Debra Miller grew up in San Bernardino County, where her mother was convicted of murdering her father when Debra was fourteen years old—the story she chronicles in The Most Wonderful Terrible Person, which is her debut memoir. She taught high school English for thirty-three years at an all-girls school in Los Angeles, California. Now retired, she lives in Playa del Rey, California, with her precious cat, Kiki.

For fans of Joan Didion and anyone fascinated by true crime, a daughter’s raw and unflinching account of California’s infamous murder trial of her mother, Lucille Miller—and the decades of emotional wreckage it left in its wake.

On October 7, 1964, Debra Miller’s life turns upside down when her mother is arrested for the murder of her father. At only fourteen years old, Debra becomes a ward of the court, grappling with the unfathomable trauma of watching her mother’s trial and conviction—a devastation that is only amplified when her family’s tragedy is splashed across headlines nationwide and featured in Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Desperate to escape the notoriety of her family and utterly ill equipped to face the world, Debra spends her young adulthood sinking into mental illness, toxic relationships, and substance abuse. Meanwhile, her unrepentant mother, Lucille, uses Debra to supply contraband in prison. When Lucille is released, twentysomething Debra, seeking the love and support she so desperately desires, moves in with her—only to find herself constantly manipulated and dragged into her mother’s illegal activities. Torn between love and survival, Debra spends years trying to escape her mother’s vortex even as she battles her own demons. Ultimately, it’s only when Lucille passes away that Debra finally frees herself from her grip—and realizes she needs to change her life.

In this raw and poignant memoir, Debra Miller bares the scars of an adolescence and adulthood shaped by the impact of a destructive mother and demonstrates that healing is always possible—even in the face of a past that just won’t let go.

Kerry Chaput is an award-winning historical fiction author who writes about daring women with loads of adventure and a splash of magic. Kerry’s writing has been an Historical Novel Society editor’s choice, with Midwest Book Review calling her a “Master of the genre.” She’s also been a finalist for Sarton Women’s Book Award and the Chaucer Book Award for early historical fiction. Born in California, she now calls the Pacific Northwest home. Kerry frequents hiking trails, coffee shops, and independent bookstores near her home in Bend, Oregon.

For fans of Kate Quinn, a dual-timeline adventure novel of a historian who risks everything—including her life—to discover the truth about a female Renaissance sculptor unjustly erased by history.

Two determined women four hundred years apart. One mysterious statue. And a bombshell that could change history.

Art historian Mia is running out of time to prove her theory that the sculptor of an unearthed erotic statue was a courtesan erased from history—a scandal no one will believe. Chasing through Venice, she tracks down hidden details of Sofia, a powerful courtesan who seems to have left a trail of sex-fueled art buried across the city, but Mia’s now being followed, and even her boss might be in on the lie.

Meanwhile, in 1609, Sofia defies Venice’s unfair laws to create illicit art that could ruin her future. Her aspirations to become a great artist go up in flames when her patron’s wife steals her work and threatens her lover.

Four hundred years later, it’s up to Mia to discover the truth, but now she’s uncovered a world of art theft that could leave her ousted—or, worse, right in the crosshairs of the most powerful crime family in Italy, who will stop at nothing to force her to authenticate the famous statue. Mia’s only hope is to prove Sofia’s existence before everyone involved silences them both forever.

Emma Tourtelot is the coauthor of eight nonfiction books about sex and relationships and has penned regular columns for New York, Glamour, and The Guardian, among others. She was also the cocreator of Nerve Personals. After providing sex advice for almost two decades as one half of the writing duo Em & Lo, she is now a middle school librarian. This is her first novel. She lives in the Hudson Valley in New York with her husband and two teenage children.

For fans of Alison Espach and Claire Lombardo, a poignant and thought-provoking debut novel about the fraught bond between mothers and teen daughters, the ripple effects of a tragic event in a small town, and the search for meaning after loss.

What if the only way forward is to let go of everything you know?

Kate’s life in the Hudson Valley seems picture-perfect: a thriving career as a realtor-slash-momfluencer, a devoted husband, and a strong bond with her brilliant teenage daughter, Indie. But when Indie’s best friend dies suddenly, their idyllic small-town haven begins to crumble. Kate and Ethan lose their footing, and Indie, alone in her grief, falls down an internet rabbit hole of nihilism and existential despair.

As Indie searches for meaning in a world that feels random and cruel, Kate struggles to reconcile her carefully curated online persona with the raw, unyielding grief tearing her family apart. When long-buried family secrets rise to the surface, she is forced to confront unsettling truths that challenge everything she thought she knew—about marriage, motherhood, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

Told in the dual voices of a mother and daughter grappling with loss, No One You Know is filled with poignant observations on parenthood, best friendship, class and political divides, infidelity in a small town—and the bitter truth that death can touch everything we love.

Andrea Leeb has an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Litro Magazine, the Potomac Review, Text Power and Telling Magazine, and HerStry. Previously, Andrea worked as an attorney and a registered nurse. Currently, she spends her time writing, practicing yoga and volunteering with non-profits. Andrea lives in Venice Beach, California with her husband, Paul.

Andrea is four and a half the first time her father, David, gives her a bath. Although she is young, she knows there is something strange about the way he is touching her. When her mother, Marlene, walks in to check on them, she howls and crumples to the floor—and when she opens her eyes, she is blind. Marlene’s hysterical blindness lasts for weeks, but her willful blindness lasts decades. The abuse continues, and Andrea spends a childhood living with a secret she can’t tell and a shame she is too afraid to name.

Despite it, she survives. She builds a life and tells herself she is fine. But at age thirty-three, an unwanted grope on a New York City subway triggers her past. Suddenly unable to remember how to forget, Andrea is forced to confront her past—and finally begin to heal.

This brave debut offers honest insight into a survivor’s journey. Readers will feel Andrea’s pain, her fear, and her shame—yet they will also feel her hope. And like Andrea, they will come to understand an important truth: though healing is complicated, it is possible to find joy and even grace in the wake of the most profound betrayals.

Linda Dahl began her career as a travel journalist and college teacher before turning to writing full time. An award-winning author, she has written groundbreaking books about women in jazz and women’s needs in recovery from addiction, as well as five works of fiction. She is currently at work on a screenplay and a new novel. She has two children, a cat, and too many plants. She lives in Riverdale in New York City.

When Lidia, a blocked Latinx artist in her sixties, goes on a group tour of Namyan, a fictional Southeast Asian country reopened to the world after a long dictatorship, she gets much more than the vacation she thinks she’s signed on for. Against a backdrop of pagodas and enigmatic customs, she and the disparate crew of eighteen Americans on the tour encounter one adventure after another—experiences that challenge their assumptions about their host country’s placid surface of beautiful pagodas and wandering Buddhist monks. Along the way, Lidia finds companionship and sexual pleasure with Haynes, a Black man seeking adventure—even danger—in Namyan. On a nighttime excursion among mysterious ancient buildings, they watch the nighttime sky. Lidia remarks that the stars look upside down – a metaphor for Namyan as a foreign place and for her. She enjoys being with Haynes but is conflicted. The final chapter reveals a secret, the source of her conflict, and her steps towards a new freedom.

An Upside-Down Sky’s cast of characters, including their Namyanese guide, mirrors America: straight, gay, gender-fluid, black, brown, white, progressive, conservative, artistic, repressed, old, young. Some of them accept Nanyam’s charming façade at face value, while others seek to understand the country’s brutal repression by the military and ongoing ethnic conflicts. And most, resistant as they might be to change, are transformed by their time there.

When Lidia, a blocked Latinx artist in her sixties, goes on a group tour of Namyan, a fictional Southeast Asian country reopened to the world after a long dictatorship, she gets much more than the vacation she thinks she’s signed on for. Against a backdrop of pagodas and enigmatic customs, she and the disparate crew of eighteen Americans on the tour encounter one adventure after another—experiences that challenge their assumptions about their host country’s placid surface of beautiful pagodas and wandering Buddhist monks. Along the way, Lidia finds companionship and sexual pleasure with Haynes, a Black man seeking adventure—even danger—in Namyan. On a nighttime excursion among mysterious ancient buildings, they watch the nighttime sky. Lidia remarks that the stars look upside down – a metaphor for Namyan as a foreign place and for her. She enjoys being with Haynes but is conflicted. The final chapter reveals a secret, the source of her conflict, and her steps towards a new freedom.

An Upside-Down Sky’s cast of characters, including their Namyanese guide, mirrors America: straight, gay, gender-fluid, black, brown, white, progressive, conservative, artistic, repressed, old, young. Some of them accept Nanyam’s charming façade at face value, while others seek to understand the country’s brutal repression by the military and ongoing ethnic conflicts. And most, resistant as they might be to change, are transformed by their time there.

When twenty-something artist Erica Mason moves from laid-back Mexico to Manhattan in the mid-1970s, she finds a hard-edged, decadent, and radically evolving art scene. Peppered with characters who could only come from the latter days of the “turn-on-and-drop-out” ’60s in then-crumbling New York (a spaced-out drummer who’s completely given up on using or making money, a radical feminist who glues animal furs to her paintings of vaginas, and icons in the making like Patti Smith), Erica’s New York is fast-moving, funny, and heartrending—just like the city itself. Ultimately, her rite of passage is not only a love affair with art, men, alcohol, drugs, and music in the swirl that was the downtown scene in a radically evolving era in New York, but also a resurrection from addiction and self-delusion. More than the study of a celebrated period of artistic expression, Cleans Up Nicely is the story of one gifted young woman’s path from self-destruction to a hard-won self-knowledge that opens up a whole new world for her—and helps her claim the self-respect that has long eluded her.

For fans of Anne Tyler and Jojo Moyes, a tartly compassionate and contemporary tale of sibling love and conflict, marital challenges, and what personal fulfillment looks like—or doesn’t—in middle age.

Mid-life: Its obligations and demands, its petty foibles and evasions. And sometimes, its crises. Dreams are deferred, shortcomings rationalized. Like favorite old clothes, petty misdemeanors may feel comfortable, but they’re not a good look.

The Talley siblings are planning a family beach vacation—all four of them together for the first time in years. They suspect it will be their last. And God knows they all need a vacation. But wait, is it really such a good idea? Corina, with her recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s, can hardly manage to get through a day without a debacle. Pete is a just-barely-walking catalog of medical calamities stemming from his longtime addictions. Becca is reeling from her teenage son’s latest misadventure. And then there is Kathy, the eldest. After firmly avoiding going back to Rincón Bay, the beach town just a few hours south of the Arizona–Mexico border that has haunted her since a college spring break trip three decades ago, she’s determined to go back and face her ghosts—though she might be better off facing the fact that her marriage is in serious trouble.

When the Talley siblings and their entourage (two spouses, added on at the last minute, and Corina’s Mexican housekeeper/caregiver) finally land in Rincón Bay, they all encounter unexpected consequences from the wounds inflicted by careless loving—but maybe, too, the seeds of healing and hope.

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. Recently retired from teaching writing in Northern California, she continues to consult with writers in the energy industry. She has served as President of the Board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. She previously co-directed Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors. Her historical mystery series—Copy Boy, Tomboy, and Poster Girl—follows Jane Benjamin, a cross-dressing, tomato-picking, San Francisco gossip columnist who investigates crime stories that never make the front page in 1930s and ’40s Northern California. Her fourth novel, An Unlikely Prospect, features a new protagonist in the same world. She and her husband live in Sacramento, California.

Jane’s a very brave boy. And a very difficult girl. She’ll become a remarkable woman, an icon of her century, but that’s a long way off.

Not my fault, she thinks, dropping a bloody crowbar in the irrigation ditch after Daddy. She steals Momma’s Ford and escapes to Depression-era San Francisco, where she fakes her way into work as a newspaper copy boy.

Everything’s looking up. She’s climbing the ladder at the paper, winning validation, skill, and connections with the artists and thinkers of her day. But then Daddy reappears on the paper’s front page, his arm around a girl who’s just been beaten into a coma one block from Jane’s newspaper―hit in the head with a crowbar.

Jane’s got to find Daddy before he finds her, and before everyone else finds her out. She’s got to protect her invented identity. This is what she thinks she wants. It’s definitely what her dead brother wants.

It’s 1939. On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie.

Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. She plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is thrown off track.

While sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death, which she now knows was a murder, and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war?

Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.

Cynical young gossip columnist Jane Benjamin joins FDR’s Office of War Information, a propaganda unit, to find a Wendy-the-Welder poster girl to urge more women to the shipyard work essential to America’s winning World War II—and, incidentally, to make herself into the new Hedda Hopper. But somebody doesn’t want those women at work.

During a five-day contest to beat the world speed record for building a liberty ship, Jane investigates the lives of the first women welders and learns more about her flyboy former lover’s secret post–Pearl Harbor mission—and her cynicism begins to melt. But when inspectors find and publicize a series of flaws in the contest-week welding, the women welders are blamed. Worse, two poster girl candidates are killed.

Are they being sabotaged by a belligerent male shipyard supervisor? The industrialist shipyard owner with a history of controlling women? Or someone else trying to diminish the success of the US liberty ship program? To find out, Jane must choose between her professional ambition and service to the women welders—before the murderer harms another girl and America’s best chance of winning the war.

In the jubilant aftermath of Japan’s surrender in World War II, San Francisco erupts in celebration. But for Sandy Zimmer, the thirty-two-year-old widow publisher of the Prospect newspaper, the revelry masks a darker truth. In the chaos of the VJ Day Peace Riot, eleven deaths and six rapes take place.

Driven by journalistic integrity and battling her own instincts to maintain peace, Sandy directs her paper to investigate the riot. Her quest for truth pits her against formidable adversaries: her controlling civic-leader father-in-law, the newspaper’s resistant board, and authorities desperate to bury the scandal as they vie to attract the United Nations Headquarters to San Francisco.

Based on little-known historical events, An Unlikely Prospect follows Sandy’s fight to find her voice in the male-dominated world of 1945 journalism. As she navigates power dynamics, gender roles, and the steep price of printing the truth, Sandy must confront her own transformation from a people-pleasing widow into a determined publisher willing to challenge the status quo.

Mattea Kramer is a writer and researcher who has been published in The Nation and has appeared on MSNBC. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

For fans of Rachel Kushner and Gillian Flynn, a gritty contemporary debut novel that puts Katniss Everdeen into Euphoria.

Casch Abbey is a waitress, single mom, and recreational boxer who falls in love twice: first with a veteran who secretly grows pot on a rich man’s land in Vermont’s Green Mountains, and then with a painkiller that eases her long-buried pain.

After her foot is crushed under the wheel of a station wagon, Casch loses her waitressing gig and goes broke—and the meds for her foot are her only source of relief. But when the drug is recalled due to outcries of widespread addiction, Casch’s dependence imperils her already tenuous life, as cravings lead her into her small town’s simmering netherworld.

Intimate and exhilarating, The Untended will upend your every assumption about who is a hero and who is worthy of love.

Rossana D’Antonio is a licensed engineer with expertise in infrastructure design and emergency management and a strong advocate for infrastructure investments, including the Federal Aviation Authority Reauthorization. Shaped by her Italian and Salvadoran parents, D’Antonio is deeply committed to family and understands the value of creating an environment in which everyone feels safe and protected. She finds peace in Malibu, California, where she resides with her husband, Freddie, and puppy, Luna.

Much as Eric Schollsberg’s Fast Food Nation made people think about the way we eat, this provocative memoir and exposé challenges readers to question why, given its long history of cover-ups and systemic safety gaps, we continue to trust the aviation industry.

On a stormy late May morning in 2008, TACA Airlines Flight 390 crashes at one of the most dangerous airports in the world, Honduras’s Toncontin International Airport. Five people die in the crash—among them Rossana D’Antonio’s brother, pilot Cesare D’Antonio. Suspecting Cesare will be made a scapegoat for the accident, as so often happens to pilots, Rossana decides to leverage her decades of experience as an engineer and set out in search of the truth.

Part memoir, part exposé, 26 Seconds interweaves Rossana’s research regarding other parallel accidents with her own story. Six months after the TACA crash, Captain Sully Sullenberger lands his plane on the Hudson River. Although authorities call his landing a miracle, they also blame him for its necessity. One year after the TACA 390 tragedy, Air France 447 falls from the sky. Again, pilot error.

As Rossana digs deeper, she exposes a culture that is too quick to conclude pilot error and an industry that experiences systemic weaknesses, chooses profits over safety, lies to its customers, and is willing to risk lives to get its planes back up in the sky. Ultimately, she uncovers the smoking gun she’s been looking for—revealing the truth about TACA 390, exposing aviation cover-ups, and challenging us all to question the very systems we’ve been told we can trust with our lives.

Jill Amy Sager is a highly sought-after Tarot reader, channeler, and public speaker with an international following. Physically disabled since birth, she spent many years with low self-esteem. Her life was transformed thanks to Tarot and wisdom from the Universe—an experience that has inspired her to dedicate her practice to helping others. This honest approach has brought her popular acclaim. Once a professional hand drum teacher and drum circle facilitator, Jill is also the author of Beginning Hand Drumming: A Guide to Recreation and Wellness, touted as the go-to instructional by former Janis Joplin drummer Dave Getz. When she isn’t with a client or writing, you’ll find her hanging out with friends and family. She lives in Western Oregon.

Each eye-opening chapter in this self-help memoir highlights Tarot reader Jill Amy Sager’s self-discovery after unexpectedly channeling wisdom from the Universe. What she learned ignited profound change: she went from having grown up physically disabled and believing she is unlovable to feeling confident and content in her own skin.  

We all want to feel good about ourselves. Yet we can struggle far longer than we need to, unable to remove blocks getting in the way. We often feel stuck and forget to give ourselves the grace, acceptance, and compassion we so readily give to others.   Here, Sager shares thirty insightful messages from a sage source she calls “Guidance” alongside illuminating personal stories that showcase how these teachings have improved her life. There are also thought-provoking questions to encourage your spiritual journey.

This book is a wake-up call—a nourishing reminder that each of us matters, and therefore treating ourselves with kindness, love, and respect is essential. Guidance shows us how to relax into our natural state of being, feeling more at ease in our vast and beautiful hearts, and Sager’s stories illustrate just how attainable this state of being is. Ultimately, we discover that this enlightened life-changing shift is key to the happiness we seek and the welcomed harmony the world needs. 

Joan Sung is a national cultural competency conference presenter and consultant and has a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, an MA in English, and a Doctorate in Education. Her articles regarding Asian American voices have been published in TinyBeans.com, Mochi Magazine, Memoir Magazine, and Writerly Magazine. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband, her son, and two dogs.

In this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance, Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society. 

Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. Sifting through her experiences with microaggressions to the over fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities.