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“A sparkling, spiritual gem of a tale that splendidly illuminates the searing soul-searching of Cathars and Catholics in medieval Languedoc. Carleton's achievement makes historical fiction a retelling of history and a discovery of self.” —Stephen O'Shea, author of The Perfect Heresy and The Friar of Carcassonne What happens when a troubled young woman dares to follow the stirrings of her soul in turbulent times? Elmina begins life with a troubled childhood in a medieval French town—a childhood that turns her into a spiritually seeking young woman who dares to follow the stirrings of her soul. Her idealism and love lead her to leave a Cathar school and follow the man who will become Saint Dominic. As the world around her erupts into the Albigensian Crusade, Elmina finds herself complicit in its horror, and her spiritual and emotional life begins to unravel. With the aid of the counsel of her wise prior, Brother Noel, Elmina learns to paint her experiences within a sacred circle—a practice that helps her discover the origins of her lifelong fears and wrestle with questions that are as divisive today as they were eight centuries ago: the nature of God, the purpose of creation, the nature of evil, and the possibility of reincarnation. Author: Linda Carleton Publication Date: June 13, 2017 -
“Em’s Awful Good Fortune takes its reader across the world and deep into the heart of its trapped, privileged, suffering, and, ultimately, invincible narrator.” —Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Set against the backdrop of the expat lifestyle, Em’s Awful Good Fortune is about marriage—love and family, work and compromise, betrayal and heartbreak, resentment and resolution. Weaving back and forth in time and between cities and countries, Em’s booming voice—fierce, funny, and relatable—is the engine that drives this story. Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Detroit, Los Angeles and Seoul—Em stomps her way around the world on the personal journey to reimagine and reclaim her voice. True to life, this is a disorderly journey—one that ultimately leads to a new understanding of partnership and the complexity of relationships. For lovers of books by Jennifer Egan, Sally Rooney, and Elizabeth Strout. Author: Marcie Maxfield Publication Date: August 3, 2021 -
As Diana surveyed her newborn baby's face, languid body, and absent cry, she knew something was wrong. Then the doctors delivered devastating news: her first child, Emma, had been born with a rare genetic disorder that would leave her profoundly physically and intellectually disabled. Diana imagined life with a child with disabilities as a dark and insular one—a life in which she would be forced to exist in the periphery alongside her daughter. Convinced of her inability to love her “imperfect” child and give her the best care and life she deserved, Diana gave Emma up for adoption. But as with all things that are meant to be, Emma found her way back home. As Emma grew, Diana watched her live life determinedly and unapologetically, radiating love always. Emma evolved from a survivor to a warrior, and the little girl that Diana didn’t think she could love enough rearranged her heart. In her short eighteen years of life, Emma gifted her family the indelible lesson of the healing and redemptive power of love. This is a mother’s requiem to her perfectly imperfect child—a child who left too soon, but whose lessons continue to inspire a life lived and loved. Publication Date: June 15, 2021 Author: Diana Kupershmit -
A bicultural child of a Malay mother and an Indian father, Amelia Zachry was different from the get-go, never quite fitting in. In this raw, inspiring memoir, she chronicles the long, winding journey that brought her from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Kentucky, USA—the place she and her family now call home. Amelia was nineteen years old, her future wide open, when a fellow student from her Kuala Lumpur university sexually assaulted her. After that night, she felt sullied—and convinced that what had happened was her fault. In the months and years that followed, she spiraled, first into isolation and then into promiscuity, as she attempted to try to take back some of the power that had been stripped from her that night. Eventually, she met the man who would become her husband and greatest advocate, Daniel, and began to emerge from that dark place—but even he couldn’t fight her demons for her. In her late twenties, Amelia was diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar II disorder, both of which would go on to shape her adult life as an individual, a wife, and a mother. A memoir of trauma and healing, mental illness and resilience, culture shock and new beginnings, devastation and triumph, Enough is one woman’s story of learning to make peace with the fact that things are as they should be, even if she sometimes wishes they were different—and of discovering that however far away it may seem, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Author: Amelia Zachry Publication Date: October 18, 2022 -
Featured on Indie Picks Magazine’s Breakout Novels of 2018 Featured on BookBub's "10 of This Summer's Creepiest Thrillers by Women "A vivid tangle of corporate intrigue, murder, friendship, and love gone wrong.” —Kirkus Reviews It only takes one moment to change everything. Long ago, Heather left her old life behind. Now, she has everything: a marriage to a handsome executive, a managerial human resources position in a powerful multinational, and a beautiful daughter. And she will do anything to keep it that way. But everything has a price. When a bullet ends the life of another woman—an ex-employee whom Heather helped fire—it sets off a chain of events that jeopardizes everything for which Heather has worked. Events of Heather’s past soon collide with her company’s wrongdoings, and she must risk everything to expose them. But all she’s ever known is the peril of being visible. Frightened and desperate, Heather calls upon her constant childhood friends—friends who long ago saved her from a life of pain—and, together, they will once again face the events of a traumatic night that each has sought to forget. Because sometimes the only ones who can save you are those with whom you share your deepest and darkest secrets—those who know that fear is the price of silence. Author: Elizabeth Campbell Frey Publication Date: June 12, 2018 -
2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist, Relationships 2016 International Book Awards: Finalist, Self-Help/Relationships National Indie Excellence Awards: Finalist, Sexuality Have you ever asked yourself the following questions: Are my desires normal? Can I share who I really am with my partner? Am I morally flawed because of my sexual fantasies? Is there something wrong with me sexually because I have low libido? In Erotic Integrity, Dr. Claudia Six leads readers through ten sexual themes―including garden-variety performance anxiety, sexual boredom, newly dating, coming out, and more―and reveals three simple steps to a more rewarding sex life: knowing who you truly are as a sexual being, embracing that knowledge, and living it authentically. Frankly presented and illustrated with candid case studies, these steps can be applied by individuals and couples of all ages and sexual orientations, with or without children. Based on Dr. Six’s twenty years experience as a clinical sexologist, this straightforward guide skillfully challenges readers to self-examine, self-accept, and self-actualize for a more fulfilling sense of eroticism. Author: Claudia Six Publication Date: May 10, 2016 -
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 -
“Interweaving a contemporary story with a rich and detailed glimpse into a little-known segment of famed French painter Edgar Degas’s life, Linda Stewart Henley invites readers into the intriguing art world of New Orleans through interlocking storylines set a century apart. An admirable debut!” —Ashley Sweeney, award-winning author of Eliza Waite When Edgar Degas visits his French Creole relatives in New Orleans from 1872 to ’73, Estelle, his cousin and sister-in-law, encourages the artist—who has not yet achieved recognition and struggles to find inspiration—to paint portraits of their family members. In 1970, Anne Gautier, a young artist, finds connections between her ancestors and Degas while renovating the New Orleans house she has inherited. When Anne finds two identical portraits of Estelle, she discover disturbing truths that change her life as she searches for meaningful artistic expression—just as Degas did one hundred years earlier. A gripping historical novel told by two women living a century apart, Estelle combines mystery, family saga, art, and romance in its exploration of the man Degas was before he became the artist famous around the world today. Author: Linda Stewart Henley Publication Date: August 25, 2020 -
Forward INDIEFAB Gold Medal for Literary Fiction and Bronze Medal for Historical Fiction Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal for Literary fiction IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Awards): Gold Medal for European Fiction Spanning a century and three continents, Even in Darkness tells the story of Kläre Kohler, whose early years as a dutiful daughter of a prosperous German-Jewish family hardly anticipate the often-harrowing life she faces as an adult—a saga of family, a lover, two world wars, a concentration camps and the unconventional life she builds in post-war Germany. As the world changes around her, Kläre makes boundary-crossing choicesin order to protect the people she loves—and to save herself. Based on a true story, Even in Darkness highlights the intimate experience of Kläre’s reinvention as she faces the destruction of life as she knew it, and traces her path beyond survival to wisdom, meaning, and—most unexpectedly—love. Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon Publication Date: April 7, 2015 -
Forty-ish hipster dad Jake is happily settled down in the politically progressive, urban, and notably self-satisfied community of Greenwood, working at his not-so-interesting job, playing guitar with his band, and enjoying domestic life with his beautiful and accomplished wife Lisa, their two charming daughters, and the beloved family dog. When Lisa rocks Jake’s world by telling him she wants a divorce, their story unfolds from multiple points of view including those of other family members, Jake’s self-absorbed divorce lawyer, the cranky family court judge who presides over his custody case, his polyamorous millennial girlfriend, and the eighteen-year-old babysitter who also happens to be his lawyer’s daughter. Throughout Greenwood, in the coffee shop, the yoga studio, and the basketball court, lives intersect. Choruses of friends and neighbors gossip, dissect, and weigh in. A surprise witness upends Jake’s custody trial. Things are not always as they seem, and there is no one truth about a marriage. Pub Date: May 23, 2023 Author: Margaret Klaw -
“A witty and thoughtful account that’s a portrait of a mother-daughter bond as much as it is a search for love. The drama alone (a broken engagement, angry creditors, infidelity) keep the reader engaged . . . ” —Kirkus Reviews “One woman’s challenging tale to find herself is full of emotion and stark, uncomfortable truths . . . revealing a vulnerability that is as painful as it is endearing. The conversational, relatable writing style is enough to captivate readers and keep the pages turning.” —BookLife Life in a middle-class Italian American-Catholic neighborhood in the 1950s Bronx was not supposed to include divorce, Judaism, classical music, political discourse, or poverty in the social construct. So, in the absence of friends, young Barbara takes comfort in the minutiae, the small details available to her in her everyday life that seem to be overlooked by others. But that appreciation for the inanimate world leads her on a path to the acquisition of objects and a quest for identity that dominates her choices—from her marriage and family life to her constant striving for more and more. Barbara’s chosen nursing career offers validation and some affirmation, but falls short of providing her what’s most elusive—self–esteem—until finally, at age fifty, she abruptly abandons her conventional role of mother, wife, nurse, and neighbor to attempt a three-hundred-mile bike ride from Boston to New York. Poorly prepared, she takes only what she needs to flee her life, and a fierce determination that finally allows her to discover her place in the world—and to find true belonging. Author: Barbara Santarelli Publication Date: September 12, 2017 -
Tracey Carisch thought she had it all. As a wife, mother, and successful executive, she seemed to be living the modern American dream. But one night, a panic attack sent her tumbling into a midlife crisis and questioning everything about her life. That’s when she and her husband made a decision that shocked their family and friends: they sold everything they owned, pulled their three young daughters out of school, and became a family of wandering globetrotters. Loaded with hilarious mishaps as well as deeply meaningful revelations, Excess Baggage chronicles the Carisch family’s extraordinary, eighteen-month adventure across six continents. As they navigate the trials and tribulations of international travel, the family encounters unique people and bizarre situations that teach them about the world―and themselves. Carisch’s candid and insightful account of her family’s journey will have you laughing out loud, shedding a few tears, and bringing the lessons of family travel into your own life . . . without ever having to leave home. Author: Tracey Carisch Publication Date: August 14, 2018 -
IndieReader Discovery Awards: Women's Issues, First Place Royal Dragonfly Book Award Winner in Women's Interests 2017 Canada Book Award Winner After her son, Zachary, dies in her arms at birth, visual artist and author Alexis Marie Chute disappears into her “Year of Distraction.” She cannot paint or write or tap into the heart of who she used to be—too caught up in mourning not only for Zachary but also for the future they might have had together. It is only when Chute learns she is pregnant again that she sets out to find healing and rediscover her identity—just in time, she hopes, to welcome her next child. In the forty weeks of her pregnancy, Chute grapples with her strained marriage, shaken faith, and medical diagnosis, with profound results. Glowing with riveting and gorgeous prose, Expecting Sunshine chronicles the anticipation and anxiety of expecting a baby while still grieving for the child that came before—enveloping readers with insightful observations on grief and healing, life and death, and the incredible power of a mother’s love. Author: Alexis Marie Chute Publication Date: April 18, 2017 -
For fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, a child sex abuse survivor-turned-domestic violence advocate examines the full circle of generational trauma, resilience, and healing. The average person can keep a secret for forty-seven hours. Babs Walters held the worst kind of secret for nearly 70 years. Beginning at the age of 11, Babs suffered childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father. His edict, “Children should be seen and not heard,” defined her childhood and groomed her to silence. Desperate to be loved and seeking approval, the good little girl absorbed both the responsibility and the shame that was not hers to begin with. Despite the generational trauma and abuse that haunted her childhood, Walters made a promise to herself when she realized that “We are not what happens to us. We are the meaning and purpose we give to what happens to us.” Now, decades later, author Babs Walters shows us how uncovering the truth is a critical step to healing. Facing the Jaguar is an inspirational story of resilience and courage—a story that proves anything is possible when we claim our truth and shine a light in even the darkest of places. Author: Babs Walters Publication Date: June 17, 2025 -
Shortlisted for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing “Faint Promise of Rain is a gorgeous book, a story that is at once spare and lush, wrenching and restoring. The characters are so fully realized, so keenly nuanced, that they linger with you long after the last page, like the sweet smell of a recent storm.” —Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This and Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University It is 1554 in the desert of Rajasthan, and a new Mughal emperor is expanding his territory. In a family of Hindu temple dancers a daughter, Adhira, must carry on her family’s sacred tradition. Her father, against his wife and sons’ protests, insists Adhira “marry” the temple deity and give herself to a wealthy patron. But after one terrible evening, she makes a brave choice that carries her family’s story and their dance to a startling new beginning. Told from the perspective of this exquisite dancer and filled with the sounds, sights and flavors of the Indian desert, Faint Promise of Rain is the story of a family and a girl caught between art, duty, and fear in a changing world. Author: Anjali Mitter Duva Publication Date: October 7, 2014 -
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 -
2016 Best Book Award Finalist in Self Help: General 2016 Next Generation Finalist in Inspiration 2016 Next Generation Finalist in Motivational 2017 Human Relations Indie Book Awards Director's Choice Award Winner for Outstanding 'Life Adjustment Book' 2017 Human Relations Indie Book Awards Silver Winner in Self-Help and Wellness 2017 Human Relations Indie Book Awards Silver Winner in Motivational 2017 Human Relations Indie Book Awards Silver Winner in Life Challenges 2017 Human Relations Indie Book Awards Silver Winner in Life Journey There are times in life that shake us to our very foundations. We wish for things to get better, fast. But the truth is that moments of “falling apart” are also our most powerful catalysts for growth and change. In Falling Together, Donna Cardillo, a registered nurse, Dr. Oz blogger, and beloved public speaker, reflects on the overwhelming challenges that fall into every life, and the renewal that comes when we are able to meet them with courage. A funny, big-hearted self-help memoir that takes on issues like divorce, caregiving, and burnout—and many women’s biggest enemies of all, fear, insecurity, and self-doubt—Falling Together shows how to turn the challenges that threaten to knock us to the ground into the building blocks we need to become more successful, more joyful, and ultimately, more alive. Author: Donna Wilk Cardillo Publication Date: April 5, 2016 -
This collection of novelettes takes the reader from the not-to-distant future to a time when travel between worlds is a common occurrence. Each stop along mankind’s journey outward to the stars is accompanied by a deeper look inward—from examining how extraterrestrial beings might use our own biology against us, to how wishes are really granted, to posing questions about the very nature of our souls. Original and thought provoking, these stories—which include an interstellar religious thriller involving a second coming of Christ—will stimulate the intellect and engage the imagination. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Nancy Joie Wilkie -
Mary, a Rust Belt farm girl, the bastard child of an unwed, unconventional single mother, claws her way out of poverty and weds, but soon stumbles over the myth of monogamy. When her first husband, Don, dies, she seeks a more honest, equitable relationship, determined that her infant son, Billy, will not be a fatherless child as she was. The day before she leaves on a freighter for Greece, she meets Isaac in the East Village, and their romance blooms as they shuttle back and forth between Brooklyn and Crete. In addition to the distance between them, however, Mary must also take on Isaac’s conventional Jewish mother and all her beliefs about how and where they should live. Fatherless, Fearless, Female follows the international adventures of the dauntless Mary as she moves from a mob-operated strip joint in Chicago to the vineyards and villages of Crete, from art schools in New York and Jerusalem to the Imperial Iranian Air Force Base in Isfahan during the revolution of ’78. Along the way, she navigates through a maze of broken vows, broken families, and broken educational systems—and learns, at last, the value of love and the true meaning of her mother’s deathbed story. Author: Mary Charity Kruger Stein Publication Date: September 29, 2020 -
As her sweetheart’s body lies cooling on the living room floor, Joni Sensel shattered but not surprised, revisits her premonition about this moment. From nearly the start of their fairytale romance less than four years ago, she knew she would lose Tony, the man she considered to be her soulmate. He was in great health, but fate had other plans a hard truth that visited Joni in the form of a startling vision during their second weekend together. Though she kept the premonition a secret while Tony was alive, upon his death she’s compelled to share it with his spirit in the form of a letter. A grief memoir with a paranormal twist, Feeling Fate explores how a dark intuition magnified Sensel’s love and gratitude in the time she and Tony had together before her premonition came true. Faced with evidence of a grand design alongside her grief, she’s torn between faith and skepticism. While she’s nearly undone by the pain of her loss, she eventually discovers that a sassy imagination and the irrational insights of the heart can both defeat despair and transform her grief into meaning. Author: Joni Sensel Pub Date: April 26, 2022 -
Loner James Malloy is a ferry captain—or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by a girl named Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored. When he discovers a private golf course staked out across wilderness sacred to his dying best friend, a Narragansett Indian, James is determined to stop such “improvements.” But despite Brenton’s nickname as “Cooperation Island,” he’s used to working solo. To keep rocky bluffs, historic trees, and ocean shoreline open to all, he’ll have to learn to cooperate with other islanders—including Captain Courtney, who might just morph from irritant to irresistible once James learns a secret that’s been kept from him for years. This salt-sprayed fourth novel by 2004 Olympic Sailor Carol Newman Cronin celebrates wilderness and water, open space and open-mindedness, and the redemptive power of neighborly cooperation. Author: Carol Newman Cronin Publication Date: June 16, 2020 -
"Skip Sunday School and read this book instead! Join Bella LaVey on her unflinching journey through the underworld of sex, where the mingling of pleasure and pain reopen the childhood wound of love withheld and eventually lead to healing. Defined by compassion, humor, and violence, Fetish Girl proves that the spiritual path can be one of adventure, startling discovery, and large men in pink tutus. A moving and courageous book, full of outcasts and deviants--the kind of folks Jesus called friends.” —Donna M. Johnson, author of Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir Fetish Girl is a kinky roller coaster ride through addiction, violence, motherhood, sex, and the creation of Evil Kitty, Bella LaVey’s larger-than-life dominatrix persona. It is a singular memoir that shows that a heavily tatted BDSM sex worker can be courageous enough to come to terms with her painful truths and raise a healthy, loving child, even as she remains boldly sexual and authentic. It’s the story of a woman attracted to extremes who is willing to go to great lengths to uncover and make peace with her true nature. Author: Bella LaVey Publication Date: November 13, 2018 -
What does a free-spirited, fifty-something professional do when she breaks up with her non-committal Buddhist boyfriend and longs for a life partner? She holds a ‘letting go’ ceremony with the boyfriend, challenges herself to go on 50 dates, takes a few lovers, and voila! Finding Mr. Right becomes a sexy dating project. Set in the SF Bay Area world of personal growth workshops and spiritual ceremonies, Fifty First Dates after Fifty traces the adventurous path of Carolyn’s universal quest for love. The goal of fifty pulls her forward through the highs and lows of dating—magical and ecstatic, pining and painful—while her heart soars, falls, and keeps on going. Buoyed by her dating project, she avoids settling for the wrong guy, discovers the type of man she wants, reconciles a love of independence and sex with her desire for commitment and emotional connection, and finds the unique partner for her. This upbeat memoir about the search for a partner in midlife is also a celebration of a woman’s unabashed sexuality. Erotic in places, funny in others, it offers a positive view of dating as an enjoyable journey of self-discovery and self-love along the way to one’s own Mr. Right. Author: Carolyn Lee Arnold Publication Date: November 2, 2021 -
“Fasbinder writes with a graceful honesty that is both refreshing and timeless. Hers is a hopeful, heartfelt journey where deep laughs alternate with moments of profound loss. A beautiful and inspiring testament to the resilience and healing power of family.” —Booklist On the day that she decided to marry a widower—also a long-time friend—Betsy Graziani Fasbinder knew that she wasn’t only gaining a husband, she was inheriting a son. Unlike many stepmothers, Betsy didn’t have to struggle with an ex, or court battles, or the weekend shuffle between houses—but she did have to navigate living in the shadow of a young mother taken too soon, to honor the memory of her son’s first mother, and to become the kind of parent and partner she herself wanted to be. Over time this family would learn how love’s roots were formed in their shared losses, and how the new family love and joy they created together would become the richest kind of inheritance. Author: Betsy Graziani Fasbinder Publication Date: May 9, 2017
