Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she'd had dozens of operations, had lost most of her leg, from just above the knee, and had become the smiling, indefatigable "poster child" for the March of Dimes. For years she made appearances at church suppers and rodeos, giving pep talks about how normal and happy she was. All the while she was learning to live with what she later described as "my ...

Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education.But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan...

**“[An] often beautiful jewel of a book . . . Black’s power as a writer means she can take us with her to places that normally our minds would refuse to go.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)From the New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World comes an incisive memoir about how she came to question and redefine the concept of resilience after the trauma of her first child’s death.**“Congratulations on t...

Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was no...

**“[An] often beautiful jewel of a book . . . Black’s power as a writer means she can take us with her to places that normally our minds would refuse to go.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)From the New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World comes an incisive memoir about how she came to question and redefine the concept of resilience after the trauma of her first child’s death.**“Congratulations on t...

In this “wonderful and courageous” (Jeannette Walls) memoir, Jackie Hance shares her story of unbearable loss, darkest despair, and—slowly, painfully, and miraculously—her cautious return to hope and love.Until the horrific car accident on New York State’s Taconic Parkway that took the lives of her three beloved young daughters, Jackie Hance was an ordinary Long Island mom, fulfilled by the joyful chaos of a household bustling wit...

The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions.Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thou...

There is us. Our Family. We will hold our precious gift and know that we are lucky . . .From the outside looking in, Kelle Hampton had the perfect life: a beautiful two-year-old daughter, a loving husband, and a thriving photography career. When she learned she was pregnant with their second child, they were ecstatic. But when their new daughter was placed in her arms in the delivery room, Kelle knew instantly that something was wrong. Nella looked different than her siste...

"He says you'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been by remaining closed."Themessenger is a school janitor with a master's in art history who claimsto be channeling "from both sides of the veil." "He" is Adam, athree-year-old who has never spoken an intelligible word. And themessage is intended for Martha Beck, Adam's mother, who doesn't knowwhether to make a mad dash for the door to escape a raving lunatic(after all, how ma...

One of these things is not like the other. That's how Cheri Matzner felt growing up in her adoptive family, and it's what continues to define her as she tries to start a family of her own. Funny and fierce, desperate for connection yet pushing it away with both hands, she needs to jump-start a marriage in danger of flatlining and save her career from scandal.But Cheri is still contending with a complicated relationship with her parents -- her aging Italian bombshell of a mother and...

Actress and humorist Annabelle Gurwitch returns with I See You Made an Effort, a book of essays so wickedly funny it may make you forget your last birthday. Not one to shy away from the grisly realities of middle age, the “slyly subversive” (O: The Oprah Magazine) Gurwitch confronts the various indignities faced by femmes d’un certain âge with candor, wit, and a healthy dose of hilarious self-deprecation.Whether falling in lust at the Genius Bar, navigating the ex...

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed.Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes.Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an...