be a caring, connected mom in a middle-class culture where motherhood
has become relentless. April rages at modern motherhood's impossible
pressures, her husband's "Dad privilege," and her kids' incessant snack
requests. She wants to enjoy motherhood, but her idealist vision and
lived experience are in constant conflict with one another. Is she
broken--or is motherhood?
Desperate for an answer, she seeks out a therapist, and lands with an
unexpected woman whose validation and wisdom gives April the clarity to
reclaim herself and even start designing clothes--her pre-motherhood
passion. But when the ever-elusive babysitter cancels last-minute, April
finds herself back at square one. She seeks guidance, but her therapist
is now dealing with her own crumbling marriage--and instead of
counseling April, she convinces her to speed off to Las Vegas with her
to help catch her husband cheating. With a little weed, alcohol, and
topless pool hopping, plus a male stripper and some much-needed
autonomy, the two find lost pieces of themselves that motherhood
swallowed up. But neither one is prepared for how tested--and
tempted--they will be, or for the life-altering choices their journey
will force them to make. Who is guiding whom anymore?
A New York Times bestseller!
From the team behind #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart comes a gripping romance that asks: Can you find true love after losing everything?
Kyle and Kimberly have been the perfect couple all through high school, but when Kimberly breaks up with him on the night of their graduation party, Kyle's entire world upends--literally. Their car crashes and when he awakes, he has a brain injury. Kimberly is dead. And no one in his life could possibly understand.
Until Marley. Marley is suffering from her own loss, a loss she thinks was her fault. And when their paths cross, Kyle sees in her all the unspoken things he's feeling.
As Kyle and Marley work to heal each other's wounds, their feelings for each other grow stronger. But Kyle can't shake the sense that he's headed for another crashing moment that will blow up his life as soon as he's started to put it back together.
And he's right.
This book includes bonus content.
Finding love is all a matter of timing in a surprising, complicated, and funny memoir by the author of A Marriage in Dog Years.
When a mysterious woman summons Nancy Balbirer to a Russian restaurant in New York City, the near stranger's shocking purple hair and even more shocking news send Balbirer simultaneously reeling back to her past and hurtling toward a future that, at almost fifty years old, she never dreamed possible. This romantic-comedy memoir tells the true story of how a pack of Hollywood television writers and the denizens of a fabled but cursed Manhattan apartment building helped the author and one of her best friends turn a thirty-two-year almost romance into a real one.
Witty and heartfelt, Nancy Balbirer's sublime memoir proves that love is possible anywhere, anytime, and at any age.
A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender.
-- Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six
- The New York Times Book Review A hilariously heartfelt novel influenced in part by the author's time assisting Carrie Fisher. People Magazine Best Book of Summer 2020 - Named a Must-Read Summer book by Town & Country - Named One of the 14 Best Books of Summer 2020 by Harper's Bazaar - One of Library Journal's 2020 Titles to Watch - One of the 30 Best Beach Reads According to Parade Magazine She needs an assistant.
He needs a hero. Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine's Worst Dressed list. She's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She's also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers. Charlie gets the job, and his three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own life's leading role? Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.
A national indie bestseller! Meet Anna K: every happy teenage girl is the same, while every unhappy teenage girl is miserable in her own special way...
At seventeen, Anna K is at the top of Manhattan and Greenwich society (even if she prefers the company of her horses and dogs); she has the perfect (if perfectly boring) boyfriend, Alexander W.; and she has always made her Korean-American father proud (even if he can be a little controlling). Meanwhile, Anna's brother, Steven, and his girlfriend, Lolly, are trying to weather an sexting scandal; Lolly's little sister, Kimmie, is struggling to recalibrate to normal life after an injury derails her ice dancing career; and Steven's best friend, Dustin, is madly (and one-sidedly) in love with Kimmie.
Jocelyn Jones is one of Hollywood's most prized secret weapons. A legendary acting teacher, coach, and artistic advisor to the stars, she has served as a confidential Creative Consultant on some of the highest-grossing pictures of all time.
Now, she shares her personal journey-and the secrets behind her unique methodology-in Artist: Awakening the Spirit Within.
How do you tap into the power of creation? A great teacher doesn't just tell you; they show you! With forthright vulnerability, Jones shares the memories and lessons that shaped her, both spiritually and as a world-class teacher-proving beyond question that the same creative process she offers actors can help you discover andmanifest a life in coherence with your own heart.
Whether you're an actor looking to elevate your craft or a fellow human traveler pursuing your dreams, Artist shows you step by step how to awaken to your higher self and move confidently into the life you were born to live.
ears like a bat-tat-ticus! Snap your fingers to the beat as a boy introduces us to his beloved (and oh-so-recognizably feline) cat. Whether Atticus is lying in the sun or stealing a sip from a water glass, sharpening his nails on a favorite chair or settling in for the night on his boy's head, this cat will win your heart--and maybe inspire you to improvise a few riffs of poetry about your own animal friends.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A gripping memoir about the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery from a bold and talented literary voice. "Anyone who has ever felt broken and wished for a better life will find inspiration in Frey's story." --People
"A great story.... You can't help but cheer his victory." --Los Angeles Times Book Review By the time he entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility, James Frey had taken his addictions to near-deadly extremes. He had so thoroughly ravaged his body that the facility's doctors were shocked he was still alive. The ensuing torments of detoxification and withdrawal, and the never-ending urge to use chemicals, are captured with a vitality and directness that recalls the seminal eye-opening power of William Burroughs's Junky. But A Million Little Pieces refuses to fit any mold of drug literature. Inside the clinic, James is surrounded by patients as troubled as he is--including a judge, a mobster, a one-time world-champion boxer, and a fragile former prostitute to whom he is not allowed to speak--but their friendship and advice strikes James as stronger and truer than the clinic's droning dogma of How to Recover. James refuses to consider himself a victim of anything but his own bad decisions, and insists on accepting sole accountability for the person he has been and the person he may become--which runs directly counter to his counselors' recipes for recovery. James has to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he has lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he holds. It is this fight, told with the charismatic energy and power of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, that is at the heart of A Million Little Pieces: the fight between one young man's will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart. "The sharp and surprising true story of a woman who finally sets out to understand her past, and the mother she had one day hoped to forget. Full of unexpected twists and unbelievable revelations, American Daughter is an immersive memoir that will have you on the edge of your seat to the very last page.
For years, Stephanie Plymale, successful CEO and interior designer, kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. Only her husband knew that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and worse. Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, who was in and out of jails and psych wards for most of Stephanie's formative years. All this changed when a series of shocking revelations forced Stephanie to revisit her tortured past and revise the meaning of every aspect of her compromised childhood.
American Daughter is the extraordinary true story of a young girl growing up on the wrong side of the American Dream. Stephanie has slept in blankets on the floor of crowded apartments, lived in the back seat of a car with her siblings, and spent decades looking over her shoulder at a mother who might just as easily hug or harm her. American Daughter is at once a moving account of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on resilience, transcendence, and ultimately, redemption.
In the vein of Mary Karr's Lit, Augusten Burroughs' Dry and Sarah Hepola's Blackout, As Needed for Pain is a raw and riveting--and often wryly funny--addiction memoir from one of New York media's most accomplished editors which explores his never-before-told story of opioid addiction and the drastic impact it had on his life and career.
Dan Peres wasn't born to be a media insider. As an awkward, magic-obsessed adolescent, nothing was further from his reality than the catwalks of Paris or the hallways of glossy magazine publishers. A gifted writer and shrewd cultural observer, Peres eventually took the leap--even when it meant he had to fake a sense of belonging in a new world of famed fashion designers, celebrities, and some of media's biggest names. But he had a secret: opiates.
Peres's career as an editor at W magazine and Details is well known, but little is known about his private life as a high-functioning drug addict. In As Needed for Pain, Peres lays bare for the first time the extent of his drug use--at one point a 60-pill-a-day habit.
By turns humorous and gripping, Peres's story is a cautionary coming-of-age tale filled with unforgettable characters and breathtaking brushes with disaster. But the heart of the book is his journey from outsider to insecure insider, what it took to get him there, and how he found his way back from a killing addiction.
As Needed for Pain offers a rare glimpse into New York media's past--a time when print magazines mattered--and a rarefied world of wealth, power, and influence. It is also a brilliant, shocking dissection of a life teetering on the edge of destruction, and what it took to pull back from the brink.
"Sensationally good -- huge, epic, immersive and absorbing ... certain to be a book of the year." --Lee Child This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything,
and the family ties that bind can also kill. New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It's a rich man's car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold. Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family -- loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all. In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family's ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters' connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction? Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.
The Glass Castle meets The Nest in this stunning debut, an intimate family memoir that gracefully brings us behind the dappled beachfront vista of privilege, to reveal the inner lives of two wonderfully colorful, unforgettable families.
On a mid-August weekend, two families assemble for a wedding at a rambling family mansion on the beach in East Hampton, in the last days of the area's quietly refined country splendor, before traffic jams and high-end boutiques morphed the peaceful enclave into the "Hamptons." The weather is perfect, the tent is in place on the lawn.
But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride, and "pater familias" of the beachfront manse, suffers a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal, and lies in a coma in the hospital in the next town. So begins Jeanne McCulloch's vivid memoir of her wedding weekend in 1983 and its after effects on her family, and the family of the groom. In a society defined by appearance and protocol, the wedding goes on at the insistence of McCulloch's theatrical mother. Instead of a planned honeymoon, wedding presents are stashed in the attic, arrangements are made for a funeral, and a team of lawyers arrive armed with papers for McCulloch and her siblings to sign.
As McCulloch reveals, the repercussions from that weekend will ripple throughout her own family, and that of her in-law's lives as they grapple with questions of loyalty, tradition, marital honor, hope, and loss. Five years later, her own brief marriage ended, she returns to East Hampton with her mother to divide the wedding presents that were never opened.
Impressionistic and lyrical, at turns both witty and poignant, All Happy Families is McCulloch's clear-eyed account of her struggle to hear her own voice amid the noise of social mores and family dysfunction, in a world where all that glitters on the surface is not gold, and each unhappy family is ultimately unhappy in its own unique way.
Bernadette, Eleanor Oliphant, Rosie, Ove . . . meet Amazing Grace Adams, the funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink--who finally pushes back.
Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled--the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she'll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment's flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia's childhood friend. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives--together with her precocious literary gifts--brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
Don't miss Ian McEwan's new novel, Lessons, available now!