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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
“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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
“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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Families who have supported a child with special needs will connect with this memoir about Sarah, a feisty girl with autism and a unique genetic blueprint. Her mom, Jenny, is equally feisty and determined, which leads her to make a commitment that dramatically changes her and Sarah’s lives—as well as those of many others. Sarah’s early years are filled with challenges, and Jenny and her husband, Carl, try various therapies in an effort to help her. At four years old, Sarah is still nonverbal, still doesn’t use the potty, and still struggles with eating. Jenny knows she must do more. She has heard of a method developed by the Autism Treatment Center of America called The Son-Rise Program, which, through loving, supportive interaction, aims to foster social connection in people with autism. It is a huge undertaking, requiring hours of one-on-one therapeutic playtime, which means Jenny needs to find and train volunteers to make it possible. Though Jenny isn’t sure she can do it, she decides to try. She calls her program Sarah-Rise. Accompany Jenny as Sarah’s language explodes, her eye contact intensifies, and she plays games, plays imaginatively, uses the potty, eats healthily, reads, and writes. Have your heart warmed and your socks knocked off by this momentous journey. Author: Jennifer Celeste Briggs Publication Date: January 21, 2025 -
Thank you for always loving me, Aimee Kaufman’s daughter, Sam, wrote in a Mother’s Day card at twenty-two years old. Reading those words, Aimee knew she’d been right to follow her heart throughout her younger daughter’s tumultuous childhood. Aimee spent many years doubting herself and fielding hurtful criticism about the way she was raising her daughter. But through it all, she stubbornly held to the belief that whatever tools and tricks she and Sam picked up from her own copious research and the experts she sought out to help her daughter, the true key to Sam’s happiness and success was unconditional love. In the end, the strong bond she cultivated with her daughter is what allowed them both to survive all the ups and downs—and, eventually, get Sam through school and into a career where she thrived. Heartfelt but clear-eyed, No One Else I’d Rather Be is an encouraging resource for parents looking to feel more confidence in the decisions they make regarding their child with a disability—and a testament to the power of a parent’s unconditional love. Author: Aimee Kaufman Publication Date: January 28, 2025 -
What is it like to grow up as an adoptee and be raised with your identical twin? In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs during the 1960s to 1980s, adopted twin sisters Julie and Jenny become the oldest daughters in a big family made up of a mixture of adopted and biological children. The twins’ sisterly bond is tight as the two strive for individuality, identity, and belonging. But Julie’s parents’ continual addition of adopted and biological children to the family leads to a number of painful experiences: they encounter infertility, infant mortality, a child with special needs, and then, when Julie is sixteen, a sudden family tragedy. Faced with these challenges, Julie questions everything—who she is, how she fits in, the circumstances of her adoption, where she belongs, her faith and idea of family. As their family values, parental relationships, and sibling bonds are tested, Julie realizes her adoptive family is held together by love, faith, support, and her parents’ commitment to each other and family. But the life her parents have constructed is not one that Julie wants for herself—and as she grows older, she realizes how her parents’ goals and dreams differ from her own, and how the experiences that have formed her have provided a road map for the person and mother she wants to be. Author: Julie Ryan McGue Publication Date: February 4, 2025 -
An updated twist on the classic Under the Tuscan Sun, this is the deeply personal story of how fiftysomething Barbara Boyle leaves her busy and familiar life behind in San Francisco and begins taking apart a 300-year-old stone barn to build a new home—a new life—in the largely undiscovered region of Piedmont, Italy. Filled with discoveries and pleasures of the stunning places and food she encounters, Pinch Me also details Barbara’s frustrations in adjusting to a new culture, as well as the startling heartbreak of being faced with a breast cancer diagnosis. But even in the midst of this crisis, she and her husband create a home out of the stone ruin they had found, forming deep friendships in their little town and unlocking a new level of joy in life. She shares intimate moments, joyous and bittersweet, as a new wife, stepmom, and a member of a community—and, of course, she shares a few recipes reflecting the gastronomical excellence of the region. A touching memoir filled with food, friendships, and scenes of Italy, Pinch Me is ultimately a celebration of love, of learning to see the world, as well as oneself, through a different window, and of the powerful joy that comes from building a dream. Author: Barbara Boyle Publication Date: February 11, 2025 -
In this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance, Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society. Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. Sifting through her experiences with microaggressions to the over fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities. Author: Joan Sung Publication Date: February 25, 2025 -
Through braided memories that flash against the present day, Portrait of a Feminist depicts the evolution of Marianna Marlowe’s identity as a biracial and multicultural woman—from her childhood in California, Peru, and Ecuador to her adulthood as an academic, a wife, and a mother. How does the inner life of a feminist develop? How does a writer observe the world around her and kindle, from her earliest memories, a flame attuned to the unjust? With writing that is simultaneously wise and shimmering, nuanced and direct, Marlowe confronts her own experiences with the hallmarks of patriarchy. Interweaving stories of life as the child of a Catholic Peruvian mother and an atheist American father in a family that lived many years abroad, she examines realities familiar to so many of us—unequal marriages, class structures, misogynist literature, and patriarchal religion. Portrait of a Feminist explores the essential questions of feminism in our time: What does it look like to live in defense of feminism? How should feminism be evolving today? Author: Marianna Marlowe Publication Date: February 25, 2025 -
Adopted as an infant by a naval officer and his wife during the Baby Scoop Era, Diane Wheaton has always heard conflicting versions of the truth of her origins—but it’s not until she is forty-seven years old that she begins to search for her biological family in earnest. Amid search and reunion, however, Diane’s adoptive parents become ill—and while overseeing their care, she is told about a secret they have kept from her for over fifteen years. This shocking disclosure complicates her already complicated feelings for them, and she finds herself faced with an important decision—one that feels almost impossible to make, but which results in a level of healing she never could have anticipated. A touching memoir of self-discovery, Finding Loretta is Diane’s tale of searching for history, roots, and family. Ultimately, she comes to accept the two distinct dynamics of the families who have helped make her who she is today, and in doing so she learns to embrace herself and feel grateful for everything she has experienced—even loss. Author: Diane Wheaton Publication Date: March 4, 2025 -
Beginning at the age of five, Sondra spends decades auditioning for the role of her authentic self. Her dazzling mother casts her as confidante and co-conspirator in her affairs and serial marriages. Sondra vacillates between fierce anger toward her mother—who does nothing to protect her from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse—and a desperate need for her love and approval. As an adult, Sondra enters into and stays in a toxic marriage for years, engaging in affairs with married men rather than divorcing. When therapy and AA eventually propel her out of the sense-deadening haze of alcohol and cigarettes, she summons the courage to tell her husband she plans to leave him. He reacts by playing on her biggest fear, telling her, “You’re going to turn out just like your mother.” Sondra attempts to establish a sober and separate identity, but tensions between her and her mother further increase when she marries someone new—a man who displaces her mother as the epicenter of her life—and her mother’s seventh marriage ends. During this time, traumatic childhood memories suddenly surface and a seismic shift occurs, freeing Sondra from her need for maternal connection. But establishing a life independent from her mother proves far more complicated than she could have imagined. Author: Sondra R. Brooks Publication Date: March 4, 2025
