Head Over Heels


Rain Mitchell - 2012
    One beloved yoga studio. A million tales to tell. Lee is a caring yoga teacher who changes lives and inspires friendships. But a year after the breakup of her marriage, she's struggling to raise her twins and make ends meet at her small studio in LA's trendy Silver Lake. The California yoga scene is dominated by celebrity teachers with agents, publicists, and other trappings Lee has rejected. When she's offered a teaching stint at a high-profile yoga festival at Lake Tahoe, she has to choose between standing by her principles--and those of the man she's just started dating--and the lure of becoming a "star." It would be an easier choice if her four best friends could join her, but each has problems of her own. Katherine, a masseuse with a troubled past, is being evicted from the only real home she's ever had. Graciela, a dancer, is in New York trying to hide her affair with a famous baseball player from her volatile boyfriend.Imani is a TV actress coping with motherhood as she's struggling to make a comeback in film.Stephanie, a screenwriter, is trying to come to terms with a very unexpected relationship. Head Over Heels explores the burgeoning world of commercialized yoga with the warmth, humor, and insider knowledge that won Rain Mitchell's Tales from the Yoga Studio raves from critics and yogis, and made the book an international success.

Crossing Values


Carrie Daws - 2011
    Job-hopping every few weeks, she refused to let anyone get close to her as she slowly made her way east. As winter plants itself firmly across the Rockies, she decides to take a chance on a job at a logging company with a family different from any she's ever known before. Watching the family interact creates more questions than answers for Amber. Feeling like she's entered the happily-ever-after written at the end of fairytales, she watches for cracks in the facade. Surely as the days pass, the play-acting will cease and the real family will emerge. Or could she be wrong? Could they truly be genuine? Could Faye understand the trauma from her past or Peter think of her as more than just the winter office help? Could this family really hold the key to what she's seeking?

The First Word


Isley Robson - 2017
    Her job as a pediatric occupational therapist is the perfect distraction from the unspeakable tragedy she experienced as a child. But when she meets alternative-energy magnate Rhys Griffiths and his autistic toddler, Will, she quickly realizes her heart will never be the same. Especially when her name becomes Will’s first word.After accepting a position as a live-in therapist for Will, Andie steels herself against the appeal of the disconcertingly attractive—and attracted—Rhys. But their chemistry can no longer be denied, and their heated affair seems destined for happily ever after. A destiny Andie’s terrified to embrace.When Andie’s guilt, Rhys’s awkwardness, and the abrupt appearance of an erratic ex threaten to dismantle their delicately blooming relationship, they must decide if love is worth the challenge. Can Andie and Rhys find their way back to each other? Or will the demons of the past simply prove too strong?

Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment


Suzanne Morrison - 2011
      But things don’t go quite as expected. Once in Bali, she finds that her beloved yoga teacher and all of her yogamates wake up every morning to drink a large, steaming mug…of their own urine. Sugar is a mortal sin. Spirits inhabit kitchen appliances. And the more she tries to find her higher self, the more she faces her cynical, egomaniacal, cigarette-, wine-, and chocolate-craving lower self.  Yoga Bitch chronicles Suzanne’s hilarious adventures and misadventures as an aspiring yogi who might be just a bit too skeptical to drink the Kool-Aid. But along the way she discovers that no spiritual effort is wasted; even if her yoga retreat doesn’t turn her into the gorgeously calm, wise believer she hopes it will, it does plant seeds that continue to blossom in surprising ways over the next decade of her life.suzannemorrison.blogspot.com

Perfectly Impossible


Elizabeth Topp - 2020
    An artist at heart, Anna works a day job as a private assistant for Bambi Von Bizmark, a megarich Upper East Side matriarch who’s about to be honored at the illustrious Opera Ball.Caught between the staid world of great wealth and her unconventional life as an artist, Anna struggles with her true calling. If she’s supposed to be a painter, why is she so much more successful as a personal assistant? When her boyfriend lands a fancy new job, it throws their future as a couple into doubt and intensifies Anna’s identity crisis. All she has to do is ensure everything runs smoothly and hold herself together until the Opera Ball is over. How hard could that be?Featuring a vibrant array of characters from the powerful to the proletarian, Perfectly Impossible offers a glimpse into a world you’ll never want to leave.

Enlightenment for Idiots


Anne Cushman - 2008
    Instead, she’s an ex-nanny yogini-wannabe who cranks out “For Idiots” travel guides. True, she has a sexy photographer boyfriend, but he’s usually off shooting a dogsled race in Alaska or a vision quest in Peru–or just hooking up with other girls. However, she’s sure her new assignment to the ashrams of India will change everything.What she finds, though, is an ashram run by investment bankers, a model-obsessed guru, tantra parties, and silent retreats. India, it turns out, is not the spiritual refuge she’d pictured. But when a wandering mystic offers her an enigmatic blessing, Amanda realizes a new life may be in store for her after all.

What More Could You Wish For: A Novel


Samantha Hoffman - 2012
    Life is good - nice and tidy. Until, that is, on her fiftieth birthday when her boyfriend does the unthinkable: He proposes. Libby's been down the marriage road before and it just didn't work. While she's trying to persuade her guy to keep things status quo, she reconnects online with her high-school boyfriend and begins an email correspondence...just for fun.But fun soon turns to flirtation and Libby is startled to feel some stirrings of the passion she felt at seventeen. How is that possible? She thought she had things all figured out. Now she must take stock of her life and everyone in it, to answer for herself the question everyone has been asking --What more could you wish for?

Stardust


Carla Stewart - 2012
    Despite doubts from the community and the aunt who raised her, she is determined to breathe new life into it. But the guests who arrive aren't what Georgia expects: Her gin-loving mother-in-law; her dead husband's mistress; an attractive but down-on-his-luck drifter who's tired of the endless road; and an aging Vaudeville entertainer with a disturbing link to Georgia's past.Can Georgia find the courage to forgive those who've betrayed her, the grace to shelter those who need her, and the moxy to face the future? And will her dream of a new life under the flickering neon of the Stardust ever come true?

Lift and Separate


Marilyn Simon Rothstein - 2016
    Her husband, the head of a global brassiere empire, didn’t think twice about leaving her after thirty-three years of marriage for a 32DD lingerie model. Now Harvey the Home-Wrecker is missing in action, but Marcy’s through thinking about what a cliché he is. What she needs now is a party-size bag of potato chips, a good support system, and a new dress.Striking out on her own is difficult at first, but Marcy manages to find traces of humor in her heartbreak. Even while devastated by Harvey’s departure, she still has her indomitable spirit and her self-respect. She has no intention of falling apart, either, even when her adult children drop a few bombshells of their own and she discovers a secret about her new, once-in-a-lifetime friend. Life may be full of setbacks, but by lifting herself up by her own lacy straps, Marcy just may be able to handle them all.

Breathe


Kate Bishop - 2013
    When he walks out six months later, proclaiming to have 'found himself' (with the help of a stunning yoga teacher), she 'finds herself' alone in an unfamiliar city, vengefully drinking through his prized wine collection, living on takeout, and refusing to answer the door. When this fails to cure her broken heart and bruised ego, she reluctantly allows her new friends to intervene. Slowly, Alex learns to define success on her own terms; she discovers the secret to love in all its forms, and the perfect flying crow pose, one breath at a time.

Such a Pretty Face


Cathy Lamb - 2010
    Since that day, a new Stevie has emerged, one who walks without wheezing, plants a garden for self-therapy, and builds and paints fantastical wooden chairs. At thirty-five, Stevie is the one thing she never thought she'd be: thin.But for everything that's changed, some things remain the same. Stevie's shyness refuses to melt away. She still can't look her neighbors' gorgeous great-nephew in the eye. The Portland law office where she works remains utterly dysfunctional, as does her family—the aunt, uncle, and cousins who took her in when she was a child. To top it off, her once supportive best friend clearly resents her weight loss.By far the biggest challenge in Stevie's new life lies in figuring out how to define her new self. Collaborating with her cousins to plan her aunt and uncle's problematic fortieth anniversary party, Stevie starts to find some surprising answers—about who she is, who she wants to be, and how the old Stevie evolved in the first place. And with each revelation, she realizes the most important part of her transformation may not be what she's lost, but the courage and confidence she's gathering, day by day.As achingly honest as it is witty, Such A Pretty Face is a richly insightful novel of one woman's search for love, family, and acceptance, of the pain we all carry—and the wonders that can happen when we let it go at last.

The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride


Joe Siple - 2018
    He finds it in Jason Cashman, a ten-year-old boy with a terminal heart defect and a list of five things he wants to do before he dies. Together, they race against the limited time each has left, ticking off wishes one by one. Along the way, Murray remembers what it's like to be young, and Jason fights for the opportunity to grow old. But when tragedy strikes, their worlds are turned upside-down, and an unexpected gift is the only thing that can make Jason's final wish come true.

Momnesia


Lori Verni-Fogarsi - 2012
    So then why does she feel so dead inside? Between work, two kids, and a husband who finds her about as exciting as furniture shopping, this is the story of a (formerly-exciting but now way-too-typical) suburban mom who diagnoses herself with "Momnesia" and sets about finessing a new version of her old vivaciousness:MOMNESIA (mahm-nee-zhuh) -noun-Loss of the memory of who you used to be. Caused by pregnancy, play dates, and trying to keep the house cleaner than the Joneses.She finds some adventure pursuing her own interests, and does make some new friends (including the battery operated variety), but still feels like nothing more than a caretaker.In between dealing with her husband's manic-depressive behavior, drama with her friends, and some naughty Internet escapades, she keeps facing the question, "Is it that I haven't been myself? Or is it that I am being myself but just different than I used to be?" It isn't until she tosses the Invisible Rule Book altogether that she discovers life--and love--have more to offer than she ever imagined!

The Yoga of Max's Discontent


Karan Bajaj - 2015
    1 bestseller in India—a young American travels to India and finds himself tested physically, emotionally, and spiritually.Max Pzoras is the poster child for the American Dream. The child of Greek immigrants who grew up in a dangerous New York housing project, he triumphed over his upbringing and became a successful Wall Street analyst. Yet on the frigid December night he’s involved in a violent street scuffle, Max begins to confront questions about suffering and mortality that have dogged him since his mother’s death.His search takes him to the farthest reaches of India, where he encounters a mysterious night market, almost freezes to death on a hike up the Himalayas, and finds himself in an ashram in a drought-stricken village in South India. As Max seeks answers to questions that have bedeviled him—can yogis walk on water and live for 200 years without aging? Can a flesh-and-blood man ever achieve nirvana?—he struggles to overcome his skepticism and the pull of family tugging him home. In an ultimate bid for answers, he embarks on a dangerous solitary meditation in a freezing Himalayan cave, where his physical and spiritual endurance is put to its most extreme test.By turns a gripping adventure story and a journey of tremendous inner transformation, The Yoga of Max's Discontent is a contemporary take on man's classic quest for transcendence.

The Other Family


Loretta Nyhan - 2020
    Her greatest concerns, though, are the health problems of her young daughter, Kylie. Symptoms point to a compromised immune system, but every doctor they’ve seen has a different theory. Then comes hope for some clarity.It’s possible that Kylie’s illness is genetic, but Ally is adopted. A DNA test opens up an entirely new path. And where it leads is a surprise: to an aunt Ally never knew existed. She’s a little wild, very welcoming, and ready to share more of the family history than Ally ever imagined.Coping with a skeptical soon-to-be-ex husband, weathering the cautions of her own resistant mother, and getting maddeningly close to the healing Kylie needs, Ally is determined to regain control of her life. This is her chance to embrace uncertainty and the beauty of family—both the one she was born into and the one she chose.