Mothers Never Die is the dramatic and inspiring story of Dr. Rose's spiritual pilgrimage. When a debilitating muscle disease ended her prestigious Harvard career and left her bedridden, she rocked back against her Jewish upbringing. She took God to task. And the surprising answer came as she discovered who it is that holds the world together: Jesus Christ. Adding intrigue and humor to her story is the running dialogue the author has with her mother. This is autobiography at its best.
The mothers of some of the most illustrious Jewish men in recent history—Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Woody Allen, the Marx Brothers—are chatting in heaven. The subject: their respective sons—and their undying love for their mothers. Each one, as before in life, engages in one-upmanship toward the others when speaking about her own renowned offspring, and no opportunity to boast can ever be missed. “He loves me so much that for my last birthday he bought me a fabulous fur coat.” “Oh! Mine topped that. He saved money for an entire year and treated me to a fantastic trip to the Caribbean.” “As for me, imagine, three times a week he actually pays a psychiatrist to talk about me.” Each woman insists on being the force, the savior, the raison d’être of her son’s career and success. We follow the intricacies of each woman’s marriage and details of her social environment, but more specifically, the relationship with her “unique” child. Written with a delicate touch, Jewish Mothers Never Die reveals in tender, funny, and searing portraits how some women continue to live through their children—even after death. Every reader will have a good chuckle, and all will enjoy this utterly charming and entertaining novel. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
What binds mothers and daughters? What makes them clutch so hard they wound each other and love so hard they lose themselves? In the nineteen short tales that make up My Mother Never Dies, literary provocateur Claire Castillon dissects the darkest aspects of the relationship between mothers and daughters. A woman tries so hard to be friends with her daughter that she begins to revert to her own adolescence; another woman finds her mother engaged in an illicit affair with a man they both know too well; a daughter rattles off all the reasons why she's disgusted with her invalid mother but realizes through her haze of teenage hatred that she is losing the only person who tells her the truth. Stunning, shocking, unflinching, and ultimately tender, My Mother Never Dies forces us to look at the worst and best of mothers and daughters. Castillon won't let us avert our gaze from the terrible and true any more than from the beautiful and truea because it all reveals the depth of our need for each other. "
Every Mother speaks with a unique voice. Sometimes we choose not to listen and sometimes we have no other choice! Meet Joia Barone; from the Other Side. A fiery Italian mother in life who still manages to command attention in death-with miraculous results!
This is a story of such breadth and scope, with a cast of characters that is so glitzy, glamorous, and flawed, that not even a Hollywood scriptwriter would have dared make it up. There is Ivana, the famous socialite businesswoman who turns out to be a tender-hearted step-mother; Fedele, the schizophrenic only child of her husband, the famous businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli; Naomi, Fedele's exquisite Japanese wife who is diagnosed with terminal cancer the week after giving birth to Katerina; Stella, the stunning mother and social figure with alcohol issues who rises to new and unexpected heights as she copes with her son's mental illness. This book is informative on a host of subjects, ranging from the lifestyle of the International Super-Rich to the profundities of coping with terminal illness and mental disease. Due to its intelligence, insight and humour the appeal of this story and struggle should be universal.
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES The electrifying, untold story of the women born into the most deadly and obscenely wealthy of the Italian mafias – and how they risked everything to bring it down. The Calabrian Mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals—supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists—and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union. The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence—omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings—and worse—are routine. In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children. A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.
100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World features stories of Jewish brides from six continents, highlighting diverse customs and rituals related to weddings now and in the past. The stories, written by brides, their relatives, clergy, and other intimates, cover similarities and differences across the Jewish diaspora, from courtship and betrothal to pre-wedding customs, the wedding ceremony, and beyond. With stories from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, this collection of intimate personal testimonies will surprise and inspire. A Jewish wedding after conversion in Madagascar, a reunion of Holocaust survivors in Sweden, a shipboard romance initiated by a celebrity, these stories from 83 countries describe Jewish wedding traditions, some familiar and others eye-opening, in a multitude of cultures and settings, past and present. 100 Jewish Brides offers intimate glimpses into the worlds of brides and their families based on their own written accounts. It represents opportunities to learn how Jewish lives were and are currently lived around the world from memories of the distant past to recent times.
The Hero of Italy examines a salient episode in Italy's Thirty Years' War with Spain and France, whereby the young duke Odoardo Farnese of Parma embraced the French alliance, only to experience defeat and occupation after two tumultuous years (1635-1637). Gregory Hanlon stresses the narrative of events unfolding in northern Italy, examining the participation of the little state in these epic European events. The first chapter describes the constitution of Cardinal Richelieu's anti-Habsburg alliance and Odoardo's eagerness to be part of it. A chapter on the Parman professional army, based on an extraordinary collection of company roster-books, sheds light on the identity of over 13,000 individuals, soldier by soldier, the origin and background of their officers, the conditions of their lodgings, and the good state of their equipment. Chapter three follows the first campaign of 1635 alongside French and Savoyard contingents at the failed siege of Valenza, and the logistical difficulties of organizing such large-scale operations. Another chapter examines the financial expedients the duchy adopted to fend off incursions on all its borders in 1636, and how militia contingents on both sides were drawn into the fighting. A final chapter relates the Spanish invasion and occupation which forced duke Odoardo to make a separate peace. The volume includes a detailed assessment of the impact of war on civilians based on parish registers for city and country. The application of the laws of war was largely nullified by widespread starvation, disease and routine sex-selective infanticide. These quantitative analyses, supported by maps and tables, are among the most detailed anywhere in Europe in the era of the Thirty Years' War.
