-
Adam Sinclair is a surrealist painter who lives in a vast artist’s compound in the Santa Cruz mountains. The artist Leonora Bloom, a researcher of dreams, isn’t sure why she is so drawn to this reclusive man she’s never met—yet she can’t shake her obsession with him. After years of hiking the ridge above Adam’s property, she finally knocks on his door. Inside Adam’s house, enormous paintings of golden spirals, cosmic stars, and cobalt universes cover the walls, vibrating with energy and mystery—and though he is aloof, the chemistry between him and Leonora is immediate. Interwoven with Leonora’s tale are the voices of Adam’s muses: Pauline, a talented writer; and Mimi Saucier, a sultry singer from 1930s Paris. The two women play off characters of the Surrealist movement including André Breton, Remedios Varo, and Wolfgang Paalen, creating worlds of dreamy enchantment, as Leonora seeks to discover Adam’s secret to the creative pulse of life—a journey into the surreal. The heart of art’s divine mysteries lies with Adam somehow, but ultimately, if she is to truly unearth who she is and why she creates, Leonora must let go of her rational self and trust her intuition. Author: Carol Jameson Publication Date: June 11, 2024 -
Emil, a Jewish man in 1930s Germany, loves Deta, a Lutheran, but Nazi racial purity laws forbid their marriage. Desperate to find a place where their love can survive, they must separate to get away. Deta leaves for England, but Emil has to overcome red tape, resistance from his aging parents, and his own ambivalence before he can embark for America. With only telegrams and letters from Deta to sustain him, he does all he can to bring her and his family to America. But the clock is ticking as the war breaks out and the Nazis tighten their stranglehold. From the heartbreaking news of November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) to the horrific revelations after the German surrender in 1945, Emil’s story runs the course of the war. Can he make his way in this new world? Will he be reunited with his beloved Deta? And will he ever see his family again? Told by Emil’s daughter with the help of letters and historical documents, All for You is a true story about love overcoming despair and the impact the Holocaust continues to have on the rising generation. Author: Dena Rueb Romero Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
Despite having everything she could ask for, Janet Wilson couldn’t shake a sense of emptiness in her life—or her desire to return to the continent of her birth. After much back-and-forth, she and her husband reached an agreement: they would embark on a daring adventure, driving 25,000 miles across Africa. What they couldn’t anticipate then was how this trip would challenge almost every belief, opinion, and value they held. Over the course of their journey, Janet and her husband collided with the world and each other. There were tears and laughter. They shared thrilling highlights and challenges that forced them to negotiate and cooperate with one another. And after a heartbreaking tragedy and Janet’s arrest, they made critical decisions that transformed their relationship, bringing them to a level of trust and commitment they had never before experienced. Ultimately, this led them to a deeper understanding about their place in the world—and each other’s lives. A suspenseful and emotional true account that explores themes of love, commitment, resilience, and the power of forgiveness in the face of adversity, All You’ll See is Sky is a memoir of a woman’s transformation from brokenness to wholeness and a couple's transformation from breakdown to breakthrough. Author: Janet Wilson Publication Date: April 16th, 2024 -
Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage. She thinks of herself as someone who’d rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go. Mercy’s Thriving Survivors is a hospital-sponsored group held in a presumably less depressing location: a Nordstrom’s employee training lounge. There, Liz hits it off with two other patients, and the three unlikely friends decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves the Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. Together, Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman who’s hiding a family secret and finds peace in a gospel choir, and snarky Liz plan outings to hear jazz, enjoy nature, and tour Alcatraz. In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close, acknowledge and let go of the dysfunction in her marriage, and repair her relationship with her daughter. They joined forces to have a good time—but what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with terminal cancer and resolve the unfinished business in their lives. Author: Ann Bancroft Publication Date: May 28, 2024 -
Blackwildgirl begins her life as a queen superpower. When she is still a child, however, her parents strike a bargain that leads to her dethronement—and sets her on a forty-five-year journey to become the warrior she was born to be: Blackwildgoddess. Join an interactive adventure exploring the private life and journals of a young Black girl, beginning at the age of eight, as she struggles and evolves from a tennis player, musician, and college student to become a wife, mother, lawyer, scholar, and writer. Documenting revelations and reflections during her twelve-stage initiation journey in America and the African diaspora, this intimate, introspective autobiography—composed of acts, stages, scenes, and letters to Love—reveals how writing can unearth and give life to women’s powerful, sassy, and willful spirits. Authentic, vulnerable, and spirit-filled, this captivating and enthralling road map is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the experiences of girls as they seek to become wild women—women who are fierce and fearless; women who are warriors for themselves and others; and women who are committed to excavating and cultivating their spiritual gardens to manifest and fulfill their destiny in the world. Be sure to get the companion journal, Blackwildgirl: Finding Your Superpower to journey and journal along as you read. Write your own story. Discover your own inner wisdom. Own your power and purpose. Celebrate yourself. Author: Menah Adeola Eyaside Pratt Publication Date: May 21st, 2024 -
A companion to Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower, journal along as you read, responding to prompts and questions as part of an interactive adventure exploring the private life and journals of Blackwildgirl, a young Black girl, beginning at the age of eight, as she struggles and evolves from a tennis player, musician, and college student to become a wife, mother, lawyer, scholar, writer, and eventually, Blackwildgoddess. Use the journal to reflect on your own life to document revelations and reflections during each of the twelve stages of Blackwildgirl’s initiation journey in America and the African diaspora. Explore how writing can unearth and give life to powerful, sassy, and willful spirits. Reading Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower while journaling in Blackwildgirl: Finding Your Superpower allows readers to also become writers, excavating and cultivating the spiritual gardens of their lives and finding their superpower. Write your own story. Discover your own inner wisdom. Own your power and purpose. Celebrate yourself. Author: Menah Adeola Eyaside Pratt Publication Date: May 21st, 2024 -
It should have been Tracey Yokas’s time to heal. With the recent death of her mother, she was given a brand-new chance to redefine herself and her happiness on her own terms. But just as she prepares herself to spread her wings, Tracey discovers that her only child, Faith, is battling issues of her own—carrying forward the legacy of disordered eating, depression, and self-harm Tracey is so desperate to leave behind. Tracey is determined to save her daughter, but she has no idea how to reach her—and as their fragile family navigates a medical system and a societal fabric that fails innumerable families in need, she and Faith become near strangers to each other. Ultimately, it’s only when Tracey begins the hard work of standing up to her own history of rejection, low self-esteem, and longing does healing—for both mother and daughter—become possible. Carrying a message made urgent by the epidemic of mental health challenges now besetting millions of American teens each year, Bloodlines is a story about how waking up to the power of love can allow us to reimagine the past—and fortify the present. Author: Tracey Yokas Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
By age four, Claudia Marseille had hardly uttered a word. When her parents finally had her hearing tested and learned she had a severe hearing loss, they chose to mainstream her, hoping this would offer her the most “normal” childhood possible. With the help of a primitive hearing aid, Claudia worked hard to learn to hear, lipread, and speak even as she tried to hide her disability in order to fit in. As a result, she was often misunderstood, lonely, and isolated—fitting into neither the hearing world nor the Deaf culture. This memoir explores Claudia’s relationships with her German refugee parents—a disturbed, psychoanalyst father obsessed over various harebrained projects and moneymaking schemes and a Jewish mother who had survived the Holocaust in Munich—and with her own identity. Claudia shares how she emerged from loneliness and social isolation, explored her Jewish identity, struggled to find a career compatible with hearing loss, and eventually opened herself to a life of creativity and love. But You Look So Normal is the inspiring story of a life affected but not defined by an invisible disability. It is a journey through family, loss, shame, identity, love, and healing as Claudia finally, joyfully, finds her place in the world. Author: Claudia Marseille Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
Having grown up on stories of her mother's wild youth in California, Elena Berg relocates from New England to the Bay Area in 2011 for a placement as an English teacher with Teach for America. Once there, she is eager to inspire a love of poetry and literature in her diverse but underprivileged students. Her own grandfather—a Holocaust survivor—was a storyteller and teacher who touched the lives of his students for years to come. Elena’s mother followed in his footsteps, leaving behind the hippie lifestyle of her twenties to become a university professor. But Elena quickly finds herself feeling disconnected from teaching, unable to inspire her students, and before long, she grows disillusioned with her career. She transitions to a role in an education technology startup—though she questions her decision, her motivations, and her values. Coming of age between the Occupy and #MeToo movements and against the backdrop of the 2016 election and California's ever-worsening fire season, Elena reckons with California as she imagined it and California as it really is. As she does so, she must also ultimately reconcile the person she envisioned herself to be with the person she actually is. Author: Noa Silver Publication Date: May 21, 2024 -
Every day, most of us interact with people of disparate backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences—individuals who hold different expectations than we do of the people and world around them. How does one navigate these often-turbulent waters? In Conscious Change, nineteen authors describe how they have applied the principles of Conscious Change within multicultural, diverse environments to overcome difficult and emotionally draining challenges—and, in doing so, provide a road map to shifting one’s own story when moving through similarly demanding situations in all areas of life. These practical case studies reveal how transformational the Conscious Change tools can be, leading to a stronger sense of one’s personal capacity as a leader, better interpersonal relationships, and the beginnings of greater equity and inclusion. Illuminating and instructive, these stories are vivid illustrations of the skills today’s leaders need in their multicultural organizations and settings, where issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are, and will increasingly be, front and center. Authors: Jean Kantambu Latting and V. Jean Ramsey Publication Date: July 9, 2024 -
Days after graduation, Betsabé Ruiz’s life in New York is turning out to be nothing less than cinematic. Although her first job at a white-shoe, Wall Street investment bank is the opportunity of a lifetime, she is not prepared for the magnitude of wealth swirling about her, the long hours and close quarters that infuse her professional relationships with intimacy, nor an unexpected attraction to her boss. And like all great films, Betsabé’s New York dream comes with a twist that challenges her to find a balance between where she came from and where she’s going. Narrated in the retrospective as a letter of wisdom to her unborn son, Daughter of a Promise captures not only Betsabé’s coming of age but also her journey to understand that deep-seated forces such as desire and love are more complicated than she ever could have imagined. Author: Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg Publication Date: April 2nd, 2024 -
Having spent ten summers on the Blackfeet Indian reservation near Glacier National Park, part of her doctoral fieldwork for a PhD in Native American Art History, forty-two-year-old Lynne Spriggs thinks of Montana as her healing place. When she moves to “Big Sky Country” from the East Coast in a quest to reset her life, she has high hopes for what awaits her. Great Falls, a farming and military town in central Montana, is not what Lynne imagined when she decided to leave city life behind. But her dream of being more connected to nature in the American West comes alive when she meets Harrison, a handsome rancher thirteen years her senior. Wary but curious, with her dog Willow by her side, she leans into the seasonal rhythms of Harrison’s hidden valley and opens her heart to a wild language that moves beyond words. In a modern world where listening is rare, Elk Love explores an intimate place where loneliness gives way to wonder, where the natural world speaks of what matters most. Author: Lynne Spriggs O'Connor Publication Date: June 18, 2024 -
A fast-paced art thriller in the spirit of Gabriel Allon from the Daniel Silva thriller series and Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me. Ally Blake risks everything to exhibit at an art fair in Bogotá in 1990. She needs to meet wealthy collectors to boost her gallery’s sales and save her family from bankruptcy. When she discovers her art crates have been tampered with and two paintings worth millions—that do not belong to her gallery—have been placed inside, her plans unravel. Chief among her problems is US Political Attaché David Martinez, an ex-boyfriend and former colleague from her posting with the State Department in Santiago. He attempts to drag her into a scheme to sell paintings seized from drug lords at an art auction and use the proceeds to fund a war Congress will not approve. Ally refuses. She devises a strategy to thwart their fraud, protect her children, and secure her family’s future—but pulling it off will require her to make the art deal of a lifetime. Author: Linda Moore Publication Date: May 14th, 2024 -
Whether you recently lost your cherished pet or know you soon will, this book is for you. Healing Wisdom for Pet Loss is designed to help readers understand the bond they have with their pets and why losing them is uniquely painful; aid them in understanding the grief they experience in the aftermath of that loss; and teach them the skills they need to process this loss. In these pages, licensed mental health counselor Anne Marie Farage-Smith offers detailed explanations of the types of grief that one may encounter upon the loss or impending loss of a pet and provides validation for the emotions experienced in relation to that loss. She also reminds readers that help is available, and gives actionable criteria for the reader to determine when professional assistance is needed and how to find it. Containing a variety of deliberately open-ended writing exercises Farage-Smith has seen help others to understand and heal their grief, as well as suggestions for a variety of ways to honor and remember one’s pet, Healing Wisdom for Pet Loss is the loving, supportive grief journey companion every bereaved pet parent needs. Author: Anne Marie Farrage-Smith Publication Date:June 4, 2024 -
Karen Solt, an eighteen-year-old nonconformist with an alcohol problem, is working at a gas station when a slick Navy recruiter railroads her into enlisting in the military. Before she knows it, she is on a ship in the Deep South, struggling to navigate not only a world much different from her small Northern Arizona hometown but also her new discovery: she’s gay. Figuring out her sexuality clarifies many things, but also creates a daunting new set of problems, for Karen. It’s 1984: being gay in the Navy is considered a crime, and gay Sailors are regularly hunted by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. Discovery means being kicked out, and by this point she is committed to the uniform (and to remaining with her first girlfriend, who is also enlisted). So she learns to hide her secret and find a way to serve—and even thrive professionally—without getting caught. But concealing her truth ultimately leads to devastating consequences. A story of desire, addiction, the damage of secrets, the power of community, and the soul-crushing cost of turning people into “others,” Hiding for my Life is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit—and a poignant call for each of us to come out from hiding and live our truth. Author: Karen Solt Publication Date: June 4, 2024 -
Twenty-year-old Kate is poised to launch into a long-anticipated life of independence when Britain declares war in 1939. After that announcement, her dream of escaping the London suburb she grew up in and pursuing a singing career is quashed: she must stay put with her family and prepare for bombing and possible invasion by Germany. Living in these anxious times, Kate strives to achieve balance in her life, though a speech disability interferes with her singing and a failed romance adds to her distress. But when a young Jewish girl whose parents have been deported comes to her for help, Kate’s goals change. Taking on a responsibility she never could have imagined, she learns that freedom and survival cannot be taken for granted—and as new responsibilities outweigh earlier goals, she learns that assisting others to escape unspeakable evil requires new perspective, as well as courage she didn’t know she had. Author: Linda Stewart Henley Publication Date: April 9th, 2024 -
It is May 2014, and Dr. Klara Lieberman—forty-nine, single, professor of archaeology at a small liberal arts college in Maine, a contained person living a contained life—has just received a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, that will dramatically change her life. Her father, she learns—the man who has been absent from her life for the last forty-three years, and about whom she has long been desperate for information—is dead. Has been for many years, in fact, which Bessie clearly knew. But now the Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during WWII, and Bessie wants the money. Klara has little interest in the money—but she does want answers about her father. She flies to Warsaw, determined to learn more. In Poland, Klara begins to piece together her father’s, and her own, story. She also connects with extended family, begins a romantic relationship, and discovers her calling: repairing the hundreds of forgotten, and mostly destroyed, pre-War Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Along the way, she becomes a more integrated, embodied, and interpersonally connected individual—one with the tools to make peace with her past and, for the first time in her life, build purposefully toward a bigger future. Author: Susan Weissbach Friedman Publication Date: April 2nd, 2024 -
Once you've experienced the devastation of fracking, nothing but stopping it makes sense. After a year of well site visits and protests, four college student activists become determined to protect the people and the places they love. In the river-crossed northwoods of Michigan, Kate, Brett, Sonya, and Mark, mentored by their former professor Rebecca, keep watch as North American Energy (NorA) connects a corridor of frack well sites deep in the state forests. When NorA expands in unexpected directions and their awful, bigger plan becomes clear, the action begins. As grassroots activists gather and prepare to stop NorA’s dangerous superfrac, stresses other than the fracturing of the bedrock appear. Sonya is arrested, Rebecca reveals her hidden past, and the one person who knows both women’s stories arrives in camp. Love and solidarity want to win, even if most showdowns with Big Oil don’t end well for those who take a stand. Suspenseful, poignant, and galvanizing, Land Marks is a tribute to the waterways that connect us, the land that sustains us, and the moments that inspire us to rise up together to say, “No more!” Author: Maryann Lesert Publication Date: April 16th, 2024 -
As the secret federal sting operation Snakehead targets the fentanyl trade, the small mill town of Stanton, Massachusetts, becomes a battlefield in the war on drugs and three mothers—newspaper reporter Laura Everett, businesswoman Mimi Sullivan, and machinist Angie Gillen—must overcome their differences and confront their pasts to keep their troubled teenagers out of the crossfire. Help comes from unexpected quarters when several Stanton cops break ranks with their superiors after learning that Snakehead’s real mission is to militarize the police and northern border. Stakes rise as the opioid crisis deepens and Mimi’s daughter sinks further into depression and heroin addiction. Laura’s and Angie’s sons try to save her, but their efforts only place her more at risk and she is forced to run away. Ultimately, the deadly violence being perpetrated all around her—by gangs, dealers, and those running the Snakehead operation—compels Laura to dig deep within herself for the power to take charge. A fast-paced, multilayered thriller that reveals the high human costs of the drug war, Last Place Called Home is also a story about love and loyalty to family, friends, and place. Stanton is a hard place to live in—but it’s an even harder place to leave. Author: Betsy Hartmann Publication Date: July 16, 2024 -
Anne grew up in an abusive home, leading to severe depression and a determination to do better as a mother. One of her sons wants a dog from the time he is a baby; Anne very much does not. For years she appeases him with creatures who live in cages and tanks, but on his tenth birthday she can no longer say no—and she proceeds to fall in love with their new four-legged family member, Mattie. Then Mattie dies a sudden and tragic death, and Anne feels herself begin to sink back into depression. Trying to cope, she immediately adopts Milo—a dog who, unbeknownst to her, has already been returned to the rescue by several families due to his aggressive behavior. But even after she realizes Milo is dangerous, she’s committed to trying to give him a chance at a good life. Anne’s journey takes the reader from dog school into the deep woods as she perseveres with Milo’s lifelong rehabilitation and her unwavering efforts to be a good mother to her sons. Working with Milo strengthens Anne and expands her ability to love. Ten years later, when Milo dies, Anne faces another choice: close the door to that part of her heart, or risk loving another dog after two tragic losses? Author: Anne Abel Publication Date: April 23rd, 2024 -
When I have wandered long enough what am I still beholden to? Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection. But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular quest: to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning. Author: Lauren Martin Publication Date: May 14, 2024 -
It’s 1973 and Will Ross, a divorced American geologist, has signed on to work on a troubled dam in a remote, rugged part of Turkey. He decides to take his children with him, but they think they’re only going for their usual two-week stint of shared custody, not to live there. Once in Turkey, Will struggles for control—of his family, his work, the landscape the dam is to be built on, and, ultimately, himself. Alongside these emotional conflicts, he, his children, and everyone else involved in the dam face powerful external forces—of erosion, dissolution, landslides, and earthquakes. Whether they let themselves see it or not, natural hazards impact their lives every day. And so do their intractable human natures. Science can help them understand those forces and engineering can help control them, but each character gradually comes to realize that the landscape they stand upon, and the landscapes of their lives, will shift and shake regardless of the choices they make. The question, then, is: how will they respond? Timely and gripping, No More Empty Spaces will make you think about how you relate to yourself, your family, and the Earth and its ever-changing processes. Author: D. J. Green Publication Date: April 9th, 2024 -
No Way Out of This is not the kind of Alzheimer’s memoir where you read about a noble, self-sacrificing wife who gives up everything to take care of her husband. We see such spouses in books and movies—but they’re not telling the whole story. Nobody’s that good. Certainly Sue Lick isn’t. Sue’s much-older husband, Fred, is a forgetful man. She’s always found that charming. But when his absentmindedness worsens into full-blown dementia, she suddenly finds herself dealing with his illness alone. Struggling to care for Fred and manage their two loveable but incorrigible dogs and still find time to write and play music, Sue constantly faces impossible choices. Tell people about his illness? Let him drive? Put him in an institution? Treat his medical problems, or let him go? Every decision feels wrong—but in the end, their love carries them through it all. More than 6 million Americans suffer from dementia. One in three seniors have it. Add in the spouses, siblings, adult children, and professionals responsible for their care, and we all have a stake in this story. While some caregivers have loving families to support them and enough money to pay for the best care, more often the situation is a lot messier. Here the author, a longtime journalist, tells the truth about nursing homes, Medicaid, mental health, and more. Author: Sue Fagalde Lick Publication Date: June 25, 2024 -
Penny is just four years old when she is snatched away from her all-American home by the Hungarian father who abandoned her when she was a baby. After facing isolation and neglect in a strange, dysfunctional household where heartache, rejection, and physical abuse rule her life, she escapes—only to find herself in a relationship with a man who’s just converted to fundamentalist Christianity. Penny’s road is long, winding, and often painful, but gradually she begins to listen to her inner voice, stand up for herself, and refuse to bow to the pressures of either her family or society—freeing herself to build a life on her own terms and find her way to happiness. A rise-from-the-ashes hero’s story of overcoming abuse, trauma, and unbearable odds, of being waylaid by both family and religion’s promise of love, and harnessing the resilience to find the way home, Redeemed offers a rare window into Eastern European immigrant culture and reads like a page-turning thriller. Especially relevant today—a time when marginalized people are increasingly finding a voice—this memoir will serve as an inspiration to women everywhere, encouraging them to overcome their obstacles and go after their dreams. Author: Penny Lane Publication Date: June 25, 2024
