Manifesting Me by Leah E. Reinhart
When eight-year-old Vinni Stewart disappears from a Jersey shore town, Maddy, her distraught single mother, begins a desperate search for her daughter. Maddy’s five-year journey leads her to a bakery in Brooklyn, where she stumbles upon something terrifying. Ultimately, her artist neighbor Evelyn reconnects Maddy to her passion for painting and guides her to a life transformed through art.
Detective John D’Orfini sees more than a kidnapping in the plot-thickening twists of chance surrounding Vinni’s disappearance, but his warnings to stay away from the investigation do not deter Maddy, even when her search puts her in danger. When the Russian Mafia warns her to stop sniffing into their business, Maddy must make a choice whether to save one child―even if it might jeopardize saving her own.
In Search of Pure Lust by Lise Weil
When Lise Weil came out in 1976, she came out into a land that was all on fire. Lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. At the center of In Search of Pure Lust is Weil’s immersion in this culture, this movement: the grand experiment of lesbian feminism of the ’70s and ’80s. She and the women around her lived in a state of heightened erotic intensity that was, she believed, the source of their most vital knowledge. Desire was their guiding light. But after fifteen years of torrid but ultimately failed relationships that tended to mirror the tumultuous political currents swirling around her, she had to admit that desire was also a conduit for childhood wounds. It reared its head when she was feeling wary, estranged― abused, even. It flagged when she was fondest and most trusting. And it tended to trump love, over and over again.
In the mid-’80s, when a friend asked Weil to accompany her on a Zen retreat, she was desperate enough to say yes. Her first day of sitting zazen was mostly hell―but smitten with the (female) roshi, she stuck with it, later returning for sesshin after sesshin. A period of difficult self-examination ensued and, over a period of years, she began to learn an altogether different approach to desire. Ultimately, what her search for pure lust uncovered is something that looks a lot like love.
Sacred & Delicious by Lisa Mitchell
Interest in Ayurvedic cooking has exploded over the past two decades, with Deepak Chopra and other respected teachers popularizing India’s ancient wellness system across North America, Europe, and Australia. Sacred & Delicious is a food memoir, a primer on India’s traditional dietary approach to wellness, and a glorious cookbook―with 125 enticing gluten-free and vegetarian recipes (most with vegan options), and more than 30 full-page four-color photos. This book celebrates the healing power of food and spices, embodying ancient Ayurvedic wisdom while appealing to a modern American palate and dietary needs. With this book in hand, readers can sustain or regain their health and vitality . . . deliciously!
Midnight Crossing by Diana Shute
When Quenton wants to take Alix home to France after years of exile in England, she is torn between the restoration of her fortune and her dream to build her Sterling Wood Stable into a successful racing business. She finds an unlikely friend in her uncle’s companion, Nicholas Griffon. Caught by her surprising fondness for him, Alix does not realize shadows from the past are stalking her―until she’s trapped by their darkness.
The Sleeping Lady by Bonnie C. Monte
Thirty-five-year-old Rae Sullivan owns a thriving home décor shop in the San Francisco Bay area, near majestic Mt. Tamalpais (to locals, The Sleeping Lady). But when her business partner, Thalia, confides that she has a lover in France, Rae’s comfortable life start to unravel. Soon, an anonymous note-writer threatens to reveal the affair, and Thalia—who, unswayed by Rae’s warnings, insists on confronting the blackmailer—turns up dead in Golden Gate Park.
The police, convinced the crime was a random mugging, are dismissive of Rae’s story of blackmail. Then a scandal from Rae’s past job comes to light, and the police start to eye her as a suspect. To clear her reputation and ensure justice for Thalia, Rae decides it’s up to her to unmask the murderer—despite her husband’s objections.
Rae’s sleuthing leads her to France, where she enlists the help of Thalia’s handsome half brother. As they collaborate to catch the killer, sparks fly between them, and Rae has to contend with these newly aroused feelings—even as she strives to outmaneuver a cold-blooded murderer who wants to silence her.
Implosion by Elizabeth W. Garber
What could be cooler, thinks teen Elizabeth Garber in 1965, than to live in a glass house designed by her architect dad? Ever since childhood, she’s adored everything he loves―his XKE Jaguar, modern art, and his Eames black leather chair―and she’s been inspired by his passionate intensity as he teaches her about modern architecture. When Woodie receives a commission to design a high-rise dormitory―a tower of glass―for the University of Cincinnati, Elizabeth, her mother and brothers celebrate with him. But less than twenty years later, Sander Hall, the mirror-glass dormitory, will be dynamited into rubble.
Implosion: Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter delves into the life of visionary architect Woodie Garber and the collision of forces in the turbulent 1970s that caused his family to collapse. Soon after the family’s move into Woodie’s glass house, his need to control begins to strain normal bonds; and Elizabeth’s first love, a young black man, triggers his until-then hidden racism. This haunting memoir describes his descent into madness and follows Elizabeth’s inspiring journey to emerge from her abuse, gain understanding and freedom from her father’s control, and go on to become a loving mother and a healer who helps others.
Entangled Moon by E. C. Frey
After a lifetime of seeking all things spiritual, wellness, and at times woo-woo, Paige Davis finds herself facing a breast cancer diagnosis at thirty-eight years old. But she quickly realizes that cancer isn’t her crisis point; rather, it is a landing pad of experiences inviting her to integrate her mind, body, and spirit, find peace in the present moment, and heal from the inside out.
In Here We Grow, Davis provides a refreshing new paradigm of integrative living that doesn’t deny the hardship of a situation, but instead encourages meeting difficulty through embodied heart-centered presence. Utilizing mindfulness, meditation, and mind-body disciplines, she shares a tool kit for transformation as she learns to befriend her body, cope through compassion, face survivor’s guilt, create a “new normal” post treatment, and discover the unexpected awakening of intuition and open-heartedness in the healing journey. Filled with honesty, humor, and present-moment awareness that reveals our true capacity for joy, connection, grace, and resilience, Here We Grow is Davis’s story of meeting fear and uncertainty with mindfulness, meaning, and the unconditional love inherent in us all.
The Silver Shoes by Jill G. Hall
In her second novel, Jill G. Hall, author of The Black Velvet Coat, brings readers another dual tale of two dynamic women from two very different eras searching for fulfillment.
San Francisco artist Anne McFarland has been distracted by a cross-country romance with sexy Sergio and has veered from her creative path. While visiting him in New York, she buys a pair of rhinestone shoes in an antique shop that spark her imagination and lead her on a quest to learn more about the shoes’ original owner.
Almost ninety years earlier, Clair Deveraux, a sheltered 1929 New York debutante, tries to reside within the bounds of polite society and please her father. But when she meets Winnie, a carefree Macy’s shop girl, Clair is lured into the steamy side of Manhattan―a place filled with speakeasies, flappers, and the beat of “that devil music”―and her true desires explode wide open. Secrets and lies heap up until her father loses everything in the stock market crash and Clair becomes entangled in the burlesque world in an effort to save her family and herself.
Ultimately, both Anne and Clair―two very different women living in very different eras―attain true fulfillment . . . with some help from their silver shoes.
The Tell by Linda I. Meyers
When Linda I. Meyers was a little girl in the 1940s, she had a recurring dream: she was an astronaut, accidentally separated from the mothership, and doomed to float alone in the darkness of space until she died. Years later, when she became a psychologist, she realized that the dream harbored both the wish to detach from her mother and the fear that such a separation would mean death―a fear that was worsened by her mother’s constant threats that Linda and her father would be “the death of her,” and accusations that they “wouldn’t be happy until she was six feet under.”
On December 17, 1970, Linda’s mother, for the fifth time that day, called her. Now twenty-eight and busy raising three little boys of her own, Linda began to feel like she was being dragged once again into the undertow of her mother’s depression, she did something she had never done before: she begged her to please let her go. The next day, her mother killed herself.
Severed from the mothership, staggered by conflicting feelings of relief and remorse, and determined to give meaning to her mother’s death, Linda realized it was time to change her life―and she set out to do just that.
Written with irony and humor as a series of stand-alone essays that build upon one another, The Tell is one woman’s touching, inspirational, and often funny story of Before and After―and, ultimately, of emancipation and purpose.
Under the Birch Tree by Nancy Chadwick-Burke
A birch tree grows tall and arabesque in the front yard of Nancy Chadwick’s childhood home. Over time the tree becomes her buddy and first learned connection, synonymous with home―and one spring morning, she makes a discovery under its boughs that foreshadows the many disconnections within her family, relationships, jobs, and home that are to come. Through the chapters in her life, Chadwick’s search for home carries her through with unflinching honesty, but in the end, it is a story of survival and triumph over adversity. She does not wallow in self-pity but remains tenacious as she examines her life. An exploration of what it means to belong, Under the Birch Tree is a success story of finding home.
