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Rikki West’s tale begins with her Catholic childhood in a Chicago suburb. As a little girl, she prays for her drunk father, begging God not to send him to hell. As a rebellious adolescent, she abandons religion, yet she yearns to connect with something more loving and peaceful than the human mind. As a teen on the California coast in the 1960s, she seeks union with higher consciousness through drugs and mantra repetition. And as a young woman studying at UC Berkeley, she gives up spiritual matters and shifts her trust to science as the only reliable truth. But something is missing for her—and when she launches her career in Silicon Valley, the drinking culture forces her to confront her own demons. Relying on Alcoholics Anonymous and therapy to stay sober, Rikki gravitates to Eastern spirituality to find her genuine self and relationship to the universe. But after years of fasting, chanting, and praying, she still finds herself seeking more—and ultimately, it is only when she throws overboard all her notions of God and truth that something unexpected and wonderful blossoms in her world. The Empty Bowl is the story of a human seeking self-knowledge—fraught with victories and disappointments, streaked with longing for love and peace. Author: Rikki West Publication Date: January 14, 2025 -
Fans of Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died will love this true story of a damaged primal bond between mother and daughter that, after decades of estrangement, was finally repaired. The conflict began when Carla, as a preteen, stepped in to defend her father against what she perceived as her mother’s harsh treatment—a move that destroyed the warm love she and her mother had for each other and began an “ice age” between them. Forty years later, determined that this mother and daughter not end as tragedy, Carla uses every tool available to her—psychology, diplomacy, humanity, wit, patience—to try to repair their bond. Finally, over her mother’s kitchen table, they melt the ice and find their way back to laughter and closeness. Too often today, problem relationships are labeled “toxic,” with the idea it is “healing” to offload a relationship no longer serving you. This loving, grounded memoir shows that rebuilding a primal bond is doable—and will prompt readers to ask themselves, Could I do the same? What if I reached out, today? Author: Carla Seaquist Publication Date: January 14, 2025 -
Lisa Cheek loved editing TV commercials—almost as much as she loved her dog, Ron Howard. Then, she “aged out” of advertising, at 45. After being let go, Lisa got a call—at 2:45 AM—from a director who, like everyone in Hollywood, had a film he wanted to make: the original Cinderella story. Now, his dream could come true—if Lisa granted his wish. In Sit, Cinderella, Sit, Lisa Cheek shares her adventures in editing a film made on location in China—along the Tibetan border—where Mandarin was the only language spoken by everyone but her. Stuck in a house with fourteen men she couldn’t understand, literally, she yearned for conversation and coffee. But there were moments of wonder and laughter. Lisa forged a bond with her translator and a woman named Sunny. She rescued one dog, and then another. “Everyone speaks Cinderella,” the director had assured her. Maybe he was right. Told with humor and heart through a fairy tale lens, with flashbacks into the author’s not-always-happy childhood, Sit, Cinderella, Sit is a story about what can happen when you take a leap of faith, look and hear beyond people’s differences, and dare to believe in yourself. Author: Lisa Cheek Publication Date: January 14, 2025 -
Alfa Foxtrot 586, a P-3 Orion turboprop, was conducting a sensitive Cold War mission off the Kamchatka Peninsula on October 26, 1978, when a propeller malfunction turned into four engine fires and the pilot—Loreen Grigsby’s husband, Jerry—was forced to ditch into remote, mountainous seas churned by a frigid North Pacific storm. The aircraft sank within ninety seconds, taking one of the three rafts with it—which left thirteen men to huddle together in the remaining two rafts, the smaller of which soon began to leak. Told from Loreen’s perspective as a navy wife at home as well as through the eyes of the men who survived the disaster, All Eternity Lies Before Me weaves a gripping tale of struggle, uncertainty, grief, and heroism. It shares Loreen’s terror as she receives notifications about her husband’s crew’s desperate battle against wind, seas, and biting cold. It details the ad hoc search and rescue mission, a valiant effort to rescue the men before time runs out. And, tragically, it tells how a young Navy wife becomes a widow and single mom. But Jerry’s death is not the end of Loreen’s story—and in the years following his loss, she discovers resilience, strength, and even new love with one of the accident survivors, Matt Gibbons. As she begins her journey toward a brighter future, she’s inspired by the camaraderie and brotherhood forged between the survivors and their rescuers—and ultimately, the long-term lessons learned by all involved become part of the lasting legacy of this event. Author: Loreen Gibbons Publication Date: January 7, 2025 -
Each eye-opening chapter in this self-help memoir highlights Tarot reader Jill Amy Sager’s self-discovery after unexpectedly channeling wisdom from the Universe. What she learned ignited profound change: she went from having grown up physically disabled and believing she is unlovable to feeling confident and content in her own skin. We all want to feel good about ourselves. Yet we can struggle far longer than we need to, unable to remove blocks getting in the way. We often feel stuck and forget to give ourselves the grace, acceptance, and compassion we so readily give to others. Here, Sager shares thirty insightful messages from a sage source she calls “Guidance” alongside illuminating personal stories that showcase how these teachings have improved her life. There are also thought-provoking questions to encourage your spiritual journey. This book is a wake-up call—a nourishing reminder that each of us matters, and therefore treating ourselves with kindness, love, and respect is essential. Guidance shows us how to relax into our natural state of being, feeling more at ease in our vast and beautiful hearts, and Sager’s stories illustrate just how attainable this state of being is. Ultimately, we discover that this enlightened life-changing shift is key to the happiness we seek and the welcomed harmony the world needs. Author: Jill Amy Sager Publication Date: January 7, 2025 -
She wants to travel the world; he wants to keep working. At sixty, Leah Fisher is ready to Love, Honor, and Negotiate. The result is a long-married couple’s decision to commence an unconventional experiment. Fisher takes readers on two journeys: an intriguing global journey—her year of solo travel—and the relational journey she and her husband embark upon as they skillfully negotiate their different priorities and preferences. We accompany them through a series of reunions and poignant farewells as they stay connected and gradually grow comfortable being together and apart. After the marriage sabbatical is over, both spouses are surprised by the outcome of their daring experiment. With gray divorce on the rise, Leah Fisher’s memoir demonstrates a creative way to fulfill individual needs without having to make the painful choice between forfeiting heartfelt dreams or leaving one’s marriage to achieve them. A riveting travel story that offers wise guidance on maintaining marital friendship, My Marriage Sabbatical is proof that couples can keep growing as individuals and partners all through their lives. Author: Leah Fisher Publication Date: January 7, 2025 -
Jealous of her brilliant older sister, Ernestine longs for her father’s approval as a little girl but is never good enough. When she discovers a talent for the flute, she meets a charismatic teacher who gives her the encouragement she craves and becomes her surrogate father. After winning several competitions, she dreams of being a professional musician, but her stern father ridicules the idea and forces her to attend Emory University as a math major like her sister.
Ernestine doesn’t give up on her musical dreams, however, and halfway through college she wins the second flute chair in the Atlanta Symphony. There, she sits beside her former teacher, the principal flute. At first, she loves working with him, but after one successful season he turns on her and does everything in his power to get her fired. Devastated by her idol’s merciless harassment, she’s driven into a spiral of suicidal depression. As she tries to recover, her vulnerability is exploited, again and again, by the very men she turns to for help.
A harrowing account of one woman’s battle with twentieth-century misogyny, Countermelodies follows Ernestine as, through the darkness, she clings to her love for the flute and her unshakable dream of making it in the cutthroat world of classical music.
Author: Ernestine Whitman Publication date: September 24, 2024 -
Bridey is tethered to her mom’s addiction to dangerous men who park their Harley-Davidsons in the house and kick holes in all their doors. Raised to be her mother’s keeper, rescuer, and punching bag, Bridey gets used to stuffing her life into black trash bags, hauling them between Alaska and California, and changing schools every time her mom moves in a new monster or runs away from one.
Desperately seeking the normal life she’s observed in sitcoms and her friends’ families, Bridey earns her way into a fancy, private college, where she tries to forget who she is until her mom calls with a threat that drops Bridey to her knees. Watching doctors and police interrogate her mother at the hospital, Bridey realizes her mom has become a monster herself . . . and she doesn’t want to be saved.
But Bridey does.
Bright Eyes is about the indomitable spirit of a young girl forced to be brave, required to be resilient, and conditioned to be optimistic, and how she ultimately uses the same traits that helped her to survive her mother’s chaos to create her own happily-ever-after.
Author: Bridey Thelen-Heidel Publication date: September 24, 2024 -
Immersion is a memoir that takes the reader on a captivating emotional and physical journey through Linda Murphy Marshall’s life: from the longstanding, crippling impact of family members’ low expectations and abuse, to her discovery as a young adult that she possesses special skills in foreign languages.
Linda is taught from an early age that she has little of value to offer the world. But her love of and affinity for languages enables her to create a new life—to separate herself from her toxic environment and to build a successful, decades-long career as a professional multilinguist. It’s a rewarding vocation, but a challenging one: her assignments with the US federal government take her on some hair-raisingly dangerous journeys, some to countries with unstable governments and even active war zones. But these sometimes-harrowing experiences teach her how to open the “windows” around her, unearth her true self, and develop a healthy sense of self-worth—and ultimately, paradoxically, her work and travel so far from home allow her to come home to herself.
Author: Linda Murphy Marshall Publication date: September 24, 2024 -
Relocated with her family to Cold War–era West Germany, Army Brat and middle sister of three Mary grapples with the torment exacted by her older sister, the high moral expectations of her military father, and societal pressure to conform to traditional gender roles during the rise of the feminism movement. Through the transformative power of place, travel, and the people she encounters, Mary embarks on a journey of self-discovery, learning about social justice and finding her voice in a world still shaped by male dominance. Rich with historical context, Out of Place is a poignant and compelling exploration of identity, personal growth, and the enduring strength that comes from embracing one’s purpose. Author: Mary McKnight Publication Date: December 3, 2024 -
At nine years old, Lynette Charity looked on, frozen in place, as her father hit her mother so hard that she flipped over their front porch railing and fell into the hedges below. That night, young Lynette hatched a plan: she would escape this life, no matter what it took. And a month later, after watching the first episode of a new show called Ben Casey, she decided that becoming a doctor was her way out. At some point, Lynette noticed that all the real doctors and nurses who took care of her were Black and all the make-believe doctors and nurses on TV were white. Did it make a difference? Not to her. Over the next decade-plus, she focused on her studies. At a time when segregation was still alive and well in Virginia, she forged her mother’s signature on transfer papers so she could go to a better-resourced white school on the other side of town. Upon finishing high school, she got a full ride to Pittsburgh’s Chatham College. And after graduating Chatham with honors, she became a member of Tufts University School of Medicine's Class of 1978, one of seven Black women in her class. Raw, candid, and inspiring, Escape Plan is the remarkable story of how, through perseverance and single-minded determination, a Black girl from the 1960s South faced down adversity, exceeded everyone’s expectations, and fulfilled her dreams. Author: Lynette D. Charity, MD Publication Date: November 12, 2024 -
The Nutcracker Chronicles, a modern twist on the beloved holiday ballet, intertwines the story of Clara and her nutcracker prince with the true-life stories that unfold backstage. The curtain rises on Ballet El Paso’s production of The Nutcracker, where young Janine Kovac is cast as Fritz, the boy who breaks the nutcracker. Her director is Ingeborg Heuser, a German woman who once performed for Hitler and who peppers her teaching with insults like, “Why can’t you just dance like a pretty girl?” At least it’s better than “You look like a cow on ice skates,” which is what the other girls hear daily. Onstage, Janine wins the battle and embarks on a voyage through a snowy forest to the Land of the Sweets, where she serves as spectator to a beautiful dance. She also travels offstage, leaving El Paso to study at San Francisco Ballet before landing a job in Iceland and returning to California, where she rises through the ranks from soldier to snowflake to candy soloist. Eventually, however, she is relegated to watching other people dance—her husband, her children, her students—and her claim to the spotlight is replaced by the quest to find joy in her new roles. Author: Janine Kovac Publication Date: November 12, 2024 -
At sixteen, Caroline longed to meet the man who owned the apartment she was hanging out at with her teenage friends. The one they said was a stripper—a fact that intrigued her. From the moment she finally saw Gary Richard, she craved his attention; and once their eyes met, he was all she wanted. Months later, she was dismayed to discover that she was pregnant. But she had Gary Richard, she reassured herself, and he was all she needed to be okay. A belief that didn’t change even when she held their week-old son in court, watching her boyfriend face charges for stolen property. This was her family, her life—so when Gary Richard’s lawyer suggested a ploy to show the judge he was a changed man, she married him. At seventeen years old, she became a wife. Over the next nine years, Caroline’s identity and dreams of a fairy-tale life became twisted by adultery, betrayal, poverty, court cases, and lies. And then, one evening, the reality of her marriage finally became clear to her after a sergeant revealed she was the victim of one of her husband’s crimes—statutory rape—and her son’s DNA was the evidence the prosecution needed to convict him. Author: Brandi Dredge Publication Date: October 22, 2024 -
A parent should never outlive their own child, yet this is the position Janice Jensen found herself in after the drowning of her nine-year-old son. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Janice dedicated herself to her roles as mother to her surviving daughter and wife to her devastated husband even as she grappled with her grief. As a non-swimmer, Janice experienced water’s unforgiving power through the loss of her son, but as time went on, she also learned to appreciate its redemptive and healing properties. She sculled symbolic and real rivers, taking the necessary side channels to find waves that soaked peace and happiness into her body, mind, and heart. She learned to sail. And she fell in love with ballroom dancing, a passion that eventually led her back to the very place where she lost her son. A poignant, heartfelt story that takes readers through the everyday ups and downs of life after a tragedy and highlights the need to view each person’s grief journey and timeline as unique. One Ripple at a Time comforts readers and, through decades of the author’s personal quest, imparts a crucial message: The best of you is just around the bend. Author: Janice Jensen Publication Date: October 15, 2024 -
Dr. Dawn Filos has always had a passion for animals—and with a lot of hard work and perseverance, she turned that passion into a career. Here, with emotional honesty, Dr. Dawn shares her colorful, memorable journey from nervous novice to seasoned, self-assured doctor. This modern-day James Herriot ultimately finds her niche as a house-call vet, where she creates a way to practice on her own terms with the privilege of unique, intimate access into the homes and lives of her beloved patients and their human families. Sometimes heartwarming, sometimes sad, and often hilarious, Tales of a Pet Vet will resonate deeply with pet lovers everywhere. Author: Dr. Dawn Filos Publication Date: October 8, 2024 -
When the pediatrician places the measuring tape around her infant’s head and notes, “His head is a little small,” Joanne knows that motherhood won’t be as she had dreamt. Even as a special educator, Joanne isn’t prepared to raise a child with a life-limiting brain malformation. Nor is she ready for the compounded pain and alienation that comes when her second son is diagnosed with autism. But the struggle to balance her sons’ medical and educational challenges drives Joanne to reconnect with the lessons she learned as a modern dancer—and there she finds enlightenment.
Inspired by her experience performing José Limón’s There Is a Time, based on Ecclesiastes 3, each chapter of Fall and Recovery details a dance lesson and the dichotomy of parenting children with disabilities. Over time, Joanne discovers that surviving motherhood isn’t a matter of strength, bravery, or faith. It’s a matter of linking your past experiences and creating your own purpose. It’s realizing that we live simultaneously in love and grief. In the end, dance teaches Joanne not only how to move freely through pain but also how to fall and recover.
Author: Joanne De Simone Publication date: September 17, 2024 -
At first grateful to be able remodel the dining room of her family’s modest home in Connecticut to accommodate her eighty-six-year-old father for what everyone felt would be a short duration of care, Cindy Eastman ultimately experienced a whole gamut of feelings over the course of what turned out to be four years of caring for her dying dad. Caregiving impacts everyone, and this account—told in essays recorded before, during, and after the time Eastman’s father was with her—details that impact, not just on the primary caregiver but also the rest of the family.
One of the reasons Eastman committed to writing down her experiences was because she predicted that once her dad died, there would be a tendency to soften or even deny any of the negative and challenging times—and there were many. As of 2020, more than 53 million adults provide homecare in this country, and the reality of that arrangement is different for every family. It is not, as some might suggest, a “noble gesture” but rather an elegant conflict—an intricate reassembling of the family dynamic that many people don’t ever see coming. In these candid, often poignant essays, Cindy Eastman brings all the emotions of taking on the challenging responsibility of caregiving a parent at the end of their life to the surface.
Author: Cindy Eastman Publication date: September 17, 2024 -
“Don’t be silly! Girls can’t fly,” seven-year-old Lola’s father admonishes her as they fly across Canada on a commercial flight in 1962. She is crushed—but decides he must be right. She’s only ever seen male pilots, after all.
Highway to the Sky begins during the empty zone of women in aviation, a three-decade drought following WWII when men reclaimed the jobs that had been performed by women during the war and forced women back to diapers and dishes, where they “belonged.”
Despite Lola’s childhood desire to avoid the straitjacket of traditional female roles and become a pilot, her desperate need for unconditional affection after a lonesome childhood sways her determination. At age twenty, she leaps into marriage and motherhood. Four years, one toxic relationship, and one private pilot license later, she leaves her husband, even though she knows she’ll be censured by friends, family, and 1970s society at large.
Lola’s head-on battle with tradition continues as the lone female pilot in her advanced flight training program and on the job as a flight instructor, bush pilot, charter pilot, and commuter airline pilot between 1979 and 1993. Flying is challenging at times, yes—but her true obstacles are the hostility, sabotage, and discrimination she faces in her industry. She perseveres, however. Ultimately, flying is what gives her the courage to regain control of her life—and helps her find personal happiness.
Author: Lola Reid Allin Publication date: September 17, 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 -
At the age of eight, Linda Lockwood moves with her family to an isolated ranch in eastern Washington State. Within two years, she’s patrolling the ranch on horseback alongside her border collie—herding sheep, killing rattlesnakes, and defending the ranch’s livestock from coyotes, bears, and even trespassing hunters—and working tirelessly to realize her dream of training horses. But her most daunting challenge is one hard work can’t overcome: her mother is descending into madness. And Linda’s deepest fear is that she might inherit the schizophrenia that threatens to dismantle her family.
At age twenty-five, Linda marries, but the joy of her first pregnancy is darkened by her mother’s suicide. Then she endures a painful miscarriage and the death of her beloved grandmother, traumatic events that send her back in time to the births and deaths of animals—domesticated and wild—that she loved in childhood. Eventually, her own family grows, but her happiness is haunted by questions people have tiptoed around all her life. How did her mother become schizophrenic? What did she endure as a patient in 1960s mental hospitals? Might Linda and even her children be next to battle that catastrophic mental disorder? Driven by the courage and will she sharpened as a rancher, Linda vows to find out.
Author: Linda Lockwood Publication date: September 10, 2024 -
Born to a depressed, exhausted mother and an abusive father who uses his seven children as cheap labor for his business schemes, Sue, Carole, and Kathy raise themselves in their chaotic household. The sisters all marry young; two divorce quickly. But despite the obstacles they face, the three women grow into confident businesswomen and remain extremely close as they build families and recover from their toxic childhood.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the sisters gather over chilled martinis to take a serious look at the future and decide they should be together—in business. Bring on the cake. Liqueur-infused cake, that is. They soon start handing out samples of their inventions at farmers markets like seasoned carnival barkers, and soon a Food Network producer who’s stopped by their table invites them to New York City—sparking a hilarious adventure involving one-way streets, security guards, and the NYPD, all in an effort to get their cake into the hands of the producers at The Food Network and Rachel Ray.
Following Sue, Carole, and Kathy from childhood and through the development of the Full Spirited Flavours cake company, Cakewalk is a delightful romp that will have readers rooting for these three sisters every slice of the way.
Author: Sue Katein, Carole Algier, and Kathy Lanyon Publication Date: September 3, 2024 -
Growing up in Santa Barbara, California, way too close to the Hollywood dream machine, Jenna Tico’s self-worth wanes to invisibility when her identity becomes enmeshed with validation from celebrities and spiritual F-boys . . . until she claws her way back to empowerment. Here, Tico shares vulnerable personal essays, stories, and poetry—all grouped following the cycles of the moon—chronicling her journey from late bloomer to full grownup.Observing the world of twenty-something relationships from perspectives as diverse as a bachelorette houseboat, a music festival afterparty, and the airplane ride to a death bed, she validates the experiences of women who feel like they have been abandoned by the generation that came before them. Her self-reflective stories encourage healthy life choices for young women without telling them where, what, or how to live their lives—and always with a healthy dash of humor on the side. Simultaneously hilarious and poignant (without the whiff of morality play),Cancer Moon invites readers to embrace their twenties—aka the “age of wallowing”—as a humorous and necessary step toward understanding how we become who we want to be in the world. Author: Jenna Tico Publication date: September 17, 2024 -
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off. A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs. The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author. Author: Jane Little Botkin Publication date: September 10, 2024 Download Book Club Questions -
Born to an abusive mother and a drug-dealer father, Ginelle Testa is not exactly set up for success—and her early years are just as troubled as one might expect. By the end of her thirteenth year, she’s started experimenting with alcohol and drugs, has fallen prey to anorexia, and has been sexually assaulted. And that’s only the beginning of her spiral down into addiction and disordered eating. As Ginelle progresses into young adulthood, she hits several substance-related bottoms. In her senior year of college, after blacking out and ending up naked in her dorm’s community shower, she goes to Alcoholics Anonymous and gets sober. But steering clear of drugs and alcohol, she discovers, is not a cure-all; despite the positive changes she’s made, her sex and dating life continue to be troubled and turbulent. Then she finally finds Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous . . . and begins to truly heal. Raw, relatable, and powerful, Testa’s is a riveting tale of climbing up from rock bottom—and learning to make a home in oneself instead of in substances and other people. Author: Ginelle Testa Publication Date: September 3, 2024 -
Unsexed examines the role that sex plays in the life of one woman with two mothers who introduce her to polarized frameworks of female sexuality. Born in Greece to a violent prostitute and then adopted by a cold and unloving virgin from New York, Marina inherits a sexual identity steeped in fear and shame—one that, as she grows older and becomes a wife and mother, trickles into her marriage and the parenting of her children. Without the tools needed to understand her complex mothers or the unpack the lessons they taught her, Marina relies on self-erasure to survive relationships that silence and define her—until she finally becomes fed up with those old patterns and begins to stand in her own power. A memoir that unearths the layered emotional and sexual lives of women and exemplifies the satisfaction that comes when they assert their voices and power, Unsexed speaks to millions of women who have different narratives but face similar struggles in reclaiming their voices, bodies, and sexuality. Author: Marina DelVecchio Publication Date: April 2, 2024 -
Songs My Mother Taught Me follows the narrator, confronted with the imminent death of her mother, on a voyage to share the final leg of their lifelong journey together. With candor and lucidity, she retraces the passage from childhood to womanhood under the powerful influence of a loving but suffocating mother. Told by a daughter who has carried all her life the epigenetic endowment inherited from her parents’ experiences during the Holocaust, this raw and painfully honest story digs into the complexities and subtleties of love. Having spent most of her life traveling the globe in an attempt to escape this legacy, the narrator finds herself back in the house she grew up in, where she tries to finally piece together, and find peace with, the looming shadows of her family’s past. This epic and lyrical tale spans from Transylvania in the 1930s to modernday Tel Aviv, Tokyo, New York, and Paris—giving a literary voice to those affected by PTSD transmitted down the generations. Author: Eva Izsak Publication Date: July 16, 2024 -
Born into a poor, immigrant family, Naomi B. Levine grew up in the Bronx and on Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side in an era when women were not encouraged to have lives of their own. Nevertheless, she managed to raise herself to prominence as a leader of Jewish affairs, champion of civil rights, and expert fundraiser. Poignant, direct, and inflected with Yiddishkeit, The Woman in the Room is the story of how Levine went from living in a crowded tenement with a shared bathroom to penning an amicus brief that was crucial in Brown v. Board of Education, assuming the Executive Directorship of the American Jewish Congress, and saving NYU from bankruptcy with the first billion-dollar capital campaign for a university. A lover of history, Levine describes not just her life but also articulates how the major historical events of the time emboldened her to take social and political positions that were in many circles unacceptable. She was an activist and a feminist before those concepts became part of our everyday parlance. The Woman in the Room not only illuminates the decades Levine lived but furnishes future generations with the strength and courage to face the challenges before them. Author: Naomi B. Levine Publication Date: July 2, 2024 -
Emil, a Jewish man in 1930s Germany, loves Deta, a Lutheran, but Nazi racial purity laws forbid their marriage. Desperate to find a place where their love can survive, they must separate to get away. Deta leaves for England, but Emil has to overcome red tape, resistance from his aging parents, and his own ambivalence before he can embark for America. With only telegrams and letters from Deta to sustain him, he does all he can to bring her and his family to America. But the clock is ticking as the war breaks out and the Nazis tighten their stranglehold. From the heartbreaking news of November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) to the horrific revelations after the German surrender in 1945, Emil’s story runs the course of the war. Can he make his way in this new world? Will he be reunited with his beloved Deta? And will he ever see his family again? Told by Emil’s daughter with the help of letters and historical documents, All for You is a true story about love overcoming despair and the impact the Holocaust continues to have on the rising generation. Author: Dena Rueb Romero Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
It should have been Tracey Yokas’s time to heal. With the recent death of her mother, she was given a brand-new chance to redefine herself and her happiness on her own terms. But just as she prepares herself to spread her wings, Tracey discovers that her only child, Faith, is battling issues of her own—carrying forward the legacy of disordered eating, depression, and self-harm Tracey is so desperate to leave behind. Tracey is determined to save her daughter, but she has no idea how to reach her—and as their fragile family navigates a medical system and a societal fabric that fails innumerable families in need, she and Faith become near strangers to each other. Ultimately, it’s only when Tracey begins the hard work of standing up to her own history of rejection, low self-esteem, and longing does healing—for both mother and daughter—become possible. Carrying a message made urgent by the epidemic of mental health challenges now besetting millions of American teens each year, Bloodlines is a story about how waking up to the power of love can allow us to reimagine the past—and fortify the present. Author: Tracey Yokas Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable enough to questions—but she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she didn’t. The story of her mother cutting off and dying her hair when she was a toddler? She thought it was eccentric and funny, nothing more. When she discovered at fifteen that her birthday wasn’t actually her birthday? She believed it when her mother said she’d changed it to protect her from the “nosy old biddies” who might try to discover her identity. It wasn’t until decades later, when a genealogy test led Patti to her biological family (including an aunt with a shocking story) and the discovery of yet another birthday, that she really began to interrogate what she thought she knew about her origins. Determined to know the truth, she finally petitioned a court to unseal records that had been locked up for almost sixty years—and began to put the pieces of her past together, bit by painstaking bit. Framed by a brief but poignant 1963 “Report of Investigation” based on a caseworker’s one-day visit to Patti’s childhood home, The Girl With Three Birthdays tells the story of an adoptee who always believed she was the answer to a couple’s seventeen-year journey to become parents, until a manila envelope from a rural county court arrived and caused her to question . . . everything. Author: Patti Eddington Publication Date: May 7, 2024 -
In this sexually charged memoir, Sue Camaione sets off on a rebellious course to make her way as a young woman determined to live on her own terms despite societal mores. Full of a precocious curiosity about sexuality, Sue questions her religious education, challenges her school dress code, sets herself on a quest to lose her virginity, and, as she grows older, encounters challenges that at times leave her broke, sick, and homeless. She flees upstate New York, embarking on romantic adventures across the country. She discovers orgasmic joy in the Rocky Mountains, falls in love in Tucson, struggles with open marriage in San Diego, and explores forbidden intimacy in the arms of a Chilean graduate student in Boston. These experiences, men, places, and friendships transform her. Both a coming-of-age story and a depiction of an era, The Practical Seductress exposes the gender double standard and the dangers and joys of sexual freedom that defined the 1970s and ’80s. Filled with humor and learned wisdom, this is a story of desire and survival, navigating treacherous and unpredictable paths, defying social norms, and finding redemption. Author: Sue Camaione Publication Date: April 30, 2024 -
This is Rossi’s wild, queer coming-of-age story. Rossi was taught only to aspire to marry a nice Jewish boy and to be a good kosher Jewish girl. At sixteen she flowers into a rebellious punk-rock rule-breaker who runs away to seek adventure. Her freedom is cut short when her parents kidnap her and dump her with a Chasidic rabbi—a “cult buster” known for “reforming” wayward Jewish girls—in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Rossi spends the next couple of years in a repressive, misogynistic culture straight out of the nineteenth century, forced to trade in her pink hair and Sex Pistols T-shirt for maxi skirts and long-sleeved blouses and endure not only bone-crunching boredom but also outright abuse and violence. The Punk-Rock Queen of the Jews is filled with wonderfully rich characters, hilarious dialogue, and keen portraits of the secretive hothouse Orthodox world and the struggling New York City of the 1980s: dirty, on the edge, but fully vital and embracing. Author: Rossi Publication Date: April 23, 2024 -
Penny is just four years old when she is snatched away from her all-American home by the Hungarian father who abandoned her when she was a baby. After facing isolation and neglect in a strange, dysfunctional household where heartache, rejection, and physical abuse rule her life, she escapes—only to find herself in a relationship with a man who’s just converted to fundamentalist Christianity. Penny’s road is long, winding, and often painful, but gradually she begins to listen to her inner voice, stand up for herself, and refuse to bow to the pressures of either her family or society—freeing herself to build a life on her own terms and find her way to happiness. A rise-from-the-ashes hero’s story of overcoming abuse, trauma, and unbearable odds, of being waylaid by both family and religion’s promise of love, and harnessing the resilience to find the way home, Redeemed offers a rare window into Eastern European immigrant culture and reads like a page-turning thriller. Especially relevant today—a time when marginalized people are increasingly finding a voice—this memoir will serve as an inspiration to women everywhere, encouraging them to overcome their obstacles and go after their dreams. Author: Penny Lane Publication Date: June 25, 2024 -
No Way Out of This is not the kind of Alzheimer’s memoir where you read about a noble, self-sacrificing wife who gives up everything to take care of her husband. We see such spouses in books and movies—but they’re not telling the whole story. Nobody’s that good. Certainly Sue Lick isn’t. Sue’s much-older husband, Fred, is a forgetful man. She’s always found that charming. But when his absentmindedness worsens into full-blown dementia, she suddenly finds herself dealing with his illness alone. Struggling to care for Fred and manage their two loveable but incorrigible dogs and still find time to write and play music, Sue constantly faces impossible choices. Tell people about his illness? Let him drive? Put him in an institution? Treat his medical problems, or let him go? Every decision feels wrong—but in the end, their love carries them through it all. More than 6 million Americans suffer from dementia. One in three seniors have it. Add in the spouses, siblings, adult children, and professionals responsible for their care, and we all have a stake in this story. While some caregivers have loving families to support them and enough money to pay for the best care, more often the situation is a lot messier. Here the author, a longtime journalist, tells the truth about nursing homes, Medicaid, mental health, and more. Author: Sue Fagalde Lick Publication Date: June 25, 2024 -
“I’ll kill the first person who comes through this door.” My father grips a baseball bat in his meaty hands. It is 1962 and Diane is three years old when her violent father moves their family—her, her pregnant mother, and her six siblings—to a remote farm in Upstate New York. There, she grabs the reader by the hand and takes them to the broken-down barns, barren fields, and rows of bunk beds in her rat-infested attic bedroom as she questions all that feels wrong about her new world. She watches her ever-pregnant mother grow emotionally colder with each new baby and wonders, Where is she when he swings his fists, his steel-toed boot, or a crowbar? Forced to perform adult manual labor in between the erratic beatings she and her siblings pound on one another to release their own aggressions, she asks herself, Is this what we’ve become? What I’ve become? Narrated in the ever-hopeful voice of a child, The Taste of Anger explores in raw, unflinching detail how years of isolation, oppression, and the threat of retaliation create an environment in which family secrets are guarded at all costs. Tension is palpable with the turning of each page, ensuring that the reader won’t let go of Diane’s hand until she gets an answer to her most urgent question of all: Who will rescue us? Author: Diane Vonglis Parnell Publication Date: June 25, 2024 -
As an adolescent in Syracuse, New York, Marcia Menter fell in love with the recorded voice of Ann Drummond-Grant, a Scottish contralto who sang with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, the legendary Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. She dreamed of singing with the company, even though it didn’t hire Americans—and even though, as she soon found out, Ann Drummond-Grant had died years earlier. But her dream persisted, and for the young music lover, Drummie’s glorious voice remained a living presence—a refuge from the race riots and political upheavals of her school years. Menter earned a conservatory degree in singing before finally realizing she was not a performer at heart. She spent decades searching for Ann Drummond-Grant—visiting places she lived and interviewing people who knew her—and putting together the puzzle of her life. This is the story of a singer and her listener—of two separate lives divided by time and geography but connected in unexpected ways. Author: Marcia Menter Publication Date: June 18, 2024 -
Having spent ten summers on the Blackfeet Indian reservation near Glacier National Park, part of her doctoral fieldwork for a PhD in Native American Art History, forty-two-year-old Lynne Spriggs thinks of Montana as her healing place. When she moves to “Big Sky Country” from the East Coast in a quest to reset her life, she has high hopes for what awaits her. Great Falls, a farming and military town in central Montana, is not what Lynne imagined when she decided to leave city life behind. But her dream of being more connected to nature in the American West comes alive when she meets Harrison, a handsome rancher thirteen years her senior. Wary but curious, with her dog Willow by her side, she leans into the seasonal rhythms of Harrison’s hidden valley and opens her heart to a wild language that moves beyond words. In a modern world where listening is rare, Elk Love explores an intimate place where loneliness gives way to wonder, where the natural world speaks of what matters most. Author: Lynne Spriggs O'Connor Publication Date: June 18, 2024 -
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 -
Karen Solt, an eighteen-year-old nonconformist with an alcohol problem, is working at a gas station when a slick Navy recruiter railroads her into enlisting in the military. Before she knows it, she is on a ship in the Deep South, struggling to navigate not only a world much different from her small Northern Arizona hometown but also her new discovery: she’s gay. Figuring out her sexuality clarifies many things, but also creates a daunting new set of problems, for Karen. It’s 1984: being gay in the Navy is considered a crime, and gay Sailors are regularly hunted by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. Discovery means being kicked out, and by this point she is committed to the uniform (and to remaining with her first girlfriend, who is also enlisted). So she learns to hide her secret and find a way to serve—and even thrive professionally—without getting caught. But concealing her truth ultimately leads to devastating consequences. A story of desire, addiction, the damage of secrets, the power of community, and the soul-crushing cost of turning people into “others,” Hiding for my Life is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit—and a poignant call for each of us to come out from hiding and live our truth. Author: Karen Solt Publication Date: June 4, 2024 -
Despite having everything she could ask for, Janet Wilson couldn’t shake a sense of emptiness in her life—or her desire to return to the continent of her birth. After much back-and-forth, she and her husband reached an agreement: they would embark on a daring adventure, driving 25,000 miles across Africa. What they couldn’t anticipate then was how this trip would challenge almost every belief, opinion, and value they held. Over the course of their journey, Janet and her husband collided with the world and each other. There were tears and laughter. They shared thrilling highlights and challenges that forced them to negotiate and cooperate with one another. And after a heartbreaking tragedy and Janet’s arrest, they made critical decisions that transformed their relationship, bringing them to a level of trust and commitment they had never before experienced. Ultimately, this led them to a deeper understanding about their place in the world—and each other’s lives. A suspenseful and emotional true account that explores themes of love, commitment, resilience, and the power of forgiveness in the face of adversity, All You’ll See is Sky is a memoir of a woman’s transformation from brokenness to wholeness and a couple's transformation from breakdown to breakthrough. Author: Janet Wilson Publication Date: April 16th, 2024 -
Why are we so determined to be loved rather than to love ourselves? Why is it so hard to forgive our imperfections and remember that we’re extraordinary? Why are we so willing to listen to others’ voices when our own voice is right here, screaming to be heard? Full of the stories that have brought her to this moment and the accompanying wisdom those experiences have lent her, Mighty Gorgeous is Amy Ferris’s answer—tender, fierce, irreverent—to these questions, and much more. Why? Because we are not on this earth to master suffering; we are here to create magic. Because perfection is overrated; all of our flaws and imperfections and scars are our beauty marks. Because all women deserve to speak their truth, to be heard and seen, to awaken to their own greatness. Because life is so very hard and so very brutal at times, bitter and cruel and excruciatingly difficult to navigate, and sometimes we need a light to guide us through that darkness. Because it’s time for us all to come home to ourselves—and Amy’s here to cheerlead you all the way to your own front door. Author: Amy Ferris Pub Day: October 3, 2023 -
In her search to find healing and meaning in midlife, Glenda Goodrich undertakes a series of wilderness quests into the backcountry of Oregon, Washington, and California to discover what the natural world has to teach her about life, death, happiness, spirituality, and forgiveness. This book chronicles the sacred ceremonies that connected Goodrich to the land, wove her into nature’s web, and transformed her from a woman who worked to please others into a woman who forged her own path. It is a brilliant collection of adventures—the touch of coyote fur, a snake’s kiss, a ceremonial blood offering—and a profound reflection on the healing and restorative power of nature. Author: Glenda Goodrich Pub Date: September 26, 2023 -
Jackie, born of medical missionaries in China during World War II, rejected her connection to her birth country growing up because it made her different. A return to China with her parents in 1980, however, is life-changing. After always having known her mother as distant and emotionally abusive, she is stunned to see a loving side to her for the first time—and pleasantly surprised by the affinity she feels for her birth country. These revelations launch Jackie on a quest to understand her difficult childhood and who she is beyond “wife,” “mother,” and “daughter.” Her journey takes her first to the mountainous landscapes of Alaska, where she finds a passion for nature and begins a thirty-five-year environmental career. As she builds her life there and later in New England, she makes multiple trips to her birth country—with her parents, alone, and with her adult children. Each of these trips provides a benchmark for the growth and transformation she undergoes as she learns to create the authentic life she craves. Deeply reflective and sensitively rendered, Whispers from the Valley of the Yak touches on the healing power of nature and universal themes of unconditional love and forgiveness—and, most importantly, being true to oneself. Author: Jacquelyn Lenox Tuxill Pub Date: September 26, 2023 -
Lynn watched her beloved Clare, newly adopted from Haiti, crawl the house in a frantic search for her lost mother. Preschool Clare enchanted with belly laughs and shining smiles. Also, thrashed and wailed in her room as Lynn crouched on her own bed—pillow clutched over her head—her past trauma triggered. A pre-teen trip to Haiti brought sunshine, ruby red hibiscus blooms, and the music of Haitian Creole. Back at home, Clare shattered mirrors into shards on the subway tiles of their bathroom. And just before her thirteenth birthday, as she and Lynn walked hand in hand through their neighborhood, Clare calmly detailed her plan to die.
Over the next years, Lynn and her family walked through psychiatric hospitals, along the Appalachian Trail, and in and out of residential placements, marriage, faith, and sanity barely surviving the journey. But then Lynn learned about fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)—a source of neurodivergence in one in twenty American children—and discovered the FASCETS Neurobehavioral Model, a strengths-based approach to celebrating and accommodating neurodiversity. It was a discovery that transformed them all.
At times joyous, at times harrowing, but always full of love, Tinderbox is a mother’s story of brokenness, unrelenting resilience, and hope. Author: Lynn Alsup Pub Date: September 12, 2023 -
Set against the backdrop of the early American presence in Iran under the Shah, and the burgeoning years of Kuwait’s early oil boom, Dancing into the Light is Kathryn Abdul-Baki’s memoir of growing up within both the expatriate Western communities and the larger Middle Eastern society of Kuwait and Jerusalem. Hers is a story of belonging to two vastly different cultures and finding her place within both, and the search to find the inherent harmony in worlds at odds with each other. She is already caught in both the joys of and the struggle to be both Arab and American, yet not fully either, when her young life of promise is disrupted by tragedy. But instead of derailing her life, her mother’s death opens the door to deeper love and support from other places within Kathryn’s family. Dancing into the Light is a story of love, loss, and renewal, and of overcoming devastating early trauma through music, dancing, and the love and devotion of strong American and Arab women. Author: Kathryn Abdul-Baki Pub Day: September 5, 2023 -
Light in Bandaged Places shows us the harm done when an older man in a position of power convinces a child that sex with him is alright because he loves her. This poignant story takes us through the long-term wounding of such abuse—and the multifaceted path of healing. As a lonely girl coming of age in the 1970s, Liz has every reason to believe her 8th-grade teacher is in love with her. Because the sex isn’t physically violent and is wrapped in a message of love, she learns to exchange sex for attention. It feels like love, after all. But years later, as an adult, emotional closeness eludes Liz. Even after marrying a sensitive, caring man, she is walled off. Struggling through confusing years, she believes something is deeply wrong with her. Healing begins when an unexpected event takes Liz back to those formative years, and she sees for the first time that what happened to her was not love but trauma. As she begins to understand how her relationship with her former teacher destroyed her innocence and self-worth, she begins a spiritual and psychological journey that sets her free. Now a meditation teacher and Buddhist practitioner, Liz offers her story in hope of helping others along their own paths of discovery and healing. Author: Liz Kinchen Pub Date: September 5, 2023 -
In this compelling tale, Judy Foreman reveals the terror she felt every night as a girl as she lay in bed frozen in dread, listening for her father’s footsteps coming down the hall. She recalls his mostly naked body, his stale smell, his silhouette in the bedroom doorway. Worse, in some ways, was her mother’s denial—her insistence that this man was wonderful, her refusal to acknowledge his drinking or his rage. It wasn’t until Foreman spent a high school summer as an exchange student with a Danish family that she began to see how unsafe her own family was; it wasn’t until she went to an all-women’s college that she realized that women had value. Ultimately, this book shows that with time and therapy, it is possible to heal from serious childhood trauma and lead a life of deep fulfillment, rewarding work and, most wonderfully, love. It is a book about the power of emotional courage to change one’s own inner and outer experience of the world, and about what matters most in life: cultivating healthy connections to other people. Author: Judy Foreman Pub Date: August 29, 2023 -
When Alana and Roland, a spirited Canadian couple with an insatiable desire to live life to the fullest, embark on an epic yearlong travel adventure around the world with their newborn son and ten-year-old daughter, they think they’re prepared for whatever might come their way. They soon discover that this is not entirely true. This charming family love story, sure to inspire wanderlust, is peppered with funny parenting mishaps, thrilling adventures, breathtaking sceneries, unforgettable monuments, and culinary bliss. However, as you are taken through the temples of Southeast Asia, the pyramids of Egypt, the rolling hills of Tuscany, and the African plains, you will also be exposed to the world as experienced by a biracial, blended family. Around the World in Black & White is a tale of self-discovery, racial awakening, resilience, and deeper understanding. This bold, witty, and heartfelt memoir will have you rethinking how you travel, how you see the world, and how the world sees you. Author: Alana Best Pub Date: August 29, 2023 -
Debbie and Judy are twins—but Judy was born with cerebral palsy, and Debbie was not. Despite the severity of Judy’s brain damage, her parents chose to keep her at home with her three siblings, and ultimately Judy lived at home with them well into adulthood. Even after her father died, she continued to stay with her mother, her care augmented by a succession of home attendants—until, that is, her doctor told Debbie that Judy’s care at home was wanting and she would not survive without nursing home care. In We Used to Dance, Debbie tells of the emotional trauma she experienced when she was forced to place her sister—a sister unable to sit, stand, eat regular food, feed herself, use a bathroom, or make her needs and desires known through speech or other means—in a new and strange environment. Following Judy’s life in her new home as well as her past relationship with Debbie and the rest of their immediate family, this is a raw, personal memoir of love and guilt—and, ultimately, acceptance. Author: Debbie Chein Morris Pub Date: October 24, 2023 -
Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 100 Indie Books of 2023 “Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.” —Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW What happens to sibling relationships when your older sister, the budding poet you loved and admired as a child, falls prey to severe mental illness? When Deborah Kasdan’s sister returns from a gap year in Israel, she dazzles friends and family with her sophistication and beauty. In three years, however, Rachel is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The diagnosis: schizophrenia. As the years pass, Deborah focuses on her own family and career but constantly feels shadowed by a sense of guilt, especially when a plan to help Rachel backfires and leaves her hospitalized 2,000 miles from home. Eventually a poem Rachel writes gains her admission, against all odds, to a highly regarded community mental health program. After decades, she finally gains the freedom she has long yearned for. Relating her older sister’s struggle, Kasdan excavates its connections to family history and provides a poignant look at a mid-century Jewish family, especially during WWII and the Cold War. As she relates this history to her sister’s life, she realizes how writing consoles both Rachel and her, and how it also connects them. Ultimately, Roll Back the World is a profound testament to the power of writing to heal. Author: Deborah Kasdan Pub Date: October 17, 2023 -
What sort of mad longing besets a woman—nearing fifty and recently widowed—to sell everything she owns, buy an around-the-world airline ticket, pack a single suitcase, and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or agenda? When Your Heart Says Go answers that question. Set in 1990–’91, Judy’s story takes readers from San Diego through eleven European countries, the then-Soviet Union, and finally India, during the lead-up to the first Gulf War. Explorations of foreign locales and interactions with strangers and acquaintances who become a lifeline to friendship are interspersed with occasional flashbacks to Judy’s life with her beloved husband, Tom, as well as his illness and death. Descriptions of sites historic and current serve as both daily life and background for Judy’s struggle to find her way as a sober, single, independent woman in the vast world as it edges toward the collapse of the Soviet Union and war in the Middle East. The outer journey serves as a container for the inner; the more Judy experiences of the world, the more she learns about herself—and the closer she gets to realizing her lifelong dream of being a writer. Author: Judy Reeves Pub Date: October 10, 2023 -
In Pursuit of Radio Mom brings the reader tight to Terry Crylen’s side as it traces her path from frequent and debilitating anxiety, loneliness, and shame—and a dysfunctional marriage that mirrors the dynamics of her relationship with her mother—to the discovery of her authentic self and the happiness and fulfillment such a transformation brings. Radio Mom also illuminates the ways in which one generation impacts the next—both wittingly and unwittingly—when later, while pressing along the difficult route of raising her own daughter, the author is challenged to confront, yet again, the legacy of her past. A book that also makes transparent the process of psychotherapy, In Pursuit of Radio Mom’s message is this: the excavation of pain clears space within the mind and heart—affording the growth of new insight, overturning fear, and making acceptance and forgiveness possible. Author: Terry Crylen Pub Date: October 24, 2023 -
Scholar Susan Godwin is hooked when she comes across the captivating story of Mary of Modena—a seventeenth-century Italian princess who was only fourteen when coerced into marriage with the future king of England, James II, yet went on to cultivate a court full of women writers in an age when female authorship was rare. How did Mary achieve such a feat? Rain Dodging is Susan’s creative nonfiction account of the years-long search upon which this question—and her own unquenchable curiosity—launched her. Godwin travels through both space and time, solo adventuring through Britain in pursuit of truth and, in a spicy parallel arc, chronicling her own cluttered but resilient feminist path. From schizophrenic lovers to out-there musicians to one unhinged mother, Susan tells the story of her personal enlightenment even as she visits the palaces and manor houses in England and Scotland Mary once inhabited and pores over materials in Oxford’s stunning 400-year-old Bodleian Library, finding moments of transcendence and unexpected delight along the way. Join Susan in this irreverent and illuminating journey—a fascinating account of the late Stuart monarchy, the progression of feminist history, and the unexpected connection between the two. Author: Susan J. Godwin Pub Date: October 17, 2023 -
At twenty-two, Jennifer Cramer-Miller was thrilled with her new job, charming boyfriend, and Seattle apartment. Then she received a devastating autoimmune diagnosis—and suddenly, rather than planning for a bright future, she found herself soaking a hospital pillow with tears and grappling with words like “progressive” and “incurable.” That day, Cramer-Miller unwillingly crossed over from wellness to chronic illness—from thriving to kidney failure. Her chances of survival hinged upon the expertise of doctors, the generosity of strangers, and the benevolence of loved ones. But what kind of life would that be? Spanning two-plus decades, this family love story explores loss and acceptance, moving forward with uncertainty, and forging a path to joy. Four kidney transplants later, Cramer-Miller is here to shine a bright light on people helping people in difficult times with a story that will make you want to hug the humans you love. Because sometimes it’s the sorrows that threaten to pull us apart that ultimately unite us in hope. Author: Jennifer Cramer-Miller Pub Date: August 15, 2023 -
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 -
Transister is the story of a family in transition. Not a prescriptive narrative but an affirming one. A raw, honest, sometimes humorous account of author Kate Brookes’s journey as her young child grapples with gender identity and becomes her authentic self. Brookes has longed to become a mother for as long as she can remember. And for almost as long, she has harbored a fierce determination to parent her children differently—better—than her own mentally ill mom parented her. To create the “normal” family she’s always wished for. And when she gives birth to twins after two years of fertility struggles, she is, admittedly, hugely relieved that she’s found herself with two boys. There will be no need for her, a decidedly un-girly girl, to braid hair, buy Barbie dolls, or pick out party dresses for her kids. Boys. Easy. Right? But by the time her twins are eight, Brookes has had two realizations: 1) her obstetrician’s “it’s another boy” announcement was flat-out wrong, and 2) there is no such thing as a “normal” family—and that’s a beautiful thing. Author: Kate Brookes Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged suburban wife and mother of two kids, solidly planted in the life she’s always wanted. Yet she longs for something more—something she can’t quite put her finger on until, one day at the Y, she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay? This revelation sends Melissa on a head-spinning journey of self-discovery, one that challenges everything she thinks she knows about herself, forces her to decide exactly how much she’s willing to risk for authenticity, and shakes the foundations of the family she’s fiercely determined to shield from the kinds of wounds she sustained during her own childhood. Torn between her desire to be true to herself and her desire to protect her children, she is consumed by fear and conflicting emotions—and when her husband unexpectedly serves her divorce papers, her confusion only deepens. Adrift in uncharted waters, Melissa finds fragments of understanding and peace in unexpected places—in a conference room in Israel, a small fishing village in Cape Cod, and at a yoga retreat center—that help her deconstruct her preconceptions about faith and identity and begin to construct a new framework for her life. Over the course of her ten-year journey, she finds hope, love, and more courage than she ever knew she was capable of, and she gradually assembles the puzzle that is her—the real her. Author: Melissa Giberson Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
Have you ever driven home from work wearing nothing but a pair of rubber boots? For Dr. Melinda McCall, a large animal veterinarian in rural Virginia, this is living the dream. Caring for cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, llamas, and the occasional alpaca, unusual mishaps and mind-blowing adventures abound. Getting caught driving home naked after a tough day at work is just another day at the office for Dr. Melinda. Ride along in the vet truck as this fearless vet confronts every obstacle that crosses her path while building a thriving veterinary practice with an all-female foundation. She prevails through a fractured skull, back surgery, rare zoonotic diseases, and other extreme challenges. With stubbornness and grit, she surpasses the expectations of adversaries, including her own father, to become the owner of a successful veterinary business and mother of an inquisitive, spirited young daughter. Offering a firsthand glimpse into the fascinating world of veterinary medicine, Driving Home Naked is a smart, riveting, and heartfelt memoir that will captivate animal lovers and inspire people to follow their dreams on any scale. Buckle up for a wild ride. Author: Melinda G. McCall, DVM Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?” Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path. The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a reader, you’ll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You’ll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father’s unnerving final demands. Author: Joanne Intrator Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
When Dayna MacCulloch was two years old, her father killed his friend and then himself. Twenty years later, she went back to see where it happened—where her father morphed from the hippie, homesteading, jack-of-all-trades man that everyone loved to the guy who took his rifle off the shelf one night and shot his friend in the face. Standing in the place where he did it, a wildfire of unanswered questions—the ones she’d suppressed all her life—blazed open within her. The life she was living no longer made sense, no longer was enough. While most of her friends were applying for big jobs, getting married, and getting pregnant, she bought a one-way ticket to a Greek island—determined to, as Rilke advised, live the questions for as long as she could. You Do Not Have to Be Good is the story of where that choice led her: to five different countries over the course of five years. It is a candid, intimate memoir about the ways that loss and landscape guide and shape us, the ways strangers can heal us, and what it means to finally come home. Author: Dayna MacCulloch Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
January 2021, ten months into the global pandemic, Sherry Sidoti’s mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer—so Sherry prioritizes a trip to Manhattan over long-awaited empty-nesting and her “second chance” with fiancé Jevon. With new life blooming and loss looming, she is beckoned to answer the question that has haunted her since childhood: is freedom found in “letting go,” as the spiritual teachers (and her mother) insist—or is it found by digging our heels deeper into the earth and holding on to our humanness? A Smoke and a Song is Sherry’s story of her quest to make meaning from the memories homed in her body. Told with tenacity, tenderness, and wry humor, Sherry stumbles towards self-actualization, spiritual awakening—and, despite it all, love. This is a story steeped in art and spirituality that explores the complexities of transgenerational maternal bonds, attachment, loss, and leaning in to our wounds to find the wisdom. Author: Sherry Sidoti Pub Date: August 1, 2023 -
Terry Repak and her partner moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. He did AIDS work while she wrote and raised their children to become global citizens like their parents. Living in different countries̵–from Ivory Coast and Tanzania to Switzerland—Terry embraced every opportunity to meet people of other cultures and to bear witness to the ravages of AIDS. Like many expats, she was torn between the pull of home when a parent’s health declined or her siblings needed help and the draw of epic landscapes and foreign cultures. The lessons she learned while living overseas—though not always easy—were deeply transformative. Candid, thoughtful, and instructive, Circling Home explores the notion of home and of how the bonds we form with people from other countries and cultures can profoundly change us. Author: Terry A. Repak Pub Date: September 12, 2023 -
As a young doctor working in the middle of the HIV epidemic in the early ’90s, Alicia Blando feels unsure of the effectiveness of the medical profession. To gain insight into her life’s path, she seeks advice in some unconventional places, and lands on astrology as her way forward. Astrology, based in astronomy, has specific rules; it can’t be easily manipulated. The scientist in her can’t help but respond to this idea. At a pivotal group demonstration, Alicia finds a mentor, Iris, who introduces her to the study of astrology. By learning to read the horoscope, Alicia gains insight into her potential and manifests her ambition to travel and explore healing techniques from indigenous cultures. Eventually, her search for new teachers and past knowledge takes her from Manhattan to the Peruvian Amazon, Belize, and Bolivia, where she discovers ancient ways of healing among people who consider the sky to be a continuation of nature on earth. She connects with the tenets of astrology as the language that describes man’s connection to the sky environment. The horoscopic map gives information that can assist in making better choices in life, Alicia learns; it has the potential to analyze a person’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and health concerns. Alicia’s journey off the beaten path ultimately leads her to true self-exploration and connection with the world around her, as well as a desire to share her knowledge. In Open for Interpretation, she shares her story of finally finding the map she’s been seeking—and explains how we can all use that map to access our true selves and untapped potential. Pub Date: June 27, 2023 Author: Alicia Blando, MD -
Should Rica invite her mother to her wedding? In her early early forties and about to remarry, Rica Ramos realizes that starting over could mean leaving her mother behind. She longs to heal the relationship, but her mother still refuses to acknowledge the sexual abuse Rica suffered at the hands of her stepfather, or her own culpability throughout the years. With old traumas resurfacing and a new life unfolding before her, Rica grasps the power of unspoken grief—and the potential to suffer or heal. Will she and her mother ever cross the chasm between them, or are some secrets meant to stay buried? As Rica navigates her options, she faces two ultimate choices: submit to a culture that shames daughters for not honoring their mothers, or muster the courage to go her own way. Offering a bold and lucid look at mother-daughter relationships, Nobody's Daughter underscores every woman’s right to truth and validation. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Rica Ramos -
At fifty-four, Alenka was running out of time to follow through on a dream she’d written down in her pocket-size Rumi book just after her first marriage crumbled. Years later, as she slowly rebuilt her life with her second husband, things started spiraling out of control. The only way she knew how to heal and connect all painful parts of her life was by riding her bike, and she didn’t want to have regrets. But was she brave enough to embark on an unknown path and risk losing everything . . . perhaps even her own life? Determined to awaken her dying spirit and heal her battered body, Alenka loaded her mountain bike with 50 pounds’ worth of camping gear and set off on a 2,500-mile journey. Starting in Lake Tahoe California, she hoped to ride along the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, following remote mountain trails. Alone. What followed was an irrevocably transformational journey of love, hope, courage, and resilience—and here, Alenka tells that story in a voice stripped of self-pity and infused with a good dose of humor. She Rides is a galvanizing wake-up call for anyone who wants to unearth and follow their own deeply buried dreams—and reclaim their life. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Alenka Vrecek -
When Barbara Terao moves into a new home in Washington, two thousand miles from her husband in Illinois, she doesn’t know when—or if—she’ll ever live with him again. Her diagnosis of breast cancer three months later changes both of them in ways they never imagined. In the ensuing months, Barbara’s husband and adult children show up to help her through a year of difficult treatments and surgery, and Barbara, in her Whidbey Island cottage, learns to listen to her heart and intuition. Nurtured by Douglas fir forests, the Salish Sea, and her community, she changes her life from the inside out. Her journey, she realizes, wasn’t about leaving her husband so much as finding herself. Reconfigured in body, mind, and spirit, Barbara finally has words for what she wants to say—and the strength to be a survivor. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Barbara Wolf Terao -
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 -
Why are so many teachers leaving the profession? They’re burned out; they feel disrespected, and unsupported. After teaching remotely during a pandemic, they’re returning to classrooms with under-socialized and sometimes out-of-control kids. What to do? Teaching by Heart chronicles the journey of a journalist-turned-teacher determined to make teaching work—despite its difficulties. Peek into Madame Nelson’s classroom to see her trying to reach teens who dance, cry, and hit each other in French class; administrators who laud the latest pedagogical trends and testing regime; and parents who sometimes support—and sometimes interfere with—their children’s education. Meet colleagues who save her from quitting, and her children who provide advice. Along the journey, she evolves from an aloof elitist into an empathetic listener to all sorts of teens. Isn’t it time we create schools in which teachers want to stay and new ones enter? Without committed teachers, how can we prepare students to run our world? Teaching by Heart illuminates why it’s so hard to hold on to classroom teachers these days—and what can be done to better the situation. Pub Date: October 31, 2023 Author: Jennifer Nelson -
For twenty-five years, paramedic and firefighter Christy Warren put each tragic, traumatizing call she responded to in a box and closed the lid. One day, however, the box got too full and the lid blew open—and she found herself unable to close it again. Her brain locked her inside a movie theater in which film after film of gut-wrenching scenes from her career played over and over again; she found herself incapable of forgiving herself for what happened at one call in particular. Caught in a loop of shame, anger, irritability, and hypervigilance—classic signs of PTSD—she began to spiral, even to the point of considering suicide, and yet still she was reluctant to seek help. In the end, it took almost losing her marriage to force Christy into action—but once she began to reach out, she found a whole army of folks waiting and ready to help her. The team of people supporting her eventually grew to include an EMDR therapist, a psychiatrist, her peers at a trauma retreat, and a lawyer who made the case for medical retirement and workers compensation. Along the way, Christy learned the vital truths that made it possible to keep going even in her darkest moments—that post-traumatic stress was literally a brain injury; that suicide and alcohol were not the only ways out; that asking for help was a sign of strength, not weakness; and that although it was ultimately up to her to do the work to change the dialogue in her head, she was not alone. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Christy Warren -
Joanne Greene grew up in Boston during the 1960s and ’70s, a turning point for women in the United States. Doors were opening wider, and Joanne walked through as many as she could. As a young woman, she dove headfirst into San Francisco radio and television, and went on to host and produce award-winning feminist and other timely features and talk shows for decades. Throughout, she worked at having a great marriage and being an exemplary parent. But underlying her high-achieving life was a sometimes-destructive need for control. Vulnerability and dependency were okay . . . for other people. Joanne’s value was tied to how in charge, how together, and how productive she was. Then she suffered a traumatic accident—and it set her on a journey of discovery that taught her true power came in the still moments, the moments when she not only loosened her grip but even allowed herself to crack. In fragility, Joanne found, there was beauty—and possibility, too. By Accident is a story about discovering that control is a seductive illusion and how letting go of the need for it can reveal great strength and lead us to even firmer ground. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Joanne Greene -
In this beautifully crafted blend of memoir and guidebook, Suzanne Anderson invites you to walk with her through the brutal landscape of trauma and loss in a way that is profoundly transformational. Whether you are going through a personal dark night or struggling with these uncertain and disruptive global times, this book offers a proven pathway to allow the breaking down to be the breaking open into a whole new way of living, loving, and leading. Structured into three distinct parts, Part One sets the stage and walks us through the shocking event of her husband’s suicide and the dismantling of her life. Using compelling personal stories throughout, Part Two explores how to embody each of the eight critical capacities of resilience, and Part Three provides some of the inner tools, rituals and broader perspectives needed. Drawing from her years of exploration into the development of human potential and the personal, shattering journey of loss, Suzanne guides you to make your own path through the darkest of times—and to become a light in the world that others can look to in their own times of need. Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Suzanne Anderson -
“. . . a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined.” —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass A marine biologist’s adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. His radical approach to recovery clashes with her instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters. Author: Beth Ann Mathews Publication Date: May 2, 2023
