Carson Chow is a high functioning addict. For years, he's been able to meet the increasing demands from his aging immigrant parents while hiding his crystal meth use every other weekend. One Friday night, as he's passed out from a drug binge, he misses 38 phone calls from his father, detailing first the collapse and eventually the death of his mother. Carson has always been close to his mother. He throws himself into the preparation of his mother's funeral. Will this tragedy plunge him deeper into his abuse or finally rouse him from his addiction stupor?

When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, he called it an “unflinching look at America’s class divide…and a reminder of the dignity of all work.” Later, it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by sixty-seven million households and was Netflix’s fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Stephanie’s escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions.

Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn’t afraid to share. In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human nature.

Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in this book, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy. Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer.

No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates.

Best friends Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani endure every parent’s nightmare when a tragic accident befalls their teenage boys, leaving one dead, another in a coma, and a third too traumatized to speak. Reeling from the worst night of their lives, the three mothers plunge into a desperate investigation of the bizarre incident. How could something so horrible happen in their wealthy Southern California suburb? They soon discover that the accident was just the beginning, and troubling discoveries lead to chilling questions: Do they really know their children? Do they even know each other?

In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child. CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make: tell the truth, and destroy her family, or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies....

Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.

There are millions of homeless children in America today and in A Place Called Home, award-winning child welfare advocate David Ambroz writes about growing up homeless in New York for eleven years and his subsequent years in foster care, offering a window into what so many kids living in poverty experience every day.

Growing up abandoned by her father and raised by a single mother, Celeste was determined to create the perfect family - but even perfect families have secrets. Her days are filled with a rewarding career, a devoted husband, and her four-year-old daughter. Celeste is the only one who knows the precarious house of cards her family is built upon - until the day her daughter falls critically ill. Then her world quickly spirals out of control, her secret threatening to destroy her marriage, family, reputation, and sanity.

This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.

After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.

Jennifer Barnes never expected the shocking news she received at a routine doctor’s appointment: she has a terminal brain tumor - and only six weeks left to live. While stunned by the diagnosis, the 48-year-old mother decides to spend what little time she has left with her family - her adult triplets and twin grandsons - close by her side. But when she realizes she was possibly poisoned a year earlier, she’s determined to discover who might have tried to get rid of her before she’s gone for good.

College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their parents are ambitious. But when Stanford alerts the school it's allotting only one spot to EBA for their incoming class, three mothers discover the competition is more cutthroat than they could have imagined.

Growing up abandoned by her father and raised by a single mother, Celeste was determined to create the perfect family - but even perfect families have secrets. Her days are filled with a rewarding career, a devoted husband, and her four-year-old daughter. Celeste is the only one who knows the precarious house of cards her family is built upon - until the day her daughter falls critically ill. Then her world quickly spirals out of control, her secret threatening to destroy her marriage, family, reputation, and sanity.

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.

Sure, it's romantic up amidst the snow-capped peaks of Wyoming's Grand Teton Mountains, but Hanna Alexander has only one thing on her mind: trying to save the family lodge. That is, she did - right up until she hired mountain-guide Micah Gallagher to help raise revenues. Teeming with suspicion and intrigue, this Grand Teton adventure leaves listeners struggling with the Christian principle of forgiveness in the face of emotional entanglements, fears of the heart, and the inevitable agony of love.

Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department and thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be when her husband is sleeping right next to her? But when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there. Tessa is the 23-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived.

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

When I said, "I do," I meant it for life. When he said, "I do," he didn't mean it at all. Divorced and single, I'm ready to find true love. When a business deal requires me to create an online dating account, I find myself drawn to Mister_Mystery. He's not looking for love. I'm not looking for another lie.

Just when Stacy Morrison thought she had it all, her husband of 10 years announced that he wanted a divorce. She was left alone with a new house that needed lots of work, a new baby who needed lots of attention, and a new job in the high-pressure world of New York publishing. Morrison had never been one to believe in fairy tales. As far as she was concerned, happy endings were the product of the kind of ambition and hard work that had propelled her to the top of her profession.

Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn’t have any complaints. She’s been in a stable marriage that’s lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children and thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman. The trouble is Annabelle isn’t sure she wants to be married to Grant anymore. The trouble is she’s still in love with someone else.

My name is Courtney Jane Salinger...and I'm sick of games. Sick of the Friday night bar-scene-cum-meat-market. Sick of awful dates and one-night stands, booty calls and guys who don’t call back, mixed messages or no messages and - and - and...I'm sick of all of it. I’m done. It's too hard, and worse: little by little, it's making me hard. It's breaking my heart. What do I want? That's easy. I want a house in suburbia with a white picket fence. I want babies to buckle into a minivan. But most of all, I want to be married. I want a husband.

On her fortieth birthday, Celia Guest has reason to celebrate. She has a loving marriage, a beautiful Connecticut home, and treasured friends. Celia has everything she’s ever wanted. But among the cards and well-wishes, she discovers a disturbing note: You don’t deserve any of this. Who could be so cruel, so resentful, so…knowing? Then, in the early morning hours, Celia vanishes without a trace.