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Jess Lawson, a forty-five-year-old healthcare consultant, wife, and mother of two, has spent most of her adulthood fostering the illusion of having a perfect life. Her impending empty-nest syndrome as her youngest child prepares to start college is troubling enough, but when her doctor husband, Arthur, announces his intention to take a prestigious new job on the other side of the country—and relocate with-out Jess—her world quickly crumbles. Amid their acrimonious divorce, revelations about Arthur's infidelity come to light; and at work, instead of the revitalized ca-reer Jess is hoping for, she uncovers surprising financial corruption that threatens a scandal for her client—and the well-being of the many unsuspecting patients and physicians they serve. Ultimately, this superwoman is forced to acknowledge that her put-together veneer can't hold up under the weight of these new burdens. She also, however, refuses to wallow in victimhood. So what now? A smart, relatable story for every woman who’s gone bold to sort out her next chapter, A Better Next shows how—with a little soul searching and a supportive circle of friends and colleagues—it’s possible to redefine happiness and establish a liberating, new normal at any stage of life. Author: Maren Cooper Publication Date: May 28, 2019 -
In Riverton Falls, a small New England town, globe-trotting bartender Celeste Fortune stands in her kitchen puzzling over last night’s frightening dream—a woman at a window, lilacs blowing in the breeze, someone’s hands tight around her neck. Celeste is sure the dream belongs to someone else. Perhaps she has finally broken through to the collective dreams of Dreamland cult. Hoping her therapist and cult leader will help her untangle it, she heads off into the cold November morning to her final appointment with him—or so she hopes. Her estranged fiancé has delivered an ultimatum: Leave the cult of Dreamers, or end their relationship for good. Instead of help, however, Celeste discovers her therapist dying in a pool of blood, skull stove in by his own healing crystal. His computer, containing the intimate dreams and secrets of half the town, is gone. Suspicion immediately falls on Celeste, known to be a rebellious member of his cult. To clear her name, Celeste enlists the help of her old friend, Gloria, and the two women set out to find the real culprit. But in the middle of their hunt, the stolen dreams seemingly come to life, terrifying the town—and Celeste and Gloria become the killer’s next target. Author: Susan Z. Ritz Publication Date: July 16, 2019 -
Negotiating collaboratively in your committed relationship is a new way to achieve individual and marital goals, to resolve differences equitably, to manage conflicts, to create and sustain a satisfying sex life, to figure out where you stand on fidelity, to think about having and caring for kids, and to have committed careers and a satisfying family life. Negotiating collaboratively supports you and your partner seeing yourselves simultaneously as individuals and as a couple—enhances the sense of “being in this together” while also having individual life plans. Negotiating collaboratively supports valuing each other as individuals before seeing each other as husband and wife, and allows modern couples to challenge old gender trappings that can undermine the achievement of balance in a committed relationship. Straightforward and accessible, A Marriage of Equals offers couples a road map for how to negotiate collaboratively around the most essential aspects of a committed relationship—and, in doing so, create the equitable marriage they long for. Author: Catherine E. Aponte PsyD Publication Date: May 28, 2019 -
Murder is never far from this sexy couple . . . even during the holidays! Their honeymoon abruptly ended by the untimely death of Alcott Howard, Clive and Henrietta return to Highbury, where Clive discovers all is not as it should be. Increasingly convinced that his father’s death was not an accident, Clive launches his own investigation, despite his mother’s belief that he has become “mentally disturbed” with grief. Henrietta eventually joins forces with Clive on their first real case, which becomes darker—and deadlier—than they imagined as they get closer to the truth behind Alcott’s troubled affairs. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s sister, Elsie, begins, at Henrietta’s orchestration, to take classes at a women’s college—an attempt to evade her troubles and prevent any further romantic temptations. When she meets a bookish German custodian at the school, however, he challenges her to think for herself . . . even as she discovers some shocking secrets about his past life. Author: Michelle Cox Publication Date: April 30, 2019 -
In September 2007, Christine Ristaino was attacked in a store parking lot while her three- and five-year-old children watched. In All the Silent Spaces, Ristaino shares what it felt like to be an ordinary person confronted with an extraordinary event—a woman trying to deal with acute trauma even as she went on with her everyday life, working at a university and parenting two children with her husband. She not only narrates how this event changed her but also tells how looking at the event through both the reactions of her community and her own sensibility allowed her to finally face two other violent episodes she had previously experienced. As new memories surfaced after the attack, it took everything in Ristaino’s power to not let catastrophe unravel the precarious threads holding everything together. Moving between the greater issues associated with violence and the personal voyage of overcoming grief, All the Silent Spaces is about letting go of what you think you know in order to rebuild. Author: Christine Ristaino Publication Date: July 9, 2019 -
All the Sweeter tells the stories of families who have adopted one or more children from the US foster care system. Each of the twelve families interviewed has a dedicated chapter in which at least one representative tells their family’s adoption story. Woven through these stories are topical chapters that explore the common challenges these families face, including the complications that accompany transracial adoptions, helping children understand adoption, relationships with birth parents, and raising a traumatized child. Each year, over 50,000 children are adopted from the US Foster Care System. Informative and diverse in scope, All the Sweeter provides a resource to families considering adoption, families in the process of adoption, and families who have already adopted children from foster care—with the ultimate goal of facilitating a better life for the children they bring into their lives. Publication Date: May 7, 2019 Author: Jean Minton -
Samantha—the fashionable wife of a successful businessman and doting mother of one—struggles to negotiate the spheres of intimacy between her husband and her family of origin. Samantha loves her husband, Richard, and she loves her sister, Elizabeth. But the two of them can barely exist in the same room, which has caused the entire family years of emotional distress. Yet it’s not until Samantha’s sister is diagnosed at age forty-three with lung cancer that her family and her marriage are tipped into full-blown crisis. A story of love, loss, forgiveness, learning to live with grief, and healing, Appearances will resonate with anyone who has ever experienced tension in their familial relationships—even as it serves as a poignant reminder that no amount of privilege can protect us from family conflicts, marital difficulty, or mortality. Author: Sondra Helene Publication Date: April 9, 2019 -
In this richly depicted story, told in vignettes relative to markers of age and experience, Patricia Eagle reveals the heartbreak and destruction of her sexual abuse, from age four to thirteen, by her father. A victim of her father’s anger and her mother’s complacency with his abusive behavior, Eagle uses dissociation and numbing in response to the abuse, and as a way to block her own sense of self. How does a child confused by episodes of abuse come to know what is safe or unsafe, right or wrong, normal or abnormal? How does a young woman learn the difference between real love and a desire for sexual pleasure stimulated by abusive childhood sexual experiences? Careening through life, Eagle wonders how to trust others and, most importantly, herself. As a mature woman struggling to understand and live with her past, she remains earnest in her pursuit of clarity, compassion, and trust to build a stronger life. Being Mean is about blocking sexual abuse memories, having them surface, then learning how to acknowledge and live with incomprehensible experiences in the healthiest ways possible. Author: Patricia Eagle Publication Date: June 11, 2019 -
Sixty-three-year-old Dart Sommers—a professor of psychology and the founder of The Raindrop Institute (TRI), a think tank dedicated to eradicating poverty—is intelligent, resourceful, and ambitious. She has always considered her brain to be the best part of her. When she finds herself reacting inappropriately to situations at work and forgetting pieces of her day, she realizes that her mind is betraying her. Before she gets confirmation from a doctor, she knows her diagnosis: she has frontotemporal dementia (FTD). And whatever symptoms she’s experiencing now, they’re only going to get worse. As she struggles with the reality of her illness, Dart finds herself falling for her friend Ash—who is her boss and the still-grieving widower whose wife died of FTD. As Dart’s health deteriorates and she faces conflict at work with a colleague who wants to take over TRI, she pushes Ash away, determined to spare him from more heartache. But he refuses to give up on her—and as events unfold, Dart begins to suspect that love, not decisions based on logic, might change everything. Author: JoAnn Franklin Publication Date: May 21, 2019 -
One terrible night in 2011, Brin Miller’s life is upended when she learns that her teenage stepson has been sexually abusing her two daughters. Once this secret is discovered, Brin’s marriage, already crumbling and unable to sustain itself, breaks apart. But against all odds, Brin and her husband, along with their daughters, are gradually able to learn resilience, forgiveness, strength, and courage, and—miraculously—Brin’s marriage begins to heal. Haunting and horrible yet hopeful and beautiful, Buried Saints is a fast and raw memoir of forgiveness and resilience, a revelatory look into a family deeply destroyed by deceit, and a truly astonishing story about the intense, unpredictable love of two parents who have to decide whether to fall or flourish in a tragic situation. Author: Brin Miller Publication Date: April 16, 2019 -
Warm cookies and milk are still okay, but what if they came with a workshop on goal setting or writing a business plan for the school year? Camp Grandma is full of innovative ideas that Marianne Waggoner Day, a highly successful businesswoman who became a committed and dedicated grandmother, modified from her working life in an effort to connect with her grandchildren. Along the way, she realized that in teaching her grandchildren, she in turn was learning some unexpected and invaluable lessons from them. Here, Day offers a new and refreshing perspective on grandparenting. Readers will be introduced to a compelling, sometimes humorous, and totally unexpected twist on a role people often take for granted—as well as enter into the larger societal conversation we should be having about the possibilities and value of grandparenting and how the women’s movement has reinvigorated and reshaped women’s approach to being grandmothers. Full of ideas and creative ways for grandparents to help their grandchildren grow strong, think critically, and have fun all at the same time, Camp Grandma reveals the importance of grandparenting and the value of passing on traditions, knowledge, and wisdom to the new generation. Babysitter? Not even close. Author: Marianne Waggoner Day Publication Date: May 7, 2019 -
Weaving together stories from non-moms aged thirty-seven to ninety-one, a growing body of research, and the author’s own story, Do You Have Kids? probes the non-mom's entire adulthood—from the morphing meaning of family to what she leaves behind when she dies. Today about one in five American women will never have children, whether by choice or by destiny. Yet few women talk much about what not having kids means to their lives and identities. Not that they don’t want to; there just aren’t obvious catalysts for such open conversations. In fact, social taboos preclude exploration of the topic—and since our family-centric culture doesn’t know quite what to do with non-parents, there’s potential for childless and childfree women to be sidelined, ignored, or drowned out. Yet there’s widespread, pent-up demand for understanding and validating this perfectly normal way of being. In this straight-shooting, exhaustively researched book, women without kids talk candidly about the ways in which their lives deviate from societal norms and expectations" here, instead of at end of sentence—the good, the bad, and the unapparent—in which their lives deviate from societal norms and expectations. Author: Kate Kaufmann Publication Date: April 2, 2019 -
When they were young, Susan and Edna, children of Holocaust refugee parents, were inseparable; Edna was Susan’s first love and constant companion. But as they grew up and Edna’s physical, and mental challenges altered the ways she could develop, a gulf formed between them. Susan’s life became even more complicated when, just short of her sixteenth birthday, she learned that she’d been born without a uterus and would never menstruate or give birth to children. As she coped with this trauma, Edna continued loving her unconditionally, as she always had. In her adult years Edna lived a life of dignity in a spiritual community, becoming a model for how Susan could live hers. In her forties, Susan realized her dream of motherhood when she adopted a daughter. Throughout, Edna remained a teacher and loving presence in her sister’s life. Encompassing Susan and Edna’s lifelong, complex, intertwining relationship, Edna’s Gift has a powerful message: life may be unpredictable, even traumatic—but if you remain open, strength and wisdom will come to you from surprising and unexpected sources. Publication Date: June 4, 2019 Author: Susan Rudnick -
The secrets, lies, and layers of deception about Diane Dewey’s origins were meant for her protection—but eventually, they imploded. Living with her family in suburban Philadelphia, Diane had grown up knowing she was born in Stuttgart and adopted at age one from an orphanage. She’d been told her biological parents were dead. Then, in 2002, when she was forty-seven years old, Diane got a letter from Switzerland: her biological father, Otto, wanted to bring her into his life. With that, her world shifted on its axis. In the months that ensued, everybody had a different story to tell about Diane’s origins, including Otto when they met in New York City. She struggled to understand what was at stake with the lies. Like a private eye, she sifted through competing versions of the truth only to find that, having traveled throughout Europe and back, identity is a state of mind. As more information surfaced, the myths gave way to a certain elusive peace; Diane discovered a tribe in her mother’s family, found a Swiss husband, gained a voice, and, for the first time, began to trust in the intuition that had nudged her all along. One-part forensic investigation, one-part self-discovery, Fixing the Fates is a story about seeing behind artifice and living one’s truth. Author: Diane Dewey Publication Date: June 4, 2019 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
At the age of forty-five, Deborah Tobola returns to her birthplace, San Luis Obispo, to work in the very prison her father worked in when he was a student at Cal Poly. But she’s not wearing a uniform as he did; she’s there to teach creative writing and manage the prison’s arts program—a dream job. As she creates a theatre program for prisoners, Tobola finds plenty of drama off the stage as well. Inside the razor wire she finds a world frozen in the ’50s, with no contact with the outside except by telephone; officers who think prisoners don’t deserve programs; bureaucrats who want to cut arts funding; and inmates who steal, or worse. But she loves engaging prisoners in the arts and helping them discover their voices: men like Opie, the gentleman robber; Razor, the roughneck who subscribes to The New Yorker; charismatic Green Eyes, who really has blue eyes; Doo Wop, a singer known for the desserts he creates from prison fare. Alternating between tales of creating drama in prison and Tobola’s own story, Hummingbird in Underworld takes readers on an unforgettable literary journey—one that is frank, funny, and fascinating. Author: Deborah Tobola Publication Date: July 23, 2019 -
In spite of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, many women are still afraid to say no to unwanted sexual advances and reluctant to report sexual violations. Far too many college students are being raped and are afraid to report it. Women are subjected to sexual harassment, sexual bullying, and sexual pressure every day on the street, at work, and at home but are unable to speak truth to power or to report these sexual offenses. I’m Saying No! is written specifically for these women—women who are still afraid to speak up for themselves, women who need to learn how to do so, and women whose personal history of child sexual abuse or sexual assault as an adult has wounded them so much that they have lost their voice. Here, Beverly Engel—an internationally recognized psychotherapist and acclaimed advocate for victims of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse—offers a ground-breaking program to help all the women who have been silenced by past trauma, women who were raised to believe they didn’t have a right to say no, and women who have spoken out in the past only to go unheard. Bold and timely, I’m Saying No! offers women the encouragement, support, and guidelines they need in order to become the powerful women they are—women who believe in themselves and stand up for themselves. Author: Beverly Engel Publication Date: April 2, 2019 -
Barbara Hoffbeck never quite felt she fit into the small farming community of Big Stone City, South Dakota—and as the youngest of seven growing up during the post-Depression era, she struggled to find her place within her large Catholic family. Barbara defied expectations at every turn, determined to prove her worth in a male-dominated time and place, whether it be by joining a "no girls allowed" hunting trip with her brothers, racing to help save her family's burning barn, or moving across the United States to New York City to pursue a career in publishing. Barbara took her experiences in stride, grounding herself in the beauty of her surroundings—an appreciation stemming from her Dakota roots. Lost Without the River is the story of a girl who grows up, leaves home, and eventually discovers an appreciation for the farm she left behind. It demonstrates the emotional power that even the smallest place can exert, and the gravitational pull that calls a person back home. Author: Barbara Scoblic Publication Date: April 16, 2019 -
Jo’s mother, Babe, liked to drink, dance, and stay up very late. When the husband she adored went on sales calls, she waited for him in the parking lot, embroidering pillowcases. Jo grew up thinking that the last thing she wanted was to be like her mother. Then it dawned on her that her own happiness was derived in large part from lessons Babe had taught her. Her mother might have had tomato aspic and stewed rhubarb in her fridge, while Jo had organic kale and almond milk in hers, but in more important ways they were much closer in spirit than Jo had once thought. At a turbulent time in America, Never Sit If You Can Dance offers uplifting lessons in old-fashioned civility that will ring true with mothers, daughters, and their families. Told with lighthearted good humor, it’s a charming tale of the way things used to be—and probably still should be. Author: Jo Giese Publication Date: April 23, 2019 -
At eighteen, Paula is already a seasoned traveler, having begun life in England, crisscrossed the US as a young child, and survived a year in a London boarding school, immersed in her mother’s heritage. But when, at eighteen, she leaves home for Israel to explore her father’s Jewish roots and learn Hebrew on a kibbutz ulpan (a work/study program on a collective farm), her quest will change her life forever. Seduced by her love of language, she continues the journey to France for several years before returning at last to settle to Israel. As she navigates her odyssey from vision to reality, she will learn much more than two new languages—and realize that if she is ever to forge her own identity, she must also separate from her twin sister and follow her own path. Author: Paula Wagner Publication Date: July 30, 2019 -
Through eight humorous essays, Keturah Kendrick chronicles her journey to freedom. She shares the stories of other women who have freed themselves from the narrow definition of what makes a “proper woman.” Spotlighting the cultural bullying that dictates women must become mothers to the expectation that one’s spiritual path follow the traditions of previous generations, Kendrick imagines a world where black women make life choices that center on their needs and desires. She also examines the rising trend of women choosing to remain single and explores how such a choice is the antithesis to the trope of the sorrowful black woman who cannot find a man to grant her the prize of legal partnership. A mixture of memoir and cultural critique, No Thanks uses wit and insight to paint a picture of the twenty-first-century black woman who has unchained herself from what she is supposed to be. A black woman who has given herself permission to be whomever she wants to be. Author: Keturah Kendrick Publication Date: June 18, 2019 -
When the fiancé of a prominent attorney is murdered, Dr. Pepper Hunt joins forces again with Detective Beau Antelope of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Department to search for the killer. Prosecutor Connor Collins’ dreams are shattered when Stacy Hart is found strangled in their home a month before their wedding. He’s convinced Jack Swailes, the contractor who found the body, killed her in a jealous rage. And Jack looks guilty when he mysteriously disappears later that day. The investigation takes a different turn when Pepper uses her clinical skills to probe below the surface of the perfect couples’ lives. Chilling secrets and sinister motives that lead back to unsolved crimes with a direct link to Stacy’s murder are finally brought to light. Author: J.L. Doucette Publication Date: July 23, 2019
