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Melanie Smith knows from experience how grief and trauma can feel complex and immovable. She used that experience to fuel her research into the issues of trauma, loss, and finding happiness, which led to the creation of Unfinished Business—an eight-step, actionable, step-by-step process that will help you uncover the story of your life from the perspective of heartbreaks, limiting beliefs, old patterns, and unconscious habits. As you work through this process, you will examine who your models and influencers were and are, as well as the relationships in your life that remain unresolved and incomplete; and you will learn to heal the past, forgive, and overcome long-held beliefs, patterns of behavior, negative self-talk, self-judgment, overwhelm, and misalignment that have held you back from succeeding in love, relationships, business, finance, and health. Through this work, you will come to know yourself at the deepest level, experience clarity of vision, and find complete self-awareness. Grounded in a scientifically supported and solution-based methodology, Melanie’s Unfinished Business system has already transformed many people’s lives through her one-on-one and small group coaching sessions; now everyone can access it—and change their lives once and for all. Author: Melanie Smith Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?” Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path. The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a reader, you’ll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You’ll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father’s unnerving final demands. Author: Joanne Intrator Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
As Josie Belle Gore, daughter of a Louisiana train engineer and Texas seamstress, journeys with her itinerant family through the deserts of the boom-and-bust American West and revolutionary Mexico, she learns that in her life, two things are constant: water is precious, and her role in her family is to save it. When unforeseeable events force the separation of her family, Josie begins an odyssey that takes her from New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto to Bisbee, Tucson, Los Angeles, and finally post-WWI San Francisco—experiencing betrayal, pandemic, and survivor’s guilt, as well as the compassion and generosity of friends and strangers, along the way. Once she lands in San Francisco, like a river meeting the sea, Josie has nowhere else to run—and she realizes that she must make peace with the past and good on her promise to the family she loves. Inspired by the author’s family lore, The Ways of Water is a lyrical tale of loss, hope, and forgiveness set in the rugged beauty of the turn-of-the-century Southwest that, like Josie, is growing up in fits and starts. Author: Teresa H. Janssen Pub Date: November 7, 2023 -
Controversial filmmaker Jean Mercier is shooting a film on location in Sweden. While spending the summer creating his latest work of cinematic art, he lives in a nearby inn with his lead actors: Albie Hughes, British veteran of stage and screen; Charlotte Reed, British indie film queen; Michael Hennesey, American TV heartthrob; Willow Barnes, fallen former teen star looking to make a comeback; and Finn Forrester, legendary Hollywood movie star. Mercier invites his friend Ella Sinclair—a beautiful, bohemian-spirited American philosopher known for her provocative writing—to stay with them for the summer. When Ella arrives, Finn is instantly enchanted by her, and soon they fall madly in love. Finn wants to plan a life together, but Ella harbors fears and convinces him to wait until the film wraps to decide their future. In a case of life imitating art, the film they are creating explores “the big questions” and prompts the stars to reflect on the crossroads they face in their own lives. How will their experiences on location affect them when they return home? The answers won’t come until months later, when the cast and crew reconvene on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival—but their revelation will make for one unforgettable night. Author: Patricia Leavy Pub Date: October 10, 2023 -
It’s the summer of 2017 in Wellington Beach, California, a suburban coastal town increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices—divisions that change the lives of five neighbors. Longtime resident and real estate agent Lisa Kensington juggles her job, her shopaholic husband, a mother-in-law who knows how to push her buttons, and teenage children with ideas of their own, all while trying to hold on to her own dreams. Her neighbor Ray Gorman is a haunted Vietnam vet who is also caring for his aging mother. Keith Nelson, an ex-con, lives in his car, parked around the corner from Ray, near his parents’ house. Keith’s got a job, a grandmother he loves, and a gym routine that almost helps him manage his violent tendencies. Down the street from Ray, sixteen-year-old Josh Kowalski is working through the shock of his father’s abandonment by slamming on a drum set. He loves Led Zeppelin and setting things on fire and is fascinated with his friend’s sister. New neighbor Jeannette Larsen, an aerobics teacher numbed by horrific tragedy, turns away from her husband—and toward sex with strangers. In the end, these characters discover that despite their differences, they are more connected than any of them could have imagined. Author: Mary Camarillo Pub Date: October 10, 2023 -
When Dayna MacCulloch was two years old, her father killed his friend and then himself. Twenty years later, she went back to see where it happened—where her father morphed from the hippie, homesteading, jack-of-all-trades man that everyone loved to the guy who took his rifle off the shelf one night and shot his friend in the face. Standing in the place where he did it, a wildfire of unanswered questions—the ones she’d suppressed all her life—blazed open within her. The life she was living no longer made sense, no longer was enough. While most of her friends were applying for big jobs, getting married, and getting pregnant, she bought a one-way ticket to a Greek island—determined to, as Rilke advised, live the questions for as long as she could. You Do Not Have to Be Good is the story of where that choice led her: to five different countries over the course of five years. It is a candid, intimate memoir about the ways that loss and landscape guide and shape us, the ways strangers can heal us, and what it means to finally come home. Author: Dayna MacCulloch Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
January 2021, ten months into the global pandemic, Sherry Sidoti’s mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer—so Sherry prioritizes a trip to Manhattan over long-awaited empty-nesting and her “second chance” with fiancé Jevon. With new life blooming and loss looming, she is beckoned to answer the question that has haunted her since childhood: is freedom found in “letting go,” as the spiritual teachers (and her mother) insist—or is it found by digging our heels deeper into the earth and holding on to our humanness? A Smoke and a Song is Sherry’s story of her quest to make meaning from the memories homed in her body. Told with tenacity, tenderness, and wry humor, Sherry stumbles towards self-actualization, spiritual awakening—and, despite it all, love. This is a story steeped in art and spirituality that explores the complexities of transgenerational maternal bonds, attachment, loss, and leaning in to our wounds to find the wisdom. Author: Sherry Sidoti Pub Date: August 1, 2023 -
Terry Repak and her partner moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. He did AIDS work while she wrote and raised their children to become global citizens like their parents. Living in different countries̵–from Ivory Coast and Tanzania to Switzerland—Terry embraced every opportunity to meet people of other cultures and to bear witness to the ravages of AIDS. Like many expats, she was torn between the pull of home when a parent’s health declined or her siblings needed help and the draw of epic landscapes and foreign cultures. The lessons she learned while living overseas—though not always easy—were deeply transformative. Candid, thoughtful, and instructive, Circling Home explores the notion of home and of how the bonds we form with people from other countries and cultures can profoundly change us. Author: Terry A. Repak Pub Date: September 12, 2023 -
Every day, we take in data from the world around us and store that data in our intellect. Then, without conscious awareness, we listen to that data—a process we call “thinking”—and use what it tells us to inform our decisions. But living our lives this way means always living in the past, and it limits us more than we think. In The Inward Outlook, psychologist Laura Basha shares how to discern this habitual way of thinking from the innate wisdom and common sense that we all have available to us at all times. Once we can see this distinction between personal thinking from the past and in-the-moment, impersonal, diffuse thinking, we are awakened to the conscious choice point, which allows us to make choices with awareness and to release judgment of ourselves and of others. We then consciously create ourselves to be the best version of ourselves we can be: our authentic, powerfully creative, compassionate selves. A powerful guide to accessing one’s own innate health, well-being, and wisdom, The Inward Outlook is an accessible exploration of a principle-based paradigm that educates people in the role thought plays in creating their experience of reality—and a road map to cultivating inspired focus, accomplishment, and peace of mind in one’s life. Pub Day: April 4, 2023 Author: Laura Basha, PhD -
As a young doctor working in the middle of the HIV epidemic in the early ’90s, Alicia Blando feels unsure of the effectiveness of the medical profession. To gain insight into her life’s path, she seeks advice in some unconventional places, and lands on astrology as her way forward. Astrology, based in astronomy, has specific rules; it can’t be easily manipulated. The scientist in her can’t help but respond to this idea. At a pivotal group demonstration, Alicia finds a mentor, Iris, who introduces her to the study of astrology. By learning to read the horoscope, Alicia gains insight into her potential and manifests her ambition to travel and explore healing techniques from indigenous cultures. Eventually, her search for new teachers and past knowledge takes her from Manhattan to the Peruvian Amazon, Belize, and Bolivia, where she discovers ancient ways of healing among people who consider the sky to be a continuation of nature on earth. She connects with the tenets of astrology as the language that describes man’s connection to the sky environment. The horoscopic map gives information that can assist in making better choices in life, Alicia learns; it has the potential to analyze a person’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and health concerns. Alicia’s journey off the beaten path ultimately leads her to true self-exploration and connection with the world around her, as well as a desire to share her knowledge. In Open for Interpretation, she shares her story of finally finding the map she’s been seeking—and explains how we can all use that map to access our true selves and untapped potential. Pub Date: June 27, 2023 Author: Alicia Blando, MD -
Meet Beige. Beige is reliable, practical, sensible, and safe. Beige doesn’t put up a fuss; it follows the rules, blends in, doesn’t want to stand out. Now meet Magenta. Magenta is rich, dynamic, loud, sometimes garish, and not easily overlooked. Society has decidedly beige expectations when it comes to aging, and the intrinsic danger of beige and its many practical aspects is that it precludes creative thinking. Creative thinking is critical in avoiding a beige aging journey. Be Brave. Lose the Beige! Finding Your Sass after Sixty encourages women to trot out their inner magenta and defy those beige expectations. Be Brave. Lose the Beige! started as a blog and morphed into a movement. This movement gently pokes fun at ageist rules and expectations. It says “yes” when the rest of the world keeps saying “no.” In these pages, Liz Kitchens chronicles how creative thinking helped her cope with empty nest syndrome, navigate sex over sixty, transition from being outtasight to literally being out-of-sight . . . and so much more. The stories and creative techniques outlined in this book are guaranteed to introduce color, sass, and a lightness of spirit into your later years. Are you ready to start coloring outside the lines, even if a few pesky rules get trampled in the process? Pub Date: May 16, 2023 Author: Liz Kitchens -
People like Feeney Simms don’t commit suicide. Beautiful, charismatic, mother of two, wife to a handsome, successful husband, beloved by her friends—this is not the typical picture of a tortured soul. But one summer night, Feeney drives to the beach and swallows a handful of pills. No note, no explanation, nothing. Like that, she’s gone. Faced with this loss, Ali, Max, and Liddy, Feeney’s closest friends, are left reeling, grappling with the devastating cocktail of grief, guilt, and anger that’s left in the wake of a suicide. In a desperate attempt to avoid further loss, the three women make the unorthodox (and very Feeney-like) decision to hold their own funerals while they are still alive—and the experience changes each of them in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Pub Date: May 16, 2023 Author: JJ Elliott -
Losing your mother is a transformational event at any age, and yet the number of books on the subject of adult children grieving a mother’s death is meager. In this moving collection of poems and letters, Donna Stoneham chronicles the healing power of love between an adult daughter and her elderly mother—across the boundaries of this world and the next, and over the course of four years—and how that connection teaches her to love more deeply, to fully forgive, and to grow into her authentic self. An embracing solace for anyone recovering from the loss of a loved one, Catch Me When I Fall reveals how our grief journeys can be a powerful transformative force and offers readers a courageous, healing path to the other side of sorrow’s dark passage. Through the conversations between mother and daughter that take place in these lyrical pieces, readers are provided with the opportunity to explore a beautiful notion: as long as we keep our hearts open to the mystery and transformational power of transcendent, eternal love, it will always be possible to heal and continue our most pivotal relationships—even after death. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Donna Stoneham, PhD -
It’s 1910, and Catherine Ogden is aching to live a creative and meaningful life. That’s not easy to do when her aunt and uncle—and all of New York society—consider a good marriage to be the pinnacle of feminine achievement. But when Catherine visits Oakview, the Northern California estate of handsome bachelor William Brandt, she thinks that it might be possible to satisfy her family’s hopes as well as her own. In that beautiful place, she finds the promise of a new start and the opportunity to use her artistic gifts in designing the garden. But as Catherine is drawn into William’s hidden life, as well as the secrets of his estate staff, she discovers that Oakview holds both more opportunity and more risk than she ever imagined. It will take all her courage—and the lessons of some shocking revelations from the past—to choose the path that leads to real freedom. Full of rich period detail and complex characters, and set against an unforgettable backdrop, The Seeing Garden explores what it takes for a woman to discern the path to her most authentic life. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ginny Kubitz Moyer -
Should Rica invite her mother to her wedding? In her early early forties and about to remarry, Rica Ramos realizes that starting over could mean leaving her mother behind. She longs to heal the relationship, but her mother still refuses to acknowledge the sexual abuse Rica suffered at the hands of her stepfather, or her own culpability throughout the years. With old traumas resurfacing and a new life unfolding before her, Rica grasps the power of unspoken grief—and the potential to suffer or heal. Will she and her mother ever cross the chasm between them, or are some secrets meant to stay buried? As Rica navigates her options, she faces two ultimate choices: submit to a culture that shames daughters for not honoring their mothers, or muster the courage to go her own way. Offering a bold and lucid look at mother-daughter relationships, Nobody's Daughter underscores every woman’s right to truth and validation. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Rica Ramos -
It’s 1939, and all across Europe the Nazis are coming for Jews and anti-fascists. The only way to avoid being imprisoned or murdered is to assume a new identity. For that, people are desperate for papers. And for that, the underground needs forgers. In Paris, Sarah, a young Jewish artist originally from Berlin, along with her music teacher and father figure, Mr. Lieb, meet Cesar, a Spanish Republican who knows well the brutality of fleeing fascism. He soon recognizes Sarah’s gift. She will become the underground’s new forger. When the war reaches Paris, the trio joins thousands of other refugees in a chaotic exodus south. In Marseille, they’re received by friends, but they’re also now part of a resistance the government is actively hunting. Sarah, now Simone, continues her forgery work in the shadows, expertly creating false papers that will mean the difference between life and a horrifying death for many. When Mr. Lieb is arrested and imprisoned in Les Milles internment camp, Simone, Cesar, and their friends vow to rescue him, enlisting the help of American journalist Varian Fry, known for plotting the escapes of high- profile people like Andre Breton and Marc Chagall. In this enlightening and thrilling story of war, love, and courage, author Linda Joy Myers explores identity, ingenuity, and the power of art to save lives. Pub Date: July 11, 2023 Author: Linda Joy Myers -
In the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ann Putnam -
Fifteen-year-old Elena lives in a church attic in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood, where she is cared for by her guardian, a kind Russian priest named Father Al. Six days a week, Father Al sends her out of Our Lady, across the meadows and ponds of Golden Gate Park, and all the way to Baba Vera’s house on Taraval Street for Baba’s version of school. Unlike regular school, however, Elena’s learning is unnerving. Baba Vera’s preposterous demands, dizzying antics, and house—which is full of skeletons, brooms, strange implements, and guinea pigs, among other oddities—seem straight out of a Russian fairy tale Father Al used to read to Elena . . . not life in 2020. If not for her beloved doll, Kukla—bequeathed to her by the mother she never got to know, but of whom she often dreams—Elena would be overwhelmed. Yet she works hard at every task given her, understanding intuitively that there is a purpose to every one of her grandmother’s strange assignments. Frank, a young taxi driver, enters Elena’s world on the day he delivers a strange, witch-like woman named Anya to Our Lady. Upon meeting Anya and Elena, a dream-world begins to spin for him—and he feels a deep, protective pull toward Elena. In the days that follow, Frank devotes himself to saving her from the harm he is sure Anya intends toward her. What he comes to understand, as he enters more deeply into Elena’s story, is that she has magic of her own. He thought he was supposed to save her—but in the end, the two of them may just save each other. Pub Date: July 25, 2023 Author: Barbara Sapienza -
At fifty-four, Alenka was running out of time to follow through on a dream she’d written down in her pocket-size Rumi book just after her first marriage crumbled. Years later, as she slowly rebuilt her life with her second husband, things started spiraling out of control. The only way she knew how to heal and connect all painful parts of her life was by riding her bike, and she didn’t want to have regrets. But was she brave enough to embark on an unknown path and risk losing everything . . . perhaps even her own life? Determined to awaken her dying spirit and heal her battered body, Alenka loaded her mountain bike with 50 pounds’ worth of camping gear and set off on a 2,500-mile journey. Starting in Lake Tahoe California, she hoped to ride along the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, following remote mountain trails. Alone. What followed was an irrevocably transformational journey of love, hope, courage, and resilience—and here, Alenka tells that story in a voice stripped of self-pity and infused with a good dose of humor. She Rides is a galvanizing wake-up call for anyone who wants to unearth and follow their own deeply buried dreams—and reclaim their life. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Alenka Vrecek -
When Barbara Terao moves into a new home in Washington, two thousand miles from her husband in Illinois, she doesn’t know when—or if—she’ll ever live with him again. Her diagnosis of breast cancer three months later changes both of them in ways they never imagined. In the ensuing months, Barbara’s husband and adult children show up to help her through a year of difficult treatments and surgery, and Barbara, in her Whidbey Island cottage, learns to listen to her heart and intuition. Nurtured by Douglas fir forests, the Salish Sea, and her community, she changes her life from the inside out. Her journey, she realizes, wasn’t about leaving her husband so much as finding herself. Reconfigured in body, mind, and spirit, Barbara finally has words for what she wants to say—and the strength to be a survivor. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Barbara Wolf Terao -
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 -
On a blustery Maine day, thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Kuriloff found herself standing on a plot of land purchased with her former partner, holding a couple of wood stakes to mark off exactly where her new house would sit. No longer their land. No longer their dream. Now, just hers. Immersed in a world of blueprints, materials, contractors, and critters, Roberta confronted the major losses she’d suffered in her life—in particular the deaths of her mother and aunt from cancer and her separation from her father and brother during her placement in an orphanage—and to try to understand how those losses had shaped the woman, lawyer, and activist she’d become. As she cleared land, hammered nails, lifted beams, and shivered in her rented mobile home, the answers began to come to her. Roberta soon found love again, with a woman named Nancy . . . only to lose her abruptly just one year later in a car accident. Her grief over Nancy’s death, and the psychic and out-of-body events she experienced following that loss, led to an eight-year spiritual quest where she explored her Jewish roots, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and reincarnation. As she healed, new love beckoned with Bernice—and at long last Roberta found that intrinsic sense of self, that unshakable foundation of heart and soul, that home, that she’d been searching for all along. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Roberta S. Kuriloff -
Why are so many teachers leaving the profession? They’re burned out; they feel disrespected, and unsupported. After teaching remotely during a pandemic, they’re returning to classrooms with under-socialized and sometimes out-of-control kids. What to do? Teaching by Heart chronicles the journey of a journalist-turned-teacher determined to make teaching work—despite its difficulties. Peek into Madame Nelson’s classroom to see her trying to reach teens who dance, cry, and hit each other in French class; administrators who laud the latest pedagogical trends and testing regime; and parents who sometimes support—and sometimes interfere with—their children’s education. Meet colleagues who save her from quitting, and her children who provide advice. Along the journey, she evolves from an aloof elitist into an empathetic listener to all sorts of teens. Isn’t it time we create schools in which teachers want to stay and new ones enter? Without committed teachers, how can we prepare students to run our world? Teaching by Heart illuminates why it’s so hard to hold on to classroom teachers these days—and what can be done to better the situation. Pub Date: October 31, 2023 Author: Jennifer Nelson -
French professor Georgie Bricker hasn’t poked a toe outside Virginia’s Willa Cather College for women in two decades. She realizes the irony: she’s working to shape her students into world leaders even as PTSD-induced agoraphobia, a result of trauma she suffered as a girl, keeps her prisoner on a tiny college campus. She tells herself her life is fine. Yet on her forty-ninth birthday, she wishes for something extraordinary. Georgie is shattered to learn that her sanctuary is heavily in debt. While she scrambles to rescue the French department, her first love, Truman Parker, arrives to serve as a financial consultant to the school. By day, Georgie works as faculty liaison to his committee. By night, she’s a moth to his porch light. When the college announces it will shutter, Georgie and fiercely independent Laurel Cross, the student who’s closest to Georgie’s heart, organize a rally to save it. Between her rekindled love for Truman and Laurel becoming the daughter she never had, her wish for the extraordinary seems to have been granted. But the pivotal rally forces Georgie into the bigger, unsheltered world, where she must confront her final fears—or forfeit her chance for emotional freedom and a fulfilling new life. Pub Date: July 11, 2023 Author: Elizabeth Sumner Wafler
