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In 1998, fiery Eleanor “Els” Gordon thought the new century would find her married to her childhood soul mate, rejuvenating her family’s Scottish Highlands estate, and finally earning a managing director title at her investment bank. Maybe she’d even have the courage to discover why her estranged mother ran home to Italy thirty years earlier. But when 2000 dawns, Els is mourning her fiancé and her father, and she’s unemployed, broke, and sharing an antique plantation house on the Caribbean island of Nevis with the ghost—or “jumbie”—of Jack Griggs, the former owner. Jack’s jumbie wangles Els’s help in making amends for wrongs committed during his Casanova life, and in exchange he appoints himself Cupid on behalf of a charter captain who’s as skittish about vulnerability as Els. Meanwhile, Els lures her mother to Nevis in hopes of unraveling the family secrets—but will the shocking truth set her free, or pull her fragile new happiness apart? A moving and lyrical novel that transports readers from lush tropics to rugged highlands and back again, The Moon Always Rising explores how the power of forgiveness can help even the most damaged person fix whatever is broken. Author: Alice C. Early Publication Date: April 21, 2020 -
Hannah Webber fears she will never be a mother, but her prayers are finally answered when she gives birth to a son. In an era of high-stakes parenting, nurturing Sam’s intellect becomes Hannah’s life purpose. She invests body and soul into his development, much to the detriment of her marriage. She convinces herself, however, that Sam’s acceptance at age fourteen to the most prestigious of New England boarding schools overseen by an illustrious headmaster, justifies her choices. When he arrives at Dunning, Sam is glad to be out from under his mother’s close watch. And he enjoys his newfound freedom―until, late one night, he stumbles upon evidence of sexual misconduct at the school and is unable to shake the discovery. Both a coming-of-age novel and a portrait of an evolving mother-son relationship, The Nine is the story of young man who chooses to expose a corrupt world operating under its own set of rules―even if it means jeopardizing his mother’s hopes and dreams. Author: Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg Publication Date: August 20, 2019 -
2015 National Indie Excellence Award Winner in Autobiography 2015 Writer’s League of Texas Book Awards Winner in Non-Fiction “What makes this book particularly valuable is its vivid depiction of the abhorrent consequences of legalized segregation. What gives it heart is the window it opens to the personal journeys of mother and daughter. An important, riveting history lesson that, unfortunately, is still relevant today.” —Kirkus Reviews In 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester’s father but her mother—a stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South—who made the most enduring mark on the town. In The Outskirts of Hope, Ivester uses journals left by her mother, as well as writings of her own, to paint a vivid, moving, and inspiring portrait of her family’s experiences living and working in an all-black town during the height of the civil rights movement. Author: Jo Ivester Publication Date: April 7, 2015 -
The Parrot’s Perch opens in 2013, when Karen Keilt, age sixty, receives an invitation to testify at the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN in New York. The email sparks memories of her “previous life”—the one she has kept safely bottled up for more than thirty-seven years. Hopeful of helping to raise awareness about ongoing human rights violations in Brazil, she wants to testify, but she anguishes over reliving the horrific events of her youth. In the pages that follow, Keilt tells the story of her life in Brazil—from her exclusive, upper-class lifestyle and dreams of Olympic medals to her turmoil-filled youth. Full of hints of a dark oligarchy in Brazil, corruption, crime, and military interference, The Parrot’s Perch is a searing, sometimes shocking true tale of suffering, struggle—and survival. Karen Keilt lived through the darkest days of Brazil’s military dictatorship. In her courageous and compelling memoir, Keilt narrates an emotionally honest reckoning of her desire to find true happiness. Forbidden by her wealthy family to even mention her imprisonment, torture, and rape, Keilt is forced to make a change that will affect the rest of her life. Seen through her testimony to the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN, readers become witnesses to both her vulnerability and her quiet strength. Author: Karen Keilt Publication Date: April 16, 2019 -
Based on a true story, this is the tale of Adélaïe Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris. With a beautiful rival who’s better connected and better trained than she is, Adélaïde faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, her rival goes from strength to strength, becoming Marie Antoinette’s official portraitist and gaining entrance to the elite Académie Royale at the same time as Adélaïde. When at last Adélaïde earns her own royal appointment and receives a massive commission from a member of the royal family, the timing couldn’t be worse: it’s 1789, and with the fall of the Bastille her world is turned upside down by political chaos and revolution. With danger around every corner in her beloved Paris, she must find a way to adjust to the new order, carving out a life and a career all over again. Author: Susanne Dunlap Publication: August 30, 2022 -
In accordance with her Sicilian Catholic family’s unspoken code, Paolina Milana learned at an early age to keep her secrets locked away where no one could find them. Nobody outside the family needed to know about the voices her Mamma battled in her head; or about how Paolina forged her birth certificate at thirteen so she could get a job at The Donut Shop; or about the police officer twenty-six years her senior whose promise to her Papà to “keep an eye on her” quickly translated into something sinister. And perhaps that’s why no one saw it coming when—on the eve of her sweet sixteen, pushed to edge—Paolina attempted to take her own mother’s life. Raw and compelling, The S-Word is the true story of a girl who nearly suffocates in the silence she was taught to value above all else—until she finally finds the strength to break free of the secrets binding her and save herself. Author: Paolina Milana Publication Date: May 5, 2015 -
Mother was an emotionally damaged woman shrouded in depression and dark secrets. Father was a man plagued by alcoholism who lived in a state of drunken evasion for many years before jumping ship. Kathleen was born into this family who masqueraded as ordinary and merged with a lineage and community plagued by toxic male aggression, submissive women, wannabe Mafia brutes, charlatan holy men and women, and lurid and criminal goings–on, all made possible by cheek–turners, complicit and fearful enablers, and the ever–present overarching code of silence. The Seller of Secrets tells a story of the admission of long-held secrets of trauma, leading to a poignant heroine’s journey to seek deep healing through truth, nature, various forms of energy medicine, and a longing to rediscover the authentic self. After a shocking deathbed confession is revealed, the healing path merges with an investigation into a shadowy past where the puzzle of long-hidden family secrets is painstakingly assembled. Kathleen recognizes how adverse childhood experiences shape a fractured life with limitations and how the importance of acknowledging the truth and freeing oneself from fear and the muteness of shame is the key to true freedom. Author: Kathleen Rose Morgan Publication Date: June 11, 2024 -
When Alicia Rodriguez, a successful entrepreneur recovering from divorce and loss, accepts an invitation to Ecuador to help a friend who is studying with a shaman, she has no idea how profoundly the decision will change her life’s course.
In Ecuador Alicia meets Napo, a powerful shaman, and they begin an extraordinary relationship that spans two continents and eight years. As their connection deepens, Alicia learns the principles of shamanism and witnesses Napo’s remarkable healing abilities. Confronted with the illusion of her life in the United States, she decides to move to Ecuador to be with him, and they make plans to build a healing center together on the coast. Within a short time, however, she realizes that she has surrendered her power and agency to Napo, who now wields it as a weapon against her. After years of inner struggle, Alicia finally finds the courage to leave Ecuador and moves to Portugal, where she finds peace . . . until an unexpected phone call rekindles old memories.
An extraordinary memoir steeped in spirituality, shamanism, and metaphysics, The Shaman’s Wife is the story of a woman who, through a daring journey of self-discovery, reclaims and embraces her feminine wisdom—and realizes that love is the answer to her lifelong spiritual quest.
Author: Alicia Rodriguez Publication date: September 10, 2024 -
Now a USA TODAY BEST-SELLER, The Sound of Wings is a masterfully crafted tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and the risks we take in the pursuit of justice. Seventy-year-old Goldie Sparrows faces declining finances, questionable health, and a late husband who torments her from the beyond. She seeks refuge in her butterfly garden, which is filled with voices and memories from long ago. Jocelyn Anderson is a struggling writer who finds escape from her custody battle in the journal of her late mother-in-law. As she gets pulled through the pages of time, Jocelyn discovers her own husband has a hidden history she knows nothing about. Is this secret now Jocelyn’s to keep? Krystal Axelrod is living a life she never dreamed she could have. And yet the demons of a dysfunctional childhood and mean girl culture from her cheerleading days cast their shadow over her ability to feel whole, capable, and worthy. Does Goldie hold the key to Krystal’s path to freedom? Publication Date: May 4, 2021 Author: Suzanne Simonetti -
"Maureen reminds us to pay attention and follow the signs and signals of the Universe that lead us to the life of our dreams. To remember, even in the midst of the depths of despair, that endings are always beginnings, that we are writing our own stories in collaboration with the Divine Creator that lives within us, to never give up when the chips are down, because the Goddess will burn down our limited expectations and deliver something bigger, badder, and bolder than we could ever dream of ourselves." —Cathy Richardson, lead singer Jefferson Starship This story begins with an ending: the day Maureen Muldoon realized the devastating fact that her husband was having an affair—and leaving her for Miss Universe. Miss freaking Universe! How does this even happen? An intimate examination of Muldoon’s unraveling in the face of this betrayal, A Spiritual Vixen’s Guide to An Unapologetic Life takes a fresh, funny and fearless look at loss, denial, anger, grace, and liberation. Muldoon reveals the strength that comes from facing one’s fears, the humor that arrives in the darkest hours, and the miracles that happen when you least expect them in this grand tapestry of tales from the dark side. Ultimately, with wit and wisdom, she walks herself out of hell in a pair of sexy stilettos and manages to do what the all the king’s horse and all the king’s men could not: she puts herself back together. And in doing so, she comes to find more beauty and strength in the fractured places than anyone would have ever imagined. Author: Maureen Muldoon Publication Date: November 20, 2018 -
Following the unexpected death of her alcoholic mother, and worn down by the unceasing taunts of “bastard” from her hostile and mentally unstable stepfather, plucky sixteen-year-old Terry Sue sets out to find her biological father—believing this man, whom she has never met, could change her life for the better. But before she can find him, she must identify him, and the unfamiliar names on her birth certificate perplex her. She comes to realize that tenacity must run in her family, for as determined as she is to find her father, he appears equally determined to remain hidden. In The Strongbox, Terry Sue offers readers a forthright and inspirational account of her challenges, as well as her against-all-odds successes. This decades-long personal journey reads like a detective novel, full of setbacks, false leads, jaw-dropping discoveries, and heartening triumphs. The narrative’s twists and turns also pull back the curtain on many of today’s inconvenient truths: child abandonment, multigenerational alcoholism, sexism, economic inequality, domestic violence, mental illness, and illiteracy. Undaunted by the many blind alleys she encounters, Terry Sue forges on in her hunt for the loving care and emotional support she never received from her parents, and she ultimately finds it—but it arrives in forms she never expected. Author: Terry Sue Harms Publication Date: October 27, 2020 -
Foreward Reviews Indie Fab Finalist in Historical Fiction USA Book Reviews Best Books of the Year Finalist Nominated by the A.L.A. for The Sophie Brody Award in Fiction Early in The Sweetness, an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their ghetto. “Something sour to remind me of the sweetness,” she tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge. Brooklyn-born Mira Kane is the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer of women’s knitwear in New York. Her cousin, eight-year-old Rosha Kaninsky, is the lone survivor of a family in Vilna exterminated by the invading Nazis. But unbeknownst to her American relatives, Rosha did not perish. Desperate to save his only child during a round-up of their ghetto, her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who then hides her in a root cellar─putting her own family at risk. The headstrong and talented Mira, who dreams of escaping Brooklyn for a career as a fashion designer, finds her ambitions abruptly thwarted when, traumatized at the fate of his European relatives, her father becomes intent on safeguarding his loved ones from threats of a brutal world, and all the family must challenge his unuttered but injurious survivor guilt. Though the American Kanes endure the experience of the Jews who got out, they reveal how even in the safety of our lives, we are profoundly affected by the dire circumstances of others. Author: Sande Boritz Berger Publication Date: September 23, 2014 -
When her charismatic mentor, Ernesto, publicly chooses her as his professional partner, all indications are that Vera’s bodywork career is about to ignite. There is just one glitch—no, make that two. Vera—single mother of savvy, smart teenage India and her scruffy mutt, Francisco—is fucking Ernesto. As for her new promotion . . . Ernesto took it from his wife, Jean, in order to give it to her. As Vera becomes increasingly embroiled in Ernesto and Jean’s dark shenanigans, she quickly realizes that what seemed like an exciting opportunity is more like a deal with the Devil. Confronted with the consequences of her own yearning for male validation, it takes India, a glamorous and aristocratic client named Grace, and the mysterious goddess White Tara, Tibetan Goddess of compassion, to teach Vera the virtues of a sustainable path to self-authority. A fast-paced, humorous tale, The T Room is sure to prove irresistible to every adventurous woman familiar with that Saturday-morning-bookstore trajectory that starts with Self-Help, diverts into Romance, and lands heartfirst in Spirituality. Author: Victoria Lilienthal Pub Date: July 19, 2022 -
A young, determined woman figures out life and love while staying true to herself in this whip-smart and genuinely witty debut. Twenty-eight-year-old Hannah Spencer wants nothing more than to change everything about her life. After ten years of living in cities, Nathan Wild has just moved back home to Vermont and doesn’t want to change anything about his. Recently laid off from her depressing job in Boston and ready for a challenge, Hannah heads to Vermont for the summer to take care of her sister’s kids and do some serious soul searching. There, against the stunning landscape of the Green Mountains, she embarks on an ambitious project: building a treehouse for her niece and nephew. As she hammers away, she formulates a plan to jump-start her life with a new job out West. But will Nathan-next-door complicate her desire to change course? A witty, romantic, and inspiring story of a young woman taking control and making tough choices about love and work to build the life she wants, The Treehouse on Dog River Road will have you rooting for Hannah every step of the way. Author: Catherine Drake Pub Date: May 10th, 2022 -
2017 IPPY Awards: Best First Book/Fiction, Silver ". . . a masterpiece. . . . Incandescent, pitch-perfect, and destined for greatness." ―Library Journal, starred review The Velveteen Daughter reveals for the first time the true story of two remarkable women: Margery Williams Bianco, the author of one of the most beloved children’s books of all time—The Velveteen Rabbit—and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother’s. But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela’s dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft is her mother. The glamorous art world of Europe and New York in the early 20th century and a supporting cast of luminaries —Eugene O’Neill and his wife Agnes (Margery’s niece), Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Richard Hughes, author of A High Wind in Jamaica—provide a vivid backdrop to the Biancos’ story. From the opening pages, the novel will captivate readers with its multifaceted and illuminating observations on art, family, and the consequences of genius touched by madness. Author: Laurel Davis Huber Publication Date: July 27, 2017 -
As Josie Belle Gore, daughter of a Louisiana train engineer and Texas seamstress, journeys with her itinerant family through the deserts of the boom-and-bust American West and revolutionary Mexico, she learns that in her life, two things are constant: water is precious, and her role in her family is to save it. When unforeseeable events force the separation of her family, Josie begins an odyssey that takes her from New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto to Bisbee, Tucson, Los Angeles, and finally post-WWI San Francisco—experiencing betrayal, pandemic, and survivor’s guilt, as well as the compassion and generosity of friends and strangers, along the way. Once she lands in San Francisco, like a river meeting the sea, Josie has nowhere else to run—and she realizes that she must make peace with the past and good on her promise to the family she loves. Inspired by the author’s family lore, The Ways of Water is a lyrical tale of loss, hope, and forgiveness set in the rugged beauty of the turn-of-the-century Southwest that, like Josie, is growing up in fits and starts. Author: Teresa H. Janssen Pub Date: November 7, 2023 -
2016 International Book Award Finalist in Fiction: Historical Nettie has spent every summer of her life in the Southern Wiregrass town of Crystal Springs, Alabama. This year, she hopes the small town’s relaxed pace will give her a break from the unrelenting physical and emotional changes of puberty. But a chance encounter with Mitchell, a seductively handsome yet secretive young man, turns Nettie’s summer plans and her heart upside down. As their relationship grows, Nettie realizes Mitchell is harboring a dark and dangerous secret—one that, when revealed, rocks the core of the sleepy little town and has Nettie and those she loves running for their lives. Author: Pam Webber Publication Date: August 4, 2015 -
In May of 1976, twenty-four-year-old Carol Menaker was impaneled with eleven others on a jury in the trial of Freddy Burton, a young Black prison inmate charged with the grisly murders of two white wardens inside Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison. After being sequestered for twenty-one days, the jury voted to convict Mr. Burton, who was then sentenced to life in prison without parole. For more than forty years, Menaker did what she could to put the intensely emotional experience of the sequestration and trial behind her, rarely speaking of it to others and avoiding jury service when at all possible. But the arrival of a jury summons at her home in Northern California in 2017 set her on a path to unravel the painful experience of sequestration and finally ask the question: What ever happened to Freddy Burton—and is it possible that my youth and white privilege were what led me to convict him of murder? The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done is Menaker’s inspirational account of journeying back in time to uncover the personal bias that may have led her to judge someone whose shoes she never could have walked in. Pub Date: April 11, 2023 Author: Carol Menaker -
AWARDS: Bookclub Favorite Winner of New Adult Fiction—Beverly Hills Book Awards Winner of the SILVER Medal for Best Fiction in Drama from Readers' Favorite Finalist USA Best Books Awards in Literary Fiction and in New Fiction “Under its skin, it is a lively, accessible meditation on redemption and the transformative value of good intention and deed.” ―Rebecca Coffey, author of Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story “An outstanding book that is not only deeply honest, heartbreaking, and hopeful, but also brilliant, poignant, and original. It captures what is at the heart of all of us and showcases that life is what we make it. Brilliant, just brilliant! 5 stars.” ―Emily Lewis, Mrs. Mommy Booknerd’s Book Reviews Inspired by a true story about mothers, daughters, and impossible choices—Jules Foster, a child psychologist, upon hearing news of her estranged, narcissistic mother’s terminal diagnosis, chooses to care for her mother over her own daughter, only to find out she has been betrayed all along. Things Unsaid asks us to consider what children owe their aging parents and siblings. Jules Foster is summoned to the local police station to retrieve her elderly parents, after her father has sideswiped a parked automobile. Her parents now rely heavily on her financial support, and Jules finds herself sacrificing her daughter Zoe's dreams for going to college in order to continue bankrolling them. Her husband, Mike, is forced to take sides. Joanne, her divorced younger sister, and Andrew, her brother, refuse to send their parents so much as a Christmas present. Now that their parents are incapable of caring for themselves, Jules, Andrew, and Joanne must decide where to draw the line between obligation and their own families. Throughout Things Unsaid, Jules, Zoe, and Andrew are forced repeatedly to evaluate their personal priorities and avoid repeated misfirings of the heart. As they make impossible choices, they pull back the curtain to reveal deeply buried family secrets. A powerful and courageous tale of family dysfunction and senior citizens, this bold and poignant debut novel presents deep insights into the messy and inevitably complicated world of family relationships, and shows how one woman is able to survive with her sanity and spirit intact. Author: Diana Y. Paul Publication Date: October 13, 2015 -
International Excellence Body, Mind, Spirit Book Awards Winner: Self-help 2017 IPPY Silver Medal Winner in Self-Help “This Way Up is a bold new path to personal growth and one that will help any woman who caretakes everyone but herself, whether at work or at home. Patti Clark's approach is wholly unique and the meditations, visualizations, questions, and journal prompts will gently lead you back to yourself.” —Brenda Knight, author of Be a Good in the WorlBe a Good in the World Women spend so much of life nurturing and giving to others that when they find themselves alone—because of an empty nest, the end of a marriage, or the death of a partner—they often struggle with feeling purposeless. This Way Up: Seven Tools for Unleashing Your Creative Self and Transforming Your Life provides a step-by-step way out of this sense of loss and into a life filled with enthusiasm, creativity, and joy. This story of healing centers on the essential wisdom of introspection and on the importance of following one’s dreams. Join the protagonist, Katya, a widow whose two sons have recently left home, as she learns seven tools for uncovering her best self: visualization, heart-centered goal setting, positive focus, meditation on love; meditation on forgiveness, gratitude, and taking action on inspiration. Katya’s experience highlights these insights in an easily digestible, highly relatable format that readers can systematically apply to their own circumstances as they work through This Way Up’s twelve weeks’ worth of day-by-day journaling exercises, thought-provoking questions, and reader support. For any woman who yearns to lead a fuller life but doesn’t know how to begin, this book is an ideal starting point. Author: Patti Clark Publication Date: April 26, 2016 -
It’s the summer of 2017 in Wellington Beach, California, a suburban coastal town increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices—divisions that change the lives of five neighbors. Longtime resident and real estate agent Lisa Kensington juggles her job, her shopaholic husband, a mother-in-law who knows how to push her buttons, and teenage children with ideas of their own, all while trying to hold on to her own dreams. Her neighbor Ray Gorman is a haunted Vietnam vet who is also caring for his aging mother. Keith Nelson, an ex-con, lives in his car, parked around the corner from Ray, near his parents’ house. Keith’s got a job, a grandmother he loves, and a gym routine that almost helps him manage his violent tendencies. Down the street from Ray, sixteen-year-old Josh Kowalski is working through the shock of his father’s abandonment by slamming on a drum set. He loves Led Zeppelin and setting things on fire and is fascinated with his friend’s sister. New neighbor Jeannette Larsen, an aerobics teacher numbed by horrific tragedy, turns away from her husband—and toward sex with strangers. In the end, these characters discover that despite their differences, they are more connected than any of them could have imagined. Author: Mary Camarillo Pub Date: October 10, 2023 -
Finalist, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards 2017 IPPY Awards: Contemporary Fiction, Gold Medal Readers' Favorite: Gold Medal Award for Women's Fiction Andrew Carnegie funded fifty-nine public libraries in Kansas in the early 20th century—but it was frontier women who organized waffle suppers, minstrel shows, and women’s baseball games to buy books to fill them. Now, a century later, Angelina returns to her father’s hometown of New Hope to complete her dissertation on the Carnegie libraries, just as Traci and Gayle arrive in town—Traci as an artist-in-residence at the renovated Carnegie Arts Center and Gayle as a refugee whose neighboring town, Prairie Hill, has just been destroyed by a tornado. The discovery of an old journal inspires the women to create a library and arts center as the first act of rebuilding Prairie Hill after the tornado. As they work together to raise money for the center, Traci reveals her enormous heart, Angelina discovers that problem-solving is more valuable than her PhD, and Gayle demonstrates that courage is not about waiting out a storm but building a future. Full of Kansas history—from pioneer homesteaders to Carrie Nation to orphan trains—To the Stars through Difficulties is a contemporary story of women changing their world, and finding their own voices, powers, and self-esteem in the process. Author: Romalyn Tilghman Publication Date: April 4, 2017 -
In 2018, Kathy Elkind and her husband decided to take a grown-up “gap year” in Europe and walk the 1,400-mile Grande Randonnée Cinq (GR5) across The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. At fifty-seven, Kathy has chosen comfort over hardship: Unlike the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Coast Trail, the GR5 winds from village to village instead of campsite to campsite. She and Jim get to indulge in warm beds and delicious regional food every night and croissants in the mornings. The GR5 is not all comfort. Walking day after day for ninety-eight days bring sickness, accommodation struggles, language barriers, and storm-shrouded mountains in the Alps. Meanwhile, Kathy finds herself reflecting on difficult topics—primarily, her struggles with dyslexia, overeating, and shame. But she also finds that the walking becomes a moving meditation and the beauty of the landscape heals; she begins to discover her own wise strength; and as the days unfold, she comes to the gratifying realization that a long marriage is like a long trail: there are ups and downs and it takes hard work to keep going, but the beauty along the way is staggering. Written with raw honesty and compassion, and rich with dazzling scenery, To Walk It Is To See It will inspire you to lace up your walking shoes and discover your own path. Author: Kathy Elkind Pub Date: August 15, 2023 -
It’s 1939. On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie. Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. She plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is thrown off track. While sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death, which she now knows was a murder, and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war? Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right. Author: Shelley Blanton-Stroud Pub Date: June 28, 2022
