven collection reveals details of each musician’s time in the limelight as well as where life has taken them. Their words and images are open, honest, inspiring, and personal, offering profound and humorous memories and gems of wisdom that will resonate with fans and music lovers alike.

From Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic to indie icon Tanya Donelly to Arrested Development’s Speech, the portraits and stories featured in Lived Through That cover a wide range of rock, rap, and alternative stars. Whether they were chart-toppers or underground sensations, the artists in Hipple’s epic collection tell the story and reawaken the songs of a pivotal era.

“A gleefully apocalyptic page-turner . . .” —Kirkus Reviews

Meet Chloe and Elizabeth Yetti: antisocial, semi-homicidal eighteen-year-old twins casually surviving the AI apocalypse.

Ten years ago, a powerful machine intelligence unleashed a nanoengineered superdrug on humanity. Civilization is now a collection of mindless addicts confined to automated treatment centers that tower over drone-dominated cityscapes. Having escaped and grown up in the forests of Northern California alongside their younger brother and brilliant scientist/survivalist mother, Clo and El stayed safe while society collapsed around them.

But when a mysterious stranger and a demonic woodland creature appear and threaten their family, the twins are drawn back to a disintegrating, drug-addled San Francisco. There, biomechanical gods and monsters vie for control of what’s left of humanity’s consciousness. Armed with only a knife, an old hunting rifle, and their secret, cryptophasic twin language, Clo and El realize that surviving the apocalypse was just the beginning—now they’ve got to face it head-on.

The first book in the Babylon Twins trilogy, this epic adventure takes readers on a journey filled with sci-fi spectacle and darkly humorous twists and turns, not to mention some good old-fashioned butt-kicking. The second book in the series will be coming out in 2022.

Weep. Scream. Hate. Disbelieve. Go numb.

Breathe.

This beautiful book offers a gentle and honest guide for surviving the early days of grief—shock, trauma, disbelief—and beyond. In simple, easy-to-absorb pages composed of short, poetic text and spot illustrations, readers will begin to find the path they need to move through their grief, step by step. From grieving a sudden death or a long illness, someone hard to love or impossible to live without, anyone suffering a loss will see themselves and their grief reflected in these pages.

When author Paula Becker’s son was killed in 2017, she reached for grief books to help her understand how to proceed through the enormous grief engulfing her. Most grief books are tens of thousands of words long—helpful resources, but often too overwhelming for the newly bereaved to navigate with shattered attention spans and broken hearts. With A Little Book of Self-Care for Those Who Grieve, as only someone who knows grief intimately can, Paula Becker offers grievers a touchstone, quiet snippets of care and advice that can be returned to again and again as they travel the lifelong road of grief. A planned foreword from a notable voice in the grief community as well as a resources section rounds out this essential book.

In the vein of It's OK That You're Not OK, A Little Book of Self-Care for Those Who Grieve acknowledges the brokenness, the pain, and how grief alters your reality and with great tenderness and gentle compassion, walks with readers in that new world.

Feeling burned out? So done? Like you’ve got zero left to give? This guided journal will help shift your focus from giving up to gratitude and refuel your soul, one prompt at a time. Yeah, yeah, we know it sounds like another line, but gratitude really can improve your overall attitude and have profound effects on your life. Real-life, actual scientific studies have found that people who regularly practice gratitude and write about it have better relationships and are healthier and happier than people who don’t.

Use this journal to dig deep to find your f*cks, or focus on the ones right in front of your face. Sometimes you’ll want to fill pages with paragraphs, while other times a simple list will do. Skip around and work on the prompts that speak to you in the moment.

Thoughtful quotes from superwise and bad*ss people will inspire you, while quick tips, tricks, and suggestions for maximizing all that latent gratitude will help you make the most of even the sh*ttiest day. Even when life ships you crates of lemons, you can still make one super strong vodka lemonade and find that there are a whole lot of reasons to give a sh*t. Now let’s find those f*cks, one by one.

The heroes at the Pentagon were extraordinary civilians and soldiers who made decisions to sacrifice their own safety to render aid to complete strangers. Twenty years later, these stories serve as a reminder of what it truly means to be American. Meticulously researched and told with respect and reverence, this book sheds light on the remarkable individuals and events of that day. Starting from the date the builders of the Pentagon broke ground on September 11, 1941, and culminating in the national Pentagon Memorial dedication in 2008, American Phoenix is a tribute to those who sacrificed everything so that others might live.

"That day, I saw humanity at its best and worst. Humanity doesn’t have race, creed, or color—not when you look into the very souls of people." —Christopher Braman, Army Sgt. 1st Class (ret.)

The terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, were intended to tear apart the fabric of our country and our democracy. Instead, this brazen act served to show the world the heart of a nation and the true meaning of “united we stand.” The heroes at the Pentagon were extraordinary civilians and soldiers who made decisions to sacrifice their own safety to render aid to complete strangers. Twenty years later, these stories serve as a reminder of what it truly means to be American.

Meticulously researched and told with respect and reverence, American Phoenix sheds light on the remarkable individuals and events of that day, revealing stories never before told. Starting from the date the builders of the Pentagon broke ground on September 11, 1941, and culminating in the national Pentagon Memorial dedication in 2008, this is a tribute to those who sacrificed everything so that others might live.