This is a gripping, beautiful story.” —Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep“I was immensely moved by this elegant book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love Dani Shapiro, the acclaimed author of the novel Black and White and the bestselling memoir Slow Motion, is back with Devotion: a searching and timeless new memoir that examines the fundamental questions that wake women in the middle of the night, and grapples with the ways faith, prayer, and devotion affect everyday life. Devotion is sure to appeal to all those dealing with the trials and tribulations of what Carl Jung called “the afternoon of life.”

    This book is both an invitation and a challenge to bravely show up for ourselves, for the people we love, and for the strangers that we will one day call family. I say, Amen!" --Bren� Brown, Ph.D., Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Braving the WildernessIn Imperfect Courage, the founder of the popular fair trade jewelry brand Noonday Collection shares her story of starting the rapid-growing business that impacts over 4,500 artisans in vulnerable communities across the globe--and invites readers on a journey of transformation, challenging them to trade their comfort zones for a life of impact and adventure. In 2015, Inc. magazine recognized Noonday Collection as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. But years earlier, as Jessica Honegger stood at a pawn-shop counter in Austin, Texas, and handed over her grandmother's gold jewelry, her goal was much more personal: to fund the adoption of her Rwandan son, Jack, by selling artisan-made jewelry.This first step launched an unexpected side-hustle that would grow into Noonday Collection. Jessica embarked on this new journey and teamed up with her first artisan partner, Jalia, a Ugandan jewelry maker. She saw the meaningful impact Noonday brought to Jalia's community and knew it was the right move.Fear crept into Jessica's heart as she realized her success, or failure, meant the same for Jalia. But refusing to let fear hinder her goals, Jessica found the necessary (if imperfect) courage she needed along the way--the courage to leave comfort and embrace a life of risk and impact.Discover Your Imperfect Courage In Imperfect Courage, Jessica takes you by the hand and invites you to trade your comfort zone for a life of impact and meaning. - First, she invites you to draw a circle of compassion around yourself and leads you through some soul-searching aimed at setting you free from shame. - Next, she challenges all of us to come together, dare to be vulnerable with one another, and commit to building a culture of collaboration. - Finally, Jessica calls on you to broaden your circle of compassion to embrace the entire globe--and to bring your beautifully imperfect courage to a world that needs you.

    Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family—both the ones we are born to and the ones we create—and their enduring legacies.

    At once shocking, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Wall’s story of subjugation and survival exposes the darkness at the root of this rebel offshoot of the Mormon faith.

    Every morning, Anjelica and her brother visited their father while he took his breakfast in bed. “What news?” he’d ask. “I’d seen him the night before,” Anjelica recalls. “There wasn’t much to report.” So she became a storyteller.In London, where she lives with her mother and brother in the early sixties when her par­ents separate, Huston encounters the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. She understudies Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. Seventeen, striking, precocious, but still young and vulnerable, she is devastated when her mother dies in a car crash.Months later she moves to New York, falls in love with the much older, brilliant but disturbed photographer Bob Richardson, and becomes a model. Living in the Chelsea Hotel, working with Richard Avedon and other photographers, she navigates a volatile relationship and the dynamic cultural epicenter of New York in the seventies.A Story Lately Told ends as Huston launches her Hollywood life. The second part of her story—Watch Me—opens in Los Angeles in 1973 and will be published in Fall 2014. Beguiling and beautifully written, Huston’s memoir is a treasure.

    Carol North was diagnosed with schizophrenia in college. The story of her life is traced from her early life in a middle class small-town family in the Midwest. For many years, Carol struggled against overwhelming odds to achieve in school in spite of her illness and was finally admitted to medical school to pursue her hopes and dreams of becoming a doctor. In medical school, however, she slid further into psychosis and finally succumbed the inexorable incapacitation so often characteristic of the illness. Carol was fortunate enough, however, to find a skilled psychiatrist who understood her dedication to becoming a physician and who worked with her to stay well enough to remain in school. When all hope seemed lost, her doctor enrolled her in an experimental dialysis program, similar to the treatment given to patients with kidney failure. With this treatment, her illness went away and she no longer required medication for it. This engrossing and ultimately triumphant story of courageous struggle against mental illness will inspire anyone who has ever had to battle for achievement against overwhelming odds. After recovering from her illness, Carol returned to school and received her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri in 1983. She then completed her internship and residency at Barnes Hospital/Washington University, and subsequently obtained a masters degree in psychiatric epidemiology (the study of psychiatric disorders in populations) while simultaneously pursuing a NIMH fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at Washington University. Dr. Carol North is currently a board-certified psychiatrist and full Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. She treats patients with schizophrenia and a range of psychiatric illness, trains young physicians and psychiatrists, and pursues federally funded research in psychiatric epidemiology. She is the recipient of numerous national awards and has appeared on many national television and radio programs.

    It was like a romance novel, an old Broadway musical, and a John Wayne western rolled into one. Out for a quick drink with friends, I wasn't looking to meet anyone, let alone a tall, rugged cowboy who lived on a cattle ranch miles away from my cultured, corporate hometown. But before I knew it, I'd been struck with a lightning bolt . . . and I was completely powerless to stop it.Read along as I recount the rip-roaring details of my unlikely romance with a chaps-wearing cowboy, from the early days of our courtship (complete with cows, horses, prairie fire, and passion) all the way through the first year of our marriage, which would be filled with more challenge and strife—and manure—than I ever could have expected.This isn't just my love story; it's a universal tale of passion, romance, and all-encompassing love that sweeps us off our feet.It's the story of a cowboy.And Wranglers.And chaps.And the girl who fell in love with them.

    Following the invisible thread of connection between people who are seemingly intended to become family, journalist Jennifer Grant shares the deeply personal, often humorous story of adopting a fifteen-month-old girl from Guatemala when she was already the mother of three very young children. Her family's journey is captured in stories that will encourage not only adoptive families but those who are curious about adoption or whose lives have been indirectly touched by it. Love You More explores universal themes such as parenthood, marriage, miscarriage, infertility, connection, destiny, true self, failure and stumbling, and redemption.

    Throughout her life, Elizabeth Lesser has sought understanding about what it means to be true to oneself and, at the same time, truly connected to the ones we love. But when her sister Maggie needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life, and Lesser learns that she is the perfect match, she faces a far more immediate and complex question about what it really means to love—honestly, generously, and authentically.Hoping to give Maggie the best chance possible for a successful transplant, the sisters dig deep into the marrow of their relationship to clear a path to unconditional acceptance. They leave the bone marrow transplant up to the doctors, but take on what Lesser calls a "soul marrow transplant," examining their family history, having difficult conversations, examining old assumptions, and offering forgiveness until all that is left is love for each other’s true selves. Their process—before, during, and after the transplant—encourages them to take risks of authenticity in other aspects their lives.But life does not follow the storylines we plan for it. Maggie’s body is ultimately too weak to fight the relentless illness. As she and Lesser prepare for the inevitable, they grow ever closer as their shared blood cells become a symbol of the enduring bond they share. Told with suspense and humor, Marrow is joyous and heartbreaking, incandescent and profound. The story reveals how even our most difficult experiences can offer unexpected spiritual growth. Reflecting on the multifaceted nature of love—love of other, love of self, love of the world—Marrow is an unflinching and beautiful memoir about getting to the very center of ourselves.

    Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall's parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.

    Instinctively, I reached out my arms to stop my fall and ended up grabbing the live fence. My hands clamped around the thin wires, and my body collapsed to the ground as the electricity coursed through it. I opened my eyes and saw my mother standing over me with the strangest smile on her face. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die!” I thought in panic.Imagine never being able to close your eyes and remember the feel of your mother’s arms wrapped around you. Now imagine closing your eyes and remembering your mother’s tears splashing down on your face as she is on top of you, crying as she is trying to choke you to death. My mother left me these memories and many more during my traumatic childhood. After many years of struggling with trying to understand “Why Me?” I took back control of my life and started saying, “It was me, now what am I going to do?” The answer is my book, “Why Me?”. It is my childhood journey through the terrors of physical and mental abuse from first grade until the day I moved out. It is my way of letting the world know what was really going on behind closed doors.

    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.

    An acclaimed singer/songwriter, he is proud of the way  he handled his difficult past: poverty in the 1950s Dublin slums and the brutality of the Artane Industrial School. He felt as though he had safely disposed of it all, until one night, while writing the powerful song that would launch his highly-praised album, 800 Voices ("A searing testament." —Irish Times), Danny's past crept back to haunt him. Confronted by forgotten memories of betrayal and abandonment, he was stunned to discover that his eight-year-old self was still trapped in a world he thought he had left behind.Although unnerved by his experience, Danny begins an arduous journey that leads him back to the streets of Dublin, the tenement slums, and, ultimately, the malice and mischief of the Artane playground. What he discovers with each twist and turn of his odyssey will forever change his life. Elegantly written, this is a brutally honest, often harrowing, depiction of a young boy's struggle to survive orphanage life, and stands as an inspiring testament to the healing power of music and love.

    The author of Escape, which detailed her escape along with her eight children from the cult she had been raised in, the extremist Mormon sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, follows up on the 2008 raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which her ex-husband ran for Warren Jeffs on a sprawling 1,700-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas.

    We follow Strauss as he explores his startling past-collision life - the funeral, the queasy drama of a high-stakes court case? and what starts as a personal tale of a tragic event opens into the story of how to live with a very hard fact: we can try our human best in the crucial moment, and it might not be good enough. Half a Life is a nakedly honest, ultimately hopeful examination of guilt, responsibility, and living with the past.