Collection: Adult

"We all need an opportunity to sit gently and thoughtfully with our grief. Consider this book your invitation."--Rachel Cargle, author of A Renaissance of Her Own

A guide to living and making peace with your ever-changing body

Have you ever felt like your body has failed you? Maybe you're not as quick or as strong as you used to be, or an illness has wrecked your sense of self, or no matter what diet you follow, you still feel uncomfortable in your own skin. So you go to war with your body for what it can no longer do--when the truth is, our bodies are always on our side.

In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jayne Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one's ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is "against you," she presents new ways to cope with your body's fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace. Along the way, she walks you through the seven stages of Body Grief--from dismissal, shock, and self-blame to hopelessness and hope, and eventual body trust--offering wisdom for how to make space for each difficult emotion as it arises.

Sharing stories from everyday people in the throes of Body Grief as well as her own journey as a newly-disabled woman--from the first of many harrowing hospital visits that resulted in her own life-altering diagnosis, to having to use a rollator on her wedding day because she could no longer walk safely on her own, to accepting the need for a hysterectomy in her early 30s--Mattingly shows that although healing isn't a linear journey, it begins when we trust and work in tandem with our bodies.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The beloved author of Here for It returns with a collection of "funny and compulsively readable" (Vogue), "hilarious and incisive" (Time) essays about what happens after happily ever after.

"How is it possible that I liked this book even more than his last one? Phenomenal."--Jenny Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of Broken (in the best possible way)

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Garden & Gun, Real Simple

After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas finally knew who he was and where he was going. He was living his best life.

But then everything changed.

In this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas moves back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore (a place he never wanted to return, even to be buried) and behaves completely out of character. They say you can't go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition? From attending his twenty-year high school reunion and discovering another person's face on his name badge, to splattering an urgent care room with blood à la The Shining, to being terrorized by a plague of gay frogs who've overtaken his backyard, Thomas provides the nitty, and sometimes the gritty, details of wrestling with the life he thought he'd left behind while trying to establish a new one.

With wit, heart, and hope for the future, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is the not-so-gentle reminder we all need that even when life doesn't go according to plan, we can still find our way back home.

A myth-shattering, inspiring book that combines research, reportage, and memoir to explore the growing phenomenon of estrangement from toxic relatives--showing it not as a tragedy, but as an empowering and effective solution to the heartbreak of family abuse.

After decades of enduring his mother's physical and psychological torment, after years of trying in vain to set boundaries, Eamon Dolan took a radical step: he cut his mother out of his life. No more phone calls, no more visits, no more contact. Parting with his abuser gave him immediate relief and set him on a path toward freedom, confidence, and joy like none he had ever felt before.

In The Power of Parting, Dolan has written the book he wishes he'd had when he was struggling to free himself from his mother's abuse. In the process, he discovered how widespread estrangement really is. At least 27 percent of Americans are estranged from a parent, sibling, or other family member. He also learned why so much stigma surrounds this common--and often lifesaving--phenomenon. Even among therapists--the professionals who would seem most attuned to the pain relatives can inflict--there's a bias toward reconciliation, when millions of their patients need instead to escape their abusers' grip. Estrangement, Dolan realized, should be understood and embraced, not shrouded in shame.

Drawing on his own suffering and healing, as well as experts' advice and the testimony of other courageous survivors, Dolan first explains why abuse is much different and more prevalent than we may think, how it harms us in childhood and beyond, and why limiting or eliminating contact might be our best possible choice. Then, he walks readers through the steps of a successful, positive estrangement: how to take crucial time for yourself; how to make sure no one can gaslight you into minimizing or forgetting; how to set rules for your abuser and--if they can't or won't respect your limits--how to end a toxic relationship. He also offers valuable counsel on how to ease the guilt and grief that often accompany parting, and how to break the cycle of abuse that was likely passed down to you through many generations.

With a convincing blend of clarity and empathy, Dolan encourages others to do what he ultimately did for himself: determine whether the people in your life treat you with the care and concern you deserve--and part ways with them if they don't.

A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends

"A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever."--Karen Russell
"Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful."--Elif Batuman

A Washington Post and Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.

Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.

Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."

A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing: a massive money-making scam and radical political conspiracy that has remade American society.

Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world's greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and--most precious of all--financial freedom. If, that is, you're willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the "multiple levels" of MLM.

Overwhelming evidence suggests that most people lose money in multilevel marketing, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes. Yet the industry's origins, tied to right-wing ideologues like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, and teachers--anyone who has been left behind by rising inequality.

In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today's top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net, then profiting from the chaos. Along the way, Read delves into the stories of those devastated by the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn.

A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism's stealthiest PR campaign, a cunning grift that has shaped nearly everything about how we live, and whose ultimate target is democracy itself.

"Glorious.... Every scene in this book is a treasure."--The New York Times

"A Victorian queer love story that will have you giggling and blushing... This book is full of charm and low-stakes adventure, just the warm and soft romance many of us are looking for."--NPR

An NPR Best Book of 2024 - Named a Best Romance of the Year by The New York Times and Parade

A delightfully queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside -- from the author of The Duke Undone.

Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn't realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?

Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn't accept Muriel's offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs.

As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season's end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they're willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.

No help.
No cell coverage.
No one to hear them scream.

Burned-out by both her marriage and work, Liz is desperate for an escape. More than that, she craves an adventure, a total reset. So, when she plans a vacation with her three best friends, she persuades them to spend four nights camping in the stunning mountains of Norway. Following a trail that climbs through lush valleys, towering peaks, and past jewel-blue lakes, Liz is sure that the hike is just what they need.

But as they stride farther from civilization, it becomes clear that the women are not the only ones looking to lose themselves in the mountains. The wilderness hides secrets darker than they could ever have imagined, and if they're not careful . . . not all of them will return.

Named a most anticipated book of Spring 2025 by Harper's Bazaar, OurCulture, Kirkus, AV Club and WNYC

From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture

What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement's power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress.

Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and "riot grrrl" feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren't. Gilbert tracks many of the period's dominant themes back to the rise of internet porn, which gained widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness.

The result is a devastating portrait of a time when a distinctly American blend of excess, materialism, and power worship collided with the culture's reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and continues to shape our world today.

Over 80 seasonal recipes for cooking with wild game and eating consciously, from one of MeatEater's leading culinary voices.

"This is food that makes you feel good, both physically and emotionally. It's food that'll make you proud to sit down at your own table."--Steve Rinella, author of The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook and The MeatEater Outdoor Cookbook

Wild + Whole founder Danielle Prewett believes that every meal should tell a story, and that sustainable eating starts by reawakening our connection to food and relying on the seasons and the inherent rhythms of nature to guide our choices. In her debut cookbook, Wild + Whole, she shares the personal journey that taught her to love hunting, fishing, foraging, and gardening, as well as her philosophy for cooking seasonally, eating consciously, and approaching food with curiosity, thoughtfulness, and intention. As a leading voice in the wild food community and a trusted resource on processing and cooking wild game, Prewett creates meals that celebrate the diversity of food. Wild + Whole contains more than 80 recipes, organized by season, including:

SPRING: Cheesy Fried Morels with Rustic Tomato Sauce, Perfect Pan-Roasted Turkey Breast with White Wine and Tarragon Sauce

SUMMER: Black Bean, Corn, and Tongue Empanadas with Cilantro-Lime Crema, Broiled Salmon with Miso-Peach Jam and Crispy Fried Rice

FALL: Mushroom-Rubbed Roast Venison au Jus, Chocolate-Porcini Pots de Creme with Hazelnut Whipped Cream

WINTER: Popovers with Roasted Bone Marrow and Celery Leaf Gremolata, BBQ Confit Goose with Grilled Cabbage Wedges

The chef behind the groundbreaking Brooklyn restaurant Bonnie's shares over 85 recipes that showcase his unique style of Chinese home cooking, a mash-up of Americana and Cantonese classics inspired by the flavors of his childhood.

"Calvin Eng draws on traditional Cantonese techniques and the mixing of Cantonese and American flavors that reflect our own experience. And he does it with a verve and creativity that make us want to run to the kitchen and start cooking!"--Sarah, Kaitlin, Bill, and Judy Leung, New York Times bestselling authors of The Woks of Life

As an American-born Cantonese kid, chef Calvin Eng grew up watching his mother, Bonnie, in the kitchen. Though he shied away from his culture as a kid, he later grew to love and embrace his upbringing, eventually opening Bonnie's, which was praised as a top restaurant of the year by the New York Times and Bon Appétit.

Salt Sugar MSG is an introduction to Cantonese cooking through an American lens, full of easy flavor boosts and practical tricks, drawing a thread from his mother's cooking to what Calvin cooks for his own family today. Some recipes stick closer to tradition, like Sizzling Steamed Fish with Seasoned Soy Sauce, Ham Yue Yook Beng (Steamed Pork Patty with Salted Fish), and Ginger Congee, while others upend expectations, like Salt & Pepper Pork Schnitzel with Chinese Ranch, Fuyu Cacio e Pepe Mein, and BLT Fried Rice. While these dishes may not look especially Cantonese at first glance, they certainly taste like it.

Written with his fiancée, Phoebe Melnick, Salt Sugar MSG is full of personal stories and practical tips and tricks as a loving ode to what it means to cook together as a Cantonese American family today.

Learn how to use tarot for radical self-love, personal reflection, and imbuing every day with magic in this vibrant, interactive guide to divination, co-created by the founder of The 52 Lists Project, Moorea Seal, and debut author and illustrator Callie Little.

Each of us has a hero inside--an inner guide fueled by intuition and self-compassion who steers us through the journey of life. Tarot utilizes the hero's journey to explore the challenges of this universal experience with its imagery and rich symbolism. This luxurious, soothing, interactive guide to the tarot is your chance to explore your personal hero's journey and all the magic that resides within.

A collaboration between 52 Lists Project founder, author and artist Moorea Seal and multidisciplinary artist and writer Callie Little, Every Little Thing You Do Is Magic examines tarot through a contemporary lens, focusing on mental health, coping skills, and the pursuit of self-discovery. Inside, tarot practitioners old and new will find a timeline of its evolution, followed by beginner-friendly tips for reading the cards, preceded by in-depth interpretations of the cards from an inclusive, modern point of view. Each card is rendered with beautiful, layered artwork and is linked to a gemstone, song, number, and a simple, approachable activity or writing prompt which are infused with inspiration from Cognitive Behavioral and Dialectical Behavioral therapeutic models. The activities throughout will challenge you to show up for yourself, cultivate healthy rituals to promote wellbeing, and develop skills to support you every step of the way.

Every Little Thing You Do Is Magic is a workbook that brings the rich, centuries-old symbolism of tarot to the modern age and helps readers of all origins to see that every little thing we do truly is magic.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF TIME'S 100 MOST INFLUENTUAL PEOPLE IN GLOBAL HEALTH

"This book is more than a memoir--it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women." --Essence

"Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature." --Abraham Verghese, MD

"[An] extraordinary family story." --The New York Times Book Review

"Required reading for all medical students." --Gayle King, CBS Mornings

The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child--or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother's footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school--were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our health-care system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock's odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician--to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this propulsive new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.

"A twisty, sharp coming-of-age story for our strange techno-utopian times."--Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.

As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother's death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.

In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future.

With sparkling wit and insight, this powerful new novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry reminds us that family is everything, even when it falls apart.

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family's lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece.

Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting.

As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades, forced to confront the buried wounds they incurred as his children, and waiting for answers. Though they have always been close, the things they learn that summer--about themselves, and their father--will drive them apart before they can truly understand his legacy. Meanwhile, their stepmother's enigmatic presence looms over the house. Is she the force that will finally destroy the family for good?

Wonderfully atmospheric, at heart this is a novel about the bonds of siblinghood--what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to reconnect them.

A searing, unflinchingly intimate memoir about one young couple caught up in the machinery of America's military system, learning to live and love through war and all that comes after

"Astonishing . . . both a love story and a gripping account of the cost of war."--Stephanie Land, bestselling author of Maid and Class

Karie Fugett is living out of her car in a Kmart parking lot when her boyfriend, Cleve, suggests, "Maybe we could get married or somethin'." Karie says yes out of love but also out of convenience. As a twenty-year-old high school dropout who ran away from her family and recently lost her job, Karie has nowhere else to turn. Just months after they elope, Cleve's Marine unit is deployed to Iraq. It isn't long before Karie gets the call: Cleve's Humvee has been hit by an IED, and he's suffered severe injuries.

Karie rushes to Walter Reed, where she's told it's a miracle that her husband has survived. "Happy Alive Day, man," a fellow vet says to Cleve, explaining that this will always be the day when he was given a second chance at life. Newlyweds barely out of their teens, Karie and Cleve are thrust into utterly foreign roles. Karie tries to adapt to her job as a caregiver, navigating the labyrinthine system of veterans affairs, hospital bureaucracies, and doctors who do little more than shrug when she raises concerns about Cleve's dependency on painkillers. It is clear to Karie that Cleve is using opiates to dull a pain that is more than physical. She catches his first overdose, but what if she can't save him a second time? Will she still be able to save herself?

Fugett's story depicts an oft-overlooked reality of war: the experience of the many thousands of caregivers and spouses--mostly women, mostly young, mostly poor--whose lives have been shattered by battles fought against enemies abroad and against addiction at home. Tender, vivid, and laced with dark humor, Alive Day is at once an epic and engrossing love story, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and a powerful indictment of the sins of a nation.