What a mess. Life doesn’t get more challenging than when KJ aims to diffuse hospice myths and drop a few bombs in 2020. According to the statistics, most people experience uncomplicated grief after a loss, but what about the rest of us? The hot mess expresses. KJ has leaned into the discomfort and let go of today’s cultural normalities to process grief in a healthy way. Based on the five stages of grief, Twisted Grief provides insight into the method behind the madness in an attempt to shine light in a dark place.
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • A BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB PICK • A LIBRARYREADS PICK “If you are someone who gravitates toward emotional gut punch reads, allow me to introduce you to this spectacular debut…”—BuzzFeed Here are three things you should know about my husband: He was the great love of my life despite his penchant for going incommunicado. He was, as far as I and everyone else could tell, perfectly happy. Which is significant because… On New Year’s Eve, he died. And here is one thing you should know about me: I found him. Bonus fact: No. I am not okay. Someday, Maybe is a stunning, witty debut novel about a young woman’s emotional journey through unimaginable loss, pulled along by her tight-knit Nigerian family, a posse of friends, and the love and laughter she shared with her husband. “Incisive and witty. I couldn’t put it down.”—Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström, internationally bestselling author of In Every Mirror She's Black “A masterfully woven exposition on love and loss. Nwabineli is magic with words.”—Bolu Babalola, internationally bestselling author of Honey and Spice Don't miss Onyi Nwabineli's next stunning page-turner, ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF, where a former kidfluencer must overcome her toxic family, reclaim her identity and, ultimately, find the freedom to be herself...
Joey goes to the carnival and makes a new friend: a bright yellow balloon. Joey and his beloved balloon do everything together, until the balloon accidentally slips off Joey's wrist and flies far, far away. What will Joey do without his special friend? A tale of love, loss and letting go that serves as a comforting guide for children who are navigating the complicated emotions of grief.
The trip of a lifetime, a summer of love - unputdownable writing, perfect for fans of John Green and E. Lockhart. Maddie O'Neill Levine wants to spend the summer before college tying up loose ends with her best friends - kissing boys and soaking up the last of the summer sun. Then her beloved grandmother drops a bombshell; she has been diagnosed with cancer. To spend quality time with her family, Maddie's grandmother takes the whole family on a round-the-word cruise - but at the end of it, Gram might not return home. Here is a story about love, loss and the power of forgiveness.
In this powerful and emotionally searing memoir, Alaina LeBlanc shares the harrowing true story of her family's descent into the nightmarish depths of Munchausen by Proxy abuse at the hands of her half-sister, Eve. What began as a troubling guardianship case over their aging mother, Tara, soon spiraled into much darker territory as Alaina uncovered Eve's pattern of deceit, manipulation, and the insidious fabrication of medical crises. With her mother confined to a surveillance-riddled basement, trapped in a chilling cycle of deprivation and control, Alaina embarked on a desperate quest for truth and justice. However, her pleas for intervention were met with disbelief and legal stonewalling, forcing Alaina to confront a dizzying labyrinth of systemic injustice. As she delved deeper, whispers from Eve's children—once silenced but now defiant—revealed their own harrowing stories of religious indoctrination, isolation, and psychological subjugation. Weaving in insights from renowned experts on Munchausen by Proxy, "The Web of Whispers" is a blazing exploration of this insidious form of abuse. It's an intimate portrait of love's tenacity, a family's unbreakable bonds, and the relentless pursuit of truth against a maze of deceit and malice. A profoundly moving and eye-opening story of overcoming the darkness, this memoir shines a light on the shadowed corners where this cruelty persists. Both a searing personal odyssey and a call for change, it raises crucial awareness while offering hope and validation for victims and survivors.
What's in a name? For Carl Capotorto, everything is in a name. The literal translation from Italian to English of Capotorto is "twisted head." This is no accident. Carl grew up in the Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s with the Mangialardis ("eat fat") and Mrs. Sabella ("so beautiful"), incessant fryers and a dolled-up glamour queen. Carl's father, Philip Vito Capotorto, was the obsessive, tyrannical head of the family--"I'm not your friend, I'm the father" was a common refrain in their household. The father ran Cappi's Pizza and Sangwheech Shoppe, whose motto was "We Don't Spel Good, Just Cook Nice." It was a time of great upheaval in the Bronx, and Carl's father was right in the middle of it, if not the cause of it, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering mother. Twisted Head is the comedic story of a hardscrabble, working-class family's life that represents the real legacy of Italian-Americans--labor, not crime. It is also the poignant memoir of the author's struggle to become himself in a world that demanded he act like someone else. Tragic and funny in equal measure, Carl's story is propelled by a cast of only-in-New-York characters: customers at the family pizza shop, public school teachers, nuns and priests at church, shop owners and merchants--all wildly entertaining and sometimes frightening. Somewhere in all the rage and madness that surrounded Carl in his youth, he found the bottom line: he loved his family, but he had to let them go. Twisted Head is an exorcism of sorts. With plenty of laughs.
The Yellow House meets Hidden in Plain View in this multigenerational memoir that celebrates African American quilting, family, and honoring the past. At age four, Phyllis Biffle Elmore was plucked off her front porch in Detroit and dropped on her grandmother Lula Horn’s doorstep in rural Alabama. Phyllis felt utterly abandoned until Grandma Lula showed her both all-encompassing love and her intricate “Quilts of Souls.” Phyllis listened intently as Lula told epic stories of folks who had passed on as she turned their clothing into breathtaking quilts for their families. Grandma Lula’s generosity of spirit, strong will, and creative soul animate every page and through the quilts, she paints portraits of extraordinary Black women born before and after the Civil War. They are enslaved people, laundresses, storytellers, healers, and quilters whose stories have gone untold until now. Beautifully written and brilliantly told, Phyllis weaves back and forth through time, piecing together true tales of racism, sexism, and colorism, but also strength and pride, creating a multigenerational patchwork honoring her family and ancestors. From the lush visuals to the powerful history, Quilt of Souls is oral tradition written and preserved for posterity. “Like the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who create masterpieces from cast-off fabrics, Phyllis Biffle Elmore in Quilt of Souls: A Memoir uses snippets of history and fragments of memories to craft a narrative that is a powerful and poignant read.” –Jessica B. Harris, New York Times best-selling author of High on the Hog "A fascinating read that unravels how storytellers are born and made, with the goal or retelling family history, culture, loves, losses, victories, and the tragedies of memoerable people, from cradle to grave." –Omar Tyree, best-selling author and NAACP Image Award winner
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
