Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life. As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward is teaching Isabel the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think through everything she does, to deconstruct her own life, cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be.

    Claire Fontaine's story is a parent's worst nightmare, a cautionary tale chronicling her daughter Mia's drug–fueled manipulation of everyone around her as she sought refuge in the seedy underworld of felons and heroin addicts, the painful childhood secrets that led up to it, and the healing that followed. Her search for Mia was brutal for both mother and daughter, a dizzying series of dead ends, incredible coincidences and, at times, miracles. Ultimately, Mia was forced into harsh but loving boot-camp schools on two continents while Claire entered a painful but life–changing program of her own. Mia's story includes the jarring culture shock of the extreme and controversial behavior modification school she was in for nearly two years, which helped her overcome depression and self–hatred to emerge a powerful young woman with self–esteem and courage. Come Back is an unforgettable story of love and transformation that will resonate with mothers and daughters everywhere.

    Lynch reflects on her difficult childhood with her bi-polar mother, and comes to realize her chaotic past unwittingly provided the perfect foundation for her chosen career.

    The characteristic heart and punch-packing observations are back, but with a newfound coat of maturity. A thin coat. More of a blazer, really.Fans of I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number know Sloane Crosley's life as a series of relatable but madcap misadventures. In Look Alive Out There, whether it's scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or staring down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors―Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris―and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.Look Alive Out There arrives on the tenth anniversary of I Was Told There'd be Cake, and Crosley's essays have managed to grow simultaneously more sophisticated and even funnier. And yet she's still very much herself, and it's great to have her back―and not a moment too soon (or late, for that matter).

     When Laura Munson's essay was published, "The New York Times" was so flooded with responses that they had to close down the comment feature. Readers wrote in saying that they had sent the column to all of their friends. Therapists wrote Munson to tell her that they were passing it out to their clients. What did Munson write that caused such a fervor? Laura detailed what happened when her husband of more than twenty years told her he wasn't sure he loved her anymore and wanted to move out. And while you might think you know where this story is going, this isn't the story you think it is. Laura's response to her husband: I don't buy it. In this poignant, wise, and often funny memoir, Munson recounts a period of months in which her faith in herself-and her marriage-was put to the test. Shaken to the core after the death of her beloved father, not finding the professional success that she had hoped for, and after countless hours of therapy, Laura finally, at age forty, realized she had to stop basing her happiness on things outside her control and commit herself to an "End of Suffering." "This Is Not The Story You Think It Is..." chronicles a woman coming to terms with the myths we tell ourselves-and others-about our life and realizing that ultimately happiness is completely within our control. Watch a Video

    Her goal: a simpler life in rural Illinois that would let her pursue her passion for writing. But then real life intervened. A fire at a neighboring farm and a misinterpreted gesture of kindness transformed her into the reluctant caretaker of a homeless menagerie of animals. Roth, coauthor of the New York Times-bestseller From Baghdad with Love, writes vividly, movingly, and often humorously of the chaos that descended into her life. One of her new tenants was a wild mustang, broken but not bowed, his restless spirit propelling him to escape the fences and pens that enclosed him—a far different life than before he was violently captured by a government-sponsored “round-up.” Ultimately these two fiercely independent characters each provide the catalyst for the other’s life-changing and life-affirming decisions. Mestengo is a captivating, emotional account that taps into readers’ love of animals: Marley and Me meets The Horse Whisperer. An entertaining and delightful read, it is a cinematic, sometimes tense, but always beautiful story of the power of healing.

    It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.  “They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.” What did Williams’s mother mean by that? In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have a voice?”

    Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.   With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life—discovering corner museums that tourists overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen’s sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband’s notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools—not to mention puberty—in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina’s raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).  Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a most enchanting family, framed by la ville de l’amour.

    In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else— realizing that you are enough.Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones’ Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.

    Stunned to learn that her son, Sam, is about to become a father at nineteen, Lamott begins a journal about the first year of her grandson Jax's life. In careful and often hilarious detail, Lamott and Sam-about whom she first wrote so movingly in Operating Instructions-struggle to balance their changing roles with the demands of college and work, as they both forge new relationships with Jax's mother, who has her own ideas about how to raise a child. Lamott writes about the complex feelings that Jax fosters in her, recalling her own experiences with Sam when she was a single mother. Over the course of the year, the rhythms of life, death, family, and friends unfold in surprising and joyful ways. By turns poignant and funny, honest and touching, Some Assembly Required is the true story of how the birth of a baby changes a family-as this book will change everyone who reads it.

    . . the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material" (Guardian), this is the frank, harrowing, and true story of one young woman's descent into heroin addiction and prostitution and the long, arduous struggle to redeem her life that made her stronger. A shy, bookish college graduate from a solid middle-class home, Kate Holden was uncertain of her way in life. When she decided to try her first hit of heroin as a one-time adventure with friends, she did not anticipate that the drug would take over. She lost her job and apartment and stole from her family. Desperation drove her first to offer her body on the streets and then in high-class brothels, where she discovered hidden strengths as well as parts of herself that frightened her. With the acceptance and unyielding love of a family that never abandoned her, Kate Holden ultimately defeated the drug and left her netherworld behind.

    This exuberant memoir shifts between her present experience as a middle-aged mom in the grip of mysterious new hungers and herself as a teenager–when she last experienced life with such heightened sensitivity and longing. From her hilarious chapter titles (“How to Have Sex with Your Husband of Seventeen Years”) to her subjects–from the boyfriend she dumped at fourteen the moment she learned how to give herself an orgasm, to the girls who ruled her elite private school (“when I left Oberlin I thought I had done with them forever, but it turned out …they also edited all the newspapers and magazines, and wrote all the books”), to raising a teenage daughter herself–Dederer writes with an electrifying blend of wry wit and raw honesty. She exposes herself utterly, and in doing so captures something universal about the experience of being a woman, a daughter, a wife.

    Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.Wall Street Journal, "Favorite Books of the Year 2013"Cosmopolitan, "Best Books of the Year for Women"Library Journal, "Best Books of 2013"Salon, "Best Books of 2013"

    Kim Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that she spent her childhood hiding behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house, navigating between teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room—the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding. In this coming-of-age story, Kim brings to life her experience of growing up in a rat-infested home, concealing her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and of the emotional burden that ultimately led to an attempt to take her own life. And in beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents that has thrived in spite of the odds. Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where we come from and the relationships that define us—and about finding peace in the homes we make for ourselves.

    But then she fell in love with Stephen: brilliant, infuriating, living with cystic fibrosis. With Stephen's life expectancy hovering around thirty years, Scarboro embraced another sort of adventure--simultaneously joyous and heartrending--choosing to stay with Stephen and live an entire marriage in the ten years they had.A memoir in the tradition of Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home and Francisco Goldman's Say Her Name, Scarboro's story, told in intimate prose, reveals the ephemerality of her tender marriage. My Foreign Cities is a modern Love Story, a portrait of a young couple approaching mortality with reckless abandon, gleefully outrunning it for as long as they can.