Now, with warmth and honesty, Hood reveals the personal story behind these works of fiction.Growing up in a mill town in Rhode Island, in a household that didn’t foster the love of literature, Hood nonetheless learned to channel her imagination and curiosity by devouring The Bell Jar, Marjorie Morningstar, The Harrad Experiment, and other works. These titles introduced her to topics that could not be discussed at home: desire, fear, sexuality, and madness. Later, Johnny Got His Gun and The Grapes of Wrath influenced her political thinking as the Vietnam War became news; Dr. Zhivago and Les Miserables stoked her ambition to travel the world. With characteristic insight and charm, Hood showcases the ways in which books gave her life and can transform—even save—our own.

    In 12 detailed chapters, astrologer Annabel Gat divulges how each sign likes to flirt, date, and fool around. Going beyond traditional heteronormative gender roles, the book candidly explores love and lust in today's sexually fluid world. From love philosophies to sexual inclinations, readers will enjoy dissecting and analyzing each passage. With unique compatibility profiles matching every sign and a quiz to identify your star match—wrapped in an all-foil case wtih gilded page edges—this is a fun and comprehensive guide to finding true cosmic love.

    Through her remarkable journey, we see more clearly the light that can shine through our own broken places and ultimately heal us: body, mind, and soul.At once tragic and heartwarming, Tana’s story integrates cutting-edge psychology and proven wellness techniques from the Amen Clinics in a moving exploration of the healing available to each one of us, no matter the pain in our past. “What a journey! With in-your-face honesty, Tana reveals how she was able to turn her pain into purpose. For anyone who has been faced with unspeakable loss, this message is so important.”  —Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk, storyteller, purpose coach, and former monk

    His novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and been translated into over twenty languages. In Will, his first ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self. A brilliant literary work, Will echoes the best of Self's fiction, reminding us how the personal is always historical, and reflecting that personal history through a psychedelic prism. Will spins the reader from Self's childhood in a North London suburb to his mind-expanding education at Oxford, to a Burroughsian trip to Morocco, an outback vision in Australia, and, finally, a nightmarish turn in rehab. From an attempt to score as a teenager by buying a pastry breakfast for a user-dealer friend in lieu of payment (Self also considers buying a banana to rob a chemist's to get his fix), to his university years, fueled with literature but also with "heroin, hashish, cocaine, grass and amphetamine"; to his experiments in sex, identity, and his first relationships, Self takes us on a tour of his young life, letting us inside one of the best minds of our generation. Whether discussing pharmacology: "there's nothing remotely euphoric about methadone: it just makes you feel as if you're buried up to your waist"; religion: "God is great . . . Gear is great . . . Therefore: gear is God . . ."; or economics: "the best things in life are free--while the worst retail at a tenner a bag," Self's mordant humor and vivid writing make this book one of the most powerful depictions of the allure and power of hard drugs ever written. It is also a technicolor portrait of the strangenesses of family, the transcendence of art, and the defiant quest for self-expression in a rule-filled world. Will is an addiction memoir like none before, powerfully bringing to the page the peerless euphoria of getting high, and simultaneously offering a pitiless examination of the lows that follow, a karmic cycle that leads back to the author's own lack of . . . will.Both kunstlerroman and confessional, Will is a tale of excess and degradation, an exploration of the wild experiences that have formed the basis of Self's incandescent fictions.

    We’re judged by social media’s faceless masses, pressured into maintaining a Pinterest-perfect home, and expected to base our self-worth on retweets, faves, likes, and followers. Our collective FOMO, and the disparity between the ideal and reality, is leading us to spend more and feel worse. No wonder we’re getting twitchy. Save for an Independence Day–style alien invasion, how do we begin to escape from the stressors that make up our days?Jen Lancaster is here to take a hard look at our elevating anxieties, and with self-deprecating wit and levelheaded wisdom, she charts a path out of the quagmire that keeps us frightened of the future and ashamed of our imperfectly perfect human lives. Take a deep breath, and her advice, and you just might get through a holiday dinner without wanting to disown your uncle.

    But the art transformed from familiar to extraordinary in her eyes after her grandfather, Moshe's son George, left behind journals detailing the loss her ancestors had endured during World War II, including Moshe's art. Knowing that her family had only found a small portion of Moshe's art, and that many more pieces remained to be found, Elizabeth set out to find them.Before Moshe was deported to the ghetto, he entrusted his work to friends who would keep it safe. After he was killed in the Majdanek concentration camp, the art was dispersed all over the world. With the help of historians, curators, and admirers of Moshe's work, Elizabeth began the incredible and difficult task of rebuilding his collection.Spanning three decades of Elizabeth's life and three generations of her family, this touching memoir is a compelling narrative of the richness of one man's art, the devastation of war, and one woman's unexpected path to healing.

    As the mother of 5 kids -- 6 if you include her husband -- sat in the neurosurgery department in star-covered sweats too whimsical for the seriousness of the situation, all she could think was "Am I going to die?"Thankfully, Jeannie and her family were able to survive their time of crisis, and now she is sharing her deeply personal journey through this miraculous story: the challenging conversations she had with her children; how she came to terms with feeling powerless and ferociously crabby while bedridden and unable to eat for a month; and how she ultimately learned, re-learned and re re-learned to be more present in life.With sincerity and hilarity, Jeannie invites you into her heart (and brain) during this trying time, emphasizing the importance of family, faith and humor as keys to her recovery and leading a more fulfilling life.

    . . .Sweet Home, Alaska, was once a thriving, idyllic town, where A Stone's Throw Hardware and Haberdashery and the Sisterhood of the Quilt were the cornerstones of the community. Then, in one fatal moment, two young lives were cut short, and everything changed. Now the Stone family businesses have closed, the diner is in the red, and the population has dwindled to 573.After the tragic accident that took her sister's life, Hope McKnight discovered she was pregnant, and gave up her dreams of college to raise her daughter. When Donovan Stone returns to sell his family's properties and to cut final ties with Sweet Home, he's shocked to find Hope still there--and a single mother. The pull between Hope and Donovan is as powerful as ever. But so are the secrets and lies stemming from that long-ago tragedy. Will they be able to overcome the past, or will the heartbreak of bygone days destroy their love again?

    At its heart, it is about parents learning how to love better by letting themselves off the hook.With her hard-earned knowledge gained from having four kids in four years, she navigates the emotional and sometimes messy waters of motherhood: the expectations, the anxiety, the total lack of control, and yes, the indignities of driving a minivan (which now sits in her driveway covered in crushed Cheerios and the remnants of her self-esteem).Howerton shares her unexpected journey through motherhood, from infertility to adoption to divorce, and how she learned to quell her inner anxiety to do it all perfectly. As a mom of both white and black children, Howerton is an advocate for social justice, foster care reform, and helping fellow parents to step up to hard conversations about race with their kids. Her writing speaks to the thorny issues parents deal with every day while reminding them they are not alone on this unpredictable ride.Rage Against the Minivan serves as a quiet resistance against the superficial obsessions of motherhood, from the kind of car we drive to looking like we've got it all together. Infused with heart and humor, it's a permission slip to allow yourself to be a "good-enough" parent.

    In this eloquent, hilarious, sharply realized memoir, Sandra A. Miller grapples with the regret and confusion that so often accompanies middle age, and the shame of craving something more when she has so much already.In a very real way, Miller has spent her life hunting for buried treasure. As a child, she trained herself to find things: dropped hair clips, shiny bits of broken glass, discarded lighters. Looking to escape from her volatile parents and often-unhappy childhood, Miller found deeper meaning, and a good deal of hope, in each of these objects.Now an adult and facing the loss of her last living parent―her mother who is at once cold, difficult, and wildly funny―Miller finds herself, as she so often did as a little girl, pressed against a wall of her own longing. Her search for gold, which soon becomes an obsession, forces her to dredge up painful pieces of her past, confront the true source of her sorrow, and finally discover what it is she has been looking for all these years.

    Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, belonging and purpose, time and eternity. At the stunning finale of Brisbane, all the carefully knit stitches unravel into a riddle: Whose story is it – the subject’s or the writer’s? Are art and love really no match for death? Is Brisbane, the city of our dreams, our only hope for the future?

    He was Jewish and white; she was Christian and black, but that didn't give them a moment's hesitation. They moved in together, got married, and started the long process of adopting their son, Brooks Robinson Streeter Zervitz, named for Scott's favorite baseball player. Then, out of nowhere, the unthinkable happened. While the couple was sharing a late-night kiss, Scott had a fatal heart attack at the age of 44.Black Widow is a story about coping with the kind of loss that blindsides you, the kind that can leave you with mascara streaked down your face, barefoot and slugging a bottle of gas station saké in front of a bunch of mourners (yep, Streeter has been there). But it's also a celebration -- of faith, love, and the people who show up when we need them most, who pry the saké away from us and who help us laugh and cry our way through this crazy roller-coaster ride called life.

    With tears and laughter, it speaks to the strength of the human spirit in the face of life's adversities.

    A successful journalist and mother to four children, she had spent her whole life feeling as if she were running a different operating system to those around her. This book charts a year in her life and offers a unique insight into the autistic mind and the journey from diagnosis to acceptance. Drawing on personal experience, research and conversations with experts, she learns how 'different' doesn't need to mean 'less' and how it's never too late for any of us to find our place in the world. Laura explores how and why female autism is so under-diagnosed and very different to that seen in men and boys and explores difficulties and benefits neurodiversity can bring.

    The delicate negotiation that follows is a carefully constructed reality between what Jamie is willing to acknowledge and what she is not.Jamie Patterson is a writer, teacher, runner, and dog lover. A former spokesperson for the American Red Cross and the Girl Scouts, Jamie is now an academic editor.