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In 1878, young Mame Sutton escapes her oppressive father through a quick marriage to the charming stage manager of a New York theatre, while her younger sister Lizzie makes the same escape by eloping with a young Jewish jeweler. Which sister has made the better choice? Life for Mame in a theatrical boarding house in 1878 offers new kinds of friendships and unexpected challenges. Through the tales of the theatre workers, she gets a backstage look at the Gilded Age of the Astors, Goulds, and Rockefellers, but she has no share in the freedom given to the ladies of the stage. Her husband’s view of a wife’s role is as narrow as her father’s idea of a daughter’s role was. How can Mame break free? For Lizzie, marriage into the Cohen family offers warmth and support, but also cultural differences and expectations which she finds hard to master. Her husband, though loving and tolerant of her mistakes, is financially dependent on his family. Lizzie longs for a life apart from the Cohen world. When disasters shake their worlds, can the sisters help each other onto new paths? Author: Allyson Johnson (cohort leader) Publication Date: November 10, 2026 -
What if an ancient ritual could transform the way you live today? In her beloved first book, Braided, Dr. Beth Ricanati shared how making sacred bread, challah, every Friday for over a decade transformed her life. Now, in The Braided Prescription, she shares insights from her subsequent challah workshops with groups all over America and even abroad, distilling what she’s learned into seven attainable and powerful practices for managing stress in our daily lives. Blending personal stories, scientific research, and timeless wisdom, Ricanati demonstrates how these seven practices can restore presence in a distracted world, strengthen bonds with family and community, and teach resilience through imperfection. With warmth and wisdom, she shows how the weekly ritual of making challah bread can help us mend what feels frayed, anchor what feels uncertain, and create space for what truly matters. For readers from every walk of life—including those who have never made dough or even seen yeast—The Braided Prescription is a powerful reminder that small acts, repeated with care, can lead to profound transformation. Author: Beth Ricanati, MD Publication Date: September 1, 2026 -
Growing up on a remote island with her mother, twelve-year-old Skye is endlessly curious about the natural world—tracking tides, seabirds, starfish—and dreams of becoming a marine biologist. But more than anything, she longs to reunite with the father she’s never met and finally feel her family is complete. When her summer takes an unexpectedly turn and she and her mother travel across the country to care for her ailing grandparents, Skye realizes that opportunity may be closer than she ever imagined. She has spent years collecting clues from her mother’s reluctant disclosures, and she is nearly certain her father still lives in her mom’s hometown. Wide-open Wyoming is nothing like Skye’s seaside home in Maine: Instead of fishing dinghies and flip-flops, she finds horses, cowboy boots, and dusty rodeo arenas. As she navigates this unfamiliar world, Skye befriends nine-year-old Tuck Foster, who eagerly helps her investigate a list of possible father candidates that fit Skye’s clues. Along the way, she cheers on bull riding, mucks stalls, shoos chickens, and learns to saddle and ride horses. She also grows close her kind-hearted grandmother and curmudgeonly grandfather, who teach her lessons about family, home, grit, and resilience. In her final days out West—and on the verge of uncovering the truth—Skye discovers what completes a family isn’t a specific place, size, or way of life. It’s love. Author: Brooke Carnwath Publication Date: September 1, 2026 -
At fourteen, Caren Rabbino loses her leg to childhood cancer. The surgery saves her life—but it also fractures her relationship to her body, her family, and the world that suddenly reads as “other.” In the years that follow, she navigates phantom limb pain and relentless pressure to “fix” herself, even as she tries to pass as normal to protect status, safety, and social mobility. She searches for belonging through work, art, and travel, while grappling with sexuality, objectification, and the particular loneliness of being visibly different. Only after years of avoidance does she step into community—teaching yoga to an amputee group and discovering a grounded, hard-won form of embodied knowledge that cuts through shame and self-protection. Asymmetries is a candid story of survival and self-definition, asking what it means to inhabit a changed body—and to be seen, on purpose. Author: Caren Rabbino Publication Date: November 17, 2026 -
Amber Mettle is a Chicago journalist with a rescue instinct—especially for animals. When she follows her restless husband to Los Angeles for a fresh start, she tries to keep an open mind. But before she can find her footing, she finds herself blindsided by betrayal—no job, no future, no sense of direction. And then, just as she's beginning to rebuild, tragedy strikes. A catastrophic wildfire reduces her home to rubble and claims her beloved pets, thrusting her into a relentless battle with insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and opportunistic grifters. But Amber's story doesn't end in ash. Following the fire, guided by haunting premonitions and signs from the animals she couldn't save, she channels her grief into action. Fueled by love, an unwavering sense of justice, and an eccentric cast of characters who bring unexpected humor to even the darkest moments, she fights to hold the people responsible accountable—and discovers that even in devastation, hope can take root. Author: Carri Karuhn Publication Date: November 10, 2026 -
Nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, Beulah has always seemed steady—rooted in tradition, shaped by generations, and slow to change. But in 1986, the ground has shifted, and no one feels that more than fifteen-year-old Barrett Childress Owens. Between her parents’ unraveling marriage and a school full of kids she can’t connect with, she feels invisible in her own hometown. When Lacy Gunderson, the captivating new girl everyone is curious about, suddenly vanishes, the town’s calm surface fractures. Search parties comb the woods. A police investigation begins. Rumors multiply. Families close ranks. And Barrett begins to sense how much the adults around her choose not to say. As Beulah clings to its usual rituals—including the annual Miss Kudzu pageant, which has shaped local girlhood for decades—Barrett is forced to navigate a community where loss lingers in the air and secrets are carefully kept. Her journey through the uncertainty reshapes her understanding of friendships, family, and the complex place she calls home. A rich coming-of-age story with a pulse of mystery and a budding romance, What Happened in Beulah explores the fault lines of a small town and the courage it takes to face the truths people would rather bury. Author: Christy Scott Cashman Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
After the sudden death of her brother, Corey retreats to a remote ranch in Sedona, Arizona, hoping the silence of the desert can drown out the noise of her grief. But the quiet only deepens her isolation—until a mysterious stray dog appears, pulling her back into the world and forcing her to face what she’s been running from. Set against the stunning red rock canyons, Nomad is a lyrical, emotionally charged debut about trauma, resilience, and the wild grit it takes to heal. As Corey grapples with loss and the ghosts of her past, she’s drawn into unexpected relationships that challenge her guarded heart and crack open the possibility of love. For readers of Prodigal Summer and A Town Called Solace, this is the story of one woman’s return to herself through the rhythms of nature, the ache of memory, and the quiet, untamed beauty of connection. It’s a tender, tough meditation on the raw path to healing—and the fierce, fragile hope that blooms in its wake. Author: Cynthia Johnstone Publication Date: November 17, 2026 -
When her elderly mother shoots her abusive husband—Deborah’s father—in their Arkansas home, Deborah is thrust into a storm of media frenzy, grief, and caregiving. As she fights for justice, supports her paralyzed wife, and battles personal demons, Deborah begins to unravel a deeper legacy of generational trauma—and realizes the need to rescue herself. Told with gripping honesty, Grace Through Fire follows Deborah’s odyssey through murder trials, chronic illness, financial collapse, and spiritual reckoning. From the chaos of the rural South to the stillness of yoga studios and the healing waters of Lake Powell and Crater Lake, Deborah rediscovers her strength, sobriety, and purpose. This is a narrative of transformation and fierce resilience—a memoir for anyone who has ever questioned their worth, carried the pain of their family, or longed for a fresh start. At the heart of it all is a bold love story, a leap of faith, and one woman’s courageous choice to create a life of freedom, service, and light on the California coast. Author: Deborah Samuel Publication Date: October 6, 2026 -
In 1950s Turkey, against the backdrop of the social and political unrest that will culminate in Turkey’s 1960 military coup d'état, a dutiful daughter is torn between family expectations and her dream of becoming a modern Turkish woman. One night, seventeen-year-old Ayten sneaks away to Istanbul for a night of dancing with her best friend. When her father discovers her rebellion, he forces her into an arranged religious marriage to a distant relative who bullied her as a child. Initially, Ayten resigns herself to her fate—but after her husband sexually assaults her on their wedding night, she flees him and her family for haven in Istanbul. Living with friends and working as a seamstress at her friend’s boutique, Ayten tries to rebuild her life. Then she meets Earl, an American airman, and they begin to fall in love—but as their connection deepens, secrets and her past threaten to upend all she’s built. Torn between her family and a future with Earl, Ayten must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice for freedom and forbidden love. Author: Denise Derya Brandt (fiction subgroup leader) Publication Date: September 29, 2026 -
In 2010, twenty-nine-year-old poet Ebony Walden quits her job to go to on an eight-month solo journey across fifteen countries and five continents. Propelled by a sense of purpose and adventure, she moves from teaching English and volunteering in places like Guatemala and India to conducting poetry workshops in Kenya, walking the ruins of Machu Picchu, and paragliding over the Swiss Alps.
Along the way, Ebony writes “Where I’m From” poems with the people she meets—intimate reflections that capture family, identity and culture, weaving their voices into her own unfolding journey. But each destination also challenges her in unexpected ways, forcing her to reckon with the hardships of growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Through breathtaking landscapes, unexpected setbacks, and profound encounters with strangers, Ebony begins to understand that travel is not just about seeing the world—it is about allowing the world to change you.
Part travel memoir, part coming-of-age story, Where I’m From invites readers to take their own journey beyond borders and come home to themselves.
Author: Ebony Walden Publication Date: September 8, 2026 -
A clear-eyed and necessary account of how violence insinuates itself into characters living liminal lives in the purgatorial world of Ontario, Illinois, Learning to Hit My Mother is a collection of connected stories that all possess a unity of place—and characters so compellingly human that they promise, with an almost unflappable certainty, to possess the reader. Pit, a girl at the onset, is savaged by her mother, who goes at her with her hands, heart, and even a baseball bat because her husband—Pit’s father—has had her. This demented triangulation forms Pit. Throughout her life she is drawn to misfits—like her friend Bean, who ultimately steps in front of a train. From these inauspicious beginnings ensues a whole delectable slew of stories; stories full of meaty, fragmented souls—Lou, Edgar, Twink, Leesa, and Pit’s son, Sam; stories whose quiet intensity will capture fans of Sherwood Anderson and Clarice Lispector. Championed by language that is jarringly precise, Learning to Hit My Mother soars in its visceral portrait of the monstrous as located in what might be called the sublimity of the ordinary. Haunting, unputdownable, and gripping, each story galvanizes with thought- provoking prose that hits each and every cell. Author: Elizabeth Kirschner Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
Eve Sprunt, a shy young woman with big ambitions, dreams of a life that includes both scientific work and a family. In 1969, she enters MIT, where women are still a small minority on campus and skepticism follows her every step. As she advances academically, Eve confronts professors who underestimate her—and others who cross professional boundaries. One mentor, however, urges her toward a PhD at Stanford, where she becomes the first woman to earn a doctorate in geophysics. Nine months after defending her thesis, Eve gives birth to her first child—then interviews for jobs with her baby in tow. Six oil companies make offers. When she begins work in Dallas, her carefully laid plans unravel, forcing her to reinvent herself as a petroleum engineer. Over a thirty-five-year career in the oil and gas industry, Eve repeatedly adapts to workplace bias, shifting markets, and high-stakes corporate culture, transforming setbacks into new opportunities for growth, global adventures, and leadership. In Defending My Work, Eve shares her remarkable journey as a woman navigating—and succeeding in—a male-dominated field, offering practical guidance, encouragement, and hard-won insight for readers of all ages. Author: Eve Sprunt Publication Date: November 10, 2026 -
Georgine had built a life of careful control. As a wife, mother, and college professor, she minimized risk and played by the rules. Her attorney husband was successful, her four grown daughters were thriving, and her students knew that hard work and deadlines mattered. Having survived a turbulent adolescence marked by poverty and substance abuse, she believed in the safety of well-ordered environments. Then the pandemic upended everything. When classrooms and offices closed, Georgine and her husband Mark relocated to Puerto Rico, where she discovered a flourishing—and often outrageous—cryptocurrency community. As she navigated the mysteries of crypto trading and uncovered the political complexities woven into the fabric of the beautiful Caribbean island she now called home, Georgine embarked on a journey that would shatter her orderly existence—and force her to revisit the dangerous youth that had shaped her complicated relationship with home, risk, and money. A memoir about facing past mistakes and embracing second chances, Crypto Island reminds us that personal growth never stops, and that living authentically often demands both resilience and reinvention. Author: Georgine Hodgkinson Publication Date: September 22, 2026 -
Mona is living the dream . . . until, at thirty-eight, her busy stay-at-home-mom life is upended. Her grandmother moves into assisted living, her teenager, Grace, doesn’t need her anymore, her charity work kicks her to the curb, and none of her friends are showing up for her. Suddenly, Mona has no purpose—unless you count stress-eating. But she seems to be the only one struggling. Shy Grace—ignoring her mother’s dreams for her to join the “it kids” in drama club—is off finding her voice (and a new band) at Bubby’s retirement home and making friends. Even Bubby’s too busy fending off resident mean girls and finding romance to pay Mona much mind. Then, on top of it all, Mona’s twenty-year high school reunion goes viral for all the wrong reasons, leaving her convinced she’s wasted her life. But when tragedy strikes, she is forced to face the truth: The only person who can make you feel small is you—and sometimes you have to lose everything you thought defined you to find what truly matters. Heartfelt, funny, and refreshingly honest, Drama Drama Drama is a celebration of second acts, self-worth, and learning to skip the drama and live your own life. Author: Gerilyn Bass Greenberg Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
How do you stay upright in a world that won’t stop shaking? When her youngest son, Lew, begins experiencing relentless seizures, the life Jen Murphy Parker thought she knew—and the ordinary chaos of raising four children—disappears overnight. What follows is a crash course in pediatric neurology: ambulance rides, ICU nights, medication trials, and the slow, brutal math of risk. With lyrical precision and humor, Parker captures the story of endurance and recalibration, of marriage and motherhood under pressure, and of the strange intimacy that grows inside long-term caregiving. Yet as Jen learns to live alongside uncertainty, she also finds a quiet thread of resilience: moments of joy, wonder, and real happiness. For parents, caregivers, and readers of narrative nonfiction, Fault Line Boy is an unflinching, luminous memoir about loving a child with rare pediatric epilepsy—and learning how to keep choosing a life, even when nothing feels steady. Author: Jen Murphy Parker Publication Date: November 17, 2026 -
Jen Thompson rose to the heights of politics in her early thirties as a celebrated Republican strategist—a rarity for a young woman. For years, success and power were her only ambitions, despite the drumbeat of her inner voice warning that her life was wildly off course. It was only when a car accident nearly killed her on the campaign trail of a nationally watched Senate campaign that Jen finally decided to walk away. Her sudden alienation from the life she had always known set into motion cascading events that carried her across the world and deep into a reckoning with her own soul. A memoir in vignettes, Wild Pivot explores how blind loyalty develops and shapes a woman with the craving to fit in and feel celebrated. With a piercing ability to explore just how jarring change and evolution can be, Thompson moves with unflinching honesty and razor-sharp wit between snapshots of her life as she grapples with the demons of her past and commits herself to doing what is required to live a life of truth and freedom—no matter the cost. Author: Jen Thompson Publication Date: September 22, 2026 -
The moment Jennifer Gay Summers’s adopted daughter, Lee, took her first steps, joy filled the house—and the chase began. Jennifer was swept into a whirlwind of motherhood with a bold, curious child wired without brakes. Drawing strength and wisdom from her years of teaching at-risk high school students, Jennifer became Lee’s fiercest advocate. An ADHD diagnosis was just the beginning. Sensory and learning disabilities, along with anxiety and depression, followed, creating a mountain of neurodivergent challenges. With Lee stuck in a school system ill equipped to handle children with mental health struggles, Jennifer was forced to come to grips with losing every last traditional parenting expectation—and in doing so found a deeper meaning to her life, turning hardship into joy. More than a memoir, Chasing Lee encourages parents of neurodivergent children to shift perspectives and find valuable survival tools using compassionate guidance and hard-won hope. Jennifer’s inspirational story shines a light on the humanity that connects us, no matter the disabilities or labels—and is a testament to the power of unconditional love and the freedom found in letting go. Author: Jennifer Gay Summers Publication Date: October 27, 2026 -
Born to Holocaust survivors and trained in the black-and-white world of law, veteran gang prosecutor Karen McKinney believed in justice, punishment, and moral certainty—so when she was asked to oppose the parole of a man she sent away for life twenty years earlier, she expected to confirm his ongoing danger. Instead, she was confronted with something she had never encountered: true transformation. Misjudged chronicles McKinney’s radical rethinking of justice through her evolving friendship with Joseph Herrera—a man she once believed to be irredeemable. Woven with personal reckonings, family trauma, and courtroom tension, this powerful memoir of healing and self-discovery reveals how the silent burdens of inherited trauma, family shame, and generational judgment shaped McKinney’s worldview—and how, through great effort, she began to break free and learned that the stories that shape us don’t have to define us. For anyone who has ever felt stuck, spiritually hungry, or disconnected from their true self, Misjudged is a compelling and hope-filled exploration of what it means to understand another person’s capacity for change and how to drop our fear-forged narratives in order to find true connection and humanity in this polarized world. Author: Karen McKinney Publication Date: December 15, 2026 -
When her husband is diagnosed with glioblastoma, Karen Paul becomes a full-time caregiver overnight. Their marriage, the landscape of which had always shown fractures, is instantly and radically transformed. Years after the long vigil of illness and his death, Karen faces the uneasy recalibration that follows and a new identity she never asked for: widow.
Told in three parts, Cartography of Loss chronicles the very particular and personal—from hospital corridors and hospice visits to tattoos and the strange circumstance of falling in love again. Along the journey, readers bear witness through stages of early widowhood, life’s continuance in spite of unbearable grief, and the echoes of losses compounded over a lifetime.
Exploring how a widow must learn to map out her life in new ways after devastating loss, Paul’s is more than a grief memoir, it’s a clear-eyed, often funny exploration of how loss rearranges a life—and proof that even after the unimaginable, there is a way forward, one essay at a time.
Author: Karen Paul Publication Date: December 1, 2026 -
What would you let go of to be free—to live a life that feels truly yours? When loss and burnout upend her life, Kathleen Branigan launches a quest for truth . . . and ends up with an existential crisis. She questions her Catholic faith, devours self-help books, goes skydiving, earns a master's in religious studies, and ventures into the Amazon for five back-to-back nights of ayahuasca. Into the Flow is a funny, soul-baring memoir for anyone seeking answers to life's Big Questions, healing from heartbreak, or craving deeper purpose when the old maps stop working. Through encounters with spiritual teachers and therapists, plus a few wild adventures, Kathleen discovers what she's looking for isn't found in miracle cures or endless self-improvement, but in trusting herself again. If you're navigating fear, uncertainty, awakening, or reinvention, Into the Flow offers laughter, honesty, and a reminder: freedom emerges when you stop the search and start creating a life that's your own. Author: Kathleen Branigan Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
Katie Trexler was at the top of her game—thriving in her high-profile job as a local television news anchor, raising healthy young twins, and a leading a nearly idyllic life with her husband in the suburbs of Denver. Then believing it was the right decision for her family—and unaware of the toll it would take on her well-being—she gave up her dream career. Years later, unsatisfied with where her path has led, Katie wonders, What do I tell my daughter about the choices I’ve made as a woman and mother? With raw honesty, What Do I Tell My Daughter? delves into the real and sometimes hidden costs of sacrificing parts of ourselves for the people we love—a reality Katie confronts first as a young mom and then again almost a decade later when her seemingly ideal life unexpectedly shatters. Punctuated by hard-earned lessons about inner strength, self-love, and equality in relationships, this unflinchingly candid memoir is for any woman, any person, who has ever lost themselves while caring for others—and who is determined to reclaim their voice, redefine success, and model courage and awareness for the next generation. Author: Katie Trexler Publication Date: October 6, 2026 -
Quinn has spent a lifetime unwinding from a childhood that was both magnificent and traumatizing. As a child actor, she was showered with attention and luxury even as she battled a mother who coveted her success—and eventually stole all her money. Now, Quinn lives a quiet, peaceful life that once seemed impossible for someone like her—suburban neighborhood, loving husband, beloved Labrador retriever, and prickly-yet-adoring cat. Until, one day, something else impossible happens: On a random Tuesday, Quinn’s feet slip off the floor, and she finds herself flying along the ceiling of her living room. Quinn’s neighbor, Georgia, is perhaps the only woman Quinn’s ever known who’s been a true friend and not a frenemy. Still excavating her life from the rubble of a brutal divorce, Georgia is in a deeply introspective place—and beginning to suspect something odd is happening with Quinn. As Quinn grapples with her newfound abilities, the cornerstones of her desperately fought-for life are increasingly threatened. Standing on the precipice of life-changing expansion and staring at a chasm of uncertainty, Quinn must decide if the leap across is worth the risk. Because only by jumping will she find out what’s on the other side. Author: Khristin Wierman Publication Date: November 17, 2026 -
1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion. When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests—while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper’s editor. As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace—and to hope for a better world. Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest. Author: Linda Kass Publication Date: September 8, 2026 -
For years, Lisa Cheek has believed long-term commitment isn’t in her genes. Her romantic history has followed a familiar pattern: date a lot and widely, but never settle down. When anyone has wanted to marry her, she’s run away. So even she is surprised when, at forty-nine, she finally says “yes” to a proposal and commits fully to her boyfriend, Big Johnson. But when she finds out on their wedding day, after the vows, that they aren’t actually married, she hesitates. Should she take this as a sign to run while she still can? In The Big Day, Lisa Cheek invites us inside one unforgettable wedding day, with its attending hilarity, chaos, and unexpected turns. As everything begins to unravel she looks back on a lifetime of relationships—her own and those of her family and friends—searching for patterns, meanings and the truth about what makes love last. Witty, unflinching and deeply relatable, The Big Day is a memoir about late-in-life love, marriage, and the complicated question so many people face: When it really matters, do you stay or do you go? Author: Lisa Cheek Publication Date: September 22, 2026
