By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

It's 1984, and after an unexpected pregnancy, assistant professor Sophia Shulder learns that her newborn baby has Down syndrome and life-threatening anomalies that require immediate risky surgeries. Under pressure to give consent, Sophia is not sure whether that is best for her baby, or for herself. The hospital, threatened by the Reagan administration's new "Baby Doe" laws, launches legal proceedings to force surgery. Is a severely disabled baby's death ever preferable to life? Who decides?

Laura Shirk is an innocent, happy-go-lucky, little girl playing with Cabbage Patch dolls and Legos. Until she isn't. Set in the late 1980s-early 90s, a visit to her aunt and uncle's house changes everything.

Will I have the chance to explain to little Erin why I had to go? Even if I do find the strength to return, what will my mother have told her? Only one person really knows what happened and why I had to do what I did. I know the truth will come out some day. I don’t expect forgiveness. The only thing I hope is that my family can survive the fallout....

Captured by COVID is a true story that begins with author Michael Bowers’ hospitalization for COVID-19 and evolves into a series of unimaginable events. The details of torture, abandonment, and betrayal are real. Captured by COVID is an emotional journey that begs the question "Is reality real?" How would you know?

Our family of three is perfect. Just me, Noah and our teenage daughter Maya. The day the police knock at our door, telling us about the car accident, is the worst day of my life. My heart shatters, but what they say next almost makes it stop beating: Noah was in the car with another woman who died at the scene. Her two-year-old girl, Luna, miraculously survived. With Noah fighting for his life, I’m desperate for the truth, and when I search his desk, I find checks made out to Luna’s mother. Did my loving, loyal husband have a secret family all along?

Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding.

Alice Hunter is smarting from the raw deal life has thrown her way: suddenly single, jobless and forced to move home to her parents' tiny seaside town. And now she faces an uncomfortable truth. She wants her twin sister Libby's enviable life. Libby's closest friend Jess Dekic has been around the Hunter family for so long she might as well be blood. She's always considered herself a sister closer to Libby than Alice ever could be.

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: A successful, first-generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with "Good morning, Monster". Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years.

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.

Growing up torn between her single Pan Am-stewardess mom and brothel-owning grandmother in 1960s New York City, Robin F. Schepper never imagined that she’d one day have an office in the East Wing of the White House. Her childhood in a German American neighborhood on the Upper East Side was peppered with half-truths, from the family secrets surrounding her grandmother’s immigration to deceptions about her biological father.

Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.

Soul Cats is a book that carries with it a very special and personal mission. The dying wish of “soul cat” Max was for his human guardian to write this very book, as he passed away just a few short weeks after. Within the chapters lies a story overflowing with deep love between Max, Flix, Howy, and their human guardians. Together, their love is the prevailing force that sees them through times of significant challenges.

John Walker was a Miami undercover narcotics agent in the 1970s. Ten years later, he was in prison for smuggling 12,000 pounds of marijuana. In prison, he connected with a South American drug lord who was still running the family operation from inside the federal pen. Within months of being paroled, John began smuggling again—this time uncut Colombian cocaine. And this time, he put everything on the line: his freedom, his family and, ultimately, his life.