A birch tree grows tall and arabesque in the front yard of Nancy Chadwick’s childhood home. Over time the tree becomes her buddy and first learned connection, synonymous with home— and one spring morning, she makes a discovery under its boughs that foreshadows the many disconnections within her family, relationships, jobs, and home that are to come. Through the chapters in her life, Chadwick’s search for home carries her through with unflinching honesty, but in the end, it is a story of survival and triumph over adversity. She does not wallow in selfpity but remains tenacious as she examines her life. An exploration of what it means to belong, Under the Birch Tree is a success story of finding home.
Author: Nancy Chadwick
Publication Date: June 19, 2018
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In the spirit of The Glass Castle and The Burning Light of Two Stars, Antonia Deignan delivers what New York Times best-selling author Julie Cantrell calls a “a heart-shattering memoir of painful truth and soulful healing.” As a child, Antonia perceived her father’s nighttime visits as special acts of love. On some deeper level, though, she knew what was happening wasn’t right. To escape, she began creating imaginary worlds and used dreams to transport her away from her fears. As she got older, Antonia traded those fantasies for dance—but despite her outlets she remained trapped underwater, without a lifeline to make her feel fundamentally safe. For years, Antonia silently navigated the dark fathoms of her internalized pain, which manifested in myriad self-destructive habits: disordered eating, drug and alcohol abuse. Only decades later, while recovering from a serious bike accident, did she finally stop running and start reflecting—giving her the power to fully accept what had happened to her in her early life and ultimately forgive the unforgivable. Raw and visceral yet gorgeously lyrical, Underwater Daughter masterfully conveys not only the rippling effects of childhood trauma but also the hope that with honesty and work, healing is possible. Pub Date: May 2, 2023 Author: Antonia Deignan -
Melanie Smith knows from experience how grief and trauma can feel complex and immovable. She used that experience to fuel her research into the issues of trauma, loss, and finding happiness, which led to the creation of Unfinished Business—an eight-step, actionable, step-by-step process that will help you uncover the story of your life from the perspective of heartbreaks, limiting beliefs, old patterns, and unconscious habits. As you work through this process, you will examine who your models and influencers were and are, as well as the relationships in your life that remain unresolved and incomplete; and you will learn to heal the past, forgive, and overcome long-held beliefs, patterns of behavior, negative self-talk, self-judgment, overwhelm, and misalignment that have held you back from succeeding in love, relationships, business, finance, and health. Through this work, you will come to know yourself at the deepest level, experience clarity of vision, and find complete self-awareness. Grounded in a scientifically supported and solution-based methodology, Melanie’s Unfinished Business system has already transformed many people’s lives through her one-on-one and small group coaching sessions; now everyone can access it—and change their lives once and for all. Author: Melanie Smith Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
A collection of sixty-four black-and-white photographs and sixty-two poems, Unfolding in Light offers a vision of hands as images, symbols, and archetypes, allowing the numinous to shine through the mundane. Sisters Joan Scott and Claire Scott provides an intimate pause that gives the reader a quiet moment to reflect on the meaning of everyday hands: an ill child’s hands; a dying woman’s hands; hands of lovers, young and old; hands at work, at play, in pain, in prayer, and in love. Author: Joan and Claire Scott Publication Date: November 17, 2015 -
Dr. Pepper Hunt and Detective Beau Antelope team up again to investigate a tragic murder/suicide in a prominent ranch family in the small town of Farson, Wyoming. As they explore events leading up to the night of the disturbing crime they are drawn into the dark heart of a troubled family touched by a legacy of trauma. Author: J. L. Doucette Publication Date: November 23, 2021 -
While recovering from a near fatal illness, Nancy Pressly discovers a treasure trove of family material stored in her attic. Haunted by images of her grandparents and her parents in their youth, she sets out to create a family narrative before it is lost forever. It takes several more years before she summons the courage to reconstitute a path back to her own past, slowly pulling back the veil of amnesia that has, until now, all but obliterated her memory of her childhood. In this sensitive and forgiving meditation on the meaning of family, Pressly unravels family dynamics and life in a small rural town in the 1950s that so profoundly affected her—then moves forward in time, through to her adulthood. With an eye attuned to visual detail, she relates how she came into her own as a graduate student in the tumultuous sixties in New York; examines how she assumed the role of caretaker for her family as she negotiated with courage and resilience the many health setbacks, including her own battle with pancreatic cancer, that she and her husband encountered; and evokes her interior struggle as a mother as she slowly traverses the barriers of expectations, self-doubt, and evolving norms in the 1980s to embrace a remarkable life as a scholar, champion of contemporary art, and nationally recognized art museum strategic planning consultant. Full of candor and art-inspired insight, Unlocking leaves the reader with a deep appreciation of the power of art and empathy and the value of trying to understand one’s life journey. Author: Nancy L. Pressly Publication Date: May 5, 2020 -
“Theater fans will love the insiders’ stories culled from Sandra’s years on Broadway—but absolutely anyone, regardless of their familiarity with theater, can and will benefit from the lessons contained in these pages. It’s impossible to read this book and come out on the other side feeling anything but awakened.” —Jack Canfield, Coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series and The Success Principles™: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be Living a meaningful, satisfying life is an enigma for most people today. We feel stuck, small, without the self-confidence to move in the direction of what we really want. Or, if we do muscle through our fear in pursuit of our dreams, we exhaust ourselves working and striving and achieving and yet somehow, no matter our level of outer-world success, are left dazed and disheartened, asking ourselves, “Is this all there is?” After ten years on Broadway, Sandra Joseph—the longest-running leading lady in Broadway’s longest-running show, The Phantom of the Opera—knows one thing for sure: the only way to have a truly fulfilling life and achieve success that satisfies is to recognize that the journey up is no substitute for the journey in. In Unmasking What Matters, Joseph uses lessons learned on the road to Broadway, during her decade as Christine, and through the challenges she faced after walking away from the business to show readers how to courageously bring their inner voice to the outer world, stop seeking success for achievement’s sake and start creating the life they truly desire. With her hard-won wisdom, poignant personal stories, and practical, experiential exercises to guide them, readers will learn to shed their limiting masks, mindfully work through their fears, stand in their authentic power, and build a life rich with satisfaction, meaning, and significance. Warm, humble, encouraging, and inspiring, Unmasking What Matters can help anyone move from stuck, fearful, and playing it safe to embracing their passions, gifts, and opportunities and living life “full-out” today. Author: Sandra Joseph Publication Date: January 23, 2018 -
Jaded New York City Public Defender Liana Cohen would give anything to have one client in whom she can believe. Dozens of hardened criminals and repeat offenders have chipped away at her faith in both herself and the system. Her boyfriend Jakob’s high-powered law firm colleagues see her do-gooder job as a joke, which only adds to the increasing strain in their relationship. Enter imprisoned felon Danny Shea, whose unforgivable crime would raise a moral conflict in an attorney at the height of her idealism―and that hasn't been Liana in quite a while. But Danny's astonishing blend of good looks, intelligence, and vulnerability intrigues Liana. Could he be the client she’s been longing for―the wrongly accused in need of a second chance? Is he innocent? As their attorney-client relationship transforms into something less than arm’s length, Liana is forced to confront fundamental questions of truth, faith, and love―and to decide who she wants to be. Author: Reyna Marder Gentin Publication Date: November 13, 2018 -
Elizabeth Tilton, a devout housewife, shares liberal ideals with her husband, Theodore Tilton, and their pastor and close friend Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, both influential reformers of the Reconstruction Era who promote suffrage for women and former slaves and advocate for the spiritual power of love rather than Calvinistic retribution. Elizabeth is torn between admiration for her husband’s stand on women’s rights and resentment of his dominating ways at home. When Theodore justifies his extramarital affairs in terms of the free love doctrine that marriage should not restrict other genuine loves, she becomes closer to Henry, who admires her spiritual gifts—and eventually falls passionately in love with him. Once passion for her pastor undermines the moral certainties of her generation, Elizabeth enters into uncharted emotional and ethical territory. Under what circumstances should she tell the truth? If she does, will she lose her children and her marriage? Will she destroy her own reputation and the career of the reverend who has done much good? Can a woman accustomed to following the leadership of men find her own path and define her own truth? Author: Barbara Southard Publication Date: January 28, 2025 -
Unsexed examines the role that sex plays in the life of one woman with two mothers who introduce her to polarized frameworks of female sexuality. Born in Greece to a violent prostitute and then adopted by a cold and unloving virgin from New York, Marina inherits a sexual identity steeped in fear and shame—one that, as she grows older and becomes a wife and mother, trickles into her marriage and the parenting of her children. Without the tools needed to understand her complex mothers or the unpack the lessons they taught her, Marina relies on self-erasure to survive relationships that silence and define her—until she finally becomes fed up with those old patterns and begins to stand in her own power. A memoir that unearths the layered emotional and sexual lives of women and exemplifies the satisfaction that comes when they assert their voices and power, Unsexed speaks to millions of women who have different narratives but face similar struggles in reclaiming their voices, bodies, and sexuality. Author: Marina DelVecchio Publication Date: April 2, 2024 -
When Laura Whitfield was fourteen, her extraordinary brother, Lawrence, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. That night she had an epiphany: Life is short. Dream big, even if it means taking risks. So after graduating from high school, she set out on her own, prepared to do just that. Laura spent her first summer after high school on North Carolina's Outer Banks, a magical few months filled with friendships, boys, and beer. There she met a handsome DJ who everyone called "Steve the Dream," and risked her heart. When September came, Steve moved to New York City to become a model, prompting Laura to start thinking about modeling, too. After just one semester of college, still seeking to fill the void left by her brother's death, she dropped out and moved to New York to become a cover girl. But while juggling the demands of life in the big city waiting tables, failed relationships, and the cutthroat world of modeling; she lost her way. A stirring memoir about a young woman's quest to find hope and stability after devastating loss, Untethered is Laura's story of overcoming shame, embracing faith, and learning that taking risks and failing can lead to a bigger life than you've ever dared to imagine. Author: Laura Whitfield Pub Date: April 5, 2022 -
When pregnant Esther—a young, adventurous, British-born Israeli—follows her new husband, Steve, to America, she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. Even before their baby is born, Esther discovers the dark side of her charming film production manager husband, and learns that she must cope with his moodiness and domineering personality. Left alone day after day in a high-rise apartment in Queens, Esther struggles with culture shock, homesickness, and adapting her husband’s whims—like the baby goat he brings home to their eighth-floor apartment to keep as a pet. Ten years and two more children later, thirty-four-year-old Steve is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Despite aggressive treatments, he succumbs to the disease, leaving Esther to care for their three children alone, Esther at first feels lost and bewildered; as time goes on, however, she discovers that there is a freedom in her new situation—and that she has a greater inner strength than she ever before realized. Author: Esti Skloot Publication Date: August 20, 2019 -
Valeria Vose: A Novel takes a reader deep inside the cultural and emotional life of a 1970’s southern woman. Privileged, approaching age forty, her “perfect” life is shattered. Determined to survive, she’s forced to confront all preconceived values and expectations in order to find a path toward creative, spiritual independence and her true identity. Author: Alice Bingham Gorman Publication Date: October 2, 2018 -
Struggling to forget a crumbling marriage, forty-year-old Anna Lucia Lottol comes to Venice to visit an old friend—but instead of finding solace, she is dragged into the police station and accused of murdering a money-laundering count with whom she had a brief affair. A US Treasury officer with brains and athleticism, Anna fights to clear her name in a seductive city full of watery illusions. As she works to pry information from a cast of recalcitrant characters sometimes denying what she sees and hears, she succeeds in unleashing a powerful foe bent on destroying her. Will she save herself and vanquish her enemies, including her darkest fears? A mysterious tapestry of murder, betrayal, and family, Venetian Blood is a story of one woman’s brave quest for the truth —before it’s too late. Author: Christine Evelyn Volker Publication Date: August 8, 2017 -
2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Medal for Memoir 2017 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist 2017 Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite for Memoir When young Barbara Bracht’s mother disappears from her life (no one tells her that she has died), she is left a confused child whose blue-collar father is intent upon erasing any memory of his dead wife. Forced to keep the secret of her mother’s existence from her brother, Bracht struggles to keep from being crushed under the weight of family secrets as she comes of age and strives to educate herself despite her father’s stance against women’s education—a journey that culminates in a visit to her mother’s grave nearly twenty years after her death. Narrated in a precocious, fiercely intelligent, and compelling voice, Veronica’s Grave” A Daughter’s Memoir is a heartrending story about the psychological cost of families who keep secrets—and the importance of pursuing one’s dreams and passions. Author: Barbara Donsky Publication Date: May 10, 2016 -
In 1972, when she was a young, divorced, single mother, restless and idealistic, Elena Schwolsky made a decision that changed her life: leaving her eighteen-month-old son with his father, she joined hundreds of other young Americans on a work brigade in Cuba. They spent their days building cinderblock houses for workers and their nights partying and debating politics. The Cuban revolution was young, and so were they. At a moment of transition in Schwolsky’s’s life, Cuba represented hope and the power to change. Twenty years later, she is drawn back to this forbidden island, yearning to move out of grief following the death of her husband from AIDS and feeling burned out after spending ten years as a nurse on the frontlines of the epidemic. Back in Cuba, she experiences the chaotic bustle of a Havana most Americans never see―a city frozen in time yet constantly changing. She takes readers along with her through her humorous attempts to communicate in a new language and navigate this very different culture―through the leafy tranquility of the controversial AIDS Sanitorium and into the lives of the resilient, opinionated, and passionate Cubans who become her family and help her to heal. Author: Elena Schwolsky Publication Date: November 12, 2019 -
After growing up in abject poverty in a dysfunctional alcoholic environment and being terrorized by a boarder who lived in the root cellar, Athena Demetrios repressed her traumatic memories—thrusting her into a downward spiral of melancholy and despair. But when, as an adult, she had a powerful spiritual experience that opened doors into other dimensions, she began an odyssey in which truth became stranger than fiction—a journey through hypnotic regression that led her to transcendence and healing. Demetrios’s story of courage, mystical insight, and otherworldly guidance will open your heart and challenge your perception of the borders of our minds and the boundaries of our world. This is a tale of past-life visions, spiritual guides, and communication beyond death—and emergence into the radiant light of self-discovery, knowing, and being at peace with all that is. Author: Athena Demetrios Publication Date: April 30, 2019 -
Alan and Joanne marry in midlife and live a happily-ever-after existence until, at sixty-nine, Alan is diagnosed with a rare, fatal, neurodegenerative illness. As he becomes increasingly disabled and dependent on others, and decreasingly able to find joy in life, he decides he wants to end his suffering using Colorado’s Medical Aid in Dying law. Joanne desperately wants Alan to live, but when he asks for her help completing the Medical Aid in Dying application, she can’t say no. She helps him complete the requirements, hoping deep down that his application will be denied . . . only to be stunned when his medical team approves his request and writes him a prescription for the life-ending drugs. Told with affection and spiced with humor, Walking Him Home is Joanne’s tale of coming to terms with her kind, funny husband’s illness; of learning to navigate the intricate passageways of caregiving and the pitfalls of our medical system; and of choosing to help Alan in his quest to die with dignity, even though she wants nothing more than to grow old with him. Tender and heartfelt, this is one woman’s story about loving extravagantly—and being loved in kind. Author: Joanne Tubbs Kelly Publication Date: August 9, 2022 -
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely disabled children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city. From a dramatic Christmas pig slaughter to a mesmerizing fire walking ceremony, her world expands rapidly—even more so when she falls in love with Thanasis, a handsome Communist. Through Thanasis, Kate meets people determined to turn a spotlight on their former dictators’ massacre of university students, as well as their record of widespread censorship and torture of dissidents. The more she learns, the more her loyalty to her country and almost everything she was taught in her conservative home state of Texas is challenged. Kate is transformed by her odyssey, but when her very safety is threatened by the politics of her lover, she must choose: risk everything to stay with Thanasis and the Greece that has captured her heart, or remove herself from harm’s way by returning to her homeland? Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Kathryn Crawley -
Karen Gershowitz is officially a travel addict—one with more than ninety countries under her belt. In these engaging stories, she brings readers along as her companions as she explores, laughs, and marvels at the richness of other cultures. Whether she’s picking through the worst meal ever in the wilds of Tanzania, eating a transcendent strudel in Vienna, meeting the locals in an isolated opal mining hamlet in Australia’s outback, or learning to make noodles in a Chinese village, she invites you to share in her experiences. Whatever kind of traveler you are, novice or experienced, or even if you prefer sitting in your armchair, these stories will transport you deep into other ways of living in the world—and, hopefully, inspire you to set out on your own journeys! Author: Karen Gershowitz Pub Date: October 3, 2023 -
A riveting journey through sacrifice, resilience, and love in the heart of the Civil War, readers follow Adrien Villere as he fights for love and honor with Terry’s Texas Rangers, while his family copes with hardship and tragedy at home. An epic tale of forbidden love and courage that transcends societal boundaries. Book 2 in the series continues to hook fans of Southern literature or Civil War history—while also having, as the Historical Novel Society North America says, “the potential to be an important part of the canon of LGBTQ+ literature.” Author: Karen Lynne Klink Publication Date: April 9, 2025 -
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist IndieFab Awards Finalist (Top 15) “Reed’s charming novel stars a neurotic singer with mother issues who has been avoiding auditions and attending frustrating therapy sessions instead. When Cecilia meets a homeless boy on the streets, however, her life takes a risky new direction. A well-written, endearing book that surprises . . . ” —Kirkus Reviews Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly starts therapy, hoping for a change in her life, but ultimately it's a runaway teenager who cons her out of sixty bucks, not therapy, that gives her the inspiration she's looking for. Author: Mary Hutchings Reed Publication Date: April 23, 2013 -
2014 USA Best Book Awards: Nominee, Autobiography/Memoir Warrior Mother is the true story of a mother’s fierce love and determination, and her willingness to go outside the bounds of the ordinary when two of her three adult children are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases. When Sheila Collins’s best friend, dying of breast cancer, asked her to accompany her through what turned out to be the last fourteen days of her life, she didn’t know that the experience was preparing her for what laid ahead with her own children. In the years that followed, Collins had to face both her son’s diagnosis with AIDS and her daughter’s diagnosis with breast cancer. Warrior Mother documents how she faces these challenges and the issues accompanying them—from learning to be the mother of a gay son to visiting a healer in Brazil on her daughter’s behalf when she decides on bone marrow transplant treatment. Experience as a professional social worker and family therapist doesn’t always help Collins to cope with her children’s illnesses—but her relationship with improvisational song, dance, storytelling, and women’s spirituality rituals carries her through. Author: Sheila K. Collins Publication Date: August 6, 2013 -
In 1991, Julia Wilkes, a zealous young reporter, covered the murder of a teenage girl in Fairbanks, Alaska. Julia’s stories relentlessly linked the girl’s boyfriend, Josh Harrison, to the crime—up to the day that the basketball star shot himself in the head. Twenty years later, Julia, now a Seattle journalism professor and syndicated columnist, comes back to Fairbanks on a sabbatical just in time to hear about a serial killer’s confession to the long-ago slaying. With Josh exonerated, Julia is haunted by whether her stories pushed him to end his life—and when a stalker begins to make attempts on her life, the stakes grow even higher. Suspects and motives abound: Julia’s enraged a pro-life group with a recent column; she’s drawn a jealous woman’s wrath; she’s unintentionally drawn the attention of a demented homeless person; and there’s always the possibility that someone from her past has come to collect vengeance for Josh’s death. Author: Patricia Watts Publication Date: March 19, 2013