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Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off. A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs. The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author. Author: Jane Little Botkin Publication date: September 10, 2024 Download Book Club Questions -
Born to an abusive mother and a drug-dealer father, Ginelle Testa is not exactly set up for success—and her early years are just as troubled as one might expect. By the end of her thirteenth year, she’s started experimenting with alcohol and drugs, has fallen prey to anorexia, and has been sexually assaulted. And that’s only the beginning of her spiral down into addiction and disordered eating. As Ginelle progresses into young adulthood, she hits several substance-related bottoms. In her senior year of college, after blacking out and ending up naked in her dorm’s community shower, she goes to Alcoholics Anonymous and gets sober. But steering clear of drugs and alcohol, she discovers, is not a cure-all; despite the positive changes she’s made, her sex and dating life continue to be troubled and turbulent. Then she finally finds Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous . . . and begins to truly heal. Raw, relatable, and powerful, Testa’s is a riveting tale of climbing up from rock bottom—and learning to make a home in oneself instead of in substances and other people. Author: Ginelle Testa Publication Date: September 3, 2024 -
Linked by their personal and professional relationships, the characters in these thirteen stories—all set between 1982 and 2012—struggle to achieve happiness and success. A coke-fueled night with a photographer costs a young woman her job in the display department of Bloomingdale’s, but holds a hidden promise. A sculptor tries to resurrect his relationship with an old flame on the same day her best friend is undergoing a bone marrow transplant. An aspiring actress drifts from house-sit to house-sit until an armed robbery at the restaurant where she works makes her question a lifelong pattern of impermanence. Moody, elegiac, and full of longing, with ricocheting themes of desire and loss, A New Day’s stories are steeped in the highs and lows inherent in the pursuit of love and creative expression. Author: Sue Mell Publication date: September 3, 2024 -
She dreams of driving across the bridges. She’d never been afraid before; but now, in the dreams, strange, magical happenings unfold. One night, at the Golden Gate, the span carries her underwater, where she discovers long lost friends, all sitting at a beautiful table at the bottom of the Bay; only it was long ago, and everyone is in Victorian dress. In another dream, the Bridge does not yet exist. Where the beautiful city would appear, there are only sandstone cliffs and desert; and she is just spirit, flying above the water. But in most of the dreams she is driving. Her eyelids become heavy, she can’t see the road. struggles desperately to keep control of the car, but can feel herself falling, slipping towards the floor, the car breaking over the railing, carrying her with it under the water. The dreams recur so often that she becomes afraid of heights, of driving over the railing into the waves. Then just as suddenly the dreams stop. Years pass, until the day she hears that he’s jumped, when they return. In this memoir we accompany the author on her search to unearth the magical and terrifying childhood she has all but buried. Author: Kristen Alexandra Davis Publication Date: July 2, 2024 -
Anne grew up in an abusive home, leading to severe depression and a determination to do better as a mother. One of her sons wants a dog from the time he is a baby; Anne very much does not. For years she appeases him with creatures who live in cages and tanks, but on his tenth birthday she can no longer say no—and she proceeds to fall in love with their new four-legged family member, Mattie. Then Mattie dies a sudden and tragic death, and Anne feels herself begin to sink back into depression. Trying to cope, she immediately adopts Milo—a dog who, unbeknownst to her, has already been returned to the rescue by several families due to his aggressive behavior. But even after she realizes Milo is dangerous, she’s committed to trying to give him a chance at a good life. Anne’s journey takes the reader from dog school into the deep woods as she perseveres with Milo’s lifelong rehabilitation and her unwavering efforts to be a good mother to her sons. Working with Milo strengthens Anne and expands her ability to love. Ten years later, when Milo dies, Anne faces another choice: close the door to that part of her heart, or risk loving another dog after two tragic losses? Author: Anne Abel Publication Date: April 23rd, 2024 -
A companion to Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower, journal along as you read, responding to prompts and questions as part of an interactive adventure exploring the private life and journals of Blackwildgirl, a young Black girl, beginning at the age of eight, as she struggles and evolves from a tennis player, musician, and college student to become a wife, mother, lawyer, scholar, writer, and eventually, Blackwildgoddess. Use the journal to reflect on your own life to document revelations and reflections during each of the twelve stages of Blackwildgirl’s initiation journey in America and the African diaspora. Explore how writing can unearth and give life to powerful, sassy, and willful spirits. Reading Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower while journaling in Blackwildgirl: Finding Your Superpower allows readers to also become writers, excavating and cultivating the spiritual gardens of their lives and finding their superpower. Write your own story. Discover your own inner wisdom. Own your power and purpose. Celebrate yourself. Author: Menah Adeola Eyaside Pratt Publication Date: May 21st, 2024 -
Blackwildgirl begins her life as a queen superpower. When she is still a child, however, her parents strike a bargain that leads to her dethronement—and sets her on a forty-five-year journey to become the warrior she was born to be: Blackwildgoddess. Join an interactive adventure exploring the private life and journals of a young Black girl, beginning at the age of eight, as she struggles and evolves from a tennis player, musician, and college student to become a wife, mother, lawyer, scholar, and writer. Documenting revelations and reflections during her twelve-stage initiation journey in America and the African diaspora, this intimate, introspective autobiography—composed of acts, stages, scenes, and letters to Love—reveals how writing can unearth and give life to women’s powerful, sassy, and willful spirits. Authentic, vulnerable, and spirit-filled, this captivating and enthralling road map is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the experiences of girls as they seek to become wild women—women who are fierce and fearless; women who are warriors for themselves and others; and women who are committed to excavating and cultivating their spiritual gardens to manifest and fulfill their destiny in the world. Be sure to get the companion journal, Blackwildgirl: Finding Your Superpower to journey and journal along as you read. Write your own story. Discover your own inner wisdom. Own your power and purpose. Celebrate yourself. Author: Menah Adeola Eyaside Pratt Publication Date: May 21st, 2024 -
Still recovering from the heartbreak of infertility, memoirist Gail McCormick and her husband volunteer to host two Children of Chernobyl for a summer reprieve from radiation exposure. Fate pairs the Seattle couple with eight-year-old Ukrainian twin sisters from Belarus—and rekindles Gail’s childhood dream to build a bridge of peace between the US and the former Soviet Union. Over four summers of mayhem and magic with the twins, a deep relationship takes root. When the girls age out of the program that brought them to Seattle, Gail confronts her Cold War fears and travels with her husband to reunite with them in Ukraine and Belarus. On this soul-making trip to a land of unspeakable loss, she celebrates life in the homes of an accordion-playing Chernobyl hero and a barefooted babushka who distills her own vodka, and—behind the remnants of the Iron Curtain—finds her place as an honorary mother and babushka in a four-generation family of former Soviets. Poignant and culturally rich, her narrative transports readers to storied cities, villages, and dachas from Kyiv to Minsk. Written with reverence, insight, humor, and hope, Zoya’s Gift illuminates the complexities, joys, and importance of reaching across political, class, and cultural divides. Author: Gail McCormick Publication Date: June 11, 2024 -
Drinking glasses of cava in the sunshine, indulging in delicious tapas, and learning Spanish with ease is what Amy Breen, a hard-charging physician and mother of three, expected of life in Spain. But when she and her young family move to Barcelona, the tranquilo lifestyle of their new country has other ideas for her. Join Amy and her family in their mishaps and adventures living in Barcelona and traveling throughout Europe, and watch as Amy—openly and with a self-deprecating humor—unfolds her struggles in her transition from a handle-it-all doctor and mother in the States to full-time parent who needs her kids to translate. The tranquilo way of life is Amy’s adversary, and then teacher, in this humorous personal and family journey. Author: Amy Breen Publication Date: June 4, 2024 -
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 -
Songs My Mother Taught Me follows the narrator, confronted with the imminent death of her mother, on a voyage to share the final leg of their lifelong journey together. With candor and lucidity, she retraces the passage from childhood to womanhood under the powerful influence of a loving but suffocating mother. Told by a daughter who has carried all her life the epigenetic endowment inherited from her parents’ experiences during the Holocaust, this raw and painfully honest story digs into the complexities and subtleties of love. Having spent most of her life traveling the globe in an attempt to escape this legacy, the narrator finds herself back in the house she grew up in, where she tries to finally piece together, and find peace with, the looming shadows of her family’s past. This epic and lyrical tale spans from Transylvania in the 1930s to modernday Tel Aviv, Tokyo, New York, and Paris—giving a literary voice to those affected by PTSD transmitted down the generations. Author: Eva Izsak Publication Date: July 16, 2024 -
As the secret federal sting operation Snakehead targets the fentanyl trade, the small mill town of Stanton, Massachusetts, becomes a battlefield in the war on drugs and three mothers—newspaper reporter Laura Everett, businesswoman Mimi Sullivan, and machinist Angie Gillen—must overcome their differences and confront their pasts to keep their troubled teenagers out of the crossfire. Help comes from unexpected quarters when several Stanton cops break ranks with their superiors after learning that Snakehead’s real mission is to militarize the police and northern border. Stakes rise as the opioid crisis deepens and Mimi’s daughter sinks further into depression and heroin addiction. Laura’s and Angie’s sons try to save her, but their efforts only place her more at risk and she is forced to run away. Ultimately, the deadly violence being perpetrated all around her—by gangs, dealers, and those running the Snakehead operation—compels Laura to dig deep within herself for the power to take charge. A fast-paced, multilayered thriller that reveals the high human costs of the drug war, Last Place Called Home is also a story about love and loyalty to family, friends, and place. Stanton is a hard place to live in—but it’s an even harder place to leave. Author: Betsy Hartmann Publication Date: July 16, 2024 -
Every day, most of us interact with people of disparate backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences—individuals who hold different expectations than we do of the people and world around them. How does one navigate these often-turbulent waters? In Conscious Change, nineteen authors describe how they have applied the principles of Conscious Change within multicultural, diverse environments to overcome difficult and emotionally draining challenges—and, in doing so, provide a road map to shifting one’s own story when moving through similarly demanding situations in all areas of life. These practical case studies reveal how transformational the Conscious Change tools can be, leading to a stronger sense of one’s personal capacity as a leader, better interpersonal relationships, and the beginnings of greater equity and inclusion. Illuminating and instructive, these stories are vivid illustrations of the skills today’s leaders need in their multicultural organizations and settings, where issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are, and will increasingly be, front and center. Authors: Jean Kantambu Latting and V. Jean Ramsey Publication Date: July 9, 2024 -
When ambitious attorney Claire Hewitt is asked to represent the Satoris, one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families, in a lawsuit over the death of their daughter, she is thrust into an opioid nightmare with deadly impact—and not for the first time. Claire’s guilt for not saving her sister, Molly, has not subsided in the twenty years since Molly’s almost certainly opioid-related death. Now, with this new assignment, her guilt comes full circle. Who was really at fault in Molly’s death? And who is at fault now? What begins as a quest for truth becomes infinitely more complicated as Claire struggles to balance her desire for justice with the Satoris’ thirst for revenge. She knows she needs to expose the greed that transforms legal opioid production into illicit fabrications and the neglect that is the breaking point between physicians and their patients. But there are powerful people who will seemingly stop at nothing to prevent these truths from seeing the light of day, and she is sabotaged at every turn. Can she push past the obstacles in her way to build a winning case? Based on true events, Side Effects Are Minimal is about a corrupt pharmaceutical industry, the guilt of physicians prescribing the opioids that kill, and the pain experienced by families who’ve lost loved ones to an epidemic that has brought the United States to its knees. Author: Laura Essay Publication Date: July 9, 2024 -
Born into a poor, immigrant family, Naomi B. Levine grew up in the Bronx and on Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side in an era when women were not encouraged to have lives of their own. Nevertheless, she managed to raise herself to prominence as a leader of Jewish affairs, champion of civil rights, and expert fundraiser. Poignant, direct, and inflected with Yiddishkeit, The Woman in the Room is the story of how Levine went from living in a crowded tenement with a shared bathroom to penning an amicus brief that was crucial in Brown v. Board of Education, assuming the Executive Directorship of the American Jewish Congress, and saving NYU from bankruptcy with the first billion-dollar capital campaign for a university. A lover of history, Levine describes not just her life but also articulates how the major historical events of the time emboldened her to take social and political positions that were in many circles unacceptable. She was an activist and a feminist before those concepts became part of our everyday parlance. The Woman in the Room not only illuminates the decades Levine lived but furnishes future generations with the strength and courage to face the challenges before them. Author: Naomi B. Levine Publication Date: July 2, 2024 -
As a naive freshman, Catherine meets Walter, a senior and Big Man on Campus whose sophistication, confidence, and wealth both intimidate and excite her. A three-year absentee courtship follows, during which time the idea of Walt tethers Catherine to safety. She was programmed to marry someone like him, so she ignores the warning signs that they might not be a good match. Hoping to please her mother and seeking refuge from her fraught childhood, she marries and has children with him—but the marriage doesn’t last. Once divorced, Catherine finds herself in a war with Walt over money, and then over access to her children—and suddenly, she can no longer ignore her childhood trauma. The high stakes of her battle with her ex-husband forge her like steel, finding every vulnerability where she needs to heal. Gradually, she develops a backbone, relinquishes her trauma-induced, people-pleasing ways, and steps into her own power. Honest and unflinching, The Longest War reminds us that there’s always a way through when we access the courage within ourselves. No matter how painful life’s difficulties, they offer us the opportunity to heal ourselves and evolve into more open, loving, compassionate people. The choice is ours. Author: Catherine Harrington. PhD Publication Date: July 2, 2024 -
When I have wandered long enough what am I still beholden to? Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection. But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular quest: to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning. Author: Lauren Martin Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
Success as a warrior is one of the few paths to advancement in early medieval Britain and Stefan, a young Saxon peasant, has fought his way up to the rank of captain, serving under an earl who in turn serves the king of Atheldom. Returning from a series of hard-won battles, he hopes for further promotion. Instead, his command is taken from him and given to a better-born rival, while he is sent off to serve as the sheriff of an impoverished shire in the furthest corner of the kingdom. Stefan arrives in Codswallow to learn that, between marauding brigands, corrupt local officials, and a hostile populace, no sheriff has stayed longer than a single season. Determined to defeat the outlaws and gain control over the shire, Stefan forms an alliance with the keeper of the shire’s inn, a Briton with a mysterious past, but is frustrated to find that even with that clandestine aid his efforts are stymied. When he is summoned to join the search for Princess Aleswina, the betrothed bride of the king of a neighboring realm, he jumps at what he sees as his chance to get an army command back—only to be drawn into the web of intrigue that lies behind the princess’s disappearance. Author: A.M. Linden Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
By age four, Claudia Marseille had hardly uttered a word. When her parents finally had her hearing tested and learned she had a severe hearing loss, they chose to mainstream her, hoping this would offer her the most “normal” childhood possible. With the help of a primitive hearing aid, Claudia worked hard to learn to hear, lipread, and speak even as she tried to hide her disability in order to fit in. As a result, she was often misunderstood, lonely, and isolated—fitting into neither the hearing world nor the Deaf culture. This memoir explores Claudia’s relationships with her German refugee parents—a disturbed, psychoanalyst father obsessed over various harebrained projects and moneymaking schemes and a Jewish mother who had survived the Holocaust in Munich—and with her own identity. Claudia shares how she emerged from loneliness and social isolation, explored her Jewish identity, struggled to find a career compatible with hearing loss, and eventually opened herself to a life of creativity and love. But You Look So Normal is the inspiring story of a life affected but not defined by an invisible disability. It is a journey through family, loss, shame, identity, love, and healing as Claudia finally, joyfully, finds her place in the world. Author: Claudia Marseille Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
It's 1971, but for Claire Joyce and girls’ basketball, it might as well be 1871. Stilted rules (three-bounce dribbling, two roving players for full-court games, and uniforms that include bloomers) set their play unfairly apart from the boys’ basketball Claire’s older brother John has trained her in. Basketball is the only constant in Claire life, and as she enters her teen years the skills she’s cultivated on the court—passing, shooting, and faking—help her guard against the chaos of an alcoholic mother, an increasingly violent younger brother, and the downward spiral her beloved John soon finds himself unable to climb out of. Deeply cut from the cloth of the Catholic Church, Brooklyn’s working class, and the limited expectations her world has for girls, Claire strives to find a mirror that might reflect a different, future self. Then Title IX bounces on the scene. Suddenly, girls’ basketball becomes explosive, musical, passionate, and driven—and if Claire plays it just right, it just might offer a full ride to a previously out-of-reach college. Sunday Money follows Claire as she narrates her way through 1970s Brooklyn, hustling on and off the court and striving to break free of the turmoil in her home and the rulebook “good” girls are supposed to follow. Author: Maggie Hill Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
Emil, a Jewish man in 1930s Germany, loves Deta, a Lutheran, but Nazi racial purity laws forbid their marriage. Desperate to find a place where their love can survive, they must separate to get away. Deta leaves for England, but Emil has to overcome red tape, resistance from his aging parents, and his own ambivalence before he can embark for America. With only telegrams and letters from Deta to sustain him, he does all he can to bring her and his family to America. But the clock is ticking as the war breaks out and the Nazis tighten their stranglehold. From the heartbreaking news of November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) to the horrific revelations after the German surrender in 1945, Emil’s story runs the course of the war. Can he make his way in this new world? Will he be reunited with his beloved Deta? And will he ever see his family again? Told by Emil’s daughter with the help of letters and historical documents, All for You is a true story about love overcoming despair and the impact the Holocaust continues to have on the rising generation. Author: Dena Rueb Romero Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
It should have been Tracey Yokas’s time to heal. With the recent death of her mother, she was given a brand-new chance to redefine herself and her happiness on her own terms. But just as she prepares herself to spread her wings, Tracey discovers that her only child, Faith, is battling issues of her own—carrying forward the legacy of disordered eating, depression, and self-harm Tracey is so desperate to leave behind. Tracey is determined to save her daughter, but she has no idea how to reach her—and as their fragile family navigates a medical system and a societal fabric that fails innumerable families in need, she and Faith become near strangers to each other. Ultimately, it’s only when Tracey begins the hard work of standing up to her own history of rejection, low self-esteem, and longing does healing—for both mother and daughter—become possible. Carrying a message made urgent by the epidemic of mental health challenges now besetting millions of American teens each year, Bloodlines is a story about how waking up to the power of love can allow us to reimagine the past—and fortify the present. Author: Tracey Yokas Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
Powerful Circe, daughter of the sun-god Helios, is sad to see Odysseus, King of Ithaca, depart from her island, Aeaea—but her heartbreak is eased after dolphins take her to Delos, where she explores a new love relationship. Circe has a strained relationship with her mother, Perse, but when she finally listens to Perse’s encouragement to seek out the amphibian god Glaucus, she’s glad she’s heeded her advice. Together, the two embark on underwater adventures, and Circe shares with Glaucus her knowledge about the healing and harmful power of herbs. While in Delos, she also meets and befriends Skylla, a local beauty with whom Glaucus is enthralled, although the girl is indifferent. Circe eventually returns to Aeaea, but one day she learns, upon consulting her scrying mirror, that there is trouble in Delos that requires her immediate action. In the turbulent world of gods mingling with mortals, our heroine shifts shapes, flies, and uses her superpowers to reverse the course of evil. In a tangle of love, hate, vengeance, and the final righting of wrongs, a cast of irresistible characters weaves an adventure laced with beauty and terror in An Unexpected Ally—a newly woven set of tales that brings to life ancient Greek myths and revives issues familiar to contemporary readers. Author: Sophia Kouidou-Giles Publication Date: October 3, 2023 -
In the backyard of Margaret and Joe Dowling’s new house in the north suburbs of Chicago, Joe plants a young willow tree as a symbol of home, belonging, and growth. As the years pass, the willow becomes a place for Margaret to share life’s wisdom with their four young daughters. Years after leaving the nest, now in their early forties, the Dowling women find themselves faced with changes that will define their lives. Debra, the oldest, is shattered when she is asked for a divorce. Rose, who has long hidden her true self, finally begins to evaluate her pattern of being in uncommitted relationships. Linney fears losing Magnolia, the magical shop where she works. Charlotte, the youngest, is the only one who knows their mother is terminally ill, and has been charged by her with keeping it a secret. And Margaret, now faced with the greatest of challenges and struggling with whether she has done enough to help her daughters find their way in life, calls them all to the family home to reunite under the willow one last time. A metaphorically rich and reflective tale of sisterhood and strength, The Wisdom of the Willow is a story of hope and healing, of the choices that shape our lives, and the challenges we all face as we seek to find our places in the world. Author: Nancy Chadwick Production Date: May 7, 2024
