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She married for love. He married for trust. Specifically, her trust fund—the one with the iron-clad “no divorce, no matter the circumstances” clause her mother insisted on. Sterling (not as good as gold) has always come second to her family’s wealth—but unlike her mother, she’ll do anything to protect her three children. For years, she’s kept up the perfect family illusion to shield them from their manipulative, gaslighting father. But now her husband is becoming more reckless, and her children more exposed. And when her daughter’s fiancé says he wants a marriage just like hers, Sterling knows her charade has gone too far. To free herself, she must outwit her husband and the legal ties meant to trap her—before it’s too late. Because in this family, there’s only one way out: One of them must die. Author: Zelly Ruskin Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
From the moment Teri Drobnick’s father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she feels like he’s slipping away. As she grapples with an uncertain future and the steady erosion of his memory, Teri leans on Uncle Bob—her dad’s best friend of eighty years. As Teri navigates the emotional limbo of caring for a parent with dementia, she and Uncle Bob, united by mutual grief, form a deeper bond from the stories he shares of his lifelong friendship with her father. Beginning with their boyhood during World War II, Uncle Bob recounts first dates, college at UC Berkeley, marriages, building a business, raising children, surviving loss. In the present, Teri confronts the anger, loneliness, and role reversal that accompany memory decline—but through tales of the past, she finds a way to reconnect with her father. With a narrative braided between past and present, Our Long Goodbye is a poignant love letter from a daughter to her father that explores anticipatory grief, enduring friendship, and the profound power of shared memory. Author: Teri Roche Drobnick Publication Date: November 3, 2026 -
It is said that every memoir is an exorcism. With a Jewish psychoanalyst father who’d lost his entire family in the Holocaust and a non-Jewish, emotionally repressed mother, where did that leave author Sylvia Flescher? For years Sylvia struggled with writers’ block, worried that her own story paled in the shadow of her parents’ enormous losses. However, after a powerful ceremony in Jerusalem that honored her mother for her courage in hiding her father in Rome during the Nazi occupation, Sylvia began to write—and she finally found her voice. In The Reluctant Psychoanalyst, Sylvia describes how trauma can pass into the next generation. A devoted daughter, for decades she did not feel free to deviate from her father’s agenda for her. Failing to recognize his narcissism and toxic boundary-crossing for what it was, she complied with his demand that she join him in his mission to “save the world from another genocide” by spreading his version of the gospel of Freud. With this memoir, Sylvia fulfills her duty to memorialize her parents’ lives—and claims the right to tell her own story. Author: Sylvia Flescher, M.D. Publication Date: November 10, 2026 -
Living in the Long Shadow is a poignant memoir told in dual timelines: the formative years of Suzanne’s childhood and the two weeks following her mother’s suicide when Suzanne is eighteen. With honesty and grace, Suzanne traces what it means to grow up in the shadow of mental illness—navigating her need for guidance and belonging, the fear of inheriting her mother’s illness, and the journey of loving a mother unable to live with or without her medication. Ten years after her mother’s passing, an extraordinary sign affirms the enduring presence of her love—and Suzanne’s grief begins to make room for acceptance. This is a story of resilience: the difficult choices that lead toward healing, the friendships and family bonds that sustain us, and the way love can reach us even after death. Author: Suzanne Sherman (nonfiction subgroup leader) Publication Date: September 29, 2026 -
Southern suburban housewife Lia and her husband Evan have long dreamed of becoming parents—but when a pregnancy test shows positive, Lia questions whether she wants the child and keeps her pregnancy a secret. As she’s holding new life inside, she intentionally surrounds herself with death by blackmailing her way into a job at a forensic anthropology center endearingly called The Body Farm. At The Farm, monsters emerge from within Lia—the desire to kill—and she begins daydreaming about murder. Because fantasizing never hurt anyone. Or so she thinks. Then a body donation to The Farm turns out to be someone she’s imagined killing, and reality and fantasy begin to blur. As people around her begin to die, Lia loses trust in her loved ones and herself . . . and ultimately must put her monsters to bed. Author: Suzanne Junered (cohort leader) Publication Date: September 1, 2026 -
The Red Barn, a pole dancing venue on the outskirts of Easton, Pennsylvania, is co-owned by Eddie and Victoria. Like the other dancers—GB, who is courageous and nonbinary; Marie, who struggles with depression; Violet, who is manifesting her dream; and Celeste, who grapples with religion and body image—Eddie and Victoria have been shaped by their mothers’ secrets and fears. These mothers suffered from domestic abuse, mental illness, and addiction, yet their only concern was to create a safe, stable home life for their children. Spanning the 1940s through the 1980s, these fourteen interconnected stories about these mothers and their children explore how intergenerational conflicts are confronted and resolved. Each story features the emotional and embodied journey of one character, and together they form a larger narrative about how individual identity and community intersect in the aftermath of trauma and betrayal. Ultimately, the Red Barn family realizes that risk-taking is not only possible but necessary, and that obstacles, no matter how heavy, don’t have to bury us. Struggle is part of life, but it doesn’t define us. What matters is trusting our own organic process of becoming who we truly are, at any age. Author: Susan L. Katz Publication Date: October 13, 2026 -
Three estranged sisters—Helen, Anna, and Penn Lockshire—are bound by the shimmering but fragile legacy of their family’s freshwater pearl farm in rural Tennessee. When the business that once made them famous faces collapse, the sisters are pulled back into each other’s lives and forced to reckon with old betrayals, unspoken resentments, and the complicated truth of their inheritance. Soon, what began as a fight for survival becomes a reckoning with the myths that shaped them and the secrets buried in the family’s past. From the discovery of a rare pearl in 1981 to the struggles of a failing farm in 2008, the Lockshire sisters must navigate love, loss, ambition, and forgiveness to decide whether their heritage is a blessing to preserve—or a burden to escape. Rich with emotional depth and anchored by the pearl’s enduring symbolism—a thing of beauty born from irritation—this sweeping story of family, identity, and resilience will captivate readers of Celeste Ng and Claire Lombardo. Author: Stacey Gordon Publication Date: November 3, 2026 -
In a world shaped by gods, kings, and ancient grudges, Ariadne finds herself at the heart of a legacy soaked in both glory and grief. As the daughter of Pasiphae, a powerful sorceress, and King Minos of Crete, she has grown up within palace walls, shadowed by the secrets of the Labyrinth and the terrible fate of the Minotaur. When her beloved brother Androgeus is lost to Athenian treachery, tensions between two great powers threaten to erupt into war. Ariadne is expected to uphold her father’s thirst for vengeance, but her heart begins to pull her in a different direction. Through encounters with goddesses, and as a result of her own awakening resolve, she dares to imagine a world where the past does not dictate the future. This is not the story of a girl betrayed and abandoned. This is the story of a young woman who dares to act—who reaches for hope in a world ruled by fear. Through love, loss, and courageous defiance, Ariadne learns to turn the Labyrinth’s twisted path into a way forward. Epic yet intimate, mythic yet urgently modern, this Greek tale reimagines the power of one voice to challenge a fate written in stone. Author: Sophia Kouidou-Giles Publication Date: November 10, 2026 -
What is the half-life of O’Toole family secrets? In 2013, Saige is stuck living with her Granny Rosamond in her beige wasteland of a hometown. Desperate for a diagnosis and cure for her mysterious ailments, she uncovers more than she bargained for—a hot rock that shouldn’t exist and a past Rosamond refuses to explain. That past takes place in the 1940s, when 50,000 people move to an eastern Washington town that doesn’t exist to build something they can’t name. Rosamond is one of them, eager to do her bit for the war effort—and find a husband. When she falls for a charming engineer, she envisions a perfect life. But as the hot war turns cold and her ever-expanding family becomes increasingly troubled, she discovers this nuclear town is no utopia, and she must decide whether to cling to the destructive facade of domestic bliss or face the truth that could save them all. When Rosamond’s past collides with Saige’s search for healing, half-buried secrets—from the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere to the wounds within their own family—can no longer be ignored. Can Saige discover the truth and heal herself without destroying her grandmother’s life? Author: Shannon St. Hilaire Publication Date: October 6, 2026 -
When Sarina Jain lost her father, she turned grief into fuel for a lifelong mission: to celebrate her Indian heritage and help others live longer, healthier lives. Born and raised in the United States, Sarina carved a unique path as the first woman to bring Indian dance fitness—Masala Bhangra—to the global stage. In All You Need Is Balle Balle she shares, with honesty and humor, how along the way she transformed heartbreak into purpose, broke barriers as an Indian American woman entrepreneur, and inspired people of all ages and backgrounds to connect through culture and movement. From navigating family loss to building a worldwide community, Sarina’s story reminds us that showing up is half the battle, letting go is the secret, and dancing—even in the hardest moments—can be healing. An inspiring memoir of resilience, wellness, and cultural identity, All You Need Is Balle Balle is a heartfelt invitation to live with energy, embrace your roots, and keep moving—no matter what life brings. Author: Sarina Jain Publication Date: October 13, 2026 -
When newly divorced fifty-year-old Grace Callahan spies a fixer-upper historic home for sale in Ojai, California, she decides to fly out from the Midwest to take a look. Grace immediately falls in love, with both the ramshackle old adobe and the little town. It’s just the change she’s been looking for—but once she moves in, she wonders if she’s bitten off more than she can chew. The house needs a lot of work, as do the orchards and the ranch animals. Luckily, support soon arrives: Emilio, a handsome contractor, helps restore the house; Juan and Carlos gently bring the orchards back to life; Rosa does housekeeping and becomes a friend; and Jane Anne offers to care for the animals, just as she did for the previous owner. When Emilio asks Grace on a date, she’s excited. But as much as she enjoys his company, the spark isn’t there—and between the steep learning curve at the ranch, her new job, and her friendship with Jane Anne, there isn’t much time for romance in her life anyway. But as her relationship with Jane Anne grows closer and deeper, Grace wonders if there might be room in her life for love after all. Author: Sara Elliott Publication Date: September 15, 2026 -
In a fine Brooklyn brownstone in the mid–20th century, Ruth and her brothers are raised by their Eastern-European Jewish father, along with a spinster aunt and bachelor uncle. Her father, a widower and respected physician, is proud to have risen from Ellis Island newcomer to a prominent figure within his close-knit immigrant community. But family tensions mount: Ruth’s younger brother rebels against everything their father represents, while her older brother is killed in action in World War II. Not long after, the sudden deaths of her father, aunt, and uncle leave Ruth to inherit a legacy she cannot ignore. With half-remembered childhood moments, hidden documents, and clues appearing around every corner, she’s compelled to embark on a journey to piece together the truth about her mother’s life and death. Along the way, Ruth struggles to imagine her future as she works to hold her fracturing life together—including her relationship with her betrothed, Shimon—but discovers that her own sense of purpose and a sincere life partner can come from reckoning with what it truly means to love. Author: Sally F. Cutler Publication Date: December 15, 2026 -
At the age of ten, Rosanne Annoni had a vision of Christ calling her to become a nun—only to have her devout Catholic mother respond to this news with a slap across the face. Traversing the time between that childhood vision and a solitary winter in Pema Chodron’s cabin at Gampo Abbey, Unfolding the Heart weaves together raw personal storytelling, spiritual discovery, and psychological insight. Through the highs of spiritual clarity and the depths of trauma, she searches relentlessly for her true path—and finds it not in renunciation, but in presence. Spanning decades of grief, motherhood, cancer, and healing, this memoir explores the messy beauty of a life lived with courageous self-inquiry. Through the Diamond Approach, Buddhist practice, and deep personal relationships, Rosanne unearths wisdom from adversity and uncovers grace in the ordinary. For spiritual seekers, healing professionals, or anyone navigating loss, midlife change, or a desire for inner truth, Unfolding the Heart is a cathartic, hopeful story of letting go, leaning in, and discovering that spiritual path isn’t somewhere far away—it’s right here, within. Author: Rosanne Annoni Publication Date: September 29, 2026 -
Eager to leave her life as a foster child behind, Robin Rosenbluth travels to a remote village in northern Kenya called Songa in 1973. As a white college student, she arrives in a desert-like environment to teach elementary school to Samburu and Rendille children. While befriending the residents, she learns to live in a mud hut, survive without modern conveniences, skin a cow, and kill a chicken for dinner. Robin weaves stories about the challenges she faced growing up—her mother’s early death, her father’s abandonment, and her years in foster care—with her account of her time in Songa. As the only Jewish resident in a village influenced by Christian missionaries, she strives to fit in: adapting to the intense heat, endless insects, and close encounters with wild animals. Over time, she develops close friendships with a local teacher and a woman who becomes her surrogate mother, participates in local customs, and makes a place for herself in Songa. Offering vivid insight into why a love-starved nineteen-year-old from New York City would choose to relocate to the other side of the world, Living with Strangers is a poignant chronicle of one young woman’s search for a place to belong. Author: Robin Rosenbluth Publication Date: October 27, 2026 -
Rachel Singer is a responsible high school senior—one of the last people you’d expect to get pregnant. But when she does at nineteen, she makes the bold choice to keep the baby. With determination and creativity, she launches a business of her own that gives her the means to support herself and her daughter, Lila. Rachel is reluctant to tell Lila’s biological father about their daughter’s existence. Cameron Fielding is a gifted but troubled twenty-five-year-old musician, haunted by the tragic death of his younger sister, consumed by addiction, and in no shape to be a parent. As he spirals through grief, anger, and self-destruction and struggles to find redemption, it’s hard to believe he will ever become the man Rachel and Lila deserve. Spanning the years from Lila’s birth to her freshman year of college, I’ll Take Maybe traces the lives of Rachel and Cameron—their loves, losses, growth, and failures—and the complicated connection between them that never clarifies or fully fades. Heartfelt and honest, this is a story about second chances, enduring love, and the strength of friendship and family in the face of life’s unexpected challenges. Author: Risa Elliott Publication Date: December 8, 2026 -
Twenty-eight-year-old beauty Emerson Blue is the second most followed celebrity on social media. A self-proclaimed “living piece of art” who rose to fame as a reality star and then parlayed her celebrity into a megabucks career as an influencer, she seems to have everything. Forty-eight-year-old Grammy winner Renn Walker is a fallen country music star. Years ago, he was canceled following allegations of sexual misconduct, and he has lived in seclusion ever since. Once a beloved figure, he seems to have lost it all. When Emerson and Renn meet, sparks fly. Against all odds, a star obsessed with popularity and a recluse shunned by the world fall in love. Everyone in the public and media has an opinion and thinks they know Emerson and Renn. But in a world dominated by social media—a world that blurs the lines between what’s public and private, what’s real and what’s illusion—do we ever really know anyone? Author: Patricia Leavy Publication Date: September 22, 2026 -
When Nicole LoBiondo set out to climb the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on every continent—she never imagined that her hardest climb would be the one waiting at home. As Nicole pushes through extreme expeditions—from Antarctica’s frozen plateau to the thin air of Everest—she returns home between climbs to care for her mother through a devastating illness. These parallel journeys reveal a story of grit, love, and the emotional cost of choosing strength when life demands everything at once. With clear-eyed honesty and vivid, cinematic detail, LoBiondo captures the reality of high-altitude mountaineering, the toll of long-term caregiving, and the universal struggle to survive what breaks us. Ultimately, she discovers that endurance is not just the ability to keep going up a mountain but also the courage to face loss, reshape identity, and rise again. A gripping blend of adventure story and intimate family memoir, Where the Air Grows Thin is a powerful story of adventure, caregiving, ALS, and the journey of a daughter fighting to hold on to her mother while learning how to let go. Author: Nicole LoBiondo Publication Date: October 13, 2026 -
When a crow swoops down on a smoky August afternoon and starts speaking with her, mythology professor Catherine Moss assumes someone is playing a joke. Stuck in the anger stage of grief ever since the disappearance of her daughter, Sierra, Catherine does not tolerate tricksters easily. But she does suffer from face blindness, which renders her unable to recognize even familiar people. Crows excel in facial recognition. Soon this crow—whom Catherine dubs Veronica—is serving as her support animal, perching on her shoulder to whisper the names of students and colleagues in her ear. She also introduces Catherine to her other human friend, an unhoused young artist named Mari. Together, the two lead Catherine to confront her deepest fear: not that Sierra is dead, but that her daughter may one day return radically changed and emotionally damaged. Set amid the yellowed skies and swirling ash of a California city during fire season, Catherine Over Water addresses the near-unbearable task of dwelling in limbo. Author: Nancy Schoellkopf Publication Date: September 15, 2026 -
When Nancy’s young paratrooper son returns home from Iraq, he brings a dusty bag of disposable cameras in his duffel. No one knows that a few months later, he will die alongside his combat buddy. Consumed by this shattering loss, Nancy begins a quest to understand what caused her son’s death. This riveting tale unveils powerful premonitions, stark truths, and dark secrets about the pull and presence of war in one family. Nancy’s firsthand account takes the blinders off, sharing the ravages of past wars—in Iraq, Vietnam, Burma, France, and beyond—and the poison their shadowy presence has spread through generations of her family. Rooted in America’s heartland, Nancy struggles to find answers about what happened to her son, even as she plumbs the anguish and complex mystery of how to choose life after unfathomable loss. The hope and wisdom embedded in this story—of one soldier, one mother, one family—moves beyond the obvious to the hidden devastation and legacy burden of war. In bringing light to war’s enduring aftermath, this stark yet ultimately uplifting memoir presents a surprising alchemy of healing, and offers a clarion call to wage peace. Author: Nancy B. Ronquillo Publication Date: October 20, 2026 -
When Marcy learns her beloved forty-five-year-old son, Michael, has died, she refuses to believe it. He was her only child. Later, she blames herself because she didn’t recognize the signs of his illness. She has disturbing dreams about not saving him and spirals through the various stages of grief as she waits months for the coroner to render a cause. But the fifth and final stage of grief, Marcy rejects. In her mind, if she accepts Michael’s death, he won’t ever return. The Porcelain Heart chronicles her raw emotional journey the year following Michael’s death. Marcy endures all the firsts without him—the holidays, his birthday. She joins grief groups, remembers frightening and fun times together, questions whether she was a good mother, and tries to distract herself with travel. She creates a golf scholarship in his name and commissions a stone people and pet fountain to be built on the path where he used to hike. Her journey culminates when she takes his ashes to his favorite place, a lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and finally begins moving toward acceptance. Author: Marcy Kelly Publication Date: October 27, 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 -
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 -
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 -
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
