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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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
