But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changes the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly has to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and has been holding her own until the unthinkable happens: she is raped by a fellow soldier.Struggling with PTSD and commanders who don't trust her story, Dostie finds herself fighting through the isolation of trauma amid the challenges of an unexpected war. What follows is a riveting story of one woman's extraordinary journey to prove her worth, physically and mentally, in a world where the odds are stacked against her.

    But one day, nine years in, she wakes up in an empty bed, and The Husband isn't there. Then, he drops The Bomb — he was having an affair with a woman at work.Adrift and on the edge of forty — fuelled by grief, booze, and one-night stands — Michelle battles the monster she calls Loneliness, juggling being a part-time parent and part-time partier. Though dangerously close to rock bottom, Michelle takes a chance on love again with a dashing but complicated man — The Man with the White Shirt.Michelle, an expert in "emotional forensics," dives into the wreckage with candour and humour, uncovering a story about falling in and out of love, divorce, single parenthood, and the messy world of dating. What she finds, beneath it all, is life and the courage to face it alone.

    Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behaviours. He extends the conversation with other smokers to meditations on Mark Twain and Italo Svevo, the nature of habit, the validity of hypnosis, and the most insignificant city in the United States, where he lived for far too long. With comic insight and meticulous precision, Hens deconstructs every facet of the dependency and offers a brilliant disquisition on the psychopathology of addiction.

    Style to the Village Voice, from Esquire to Hustler. He penned scripts for twisted cult classics like Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari. He banged out shows for TV mega-hits like Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, and thirtysomething. But even when Jerry Stahl was making five grand a week, he was shooting six. Careening from his luxury home to L.A.'s more hellacious neighborhoods, he financed a heroin habit that brought on the soothing hiss of oblivion, while it stole his health and smashed his career. Until in a private apocalypse straight out of Day of the Locust, Jerry Stahl kicked smack and emerged clean.A searing, strung-out confessional in the lineage of Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, and Hubert Selby Jr., PERMANENT MIDNIGHT chronicles one man's slide into the opiated abyss and his claw-marked ascent back into the light--heralding the return of the Urban Hipster to contemporary literature, infused with savage humor and relentless intensity.

    She had always been a source of support--until Maya became a mother herself. Then, the parent who had once been so capable and attentive turned unavailable and distant. Struggling to understand this abrupt change while raising her own young child, Maya searches for answers and soon learns that her mother is living with Alzheimer'sWhen Maya steps in to care for her, she comes to realize that despite their closeness, she never really knew her mother. Were her cherished stories--about life in India, about what it means to be an immigrant, about motherhood itself--even true? Affecting, raw, and poetic, What We Carry is the story of a daughter and her mother, of lies and truths, of receiving and giving care--and how we cannot grow up until we fully understand the people who raised us.Advance praise for What We Carry"A dazzling, courageous memoir about the weight we carry as women, daughters, and mothers--and what happens when we let go. Lang takes us deep into the heart of her relationship with her mother, a brilliant psychiatrist and Indian immigrant with long-buried secrets. After a health crisis brings mother and daughter under the same roof for the first time since childhood, Lang grapples with new information about the parent she'd idolized, and realizes it's time to tell the story of her own life. What We Carry is a love letter to everyone who has swum through turbulent water before reaching the shores of selfhood."--Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

    She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents--hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. In Before and After, Wingate and Christie tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with Wingate and Christie to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children's Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.

    But she looked on the bright side, too, believing that as long as she cared enough, she could keep her loved ones safe. Then, in the dark of one quiet, pre-dawn morning, she woke abruptly to a terrible sound—and found her teenage son unconscious on the floor. In the aftermath of a crisis that darkened her signature sunny spirit, she wondered: If this happened, what else could happen? And how do any of us keep going when we can’t know for sure what’s coming next? Leave it to the writer whose critically acclaimed debut had us “laughing and crying on the same page” (NPR) to illuminate what it means to move through life with a soul made of equal parts anxiety and optimism (and while she’s at it, to ponder the mysteries of backyard turtles and the challenges of spatchcocking a turkey). Hailed by The Washington Post as “Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Laurie Colwin all rolled into one,” Philpott returns in her distinctive voice to explore our protective instincts, the ways we continue to grow up long after we’re grown, and the limits—both tragic and hilarious—of the human body and mind.

    They are planning a wedding and have bought a new home. The last thing the two of them need right now is a new cat.But their recently purchased house seems to come complete with a stray orange feline--a cat with a vibrant personality and a talent for mousing. So Shawn soon finds himself with a regular companion. Little does he realize that this cat will shortly become more important to him than he can possibly imagine.As Shawn's personal life begins to shift in ways he never saw coming, Kitty remains a constant source of stability and comfort. Shawn gave Kitty a home, and now Kitty gives Shawn the love he needs to heal.A touching and inspiring story of heartfelt companionship, The Kitty offers an uplifting perspective on what it means to find true friendship in this world. Anyone who has ever shared a meaningful connection with a pet will fall head over heels in love with Kitty and Shawn.As Shawn discovers, sometimes we don't even realize we need to be rescued--until we are.

    For Cazzie David, the world is one big trap door leading to death and despair and social phobia. From shame spirals caused by hookups to panic attacks about being alive and everyone else having to be alive too, David chronicles her life’s most chaotic moments with wit, bleak humor, and a mega-dose of self-awareness. In No One Asked for This, David provides readers with a singular but ultimately relatable tour through her mind, as she explores existential anxiety, family dynamics, and the utterly modern dilemma of having your breakup displayed on the Internet. With pitch-black humor resonant of her father, comedy legend Larry David, and topics that speak uniquely to generational malaise, No One Asked for This is the perfect companion for when you don’t really want a companion.Mean sister --Do not disturb --Ex dysmorphia --Almost pretty --Is everything gonna be fine? --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: I --Why God is definitely real --Too full to fuck --So embarrassing --Love you to death --Insecurity when you're the new girlfriend --Environ-mental mom --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: II --Shit-talking etiquette --My parasite --Privileged assistant --I got a cat for my anxiety --This essay doesn't pass the Bechdel test --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: III --Moving out --Erase me --Thanksgiving

    Barnett was only a law student when she came across the case that would change her life forever--that of Sharanda Jones, single mother, business owner and, like Brittany, black daughter of the rural South. A victim of America's ruthless and devastating war on drugs, Sharanda had been torn from the arms of her young daughter and was serving a life sentence without parole--all for a first-time drug offense. In Sharanda, Brittany saw haunting echoes of own life, both as the daughter of a formerly incarcerated mother and the one-time girlfriend of an abusive drug dealer. As she studied Sharanda's case, a system slowly came into focus: one where widespread racial injustice forms the core of our country's addiction to incarceration. Moved by Sharanda's plight, Brittany began to work towards her freedom.This had never been the plan. Bright and ambitious, Brittany was already a successful accountant with her sights set on a high-powered future in corporate law. But Sharanda's case opened the door to a harrowing journey through the criminal justice system, in which people could be locked up for life under misguided appeals for law and order. Driven by the realization that her clients' fates could have easily been her own, Brittany soon found herself on a quest to unlock the human potential of those our society has forgotten how to see. Living a double life, she moved billion dollar corporate deals by day, and by night worked pro bono to free Sharanda and others in near-impossible legal battles. Ultimately, her journey transformed her understanding of injustice in the courts, of genius languishing behind bars, and the very definition of freedom itself. A Knock at Midnight is Brittany's riveting, inspirational memoir, at once a coming-of-age story and a powerful evocation of what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist both at every turn.

    She finds the wry, bittersweet humor in (almost) all situations--whether it's becoming radioactive during a thyroid cancer treatment, getting fired from her volunteer work, or struggling to find her identity outside of motherhood. Aren't You Forgetting Someone? speaks to those of us who lament the invisibility of the middle-aged woman, but also revel in the unexpected delights of newfound freedom to do whatever the hell we want while no one is looking.

    The heartbreaking story of this mysterious sonata—Schubert’s last, and his most elusive and haunting—is the soundtrack of Andrea's story.Sonata is a breathtaking exploration of a “Janus-head miracle”—Andrea's extraordinary talent and even more extraordinary illness. With no cure for her R.A. possible, Andrea must learn to live with this disease while not letting it define her, even though it leaves its mark on everything around her—family, relationships, even the clothes she wears. And in this riveting account, she never loses her wit, humor, or the raw artistry of a true performer.As the goshawk becomes a source of both devotion and frustration for Helen Macdonald in H is for Hawk, so the piano comes to represent both struggle and salvation for Andrea in her extraordinary debut.

    First there was depression, then ineffective but highly addictive medication, and finally therapy, where he fell further into an inescapable darkness. After a suicide attempt, he spent weeks confined on the psych ward, feeling alone and trapped. One afternoon, during an exercise break on the hospital rooftop basketball court, he experienced a sudden urge. Run, I thought. Run before it’s too late and you’re stuck down here. Right now. Run.     The impulse that starts with sprints across a hospital rooftop turns into all-night runs in the  mountains. Through motion and immersion in the perfection of nature, Thompson finds a way out of the hell of depression and drug addiction. Step by step, mile by mile, his body and mind heal.In this lyrical, vulnerable, and breath-taking debut memoir, J.M. Thompson, now a successful psychologist, retraces the path that led him from despair to wellness, detailing the chilling childhood trauma that caused his mind to snap and sink, and the unorthodox treatment that finally saved him. Running Is A Kind Of Dreaming is a luminous literary testament to the universal human capacity to recover from our deepest wounds.

    A searingly candid memoir." -- Kirkus "Far from your cookie-cutter story of addiction . . . [I'm Just Happy to Be Here] describes Hanchett's journey to recovery and sobriety in imperfect and unconventional ways." -- Bustle In this unflinching and wickedly funny memoir, Janelle Hanchett tells the story of finding her way home. And then, actually staying there. Drawing us into the wild, heartbreaking mind of the addict, Hanchett carries us from motherhood at 21 with a man she'd known three months to cubicles and whiskey-laden domesticity, from judging meth addicts in rehab to therapists who "seem to pull diagnoses out of large, expensive hats." With warmth, wit, and searing B.S. detectors turned mostly toward herself, Hanchett invites us to laugh when we probably shouldn't and to rejoice at the unconventional redemption she finds in desperation and in a misfit mentor who forces her to see the truth of herself. A story of ego and forced humility, of fierce honesty and jagged love, of the kind of failure that forces us to re-create our lives, Hanchett writes with rare candor, scorching the "sanctity of motherhood," and leaving beauty in the ashes.

    Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.