Part art book and part biography, Magnetic Woman examines the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902–80), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, and focuses on her construction of gender and eroticism. Toyen’s early life in Prague enabled her to become a force in three avant-garde groups—Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism—yet, unusually for a female artist of her generation, Toyen presented both her gender and sexuality as ambiguous and often emphasized erotic themes in her work. Despite her importance and ground-breaking work, Toyen has been notoriously difficult to study. Using primary sources gathered from disparate disciplines and studies of the artist’s own work, Magnetic Woman is organized both chronologically and thematically, moving through Toyen’s career with attention to specific historical circumstances and intellectual developments approximately as they entered her life. Karla Huebner offers a re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde, along with a complex and nuanced view of women’s roles in and treatment by the surrealist movement.

Why, the rather staid young cellist Sarah wonders, should her aunt rent their spare room to the perhaps unstable Kari Zilke? Like the nephew in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Sarah finds herself taking an unexpected interest in the lodger, but she is unable to stop at providing a mere introduction to Kari’s narrative of mid-life crisis and self-discovery, and develops her own more troubled tale of personal angst and growth, entwined with the account Kari herself purportedly left behind. Generational tensions, artistic collaborations, and even a romance steeped in Greek myth follow as Kari and Sarah pursue their very different creative paths in theater and music. And while Kari seems to blossom post-divorce, Sarah must grapple with the question of what the role of mothers, fathers, aunts, mentors, and male collaborators should be in her life as a young musician.

Jacobine Flaa and her increasingly unrealistic friend Cinda are approaching retirement in the Midwest in the age of Trump and climate crisis. Both want to move back to the western US, but can they afford the housing prices there?

Jacobine, a historian specializing in immigration, combines teaching and museum work at a university and misses her California friends; Cinda, an art historian employed less than happily at a small museum, wants a more outdoorsy life and keeps applying for jobs in places she’d rather live.

The novel opens on Election Day 2016, when the two women meet for dinner with a third friend. When Trump captures the necessary electoral votes, Jacobine attends many protests, while Cinda, though sharing her politics, is no activist.

Jacobine struggles with health worries and the loss of friends and loved ones to cancer, heart attack, and suicide. What's more, over time, Cinda’s sometimes crazy plans and peculiar expectations prompt Jacobine to rethink their friendship.

Jacobine must confront questions of aging, death, and renewal in her effort to regain a vibrant life. How will she pull herself forward as she turns sixty in the third year of the Trump presidency?

In a college dorm in the late Seventies, seven hallmates hold a funeral for a pet hamster, only to stumble upon a body ...

Startled but not exactly sorrowful at finding their unpopular dorm preceptor slumped atop a garbage can in the trash room, Keith and his friends can’t resist investigating, and set to questioning a quirky set of potential witnesses and suspects. Could the killer be a fellow student? A member of the faculty or staff? The provost? Might it even be one of their friends?

Keith and his pals must navigate college politics, unruly druggies, and lesbian separatists in order to uncover the truth.