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Through personal stories and extensive research, Sidelined: How Women Manage (and Mismanage) Their Health examines the many ways in which women unwittingly neglect their own health. Researcher and writer Susan Salenger describes how women tend to place their needs behind the needs of their families, how they blame themselves for getting sick, and how they too often hesitate to question their doctors’ advice. But women’s attitudes toward themselves and their health don’t exist in a vacuum—which is why Salenger also examines the cultural and medical history that has conditioned women not to act in their own best interest, offering insight into the gender biases of the medical community and exploring why women are misdiagnosed more often than men and why we’ve been routinely omitted from clinical trials. Designed to help women—particularly women over thirty-five—become more aware of why they make the decisions they do and Sidelined will equip readers with the knowledge, language, and skill sets they need to get the best healthcare possible. Author: Susan Salenger Pub Date: April 12, 2022 -
Mary Em Phillips has decided to kill herself after losing her beloved Mamie, who raised her; her husband, Jack, who has left her for another woman; and her only son, Petey, who has died as a result of a freak bacterial infection. But when Mosely Albright, a black man from Chicago’s South Side, comes to her back door one morning needing a drink of water and seeking directions back to the train, her plans are derailed . . . to the chagrin of Mishigami (so named by the Ojibwe, also known as Lake Michigan), who has been trying to lure Mary Em into his icy depths in the hopes that she will save him. Mary Em wants nothing more than to end her anguish. Mosely is searching for the love he’s been missing most of his life. And Mishigami who fears he is dying from rampant pollution and overfishing, seeks a champion. A story of friendship, survival, connection and the unquestioning power of nature told through three distinct voices, Speed of Dark affirms a love of humanity that transcends all else, including race and background. Author: Patricia Ricketts Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane. Author: Leslie Johansen Nack Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
Gracie is a serious, sensitive, aspiring writer; Jannie, her autistic younger sister, is passionate about birds. As children, they were taken by their mother on a senseless trip through Europe that ended in their mother’s suicide. Now, in Berkeley, their father works tirelessly to find ways to engage Jannie, while Gracie unwilling to reveal the truth about her mother’s suicide or her sister’s autism to anyone outside her family weaves a web of lies around herself that isolate her even as Jannie, in part through her relationships with and understanding of birds, begins to speak, interact, and emerge. Narrated by Gracie and alternating back and forth between 2002, when the sisters are still children/adolescents, and 2017, when they are in their early adulthood, The Language of Birds is a story of coming to understand what seems unfamiliar and indecipherable, and of finding authentic ways to be with the people you love. Author: Anita Barrows Pub Date: May 17, 2022 -
From the award-winning bestselling author of books about autistic and learning-disabled children, Mary MacCracken, comes an engaging memoir of love, marriage—and Alzheimer’s. Braving divorce to be together, Cal and Mary help each other overcome setbacks in their work. Cal’s inventions are increasingly successful; Mary’s first book is published to much acclaim, followed by three more. It seems nothing can stop them. Then Alzheimer’s strikes. Always a fighter, Cal vows to beat his disease, while Mary finds ways to sustain their loving life together, devising ways to help Cal as he falters. She herself is helped by good doctors, social workers, and many friends—a whole community of care. Still, all the support in the world can’t stop Cal’s decline. He goes missing at night, flees his daycare program repeatedly, and must finally go to a memory unit. But even then, he and Mary share bits of happiness. In the end, they fail to beat Alzheimer’s. Yet their story is also one of triumph, as their love persists all through and beyond their battle. Poignant and inspiring, The Memory of All That is a beautifully written love story that offers guidance and comfort to those dealing with dementia, or any of life’s challenges. Author: Mary MacCracken Pub Date: July 26, 2022 -
This is the story of Rebecca Stirling’s childhood: a young girl raised by the sea, by men, and by literature. Circumnavigating the world on a thirty-foot sailboat, the Stirlings spend weeks at a time on the open ocean, surviving storms and visiting uncharted islands and villages. Ushered through her young life by a father who loves adventure, women, and extremes, Rebecca befriends “working girls” in the ports they visit (as they are often the only other females present in the bars that they end up in) and, on the boat, falls in love with her crewmate and learns to live like the men around her. But her driven nature and the role models in the books she reads make her determined to be a lady, continue her education, begin a career, live in a real home, and begin a family of her own. Once she finally gets away from the boat and her dad and sets to work upon making her own dream a reality, however, Rebecca begins to realize life is not what she thought it would be—and when her father dies in a tragic accident, she must return to her old life to sift through the mess and magic he has left behind. Author: Rebecca Stirling Pub Date: July 26, 2022 -
When her charismatic mentor, Ernesto, publicly chooses her as his professional partner, all indications are that Vera’s bodywork career is about to ignite. There is just one glitch—no, make that two. Vera—single mother of savvy, smart teenage India and her scruffy mutt, Francisco—is fucking Ernesto. As for her new promotion . . . Ernesto took it from his wife, Jean, in order to give it to her. As Vera becomes increasingly embroiled in Ernesto and Jean’s dark shenanigans, she quickly realizes that what seemed like an exciting opportunity is more like a deal with the Devil. Confronted with the consequences of her own yearning for male validation, it takes India, a glamorous and aristocratic client named Grace, and the mysterious goddess White Tara, Tibetan Goddess of compassion, to teach Vera the virtues of a sustainable path to self-authority. A fast-paced, humorous tale, The T Room is sure to prove irresistible to every adventurous woman familiar with that Saturday-morning-bookstore trajectory that starts with Self-Help, diverts into Romance, and lands heartfirst in Spirituality. Author: Victoria Lilienthal Pub Date: July 19, 2022 -
A young, determined woman figures out life and love while staying true to herself in this whip-smart and genuinely witty debut. Twenty-eight-year-old Hannah Spencer wants nothing more than to change everything about her life. After ten years of living in cities, Nathan Wild has just moved back home to Vermont and doesn’t want to change anything about his. Recently laid off from her depressing job in Boston and ready for a challenge, Hannah heads to Vermont for the summer to take care of her sister’s kids and do some serious soul searching. There, against the stunning landscape of the Green Mountains, she embarks on an ambitious project: building a treehouse for her niece and nephew. As she hammers away, she formulates a plan to jump-start her life with a new job out West. But will Nathan-next-door complicate her desire to change course? A witty, romantic, and inspiring story of a young woman taking control and making tough choices about love and work to build the life she wants, The Treehouse on Dog River Road will have you rooting for Hannah every step of the way. Author: Catherine Drake Pub Date: May 10th, 2022 -
Llwddawanden is a hidden sanctuary where remnants of a once-powerful pagan cult carry on their ancient ritual practices, supported by a small but faithful following of servants, craftsmen, and laborers. Cut off from the outside world by both geography and conviction, the Druids of Llwddawanden continue to venerate the Great Mother Goddess and to view themselves as the first-born and favorite of Her mortal children. While the belief that the most important of all divine beings gave birth to their ancestors and that Her spirit inhabits the body of their highest priestess is a tenuous conclusion in view of their reduced lot in life, the Druids of Llwddawanden believe it and are, for the most part, committed to carrying on the traditions handed down to them by their forbears. Herrwn, the shrine’s chief priest and master bard, has the responsibility of overseeing the education of Caelym, the orphaned son of the cult’s previous chief priestess, as well as keeping the peace within the upper ranks of their order—two tasks that grow more difficult as the rivalry over which of the three highest priests will claim Caelym as his disciple grows, and as mounting conflicts between the current chief priestess and her only living daughter threaten to rend the fabric of a society that has endured for more than a millennium. Author: A.M. Linden Pub Date: June 28, 2022 -
Kathy is a virgin in her twenties trying to navigate the blurred lines between sex and love even as outside forces attempt to detach her from her sexual autonomy. At home, her adoptive mother’s eyes investigate her body for evidence of sexual promiscuity and, despite her protests, she is called a putana; a whore for her perceived sexual debauchery. At work, meanwhile, she is sexually harassed by male managers who slap her butt, tell her they want Greek for lunch (wink, wink), and fill out recommendation forms about her sexy qualities. A young girl on the cusp of womanhood, she encounters a version of her self as men experience her: hyper sexualized and objectified. As if this is not enough, Kathy enters the dating scene in search of love only to find herself fending off young men who want her just for sex. In each relationship, Kathy uncovers her own strength and conviction as she fights for the kind of sex she wants instead of the kind of empty sex boys seem to require of girls. The more demands they make, the more determined she is to hold out for love even if it means losing a guy or going home single and alone. Raw and empowering, The Virgin Chronicles sends the message that love is worth waiting for and sex is better when it’s paired with self-actualization. Author: Marina DelVecchio Pub Date: April 26, 2022 -
When the Sonoma Complex fire came to Elisa Stancil Levine’s California doorstep in 2017, her world changed overnight. The devastating fire torched thousands of acres, but for Elisa, a world-class decorative artist, it was her reaction that night that cracked her wide open. A loving wife, mother, and grandmother, Elisa thought she had reckoned with her early childhood trauma. But when she fled the midnight firestorm without alerting a single neighbor, she had to ask herself: Who does that? In This or Something Better, Elisa revisits her past and the one force in which she has always found true kinship: the wild river. Nature, her lifelong ally, gave solace. Through teen pregnancy, her baby’s stillbirth, and a mystical near-death experience at eighteen, nature shaped her character, and it later informed her wildly successful career. But was there an unintended consequence? The fresh trauma of the firestorm sparked a quest: what treasure awaited if Elisa learned to trust human nature? Vivid, poetic, and intimate, This or Something Better reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time—and invites us each to consider and embrace our own path toward wholeness and authenticity. Author: Elisa Stancil Levine Pub Date: June 7, 2022 -
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. Author: Shelley Blanton-Stroud Pub Date: June 28, 2022 -
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 -
Barnaby Brown has had enough of freezing winters, a dead-end job, and his life alone with his parrot. He wants to start anew move to California, and reawaken his lost dream of becoming an artist. Then his car crashes into as now bank nixing his plan of driving West and his beloved parrot flies away, and suddenly California feels very out of reach. After a run-in with a former teaching colleague, Barnaby is shocked into an awareness of how low he has sunk. He vows to make changes, including kicking his drinking habit and settling his debts. With the help of some good friends, Barnaby starts taking steps toward a better life and finds romance and more than a few mysteries to unravel along the way. A heartwarming novel about ordinary people and their hidden talents, Waterbury Winter celebrates the importance of keeping promises and the restorative value of art. Author: Linda Stewart Henley Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
In 1967, Fay Stonewell, a water tank escape artist in Florida, leaves for Vietnam to join the Amazing Humans, a jerry-rigged carnival entertaining the troops, abandoning her teenage, disabled son, Dickie, in the care of an abusive boyfriend. Now forty-years-old, Dickie recalls the chaotic months after Fay left. His troubled home life ends in a surprising act of violence, forcing him to run away first to Manhattan, where he’s taken in by the eccentric artist Laurence Jones and later, by Spin, a gay man struggling with AIDS in a Massachusetts coastal town. Spin may offer Dickie what he’s always wanted: a home without wheels. But the farther Dickie runs, the tighter the past clings to him. Fay faces dangerous threats also. From the night her plane jolts onto a darkened Saigon runway, she confronts every bad decision she’s made as she struggles to return to her son. But the Humans owner is hellbent on keeping her in Vietnam, performing only for war-injured children at a hospital, daily reminders of the son she’s left behind. Ultimately, What We Give, What We Take is a deeply moving story of second chances and rising above family circumstances, however dysfunctional they may be. Author: Randi Triant Pub Date: April 12th, 2022 -
It’s 1976, and Shelley Ilillouette, unemployed and without prospects, has never heard of the Kingdom of Tonga—but when an artist offers her a job in this South Pacific kingdom, she takes it. She arrives in Tonga to discover that her employer has vanished. Alone in a bewildering world where ancient Polynesia mingles with missionaries, Peace Corps, and yacht dwellers, she is adopted by Foeata, a genial Tongan who decides that a mafu—a sweetheart—will solve Shelley’s problems. Foeata favors the Peace Corps doctor, Skip, but he is smitten with Lily, a mysterious half-Tongan actress. Then Shelley’s first and only lover, Jackson, follows her to the islands, and life only get more complicated. When Lily goes missing, too, and Jackson’s visit proves disastrous, Shelley has to admit that she has not escaped from anything; she has just brought all the confusion of life with her. Why, Foeata wonders, are Americans so bad at love? Amidst encounters with sharks and one octopus (meetings far less harrowing than those she has with missionaries and ex-lovers over the course of her adventure), Shelley untangles a web of stories reaching back decades, leading her to conclude that Tonga may indeed be what its king has proclaimed: the place where time begins. Author: Sasha Paulsen Pub Date: July 5, 2022 -
From the fall of 1918 to summer 1919, six YWCA women are attached to the North Russia Expeditionary Forces, an international military mission posted in the city of Arkhangelsk, North Russia. With this change, Clara Taylor’s second year working for the YWCA in Russia turns out to be vastly different from her previous year in Moscow. No longer teaching home economics or surveying factory conditions, Clara now finds herself dancing with soldiers at parties, then learning of their deaths in action the next day; reading to ill soldiers in the hospital; and serving hot coffee to ragtag men on the front lines of the Vologda railroad front in the bitter Russian winter. Throughout, she remains strong, courageous, and dedicated to her ideals of service. Even her own hospitalization for appendicitis does not stop her from supporting others in an untenable situation. Able to let loose about her own political views in these letters, Clara writes scathing commentary about the ineptitude of the military command. She also writes of the frozen landscape, the astounding beauty of the northern lights, homesickness, the strength of the Russian people, and, finally, the overwhelming joy of returning home to her family. Author: Katrina Maloney & Patricia M. Maloney Pub Date: July 26, 2022 -
If you’re stressed and unhappy because of problems with a boss or colleague, you pay a price. Not only can your mental and physical health suffer, your nearest and dearest get sick of hearing about it. Going to bed angry and waking up only to dread a new workday is a terrible way to live. Remote work may have lessened the impact of annoying colleagues for a while, but they can still find ways to irritate. If you’re co-located, the “mute” and “stop video” buttons don’t exist to diminish your exasperation. Not all jerks are the same; the person you find to be a nightmare may be perfectly acceptable to others. And, astonishingly, someone else may even think you’re the jerk! Author Louise Carnachan has the credentials and experience to make her an expert in this area, but more importantly, she’s been in the trenches herself. With an emphasis on the positive actions you can take while being attentive to your specific situation, Work Jerks provides practical advice on how to deal with a variety of problematic coworkers—whether in-person or remotely—so work can stop being something you dread and start being something you enjoy. Author: Louise Carnachan Pub Date: June 14, 2022 -
Mississippi, 1967. It’s the Summer of Love, yet unwed mothers’ maternity homes are flourishing, secret closed adoptions are routine, and many young women still have no voice. In You’ll Forget This Ever Happened, Laura Engel takes us back to the Deep South during the turbulent 1960s to explore the oppression of young women who have committed the socially unacceptable crime of becoming pregnant without a ring on their finger. After being forced to give up her newborn son for adoption, Engel lives inside a fortress of silent shame for fifty years but when her secret son finds her and her safe world is cracked open, those walls crumble. Are you still a mother even if you have not raised your child? Can the mother/child bond survive years of separation? How deep is the damage caused by buried family secrets and shame? Engel asks herself these and many other questions as she becomes acquainted with the son she never knew, and seeks the acceptance and forgiveness she has long denied herself. Full of both aching sadness and soaring joy, You’ll Forget This Ever Happened is a shocking exposé of a shameful part of our country’s recent past and a poignant tale of a mother’s enduring love. Author: Laura L. Engel Pub Date: May 10, 2022
