Worthy is a memoir of loss and the search for acceptance. Raised in a Mormon household, Denice Turner strives to find her place in the Church, longing to be worthy of her mother’s love. When her mother dies in a suspicious house fire, Turner is forced to face the problems with the stories she inherited. Contemplating the price of worthiness, Turner grapples with the mystery of her mother’s death, seeking to understand her mother’s battle with chronic pain.The story unfolds...

A bighearted memoir of fidelity and forgiveness, A Beginner’s Guide to Faults draws on the language of geology to explore fault lines in a long marriage—deep fractures formed by unmet needs, quiet betrayals, and the human longing for connection and freedom.After twenty-five years of marriage, Denice is blindsided when her husband reveals his romance with a Las Vegas stripper. This latest move in their tit-for-tat game of infidelity is too much for her. She files for divorc...

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEARNew York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Christian Science Monitor • Slate • St. Louise Post-Dispatch • Cleveland Plain Dealer • Seattle Times • NBCC Award FinalistMary Karr’s unforgettable sequel to her be...

Sixteen literary luminaries on the controversial subject of being childless by choice, in this critically acclaimed, bestselling anthologyOne of the most provocative and talked-about books of the year, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed is the stunning collection exploring one of society’s most vexing taboos.One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed “fertility crisis,” and whether modern women could fi...

From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuse...

“Part portrait of a place, part rescue manual, part rumination of life and death, Population: 485 is a beautiful meditation on the things that matter.” — Seattle TimesWelcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin (population: 485) where the local vigilante is a farmer’s wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station...

Introducing a writer with a keen eye, a wicked tongue, and an appealing take on family.In the family of Jen Lancaster and Elizabeth Gilbert, Kyran Pittman is the laid-back middle sister: warm and witty and confiding, with an addictively smart and genuine voice-but married with three kids and living in the heartland. Relatable and real, she writes about family in a way that highlights all its humor, while at the same time honoring its depth.A regular contrib...

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERI once began a list of the contradictory notions I hold:Look before you leap.He who hesitates is lost.Two heads are better than one.If you want something done right, do it yourself.Nothing ventured, nothing gained.Better safe than sorry.Out of sight, out of mind.Absence makes the heart grow fonder.You can't tell a book by its cover.Clothes make the man.Many hands make light work...

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whe...

From "a genuine American Dostoevsky" ( The Washington Post): a dazzling, funny, bittersweet exploration of the mysteries of relationship, both human and animal.When his favorite cat Biscuit goes missing, Peter Trachtenberg sets out to find her. The journey takes him 700 miles and many years into his past-- into the history of his relationships with cats and the history of his relationship with his wife F., who may herself be on the verge of disappearing. Wh...

"There was very fine, an elegant pain, hardly a pain at all, like the swift and fleeting burn of a drop of hot candle wax...Then the blood welled up and began to distort the pure, stark edges of my delicately wrought wound."The chaos in my head spun itself into a silk of silence. I had distilled myself to the immediacy of hand, blade, blood, flesh."There are an estimated two to three million "cutters" in America, but experts warn that, as with anorexia, this could be just the...