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Every day, we take in data from the world around us and store that data in our intellect. Then, without conscious awareness, we listen to that data—a process we call “thinking”—and use what it tells us to inform our decisions. But living our lives this way means always living in the past, and it limits us more than we think. In The Inward Outlook, psychologist Laura Basha shares how to discern this habitual way of thinking from the innate wisdom and common sense that we all have available to us at all times. Once we can see this distinction between personal thinking from the past and in-the-moment, impersonal, diffuse thinking, we are awakened to the conscious choice point, which allows us to make choices with awareness and to release judgment of ourselves and of others. We then consciously create ourselves to be the best version of ourselves we can be: our authentic, powerfully creative, compassionate selves. A powerful guide to accessing one’s own innate health, well-being, and wisdom, The Inward Outlook is an accessible exploration of a principle-based paradigm that educates people in the role thought plays in creating their experience of reality—and a road map to cultivating inspired focus, accomplishment, and peace of mind in one’s life. Pub Day: April 4, 2023 Author: Laura Basha, PhD -
As a young doctor working in the middle of the HIV epidemic in the early ’90s, Alicia Blando feels unsure of the effectiveness of the medical profession. To gain insight into her life’s path, she seeks advice in some unconventional places, and lands on astrology as her way forward. Astrology, based in astronomy, has specific rules; it can’t be easily manipulated. The scientist in her can’t help but respond to this idea. At a pivotal group demonstration, Alicia finds a mentor, Iris, who introduces her to the study of astrology. By learning to read the horoscope, Alicia gains insight into her potential and manifests her ambition to travel and explore healing techniques from indigenous cultures. Eventually, her search for new teachers and past knowledge takes her from Manhattan to the Peruvian Amazon, Belize, and Bolivia, where she discovers ancient ways of healing among people who consider the sky to be a continuation of nature on earth. She connects with the tenets of astrology as the language that describes man’s connection to the sky environment. The horoscopic map gives information that can assist in making better choices in life, Alicia learns; it has the potential to analyze a person’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and health concerns. Alicia’s journey off the beaten path ultimately leads her to true self-exploration and connection with the world around her, as well as a desire to share her knowledge. In Open for Interpretation, she shares her story of finally finding the map she’s been seeking—and explains how we can all use that map to access our true selves and untapped potential. Pub Date: June 27, 2023 Author: Alicia Blando, MD -
Meet Beige. Beige is reliable, practical, sensible, and safe. Beige doesn’t put up a fuss; it follows the rules, blends in, doesn’t want to stand out. Now meet Magenta. Magenta is rich, dynamic, loud, sometimes garish, and not easily overlooked. Society has decidedly beige expectations when it comes to aging, and the intrinsic danger of beige and its many practical aspects is that it precludes creative thinking. Creative thinking is critical in avoiding a beige aging journey. Be Brave. Lose the Beige! Finding Your Sass after Sixty encourages women to trot out their inner magenta and defy those beige expectations. Be Brave. Lose the Beige! started as a blog and morphed into a movement. This movement gently pokes fun at ageist rules and expectations. It says “yes” when the rest of the world keeps saying “no.” In these pages, Liz Kitchens chronicles how creative thinking helped her cope with empty nest syndrome, navigate sex over sixty, transition from being outtasight to literally being out-of-sight . . . and so much more. The stories and creative techniques outlined in this book are guaranteed to introduce color, sass, and a lightness of spirit into your later years. Are you ready to start coloring outside the lines, even if a few pesky rules get trampled in the process? Pub Date: May 16, 2023 Author: Liz Kitchens -
People like Feeney Simms don’t commit suicide. Beautiful, charismatic, mother of two, wife to a handsome, successful husband, beloved by her friends—this is not the typical picture of a tortured soul. But one summer night, Feeney drives to the beach and swallows a handful of pills. No note, no explanation, nothing. Like that, she’s gone. Faced with this loss, Ali, Max, and Liddy, Feeney’s closest friends, are left reeling, grappling with the devastating cocktail of grief, guilt, and anger that’s left in the wake of a suicide. In a desperate attempt to avoid further loss, the three women make the unorthodox (and very Feeney-like) decision to hold their own funerals while they are still alive—and the experience changes each of them in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Pub Date: May 16, 2023 Author: JJ Elliott -
Losing your mother is a transformational event at any age, and yet the number of books on the subject of adult children grieving a mother’s death is meager. In this moving collection of poems and letters, Donna Stoneham chronicles the healing power of love between an adult daughter and her elderly mother—across the boundaries of this world and the next, and over the course of four years—and how that connection teaches her to love more deeply, to fully forgive, and to grow into her authentic self. An embracing solace for anyone recovering from the loss of a loved one, Catch Me When I Fall reveals how our grief journeys can be a powerful transformative force and offers readers a courageous, healing path to the other side of sorrow’s dark passage. Through the conversations between mother and daughter that take place in these lyrical pieces, readers are provided with the opportunity to explore a beautiful notion: as long as we keep our hearts open to the mystery and transformational power of transcendent, eternal love, it will always be possible to heal and continue our most pivotal relationships—even after death. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Donna Stoneham, PhD -
It’s 1910, and Catherine Ogden is aching to live a creative and meaningful life. That’s not easy to do when her aunt and uncle—and all of New York society—consider a good marriage to be the pinnacle of feminine achievement. But when Catherine visits Oakview, the Northern California estate of handsome bachelor William Brandt, she thinks that it might be possible to satisfy her family’s hopes as well as her own. In that beautiful place, she finds the promise of a new start and the opportunity to use her artistic gifts in designing the garden. But as Catherine is drawn into William’s hidden life, as well as the secrets of his estate staff, she discovers that Oakview holds both more opportunity and more risk than she ever imagined. It will take all her courage—and the lessons of some shocking revelations from the past—to choose the path that leads to real freedom. Full of rich period detail and complex characters, and set against an unforgettable backdrop, The Seeing Garden explores what it takes for a woman to discern the path to her most authentic life. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ginny Kubitz Moyer -
Should Rica invite her mother to her wedding? In her early early forties and about to remarry, Rica Ramos realizes that starting over could mean leaving her mother behind. She longs to heal the relationship, but her mother still refuses to acknowledge the sexual abuse Rica suffered at the hands of her stepfather, or her own culpability throughout the years. With old traumas resurfacing and a new life unfolding before her, Rica grasps the power of unspoken grief—and the potential to suffer or heal. Will she and her mother ever cross the chasm between them, or are some secrets meant to stay buried? As Rica navigates her options, she faces two ultimate choices: submit to a culture that shames daughters for not honoring their mothers, or muster the courage to go her own way. Offering a bold and lucid look at mother-daughter relationships, Nobody's Daughter underscores every woman’s right to truth and validation. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Rica Ramos -
It’s 1939, and all across Europe the Nazis are coming for Jews and anti-fascists. The only way to avoid being imprisoned or murdered is to assume a new identity. For that, people are desperate for papers. And for that, the underground needs forgers. In Paris, Sarah, a young Jewish artist originally from Berlin, along with her music teacher and father figure, Mr. Lieb, meet Cesar, a Spanish Republican who knows well the brutality of fleeing fascism. He soon recognizes Sarah’s gift. She will become the underground’s new forger. When the war reaches Paris, the trio joins thousands of other refugees in a chaotic exodus south. In Marseille, they’re received by friends, but they’re also now part of a resistance the government is actively hunting. Sarah, now Simone, continues her forgery work in the shadows, expertly creating false papers that will mean the difference between life and a horrifying death for many. When Mr. Lieb is arrested and imprisoned in Les Milles internment camp, Simone, Cesar, and their friends vow to rescue him, enlisting the help of American journalist Varian Fry, known for plotting the escapes of high- profile people like Andre Breton and Marc Chagall. In this enlightening and thrilling story of war, love, and courage, author Linda Joy Myers explores identity, ingenuity, and the power of art to save lives. Pub Date: July 11, 2023 Author: Linda Joy Myers -
In the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ann Putnam -
Fifteen-year-old Elena lives in a church attic in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood, where she is cared for by her guardian, a kind Russian priest named Father Al. Six days a week, Father Al sends her out of Our Lady, across the meadows and ponds of Golden Gate Park, and all the way to Baba Vera’s house on Taraval Street for Baba’s version of school. Unlike regular school, however, Elena’s learning is unnerving. Baba Vera’s preposterous demands, dizzying antics, and house—which is full of skeletons, brooms, strange implements, and guinea pigs, among other oddities—seem straight out of a Russian fairy tale Father Al used to read to Elena . . . not life in 2020. If not for her beloved doll, Kukla—bequeathed to her by the mother she never got to know, but of whom she often dreams—Elena would be overwhelmed. Yet she works hard at every task given her, understanding intuitively that there is a purpose to every one of her grandmother’s strange assignments. Frank, a young taxi driver, enters Elena’s world on the day he delivers a strange, witch-like woman named Anya to Our Lady. Upon meeting Anya and Elena, a dream-world begins to spin for him—and he feels a deep, protective pull toward Elena. In the days that follow, Frank devotes himself to saving her from the harm he is sure Anya intends toward her. What he comes to understand, as he enters more deeply into Elena’s story, is that she has magic of her own. He thought he was supposed to save her—but in the end, the two of them may just save each other. Pub Date: July 25, 2023 Author: Barbara Sapienza -
At fifty-four, Alenka was running out of time to follow through on a dream she’d written down in her pocket-size Rumi book just after her first marriage crumbled. Years later, as she slowly rebuilt her life with her second husband, things started spiraling out of control. The only way she knew how to heal and connect all painful parts of her life was by riding her bike, and she didn’t want to have regrets. But was she brave enough to embark on an unknown path and risk losing everything . . . perhaps even her own life? Determined to awaken her dying spirit and heal her battered body, Alenka loaded her mountain bike with 50 pounds’ worth of camping gear and set off on a 2,500-mile journey. Starting in Lake Tahoe California, she hoped to ride along the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, following remote mountain trails. Alone. What followed was an irrevocably transformational journey of love, hope, courage, and resilience—and here, Alenka tells that story in a voice stripped of self-pity and infused with a good dose of humor. She Rides is a galvanizing wake-up call for anyone who wants to unearth and follow their own deeply buried dreams—and reclaim their life. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Alenka Vrecek -
When Barbara Terao moves into a new home in Washington, two thousand miles from her husband in Illinois, she doesn’t know when—or if—she’ll ever live with him again. Her diagnosis of breast cancer three months later changes both of them in ways they never imagined. In the ensuing months, Barbara’s husband and adult children show up to help her through a year of difficult treatments and surgery, and Barbara, in her Whidbey Island cottage, learns to listen to her heart and intuition. Nurtured by Douglas fir forests, the Salish Sea, and her community, she changes her life from the inside out. Her journey, she realizes, wasn’t about leaving her husband so much as finding herself. Reconfigured in body, mind, and spirit, Barbara finally has words for what she wants to say—and the strength to be a survivor. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Barbara Wolf Terao -
This collection of novelettes takes the reader from the not-to-distant future to a time when travel between worlds is a common occurrence. Each stop along mankind’s journey outward to the stars is accompanied by a deeper look inward—from examining how extraterrestrial beings might use our own biology against us, to how wishes are really granted, to posing questions about the very nature of our souls. Original and thought provoking, these stories—which include an interstellar religious thriller involving a second coming of Christ—will stimulate the intellect and engage the imagination. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Nancy Joie Wilkie -
On a blustery Maine day, thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Kuriloff found herself standing on a plot of land purchased with her former partner, holding a couple of wood stakes to mark off exactly where her new house would sit. No longer their land. No longer their dream. Now, just hers. Immersed in a world of blueprints, materials, contractors, and critters, Roberta confronted the major losses she’d suffered in her life—in particular the deaths of her mother and aunt from cancer and her separation from her father and brother during her placement in an orphanage—and to try to understand how those losses had shaped the woman, lawyer, and activist she’d become. As she cleared land, hammered nails, lifted beams, and shivered in her rented mobile home, the answers began to come to her. Roberta soon found love again, with a woman named Nancy . . . only to lose her abruptly just one year later in a car accident. Her grief over Nancy’s death, and the psychic and out-of-body events she experienced following that loss, led to an eight-year spiritual quest where she explored her Jewish roots, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and reincarnation. As she healed, new love beckoned with Bernice—and at long last Roberta found that intrinsic sense of self, that unshakable foundation of heart and soul, that home, that she’d been searching for all along. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Roberta S. Kuriloff -
French professor Georgie Bricker hasn’t poked a toe outside Virginia’s Willa Cather College for women in two decades. She realizes the irony: she’s working to shape her students into world leaders even as PTSD-induced agoraphobia, a result of trauma she suffered as a girl, keeps her prisoner on a tiny college campus. She tells herself her life is fine. Yet on her forty-ninth birthday, she wishes for something extraordinary. Georgie is shattered to learn that her sanctuary is heavily in debt. While she scrambles to rescue the French department, her first love, Truman Parker, arrives to serve as a financial consultant to the school. By day, Georgie works as faculty liaison to his committee. By night, she’s a moth to his porch light. When the college announces it will shutter, Georgie and fiercely independent Laurel Cross, the student who’s closest to Georgie’s heart, organize a rally to save it. Between her rekindled love for Truman and Laurel becoming the daughter she never had, her wish for the extraordinary seems to have been granted. But the pivotal rally forces Georgie into the bigger, unsheltered world, where she must confront her final fears—or forfeit her chance for emotional freedom and a fulfilling new life. Pub Date: July 11, 2023 Author: Elizabeth Sumner Wafler -
Samantha Lockwood, Day Sets, and Harriet Robinson come to Fort Snelling from very different backgrounds. It’s 1835 and the world is changing, fast, and they are all struggling to keep up. After she refuses another suitor he’s chosen for her, Samantha’s father banishes her to live in the territory with her brother. He, too, tries to take over her marriage plans—but she is determined to find her own husband, even when her choices go awry. Day Sets demands that her white husband create a school to educate their daughter, supporting her father’s belief that his people must learn the ways of the white man in order to ensure the tribe’s future. Until events prove her father wrong. Harriet’s life in the territory is more like that of a free person than anywhere she’s lived. She even falls in love with Dred Scott and dreams of a life with him. But they are both enslaved, and she keeps being reminded of how little control she has over her own fate. As their cultures collide, each of these three women must find a way to direct her own future and leave a legacy for her children. Pub Date: June 27, 2023 Author: Linda Ulleseit -
For twenty-five years, paramedic and firefighter Christy Warren put each tragic, traumatizing call she responded to in a box and closed the lid. One day, however, the box got too full and the lid blew open—and she found herself unable to close it again. Her brain locked her inside a movie theater in which film after film of gut-wrenching scenes from her career played over and over again; she found herself incapable of forgiving herself for what happened at one call in particular. Caught in a loop of shame, anger, irritability, and hypervigilance—classic signs of PTSD—she began to spiral, even to the point of considering suicide, and yet still she was reluctant to seek help. In the end, it took almost losing her marriage to force Christy into action—but once she began to reach out, she found a whole army of folks waiting and ready to help her. The team of people supporting her eventually grew to include an EMDR therapist, a psychiatrist, her peers at a trauma retreat, and a lawyer who made the case for medical retirement and workers compensation. Along the way, Christy learned the vital truths that made it possible to keep going even in her darkest moments—that post-traumatic stress was literally a brain injury; that suicide and alcohol were not the only ways out; that asking for help was a sign of strength, not weakness; and that although it was ultimately up to her to do the work to change the dialogue in her head, she was not alone. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Christy Warren -
The Earthquake Child is the story of an adoption, told through the voices of an adoptee, his desperate young birth mother, and his loving but grieving adoptive mother. How can Joshua’s behavior be explained? This question is all-consuming for his adoptive family. Joshua was relinquished at birth, then adopted only days later. Is it his genetic inheritance of substance abuse and generational poverty that causes him to act out, run away and eventually become involved with drugs? Is it the losses he’s experienced in his adoptive family? Or is it the very fact of adoption itself—the trauma of being amputated from his gestational mother to be raised by a family unrelated to him by blood, culture, or biology? What makes our children who they are? These voices and questions will resonate with all parents, but particularly with those who are or have been part of the adoption triangle: adoptees, mothers who have relinquished a child, and parents who’ve added a child to their family through adoption. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Elayne Klasson -
Joanne Greene grew up in Boston during the 1960s and ’70s, a turning point for women in the United States. Doors were opening wider, and Joanne walked through as many as she could. As a young woman, she dove headfirst into San Francisco radio and television, and went on to host and produce award-winning feminist and other timely features and talk shows for decades. Throughout, she worked at having a great marriage and being an exemplary parent. But underlying her high-achieving life was a sometimes-destructive need for control. Vulnerability and dependency were okay . . . for other people. Joanne’s value was tied to how in charge, how together, and how productive she was. Then she suffered a traumatic accident—and it set her on a journey of discovery that taught her true power came in the still moments, the moments when she not only loosened her grip but even allowed herself to crack. In fragility, Joanne found, there was beauty—and possibility, too. By Accident is a story about discovering that control is a seductive illusion and how letting go of the need for it can reveal great strength and lead us to even firmer ground. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Joanne Greene -
In this beautifully crafted blend of memoir and guidebook, Suzanne Anderson invites you to walk with her through the brutal landscape of trauma and loss in a way that is profoundly transformational. Whether you are going through a personal dark night or struggling with these uncertain and disruptive global times, this book offers a proven pathway to allow the breaking down to be the breaking open into a whole new way of living, loving, and leading. Structured into three distinct parts, Part One sets the stage and walks us through the shocking event of her husband’s suicide and the dismantling of her life. Using compelling personal stories throughout, Part Two explores how to embody each of the eight critical capacities of resilience, and Part Three provides some of the inner tools, rituals and broader perspectives needed. Drawing from her years of exploration into the development of human potential and the personal, shattering journey of loss, Suzanne guides you to make your own path through the darkest of times—and to become a light in the world that others can look to in their own times of need. Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Suzanne Anderson -
“. . . a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined.” —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass A marine biologist’s adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. His radical approach to recovery clashes with her instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters. Author: Beth Ann Mathews Publication Date: May 2, 2023 -
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely disabled children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city. From a dramatic Christmas pig slaughter to a mesmerizing fire walking ceremony, her world expands rapidly—even more so when she falls in love with Thanasis, a handsome Communist. Through Thanasis, Kate meets people determined to turn a spotlight on their former dictators’ massacre of university students, as well as their record of widespread censorship and torture of dissidents. The more she learns, the more her loyalty to her country and almost everything she was taught in her conservative home state of Texas is challenged. Kate is transformed by her odyssey, but when her very safety is threatened by the politics of her lover, she must choose: risk everything to stay with Thanasis and the Greece that has captured her heart, or remove herself from harm’s way by returning to her homeland? Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Kathryn Crawley -
In the spirit of The Glass Castle and The Burning Light of Two Stars, Antonia Deignan delivers what New York Times best-selling author Julie Cantrell calls a “a heart-shattering memoir of painful truth and soulful healing.” As a child, Antonia perceived her father’s nighttime visits as special acts of love. On some deeper level, though, she knew what was happening wasn’t right. To escape, she began creating imaginary worlds and used dreams to transport her away from her fears. As she got older, Antonia traded those fantasies for dance—but despite her outlets she remained trapped underwater, without a lifeline to make her feel fundamentally safe. For years, Antonia silently navigated the dark fathoms of her internalized pain, which manifested in myriad self-destructive habits: disordered eating, drug and alcohol abuse. Only decades later, while recovering from a serious bike accident, did she finally stop running and start reflecting—giving her the power to fully accept what had happened to her in her early life and ultimately forgive the unforgivable. Raw and visceral yet gorgeously lyrical, Underwater Daughter masterfully conveys not only the rippling effects of childhood trauma but also the hope that with honesty and work, healing is possible. Pub Date: May 2, 2023 Author: Antonia Deignan -
A decade has passed since Lucas Connolly lost his best friend—and the only man he’s ever loved—in World War I, but he still can’t shake his guilt over Jamie’s death. In fact, ever since losing Jamie, Lucas has heard his friend’s voice inside his head—confused about what happened to him, begging him for help. And now, suddenly, it’s not just Jamie’s voice anymore; now, a specter who looks and acts exactly like Jamie did before his death, and who is demanding answers from Lucas about what happened to him, has begun to haunt him. Concerned about Lucas’s deteriorating mental state, his friend Angela encourages him to move on with his life, and even sets him up with a coworker whom she suspects is also gay. But Lucas is too consumed with the secret he still keeps about the part he played in Jamie’s death to even begin to form a healthy connection with someone new—and as Jamie’s ghost begins to recover his memories and get closer to the truth, Lucas’s obsession only deepens. Ultimately, Lucas realizes that his only path forward is to first go backward—that only in examining his troubled youth, facing his deepest self, and shining a light on the shadowed parts of his past will he finally be able to set his old friend, and himself, free. Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: E.L. Deards
