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In accordance with her Sicilian Catholic family’s unspoken code, Paolina Milana learned at an early age to keep her secrets locked away where no one could find them. Nobody outside the family needed to know about the voices her Mamma battled in her head; or about how Paolina forged her birth certificate at thirteen so she could get a job at The Donut Shop; or about the police officer twenty-six years her senior whose promise to her Papà to “keep an eye on her” quickly translated into something sinister. And perhaps that’s why no one saw it coming when—on the eve of her sweet sixteen, pushed to edge—Paolina attempted to take her own mother’s life. Raw and compelling, The S-Word is the true story of a girl who nearly suffocates in the silence she was taught to value above all else—until she finally finds the strength to break free of the secrets binding her and save herself. Author: Paolina Milana Publication Date: May 5, 2015 -
2015 International Book Awards Finalist in Self Help “If you want to take your life to the next level of thriving, fulfillment, inner peace, love, joy, and all the important things we want in life and still be more effective at work, read The Thriver's Edge. I promise you'll be glad you did.” —Jack Canfield, New York Times best-selling author of The Success Principles and co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series Are you more afraid of success than failure? Do you undervalue your worth? Are you unaware of the limitations that keep you from flourishing in your life, work, and relationships? A major reason why people don’t thrive is because we’re focusing on the wrong things―on keeping up rather than waking up to what matters most. In The Thriver’s Edge, master executive coach and transformational leadership expert Dr. Donna Stoneham uses her powerful THRIVER model to help readers uncover the beliefs and fears holding them back from more fully expressing their gifts. Page by page, Dr. Stoneham explores the many ways to develop and integrate the seven keys—trust, humility, resilience, inner direction, vision, expansiveness, and responsibility—that lead to thriving, illustrating her points with personal stories and inspirational examples of various people who have flourished in the midst of adversity. At the end of each chapter, powerful reflection questions and practices encourage readers to put these seven keys into practice. Practical, practicable, and transformative, The Thriver’s Edge is a “coach in a book” that teaches readers to unleash their potential, fulfill their dreams and offer their best to the world. Author: Dr. Donna Stoneham Publication Date: May 5, 2015 -
Numerous women in our culture have experienced shame, degradation, and despair as a result of having been sexually traumatized early in life. Some of these women end up in unhappy marriages or abusive relationships; some fall prey to a variety of addictions, silently or publicly; and some find themselves working in the sex industry. And for many survivors, their situations—and the situations that have brought them there—are secrets that have no voice. In Singing with the Sirens, experts Ellyn Bell and Stacey Bell address the long term complex trauma that results from the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and young women, drawing on their personal and professional experiences to explore the link between the sexual abuse of children, issues of attachment and safety, and the commercial exploitation of young people. But this is not strictly a scholarly book or a memoir of personal experience; rather, the authors address this problem from a perspective of self-realization and transformation, taking the reader on a journey through mythological tales toward finding healing from within. Poetic, hopeful, and powerful, Singing with the Sirens is a call for wounded women everywhere to reclaim their own truth, spirit, and to sing with their authentic voice. Author: Ellyn Bell and Stacey Bell Publication Date: May 13, 2015 -
“An insightful guide to navigating life's complexities.” —Melody Beattie, bestselling author of Codependent No More, The Language of Letting Go. Being caring and compassionate is important—but too many women allow the weight of others’ needs to press so hard on them that they find they often fail to speak up for what they want and need. And women do this all the time. It’s time for these women to stop worrying quite so much about everyone else—and start taking care of themselves. In Stop Giving It Away, therapist Cherilynn Veland utilizes her twenty-plus years of counseling experience to untangle what binds so many women to other people’s needs, wants, and expectations, and to build a case for what these women can do to make changes that will help them live more fulfilling personal and professional lives. Illustrating her points with real-life stories of women who—to the detriment of their relationships and personal happiness—have given away too much at home and at work, Veland provides readers with a toolkit for recognizing and analyzing unhealthy behaviors, developing healthy relationship strategies, and setting good personal boundaries. Accessible, entertaining, and illuminating, Stop Giving It Away is a book for every woman who tends to put everyone else first—and herself last. Author: Cherilynn Veland Publication Date: May 17, 2015 -
2016 Indie Excellence Winner in Relationships “Insatiable is an extraordinary memoir. It is not only heartfelt, it brings to life a complicated disorder. Through Hauer’s story we can really see what love addiction is and how painful it is. But this is more than a story about the problem, this is a story of recovery and redemption. I highly recommend this book. It is a must-read if you are struggling with this disorder or have a loved one who is suffering and need to know what to do.” —Susan Peabody, author of Addiction to Love In her professional life, Shary Hauer was a confident, successful, high-caliber executive coach who advised big-time corporate leaders around the globe—but her personal life was an entirely different matter. When it came to love, she was insecure, clingy, desperate, willing to do anything and everything to win and keep a man. Because without a man by her side, what good was she? In Insatiable, Hauer fearlessly chronicles her emotional journey from despair to hope, rejection to redemption, and self-hate to self-love, one man at a time. In candid detail, she relates what it is like to be trapped in the torturous cycle of love addiction—what it’s like to be forever searching, needing, obsessing, scheming, and agonizing for love, suffering from a hunger that never ceases—and what it takes to break free of that cycle. An intimate, soul-baring tale that sheds much-needed light on one of the least understood and talked about addictions, Insatiable is the story of one woman’s journey through the hellish, the humiliating, and the humbling in her single-minded pursuit of the most addictive drug of all: love. Author: Shary Hauer Publication Date: May 20, 2015 -
In Benediction for a Black Swan, Mimi Zollars explores the topics of childhood, children, marriage and divorce, alcoholism, and the sensual world in a series of edgy, seductive, irreverent, and ethereal poems. Incorporating elements of magical realism, Zollars’ sexy, darkly beautiful works embrace the miraculous as ordinary—and turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Author: Mimi Zollars Publication Date: June 2, 2015 -
2016 Indie Excellence Winner in Literary Fiction “A sensitively told exploration of layers of loss, isolation, motherhood, and marriage. Diamond knows there are no easy answers and her portrait of Sarah is drawn by a skillful, compassionate hand.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own Since the death of her infant daughter, lawyer-turned-stay-at-home mom Sarah Shaw has struggled to keep it together for her two young sons and law professor husband. With her husband burying himself in his career and her friendships all having withered, she is lost in a private world of grief. Then one day walking in L.A., Sarah’s heart catches at the sight of a young homeless woman pushing a baby in a stroller—and saving them becomes her mission. An unlikely bond grows between Sarah and the mother, Josie, whose pride and strained relationship with her own mother prevent her from going home to Oakland. Through her friendship with Josie, Sarah slowly learns that those we love are never far, even in death—and that sometimes it is the people we set out to save who save us. Shelter Us speaks to the quiet joys and anxieties of parenthood, and illuminates the place all parents know: that shadowy space between unconditional love and fear of unbearable loss. Author: Laura Diamond Publication Date: June 8, 2015 -
2016 International Book Awards: Finalist, Health: Psychology & Mental Health “[H]onest, brave, and soul-baring in its exploration of grief and clinical depression.” —Colorado Review Two weeks before his college graduation, Kelley Clink’s younger brother Matt hanged himself. Though he’d been diagnosed as bipolar as a teenager and had attempted suicide once before, the news came as a shock—and it sent Kelley into a spiral of grief and guilt. After her Matt’s death, a chasm opened for Kelley between the brother she’d known and the brother she’d buried. She kept telling herself she couldn’t understand why he’d done it—but the truth was, she could. Several years before he’d been diagnosed with bipolar, she’d been diagnosed with depression. Several years before he first attempted suicide by overdose, she had attempted suicide by overdose. She’d blazed the trail he’d followed. And if he couldn’t make it . . . what hope was there for her? A Different Kind of Same traces Kelley’s journey through grief, her investigation into what role her own depression played in her brother’s death, and, ultimately, her path toward acceptance, forgiveness, resilience, and love. Author: Kelley Clink Publication Date: June 9, 2015 -
Why is it easier for a woman to be a muse than to have one? Are security and inspiration mutually exclusive? Can one be fully creative—in art or life—without the inspiration of erotic love? These are the questions asked in THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE, a novel set in New York in the 1980s, then fast-forwarding to Northern California 20 years later. Julia, an aspiring poet, is living with her British boyfriend Ben, a restrained professor at Princeton, when she is thrown off-balance by a chance meeting in Manhattan with Michael, a long-ago friend. A complex and compelling composer, Michael was once a catalyzing muse for her, but now returns as a destabilizing influence. Julia longs to become involved with Michael, but feels enormous guilt at the thought of betraying Ben and giving up the security of that relationship. When Michael signals he is too wounded to make a commitment, Julia turns her triangular situation into a square by setting him up with a cousin. In the process she discovers, as Pascal once said, that “the heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” This deeply psychological tale explores the surprising ways we make romantic choices. Author: Jessica Levine Publication Date: April 8, 2014 -
Loveyoubye opens when Rossandra White’s husband of twenty-five years disappears, leaving behind a cryptic, hastily-written note on the kitchen counter, and then returns weeks later, offering few details about where he went. This sequence of events has played out before. Despite knowledge of at least one affair, she trusts he is being true to her and that their tumultuous marriage will endure. But this time is different. A subsequent confluence of crises rattles Rossandra’s core, shedding light on both the dark elements of their marriage and the direction her life must follow if she decides to leave her husband. In South Africa, land of her birth, Rossandra’s younger brother, whose physical and mental disabilities have stricken her with a lifetime of guilt, needs her help, and she answers the call. She returns to California where her dog Sweetpea, who for years has served as a vital emotional link between Rossandra and her husband, has begun to succumb to a fatal illness. Author: Rossandra White Publication Date: April 8, 2014 -
"Magnificent ... an exquisitely honest book." ―Newark Star-Ledger "There are so many who would benefit from Smolowe's emotional intelligence, warmth and wisdom." ―Dr. Lloyd Sederer, Medical Director, NY State Office of Mental Health, Huffington Post "No one would envy Smolowe's ordeal. But the way she handled it and writes about it? Very much so." ―New Jersey Monthly Four loved ones, gone, in the space of seventeen months. Unimaginable. But as journalist Jill Smolowe buried her husband, then her sister, mother, and mother-in-law, she had no trouble imagining what would follow. Films and memoirs, after all, offer only one script for the newly widowed: you fall apart. To Smolowe’s surprise and relief, that day never arrived. When friends insisted that her strength was “amazing,” she began to wonder if there was something freakish about her grief. Delving into modern bereavement research, she discovered a stunning bottom line: far from being uncommon, resilience like hers is the norm. In a story laced with humor, insight, and love, Smolowe finally gives voice to this silent majority. With a lens firmly trained on what helped her tolerate so much sorrow and rebound from so much loss, Smolowe jostles preconceptions about caregiving, defies clichés about grief, and offers often counterintuitive answers to those questions all of us eventually confront: What do I say? How can I help? How would I cope if it were me? Deeply moving and quietly wise, Four Funerals and a Weddingreminds us that grief is not only about endings—it’s about new beginnings. Author: Jill Smolowe Publication Date: April 8, 2014 -
The collection of essays in Flip-Flops After Fifty will immediately amuse, enlighten, and provoke the reader to think about the topics that affect all of us. This writer has experienced some of life’s painful jabs and has come through it all with strength, humor, and having learned a lesson or two. And she’s happy to share these lessons with others. Who hasn’t dealt with the emotions from family events, stress from lousy jobs, or the bittersweet feelings when the kids leave home? Not to mention body image, high school reunions, and parenting. It’s all covered here in this first collection of personal and insightful essays. Chapters include: “Family”, “The Holidays” and “Fifty.” Eastman’s conversational style and easy humor tackle the sublime and the ridiculous, the sacred and the profane. After a certain age, and it’s no secret that it’s fifty, Eastman’s essays argue that attitudes change for the better. Making decisions gets easier, although there’s no guarantee that life does. Even so, her writing allows us to take a look at our own issues with the reassuring handholding of a confidante. This is a collection that you will want to keep for yourself as well as give to a friend. Author: Cindy Eastman Publication Date: April 8, 2014 -
Three Minus One: Parents’ Stories of Love and Loss is a collection of intimate, soul-baring stories and artwork by parents who have lost a child to stillbirth, miscarriage, or neonatal death, inspired by the film Return to Zero. The loss of a child is unlike any other, and the impact that it has on the mother, the father, their family, and their friends is devastating—a shockwave of pain and guilt that spreads through their entire community. But the majority of those affected, especially mothers, often suffer their pain in silence, convinced that their grief and trauma is theirs to bear alone. This anthology of raw memoirs, heartbreaking stories, truthful poems, beautiful painting, and stunning photography from the parents who have suffered child loss offers insight into this unique, devastating and life-changing experience—breaking the silence and offering a ray of hope to the many parents out there in search of answers, understanding, and healing. Author: Sean Hanish Publication Date: April 19, 2014 -
In 1983, two outcasts are brought together by circumstance: nine-year-old Michael Nygaard, a Minnesota farm boy transplanted to suburban Chicago after his father dies, and Julia Parnell, a woman trying to begin again after a failed attempt to live openly. Michael doesn’t understand the new people around him: the wild girl across the street nurtures their friendship and then undermines it; her alcoholic father rockets between affability and rage; the bullies at school taunt him; and he adores his teacher, Miss Parnell, but knows she’s living a false life. When Julia’s secret is exposed, she faces a choice: accept herself for who she is or deny her true nature. Meanwhile, Michael must also choose whether to simply endure his new situation or fight back. Coming of age will take bravery from these two lost souls—and if they can’t find the strength to change, neither will have the life they long for. Author: Jessica Null Vealitzek Publication Date: April 22, 2014 -
This book is not new-age magic: no candles, incense, or sage were used in the production of this work. Nor is it a religious treatise: anyone can benefit from this book’s teachings, regardless of their faith, culture, or background. What this book is—what it has to offer—is a set of tools and techniques that readers can use to cultivate more creative thoughts, gain a new perspective on life, and realign their mindset to experience the things they truly desire. For those who struggle with the day-to-day and want something better; for those who want to achieve their desires with less effort and greater success; for those who yearn for more meaning, flow, and joy in their life—author Francine Huss has a simple message: Think Better. Live Better. Author: Francine Huss Publication Date: August 22, 2014 -
2015 IPPY Winner: Silver (tie) Contemporary Fiction After a four-month estrangement from her family, thirty-two-year-old Emma Michaels visits The Harbor View Assisted Living Home to tell her grandmother, Gussie, that she has made a decision: she’s going to sell the family property—her inheritance. Sitting on the dock of Poquatuck Village, Connecticut, looking across the harbor to their family’s longtime home, the two women debate over Emma’s choice—and their conversation lays the framework for the book, which flows over the decades, all the way back to Gussie’s youth and marriage, then forward through the lives of her three children, Auggie, Livy, and Alyssa, whose hopes and talents are warped by their mother’s influence and disappointed expectations. Expectations passed down through the generations. Subtle. Unspoken. Implacable. As Emma and Gussie remember the choices and dynamics that have produced the complicated tapestry that is their family’s history, Emma makes a number of surprising discoveries about her loved ones—and herself—and she prepares to do what no one else in her family has dared: let go of the past to make room for the future, though doing so will destroy the thing her grandmother holds most dear. Author: Tory McCagg Publication Date: May 6, 2014 -
2015 International Book Awards: Finalist, Autobiography/Memoir 2015 INPE Best Book of the Year: Winner, Narrative Nonfiction 2015 Reader’s Choice International Book Awards: Finalist Kittel’s inspirational memoir, Breathe, tells the story of a family that suffers the unimaginable loss of an infant son as a result of the family being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Kittels’ pain is all consuming, and it’s enhanced by the fact that their extended family tries to point fingers and pass the blame. But the story moves from heartbreaking to horrific when, a mere nine months later, they are forced to bury yet another son when the doctor and her medical team make a terrible mistake during Kittel’s pregnancy. The narrative takes a third turn when the Kittels decide to press charges of malpractice, but the surprises don’t stop there. The Kittels end up having to battle not only the medical system but also their own family in a court of law, all while raising their other three young children and trying to heal from the pain of living through the deaths of two sons. Breathe is a story about motherhood, death, and a family in conflict. Although the pain Kittel suffers is tremendous, she narrates the story beautifully, and she ultimately shows readers how to embrace love, honesty, and joy even on the heels of tragedy. Author: Kelly Kittel Publication Date: May 14, 2014 -
2015 IPPY: Gold: Contemporary Fiction, Winner After her farmhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut is destroyed, Lidia is thankful her teenage twins, Carly and Clarisse, are unharmed and that her friend Polly Niven has taken them in. Lidia, whose husband left her and the girls for another man, lost her job in the financial crisis. She fears more bad news and soon discovers a connection between her and Tina Calderara, the pilot who crashed into her home. In the midst of her troubles, she meets Harry Caligan, the FBI Special Agent assigned to her case. With Harry’s help, Lidia plunges into the family mystery linking her to Tina. Author: Jean P. Moore Publication Date: June 3, 2014 -
“Her Name is Kaur pushes past the boundaries of romance to illuminate the love at the very heart of faith. In this groundbreaking book, Meeta Kaur has gathered a diverse and fresh group of stories of growing up Sikh and redneck, Sikh and queer, Sikh and daydreaming, Sikh and heartbroken, Sikh and deeply beloved. Whether discussing the everyday (mother-in-law conflicts) or the taboo (mental illness), these women writers share colorful, intense, and engaging adventures that range from Los Altos to Toronto to Chandigarh. This collection deserves a place on the shelf of everyone interested in South Asian cultures, women of America, and just good storytelling.” —Minal Hajratwala, author of Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents Sikh American women do the lion’s share of organizing and executing the business of the Sikh community, and they straddle multiple lives and worlds—cross-cultural, interreligious, intergenerational, occupational, and domestic—yet their experiences of faith, family, and community are virtually invisible in the North American milieu and have yet to be understood, documented, or shared. Until now. In Her Name is Kaur, Sikh American women explore the concept of love from many angles, offering rich, critical insight into the lives of Sikh women in America. Through a chorus of multi-generational voices—in essays ranging in tone from dramatic to humorous—they share stories of growing into and experiencing self-love, spiritual love, love within family, romantic love, the love they nurture for humanity and the world through their professional work, and more. Eye-opening and multifaceted, this collection of stories encourages its readers to take the feeling of love and turn it into action—practical action that will make the world a better place to be for everyone, regardless of their faith or creed. Author: Meeta Kaur Publication Date: June 17, 2014 -
2014 PNBA Book Award Nominee: General 2015 IndieFab Winner: Finalist, General “A Tight Grip [is] a hilarious, high-drama novel with a delightful angle of approach to the inner workings of women in golf, family, and the positives and negatives of middle age.” —Books, Inc., The West's Oldest Independent Bookseller Some people might say that, at age 46, Jane “Par” Parker is too old to win golf tournaments; too old to fear her mother; and too old, after twenty years, to still feel heavy grief over the murder of her father. But Par has an obsessively tight grip on the past, and no one can tell her to live her life otherwise. Par is maniacally driven to win a golf tournament she hasn’t been able to win in ten years. Recent low-scoring rounds have strengthened her confidence. Distractions conspire against her: she spends a night in jail for a crime she blames on her husband; reads about her arrest on the front page; learns she has an enemy at the newspaper; and discovers shocking love affairs by those closest to her. A Tight Gripcelebrates the bonds of female friendships as Par Parker processes her life with her three closest friends. She discovers the transformative power of adversity, and seizes options to evolve as a person, an athlete, and a best friend. Author: Kay Rae Chomic Publication Date: June 10, 2014 -
NOMINATED for Library of Virginia Literary Awards in the ART in LITERATURE: Mary Lynn Kotz Award category. “Two cultured French families lose everything in the Second World War, even each other. Winkler spins from this tragic tale a thing of beauty, as delicately radiant as the imagined painting at its core, even as she keeps the pages turning until the end.” ―Nicole Mones, author of Night in Shanghai France, 1940. Nazi forces march towards Paris. Lili Rosenswig’s wealthy and eccentric family is ensconced in their country chateau with their sumptuous collection of arts and antiques. The beloved Matisse portrait of Lili’s mother has been brought from their Paris salon for safety. It is the day before young lovers Lili and Paul are to be married that they are forced to flee and their fortunes change irrevocably. Lili and her family escape but Paul must stay behind to defend his country. In their struggle to adapt to changing circumstances in an unpredictable world, all are pushed to reinvent themselves. When top Nazi Herman Goring loots their Matisse portrait, their story is intertwined with the fate of the painting. Portrait of a Woman in White is a moving family saga, an obsessive search for lost love and lost art and how far we will go to survive. Author: Susan Winkler Publication Date: September 2, 2014 -
“Her Beautiful Brain is a daring and ambitious memoir that bestows unexpected rewards on the reader.” ―David Takami, Seattle Times “Unflinching, tragic and compassionate.” ―Shelf Awareness “In this poetic memoir, Hedreen mixes details from her own life with details about her mother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease... Candid, sometimes funny and always poignant.” ―Booklist Arlene was a twice-divorced, once-widowed copper miner’s daughter who raised six kids singlehandedly and got her bachelor’s and master’s degree at forty so she could support her family. In her late fifties, she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease—and in the two decades that followed, her children were forced to stand helplessly by as their mother’s once-beautiful brain slowly unraveled. In this poignant memoir, Ann Hedreen gives shattering insight into what it is to watch your mother—a woman you once thought of as invincible—begin to disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where Arlene was born and raised, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughter’s love for a mother lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness. Author: Ann Hedreen Publication Date: September 16, 2014 -
Gold Medal Winner, Autobiography/Memoir, 2015 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards “Gardner has written a rich, haunting book that vividly captures her childhood and makes everyday turmoil vital through precise and honest prose.” —Publishers Weekly, July 2014 A father makes the fateful decision to leave a successful career in the US behind and move to an isolated beach in the Dominican Republic. He plants ten thousand coconut seedlings, transplants his wife and two young daughters to a small village, and declares they are the luckiest people alive. In reality, the family is in the path of hurricanes and in the grip of a brutal dictator, Rafael Trujillo—and the children are additionally under the thumb of an increasingly volatile and alcoholic father. Set against a backdrop of shimmering palms and kaleidoscope sunsets, The Coconut Latitudes is Rita Gardner’s compelling memoir of a childhood in paradise, a journey into unexpected misery, and a twisted path to redemption and truth. Author: Rita Gardner Publication Date: September 16, 2014 -
Foreward Reviews Indie Fab Finalist in Historical Fiction USA Book Reviews Best Books of the Year Finalist Nominated by the A.L.A. for The Sophie Brody Award in Fiction Early in The Sweetness, an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their ghetto. “Something sour to remind me of the sweetness,” she tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge. Brooklyn-born Mira Kane is the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer of women’s knitwear in New York. Her cousin, eight-year-old Rosha Kaninsky, is the lone survivor of a family in Vilna exterminated by the invading Nazis. But unbeknownst to her American relatives, Rosha did not perish. Desperate to save his only child during a round-up of their ghetto, her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who then hides her in a root cellar─putting her own family at risk. The headstrong and talented Mira, who dreams of escaping Brooklyn for a career as a fashion designer, finds her ambitions abruptly thwarted when, traumatized at the fate of his European relatives, her father becomes intent on safeguarding his loved ones from threats of a brutal world, and all the family must challenge his unuttered but injurious survivor guilt. Though the American Kanes endure the experience of the Jews who got out, they reveal how even in the safety of our lives, we are profoundly affected by the dire circumstances of others. Author: Sande Boritz Berger Publication Date: September 23, 2014
