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When Sally learns that her twenty-one-year-old son Christopher died tragically in a boat accident, her greatest fear is realized. Christopher was often drawn to risk and struggled with addiction, and in this riveting memoir, Sally captures the wild ride of his jam-packed life and her deep love for him while also reflecting on her own childhood and family legacy of alcoholism. This book is for any parent raising a child from the edge of their seat, or for those suffering the trauma of losing a child. Sally shares insights about what it’s like to experience the emotional aftershocks of acute grief, and readers may see themselves in Sally’s bittersweet illusion of trying to keep Christopher safe; in how she is challenged to let go of her fear, guilt, and regret in order to forgive herself; and in the ways grief teaches her about the power of love. Reaching for Beautiful is a luminous story of how love triumphs over pain, love transcends fear, and love never dies. Author: Sally McQuillen Publication Date: April 1, 2025 -
In the tradition of The Paris Bookseller and Her Hidden Genius, the story of a real woman overshadowed in history by the giant talent she saved, Vincent van Gogh. How did a failed belligerent Dutch painter become one of the greatest artists of our time? In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh Bonger lives safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passionate work to sell unknown artists, especially his ill-fated dead brother Vincent. When Theo dies unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness is shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—is worthless. Pressured to move to her parents’ home, Jo defies tradition, opening a boarding house to raise her infant son alone, and choosing to promote Vincent’s art herself. But her ingenuity and persistence draw the powerful opposition of a Parisian art dealer who vows to stop her once and for all, and so sink Vincent into obscurity. Saving Vincent reveals there was more than one genius in the Van Gogh family. Author: Joan Fernandez Publication Date: April 15, 2025 -
A powerful contemporary romance that explores the incredible healing power of love. Tess Lee is a world-famous novelist. Her inspirational books explore people’s innermost struggles and the human need to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel—but despite her extraordinary success, she’s been unable to find personal happiness. Jack Miller is a federal agent working in counterterrorism. After spending decades immersed in a violent world, a residue remains. He’s dedicated everything to his job, leaving nothing for himself. The night Tess and Jack meet, their connection is palpable. She examines the scars on his body and says, “I’ve never seen anyone whose outsides match my insides.” The two embark on an epic love story, but old traumas soon rise to the surface as Jack struggles with the death of a loved one and Tess is forced to confront her childhood abuse. Can unconditional love help heal their invisible wounds? Together, will they be able to move from darkness to light? Author: Patricia Leavy Publication Date: March 18, 2025 -
Lisa Cheek loved editing TV commercials—almost as much as she loved her dog, Ron Howard. Then, she “aged out” of advertising, at 45. After being let go, Lisa got a call—at 2:45 AM—from a director who, like everyone in Hollywood, had a film he wanted to make: the original Cinderella story. Now, his dream could come true—if Lisa granted his wish. In Sit, Cinderella, Sit, Lisa Cheek shares her adventures in editing a film made on location in China—along the Tibetan border—where Mandarin was the only language spoken by everyone but her. Stuck in a house with fourteen men she couldn’t understand, literally, she yearned for conversation and coffee. But there were moments of wonder and laughter. Lisa forged a bond with her translator and a woman named Sunny. She rescued one dog, and then another. “Everyone speaks Cinderella,” the director had assured her. Maybe he was right. Told with humor and heart through a fairy tale lens, with flashbacks into the author’s not-always-happy childhood, Sit, Cinderella, Sit is a story about what can happen when you take a leap of faith, look and hear beyond people’s differences, and dare to believe in yourself. Author: Lisa Cheek Publication Date: January 14, 2025 -
Waking up in the emergency room with a broken arm is not one of the ways Marianne imagined her first date with Carl, if it is a date, ending up. Nor was driving up to the entrance of a women’s prison a few weeks later anywhere on her radar. But here she is. At least I’m on this side of the gate. She picks up newly released Stephanie, as a favor to a nun she barely knows, returns to her East of Troost home, and finds herself immersed in a whole new drama. East of Troost is Marianne’s childhood neighborhood, downtrodden by decades of redlining and a wide swath of destruction to make way for an expressway. Marianne moves back after a reversal of fortune limits her options. She repairs the house and deals with a couple of “incidents”—hence her acquaintance with Officer Carl. Meanwhile, Sister Colette bought the house behind her and is taking in women who, in her words, need to learn to “just live.” As Stephanie helps Marianne cope with her broken arm, she gradually comes out of her shell and teaches Marianne a thing or two about just living. Author: Ellen Barker Publication Date: February 18, 2024 -
Rikki West’s tale begins with her Catholic childhood in a Chicago suburb. As a little girl, she prays for her drunk father, begging God not to send him to hell. As a rebellious adolescent, she abandons religion, yet she yearns to connect with something more loving and peaceful than the human mind. As a teen on the California coast in the 1960s, she seeks union with higher consciousness through drugs and mantra repetition. And as a young woman studying at UC Berkeley, she gives up spiritual matters and shifts her trust to science as the only reliable truth. But something is missing for her—and when she launches her career in Silicon Valley, the drinking culture forces her to confront her own demons. Relying on Alcoholics Anonymous and therapy to stay sober, Rikki gravitates to Eastern spirituality to find her genuine self and relationship to the universe. But after years of fasting, chanting, and praying, she still finds herself seeking more—and ultimately, it is only when she throws overboard all her notions of God and truth that something unexpected and wonderful blossoms in her world. The Empty Bowl is the story of a human seeking self-knowledge—fraught with victories and disappointments, streaked with longing for love and peace. Author: Rikki West Publication Date: January 14, 2025 -
1953. WWII veteran Charles Hawkins sweet-talks his daughter, Lyla, into climbing the family’s oak tree and hanging the rope for their tire swing. Eager, Lyla crawls along the branch and ties off a bowline, following her father’s careful instructions, becoming elated when he playfully tests the rope and declares the knot to be “strong enough to hold the weight of a grown man. Easy.” But when her father walks out back one November night and hangs himself from the rope, Lyla becomes haunted by the belief that his death is her fault, a torment amplified by her grief-stricken mother, who sneaks up to the attic and finds comfort in the arms of her dead husband’s sweaters, and a formidable grandmother, who seemingly punishes Lyla by locking her outside, leaving her to stare down the enormous tree rooted at the epicenter of her family’s loss. Set among the fault-prone landscape of Northern California, The Pale Flesh of Wood is told by three generations of the Hawkins family. Each narrative explores the effects of trauma after the ground shifts beneath their feet and how they must come to terms with their own sense of guilt in order to forgive and carry on. Author: Elizabeth A. Tucker Publication Date: February 11, 2025 -
Zandy Watson, a thirty-year-old documentary maker from New York with a scumbag father and a broken past, is a social justice warrior, hell-bent on making movies that will expose important truths. Except she has to pay the bills, and her boss insists she go to the South of France to make some puff piece about a 300-year-old perfume house. In Grasse—the perfume capital of the world, a heavenly garden rich in delicate flowers—Zandy is seduced by the perfumer’s art. And by Dominique Severin, a secretive, debonair heir who is battling to preserve his honor by keeping his family business alive. But behind the glamorous façade, Zandy discovers a shameful secret. Holding a glittering chance to do what’s right by telling the truth, she faces a heartbreaking choice. Will she betray the lover who has trusted her with his secrets? And will she destroy thousands of innocent lives along the way? The Perfumer’s Secret is an enchanting journey through the captivating world of perfume with an indomitable young woman who in her darkest moment discovers the wisdom and courage to improve countless lives—and change her own life forever. Author: Neroli Lacey Publication Date: February 11, 2025 -
A suspenseful tale stretching from Spain to Hollywood, from a small Jewish community in South Carolina to a crumbling hacienda in the Yucatan, The Serpent Bearer carries readers into the lives of a glamorous British aristocrat, a Jewish gambler, and a beautiful Hollywood screenwriter—all swept up by dangerous political currents during WWII. Solly Meisner, a Spanish Civil War veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, has barely settled in after his return home when he discovers powerful Nazi sympathizers are working behind the scenes in his new hometown of Pennington, South Carolina. Determined to stop them, he signs on with the Coordinating Office of Information (COI), a newly formed US spy agency. His first assignment: travel to the Yucatan and infiltrate a group of German spies and collaborators—including Estelle, a beautiful British woman he fell in love with in Spain, and whom he fears may have betrayed him. In the Yucatan Solly encounters a band of European exiles, not all of them who they claim to be. With his contacts dropping like flies, danger lurks at every turn. But with the Nazis only a few hundred miles from the US coast and making plans for an invasion, there is no time to lose, and no one Solly trusts to track them down and stop them but himself. If he fails, the world he once knew will be gone forever—and the people he loves with it. Author: Jane Rosenthal Publication Date: March 11, 2025 -
There is a common belief that an ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness, as Diana did as a child and as an adult. Even as a young child, she endured and survived unspeakable traumas and adversities. As a national expert on child abuse and neglect, Diana English is uniquely qualified to write this deeply personal memoir. The Well of Sorrow follows Diana and her young siblings in their determination to survive the household their mother deemed “too violent” to stay in. Diana’s childhood is one of violence and trauma but also a story of healing and survival sustained by sibling connection, serendipity, random acts of kindness, grit, and a will to survive. Author: Diana English Publication Date: April 29, 2025 -
What is wonder? Wonder is curiosity and awe put together. We are born with our wonder intact. Why? What? How? Wow! Look at that rainbow! What makes a rainbow? Wonder is what we need to survive and thrive, not just as individuals but also as a civilization. It’s what’s lauded and honored by our society in young children. Until it isn’t. The Wild Why calls for an illuminating end to this endemic crisis of self, and a return to what we know at birth and need to reclaim. This is a book of teaching, and teaching-spirited stories, all centered on how to find our true self-expression and the wonder that spawns it. Author: Laura Munson Publication Date: April 8, 2025 -
It’s 1976, the second wave of feminism is in full swing, and three cousins share an apartment at Yale. Two are seniors; the third is starting graduate school. Each is seeking her own path in both love and work—but all three women, not quite knowing how to use the new freedoms available to them, alternate between supporting and undermining each other in their efforts. Julia, the most conventional of the three, wants the security of her monogamous relationship but is attracted to men. Anna plans on traveling the world to escape her boyfriend and alcoholic mother. Robin, who is bisexual, has various partners as she dreams of open relationships. All fall under the spell of a charismatic musician, Michael, who is too wounded to be available. By the end of a year of experiments and necessary mistakes, the cousins will make crucial decisions that will determine the course of the rest of their lives. This prequel to Levine's first two critically acclaimed novels, The Geometry of Love and Nothing Forgotten, dramatizes the struggles that women have faced and continue to face while entering adulthood in a world not quite ready to accept them as equals. Author: Jessica Levine Publication Date: April 15, 2025 -
What is it like to grow up as an adoptee and be raised with your identical twin? In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs during the 1960s to 1980s, adopted twin sisters Julie and Jenny become the oldest daughters in a big family made up of a mixture of adopted and biological children. The twins’ sisterly bond is tight as the two strive for individuality, identity, and belonging. But Julie’s parents’ continual addition of adopted and biological children to the family leads to a number of painful experiences: they encounter infertility, infant mortality, a child with special needs, and then, when Julie is sixteen, a sudden family tragedy. Faced with these challenges, Julie questions everything—who she is, how she fits in, the circumstances of her adoption, where she belongs, her faith and idea of family. As their family values, parental relationships, and sibling bonds are tested, Julie realizes her adoptive family is held together by love, faith, support, and her parents’ commitment to each other and family. But the life her parents have constructed is not one that Julie wants for herself—and as she grows older, she realizes how her parents’ goals and dreams differ from her own, and how the experiences that have formed her have provided a road map for the person and mother she wants to be. Author: Julie Ryan McGue Publication Date: February 4, 2025 -
Elizabeth Tilton, a devout housewife, shares liberal ideals with her husband, Theodore Tilton, and their pastor and close friend Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, both influential reformers of the Reconstruction Era who promote suffrage for women and former slaves and advocate for the spiritual power of love rather than Calvinistic retribution. Elizabeth is torn between admiration for her husband’s stand on women’s rights and resentment of his dominating ways at home. When Theodore justifies his extramarital affairs in terms of the free love doctrine that marriage should not restrict other genuine loves, she becomes closer to Henry, who admires her spiritual gifts—and eventually falls passionately in love with him. Once passion for her pastor undermines the moral certainties of her generation, Elizabeth enters into uncharted emotional and ethical territory. Under what circumstances should she tell the truth? If she does, will she lose her children and her marriage? Will she destroy her own reputation and the career of the reverend who has done much good? Can a woman accustomed to following the leadership of men find her own path and define her own truth? Author: Barbara Southard Publication Date: January 28, 2025 -
A riveting journey through sacrifice, resilience, and love in the heart of the Civil War, readers follow Adrien Villere as he fights for love and honor with Terry’s Texas Rangers, while his family copes with hardship and tragedy at home. An epic tale of forbidden love and courage that transcends societal boundaries. Book 2 in the series continues to hook fans of Southern literature or Civil War history—while also having, as the Historical Novel Society North America says, “the potential to be an important part of the canon of LGBTQ+ literature.” Author: Karen Lynne Klink Publication Date: April 9, 2025 -
Families who have supported a child with special needs will connect with this memoir about Sarah, a feisty girl with autism and a unique genetic blueprint. Her mom, Jenny, is equally feisty and determined, which leads her to make a commitment that dramatically changes her and Sarah’s lives—as well as those of many others. Sarah’s early years are filled with challenges, and Jenny and her husband, Carl, try various therapies in an effort to help her. At four years old, Sarah is still nonverbal, still doesn’t use the potty, and still struggles with eating. Jenny knows she must do more. She has heard of a method developed by the Autism Treatment Center of America called The Son-Rise Program, which, through loving, supportive interaction, aims to foster social connection in people with autism. It is a huge undertaking, requiring hours of one-on-one therapeutic playtime, which means Jenny needs to find and train volunteers to make it possible. Though Jenny isn’t sure she can do it, she decides to try. She calls her program Sarah-Rise. Accompany Jenny as Sarah’s language explodes, her eye contact intensifies, and she plays games, plays imaginatively, uses the potty, eats healthily, reads, and writes. Have your heart warmed and your socks knocked off by this momentous journey. Author: Jennifer Celeste Briggs Publication Date: January 21, 2025
