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On a blustery Maine day, thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Kuriloff found herself standing on a plot of land purchased with her former partner, holding a couple of wood stakes to mark off exactly where her new house would sit. No longer their land. No longer their dream. Now, just hers. Immersed in a world of blueprints, materials, contractors, and critters, Roberta confronted the major losses she’d suffered in her life—in particular the deaths of her mother and aunt from cancer and her separation from her father and brother during her placement in an orphanage—and to try to understand how those losses had shaped the woman, lawyer, and activist she’d become. As she cleared land, hammered nails, lifted beams, and shivered in her rented mobile home, the answers began to come to her. Roberta soon found love again, with a woman named Nancy . . . only to lose her abruptly just one year later in a car accident. Her grief over Nancy’s death, and the psychic and out-of-body events she experienced following that loss, led to an eight-year spiritual quest where she explored her Jewish roots, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and reincarnation. As she healed, new love beckoned with Bernice—and at long last Roberta found that intrinsic sense of self, that unshakable foundation of heart and soul, that home, that she’d been searching for all along. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Roberta S. Kuriloff -
Told alternately, by Colleen, an idealistic young white teacher; Frank, a black high school football player; and Evelyn, an experienced black teacher, Freedom Lessons is the story of how the lives of these three very different people intersect in a rural Louisiana town in 1969. Colleen enters into the culture of the rural Louisiana town with little knowledge of the customs and practices. She is compelled to take sides after the school is integrated―an overnight event for which the town’s residents are unprepared, and which leads to confusion and anxiety in the community―and her values are tested as she seeks to understand her black colleagues, particularly Evelyn. Why doesn’t she want to integrate the public schools? Frank, meanwhile, is determined to protect his mother and siblings after his father’s suspicious death―which means keeping a secret from everyone around him. Based on the author’s experience teaching in Louisiana in the late sixties, this heartfelt, unflinching novel about the unexpected effects of school integration during that time takes on the issues our nation currently faces regarding race, unity, and identity. Author: Eileen Harrison Sanchez Publication Date: November 12, 2019 -
In this accessible, straightforward book, seasoned author Betsy Graziani Fasbinder offers readers the why, what, and how of public speaking, along with exercises and resources to support ongoing learning. She provides inspiration and encouragement to help writers to overcome their fears of public speaking, but she doesn’t stop there; she also lays out the practical, nuts-and-bolts tools they need to select, deselect, and arrange the content of what to say when they’re on a podium, in an interview, or in casual conversations about their writing, and includes a model for handling challenging questions from interviewers and audience members with confidence and grace. Part practical how-to―full of usable tools and tips―and part author cheerleader and champion, From Page to Stage is the ultimate resource for writers who wish bring their storytelling skills to their speaking opportunities. Author: Betsy Graziani Fasbinder Publication Date: August 7, 2018 -
2016 International Book Award Finalist in Health: Death & Dying and Finalist in Memoir/Autobiography/Biography 2017 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist in Memoir “This tenderly rendered addition to the literature on hospice care deserves the widest possible audience.” —Kirkus Reviews Twenty-one people of different ages have one thing in common; they’re within six months of their deaths. They’ve endured the battle of the medical system as they sought cures for their illnesses, and are now settling in to die. Some reconcile, some don’t. Some are gracious, some not. As Nina Angela McKissock, a highly experienced hospice nurse, goes from home to home and within the residential hospice, she shares her journey of deep joy, humorous events, precious stories, and heartbreaking love. Free of religiosity, dogma, or fear, From Sun to Sun brings readers into McKissock’s world—and imparts the profound lessons she learns as she guides her beloved patients on their final journey. Author: Nina Angela McKissock Publication Date: August 4, 2015 -
Dizzy with grief after a shattering breakup, Kristen did what any sensible thirty-nine-year-old woman would do: she fled, abandoning her well-ordered life in metropolitan Boston and impulsively relocating to a college town in North Carolina to start anew with a freshly divorced southerner. Dismissing the neon signs that flashed Rebound Relationship, Kristen was charmed by the host of contrasts with her new beau. He loved hunting and country music, she loved yoga and NPR; he worried about nothing, she worried about everything. The luster of her new romance and small-town lifestyle soon—and predictably—faded, but by then a pregnancy test stick had lit up. As Kristen’s belly grew, so did her concern about the bond with her partner—and so did a fierce love for her unborn child. Ready or not, she was about to become a mother. And then, tragedy struck. Poignant and insightful, From the Lake House explores the echoes of rash decisions and ill-fated relationships, the barren and disorienting days an aching mother faces without her baby, and the mysterious healing that can take root while rebuilding a life gutted from loss. Author: Kristen Rademacher Publication Date: July 21, 2020 -
2016 International Book Award Finalist in Travel: Guides & Essays 2016 IndieFab Finalist in Travel 2016 Readers’ Favorite Awards Gold Medal Winner in Non-Fiction: Travel In the 1960s and ’70s, thousands of baby boomers strapped packs to their backs and flocked to Europe, wandering the continent on missions of self-discovery. Many of these boomers still dream of “going back”—of once again cutting themselves free and revisiting the places they encountered in their youth, recapturing what was, and creating fresh memories along the way. Marianne Bohr and her husband, Joe, did just that. In Gap Year Girl, Bohr describes what it’s like to kiss your job good-bye, sell your worldly possessions, pack your bags, and take off on a quest for adventure. Page by page, she engagingly recounts the experiences, epiphanies, highs, lows, struggles, surprises, and lessons learned as she and Joe journey as independent travelers on a budget—through medieval villages and bustling European cities, unimaginable culinary pleasures, and the entertaining (and sometimes infuriating) characters encountered along the way. Touching on universal themes of escape, adventure, freedom, discovery, and life reimagined, Gap Year Girl is an exciting account of a couple’s experiences on an unconventional, past the-blush-of-youth journey. Author: Marianne Bohr Publication Date: September 1, 2015 -
Boston, 1984. Even in a world without cell phones, messages come through loud and clear if one is listening. When thirty-something Nora Forrest travels to Manhattan to see a Broadway play starring her idol, an aging Irish actor named Hugh Sheenan, she doesn’t know whether what happens in the theater that night should be credited to witchcraft, extrasensory perception, synchronicity, or simple accident—and she knows that many people would tell her nothing had happened at all. Told through the voices of four people, Gillyflower is a story about intersections and connections—real, imaginary, seized, and eluded. It’s a book about everyday magic, crystalline memory, and the details that flow through time and space like an electrified mist. It’s a detective story, a love story, and a coming-of-age story—for the never really young and for the almost old. Author: Diane Wald Publication Date: April 16, 2019 -
A bank internship in Japan’s booming 1981 economy is supposed to be twenty-three-year-old Dorothy Falwell’s ticket into a prestigious international MBA program. But the internship is unpaid―so, to make ends meet, she accepts an evening job as a hostess in a rundown suburban bar, a far cry from the sensuous woodblock prints she’s seen of old Tokyo’s “floating world.” Like her namesake, Dorothy hasn't planned on the detours she encounters in her own twisted version of Oz. Renamed Gina by her boss, she struggles with nightly indignities from customers and confusing advice from new friends. Then her internship crumbles and the suave but mysterious Mr. Tambuki offers help. How can she resist? With patience and the utmost respect for her opinions, Mr. Tambuki lures her into his exotic world of unorthodox Zen instruction, erotic art, and high-octane sex. Soon, bizarre sexual escapades with monks, salarymen, and gangsters begin to feel normal until one of her clients goes too far, and Dorothy realizes she’s in over her head. But can she find her way back from this point of no return? Author: Belle Brett Publication Date: September 25, 2018 -
2016 USA Best Book Awards: Literary Fiction, Finalist “[Meyers] weaves a strange pattern of beautifully detailed memories, tragic events, and science into an unforgettable tale of loss, longing, and the reality that one tries to escape in order to move on.” ―Booklist Charles Lang is a renowned scientist whose wife Julie and daughter Jess vanished mysteriously several years ago. Yet Charles remembers none of this, not even his own name. All that he has left of his identity are the accidental remnants scattered throughout the house, and the only clue Charles has regarding what happened to him is a thick cap of bandages wrapped around his head. As Charles starts to have memories of the past, memories that may or may not be his own, he realizes that only by uncovering the details of his former life will he have any hope of being reunited with Julie and Jess. A haunting tale of love and longing, of fate and free will, of the blurring lines between fiction and reality, Glass Shatters explores the dangers of trying to reinvent oneself. With the lyricism of Nicole Krauss, the exhilarating suspense of Kazuo Ishiguro, and the Gothic sensibility of Mary Shelley, Michelle Meyers’s debut novel showcases a daring new voice in the contemporary literary landscape. Author: Michelle Meyers Publication Date: April 12, 2017 -
Odile Atthalin was a young woman from a prominent, bourgeois family in Paris when she decided to leave home in search of meaning. All she knew was that she wanted to go East; but once she had separated from France and committed to creating a new life for herself, opportunities fell into place. After years of travels around the world, including a life-changing four years in an Indian ashram, Atthalin settled in Berkeley, CA, where she found all she needed: her first real home; a godson with special needs to nurture, to whom she became a devoted godmother; and a subculture of seekers, writers, guides, healers, artists, and spiritual creatives—a diverse tribe in which she could fit and finally felt she belonged. Author: Odile Atthalin Publication Date: June 20, 2017 -
Linda Olson and her husband, Dave Hodgens, were young doctors whose story had all the makings of a fairy tale. But then, while they were vacationing in Germany, a train hit their van, shattering their lives—and Linda’s body. When Linda saw Dave for the first time after losing her right arm and both of her legs, she told him she would understand if he left. His response: “I didn’t marry your arms or your legs. If you can do it, I can do it.” In order to protect their loved ones, they decided to hide the truth about what really happened on those train tracks, and they kept their secret for thirty-five years. As a triple amputee, Linda learned to walk with prostheses and change diapers and insert IVs with one hand. She finished her residency while pregnant and living on her own. And she and Dave went on to pursue their dream careers, raise two children, and travel the world. Inspiring and deeply moving, Gone asks readers to find not only courage but also laughter in the unexpected challenges we all face. The day of the accident, no one envied Linda and Dave. Today, many do. Author: Linda K. Olson Publication Date: October 27, 2020 -
“Every Philadelphian —make that anyone interested in democratic engagement and transparent governance—should read this book by a veteran Democratic Party committeeperson. A rigorous, completely absorbing case study of Philadelphia’s political structure, the book is both an insider’s guide and a primer on taking back the party. Frank in her assessments of the past and present, Bojar offers a seductive vision of a future party, transformed from the bottom up, and entreats readers to put down the book and make it happen.” —Belinda Davis, Professor of History, Rutgers University Drawing on the experiences of grassroots political activists from different socio- economic and ethnic backgrounds, Green Shoots of Democracy explores how self-identified progressives manage (or fail to manage) to work within a big city political machine. Although the book focuses on the work of progressives to foster democracy and transparency within the Philadelphia Democratic Party, lessons gleaned from their experiences are applicable beyond Philadelphia. Americans have long had a history of volunteerism; however, grassroots partisan politics is often not considered a worthy volunteer endeavor—not as worthy as, for example, working in a homeless shelter or a literacy center. Green Shoots of Democracy argues for a more democratic, transparent party structure—one that is sorely needed to counter the widespread perception that electoral politics is dirty business rather than an honorable civic project. Author: Karen Bojar Publication Date: August 2, 2016 -
“In Green-Light Your Book, Brooke Warner makes an argument for indie authorship that helps legitimize the field. Her voice is an important one in the conversation about what matters when it comes to modern-day publishing.” —Angela Bole, CEO and Executive Director of the Independent Book Publishing Association Green-Light Your Book is a straight-shooting guide to a changing industry. Written for aspiring authors, previously published authors, and independent publishers, it explains the ever-shifting publishing landscape and helps indie authors understand that they’re up against the status quo, and how to work within the system but also how to subvert the system in order to succeed. Green-Light Your Book seeks to equip authors and publishers with the language, knowledge, and skill sets they need to play big. Author:Brooke Warner Publication Date: June 14, 2016 -
In 1923, seventeen-year-old “Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus she begins a twenty-two-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God worshipped by millions for his abilities to destroy obstacles, bestow wishes, and avenge evils. Impressed by Esther’s fortitude and relentless determination, born of her deep—though unconscious—understanding of the meaning and purpose of love, Ganesha, with compassion, insight, and poetry, chooses to highlight her story because he recognizes it is all of everyone’s stories—for truth resides at the essence of its telling. Weaving Eastern beliefs and perspectives with Western realities and pragmatism, Guesthouse for Ganesha is a tale of love, loss, and spirit reclaimed. Author: Judith Teitelman Publication Date: May 7, 2019 -
As a horny little kid, Holly Lorka had no idea why God had put her in the wrong body and made her want to kiss girls. She had questions: Was she a monster? Would she ever be able to grow sideburns? And most importantly, where was her penis? The problem was, it was the 1970s, so there were no answers yet. Here, Lorka tells the story—by turns hilarious and poignant—of her romp through the first fifty years of her life searching for sex, love, acceptance, and answers to her questions. With a sharp wit, endearing innocence, and indelible sense of optimism, she struggles through the awkward years (spoiler: that’s all of them) and discovers that what she thought were mistakes are actually powerful tools to launch her into a magical—and ridiculous—life. Oh, and she discovers that she can buy a penis at the store, too. Author: Holly Lorka Publication Date: October 20, 2020 -
The American workplace has become toxic to mental, emotional, and physical health. A book for our complex and challenging times, Happier at Work offers a practical path for leaders and employees to shift a culture of fear and reactivity to one of communication and collaboration. Mindfulness and compassion come naturally to all of us, as does a fundamental goodness; in these pages, readers will discover how to access that true nature. Van Gils also explores the science behind practices that not only decrease stress, overwhelm, and chronic illness but also develop authentic, emotionally fit leaders and a compassionate workplace. Accessible and inspiring, Happier at Work is a guide to a transformed workplace―one of enhanced creativity, innovation, engagement, performance, and joy! Author: Gayle Van Gils Publication Date: June 30, 2017 -
Feeling crappy? Wanna be happier? Wanna up your game? Happy AF is your comprehensive roadmap for happiness. Drawing heavily from neuroscience, positive psychology, and behavioral science, the straightforward strategies and exercises in this how-to guide will teach you how to strengthen your happiness muscle and live up to your greatest potential. Happiness junky Beth Romero serves up a life-affirming parable laced with contextual how-tos—all backed by clinical research—in fresh, insightful, and accessible language you can relate to. Kinda like your best friend giving it to you straight (with love) over cocktails. In this book, you will discover: * the art of letting go * proven ways to jiu-jitsu your negative thoughts to transform your life * how goals, vision, purpose are the stepping-stones to greatness * the importance of gratitude and grace in your happiness journey * the scientific link between sleep, morning routines, diet, and exercise on your mental well-being * and much, much more! Happiness is a choice—and it’s within your reach. If you do the work. If you believe. Much like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, the power is always within you . . . just waiting for you to access it. So get ready to click your Manolos, Dr. Martens, or Adidas and find your happy place. Author: Beth Romero Pub Date: November 14, 2023 -
Abbie Rose Stone’s acquired wisdom runs deep, and so do her scars. She has successfully navigated the shoals of a long marriage, infertility, challenging children, and a career. Now it’s her turn to realize her dream: producing hard apple cider along the northern shores of Lake Michigan that she loves. She manages to resist new versions of the old pull of family dynamics that threaten to derail her plan―but nothing can protect her from the shock a lovely young stranger delivers when she exposes a long-held secret. In the wake of this revelation, Abbie must overcome circumstances that severely test her self-determination, her loyalties, and her understanding of what constitutes true family. Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon Publication Date: September 18, 2018 -
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot. An affair with an African American miner puts Ruby’s life and livelihood at risk, but she can’t let him go. Not until a trio of disparate characters—her dead husband’s sister, a vindictive shopkeeper, and the local mine owner she once swindled—threaten to ruin her does Ruby face the consequences of her choices; but as usual, she does what she needs to in order to provide for herself and her sons. Set against the breathtaking beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and bursting with Wild West imagery, history, suspense, and adventure, Hardland serves up a tough, fast-talking, shoot-from-the-hip heroine who goes to every length to survive and carve out a life for herself and her sons in one of the harshest places in the American West. Author: Ashley E. Sweeney Publication Date: September 13, 2022 -
Four young children caught between love and hate—hostages to the cruelty of revenge. A deceitful American father and a naïve decision by a Filipino mother transformed their lives forever. Valorie, Veronica, Vance, and Vincent’s perfect world turned into a nightmare one hot afternoon in 1959 in Cebu, Philippines. What was to be a quick lunch with their father turned into a flight to America, where four dreadfully long years of running from state to state, hiding, and vanishing into the night followed. Kidnapped from the only world they knew, confusion quickly set in. At nine, Valorie, the eldest, liked seeing their father after his absence for over a year. Vance, a timid six-year-old, went along with whatever Valorie did. Vincent, the baby at three, cried for his mother while clinging to Veronica for comfort. Veronica, eight, was the only one who was truly panicked by what was happening around them—and she recognized instantly that she and her siblings would have to stick together in order to survive. In that moment, her childhood ended and the warrior within her emerged. Moving from state to state and school to school, avoiding the law, looking over their shoulders at every turn, the four Slaughter children found themselves fighting not only the heartbreak of separation from their loving mother but also poverty, discrimination, and abuse. Their only weapons were their deep love for one another and an unwavering determination to survive the trials they faced—and find their way back to their mother. Author: Veronica Slaughter Publication Date: August 4, 2020 -
She didn’t see the hammer. For a fraction of a second JoAnne Jones saw a young black face, framed by a black hoodie, and then she descended into a place where she felt and saw nothing. Jones survived this sudden assault by a stranger, but it left her with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), fractured hands, and PTSD. Headstrong tells the story of how she learned to live with the daily challenges of TBI. It brings the reader into a life traumatized by violence and set in the context of a society full of violence and vocal, visible white supremacists. Woven throughout Jones’s account are the stories of how medical professionals, friends, family, and strangers became a foundation strong enough to hold her during the worst of times, and to give her the buoyancy to find a path toward hope. Author: JoAnne Silver Jones Publication Date: November 19, 2019 -
Wanting to understand how her path is tied to her mother tongue, Anne, a young, multiracial American woman, travels through China, the country of her mother’s birth. Along the way, she tries on different roles—seeker, teacher, student, girlfriend, artist, and daughter—and continually asks herself: Why do I feel called to make this journey? Whether witnessing a Tibetan sky burial, teaching English at a university in Chengdu, visiting her grandmother in LA, or falling in love with a Chinese painter, Anne is always in pursuit of intimacy with others, even as she is all too aware of her silences and separation. For two years, she settles into a comfortable routine in her boyfriend’s apartment and regains fluency in Chinese, a language she spoke as a young child but has used less and less as an adult. Eventually, however, her desire to know herself in other ways surfaces again. She misses speaking English, she feels suffocated by urban, polluted China, and she starts to fall for another man. Ultimately, Anne realizes that to live her truth as a mixed-race, bilingual woman she must embrace all of her influences and layers. In a world that often wants us to choose a side or fit an ideal, she learns that she can both belong and not belong wherever she is, and that home is ultimately found within. Author: Anne Liu Kellor Publication Date: September 7, 2021 -
Anita Swanson Speake’s story begins with a diagnosis: idiopathic cardiomyopathy. At sixty-five, she had just found out that her heart was dying. When she got the news, she was in her late sixties. Her girls were raised and gone. Her three decades of high-stress nursing was behind her. She was living with her hopefully last, and certainly best, husband in a big, contemporary house with lots of glass on a lake in rural Northern California. She loved her life. But she didn’t love her scary new medical condition—or the many awful side effects of the medications her doctor promised would serve as a crutch for her heart. As she struggled with all this, Speake began to see herself as a member of the dying rather than the living. And over time, she began to ponder a new question: “Do I really want to get well?” Heartsong takes readers on an often humorous, sometimes sad journey through the best of Western medicine, complemented by a sampling of alternative and Eastern support systems—and through Speake’s evolving relationship with God—as she navigates this transition. Ultimately, with the help of her doctors, a Reiki practitioner, a Mindfulness coach, and her deep, abiding faith, Speake found renewed purpose late in a changing life—and realized God was waiting there for her all along. Author: Anita Swanson Speake Publication Date: May 14, 2019 -
“Her Beautiful Brain is a daring and ambitious memoir that bestows unexpected rewards on the reader.” ―David Takami, Seattle Times “Unflinching, tragic and compassionate.” ―Shelf Awareness “In this poetic memoir, Hedreen mixes details from her own life with details about her mother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease... Candid, sometimes funny and always poignant.” ―Booklist Arlene was a twice-divorced, once-widowed copper miner’s daughter who raised six kids singlehandedly and got her bachelor’s and master’s degree at forty so she could support her family. In her late fifties, she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease—and in the two decades that followed, her children were forced to stand helplessly by as their mother’s once-beautiful brain slowly unraveled. In this poignant memoir, Ann Hedreen gives shattering insight into what it is to watch your mother—a woman you once thought of as invincible—begin to disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where Arlene was born and raised, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughter’s love for a mother lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness. Author: Ann Hedreen Publication Date: September 16, 2014
