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  Swinging From The Chandelier -...

  Sandy Hartranft, Glenn Hartranft

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  The day I found Ben swinging from the chandelier, I knew two things - being his mom was going to be a wild ride, and if I ever decided to write a book about it, I had my title. This book started as a way to cope, a reminder to breathe as I raised three boys, including Ben, who was diagnosed with autism at age 2. It tells our story - from experiencing the complex emotions of fear and guilt at hearing the diagnosis, to fighting tooth-and-nail with the school district to get Ben the services he needed. Our journey isn't over yet, but my once-nonverbal, illiterate son is now a public speaker. And this is the story of how - against all odds - he learned to read and write, learned to drive, and eventually got a job. It's the story of how he was voted homecoming king by his high school of 3,000, and how he continued to exceed all our expectations for him. 
  I have been working on this book for over 10 years. When I first started, it was a way for me to document events, feelings, successes, and missteps while raising our son, Ben, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age two. Over time, I realized that the stories of other parents helped me on my own journey, so I hoped my book might do the same for someone else.

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  Notes from an Island

  Tove Jansson, Alexander Chee

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  From a renowned artist and writer, a deeply personal nature journal that includes sketches from her romantic partner, artist Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä. In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her bestselling novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin. Tove's signature spare, quirky prose, and Tooti's subtle ink washes and aquatints combine to form a work of meditative beauty, a chronicle of living peacefully in nature and observing the island’s ecology and character. Notes from an Island is both a work of artistic collaboration and an homage to the deep love the two women shared. One feels as if Jansson’s journal, with Tooti’s sketches tucked inside, has been unearthed like a treasure from under a pile of old quilts in the back of their rustic cabin.Includes a companion PDF of images from the print edition.

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  Rottenkid - A Succulent Story of...

  Brigit Binns

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  A memoir sauteed in Hollywood stories, world travel, and always, the need to belong 
   
   
   
  Prolific cookbook author Brigit Binns's coming-of-age memoir—costarring her alcoholic actor father Edward Binns and glamorous but viciously smart narcissistic mother—reveals how simultaneous privilege and profound neglect lead Brigit to seek comfort in the kitchen, eventually allowing her to find some sense of self-worth. 
   
    
   
  In the old Hollywood of her childhood, Brigit seems to live in an elite world. But when her parents eventually divorce—her father flees and her mother sends her off to boarding school so she can more easily conduct her decades-long romance with a married California governor—Brigit racks up seven schools and a host of bad decisions before the age of sixteen. 
   
    
   
  Marriage to an Englishman takes her across the pond and to professional cooking school. But when that life comes crashing down, she returns heartbroken and alone to Los Angeles eighteen years after vowing never to return. Here she thrives, cold pitching herself to top chefs as coauthor for their cookbooks. Peppered with humor and seasoned with optimism, Brigit's story is an entertaining tribute to female resilience.

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  I'm Single Because I Hate My...

  Sarah Amy Jennifer Jones

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  “To be fair, there are lots of reasons I’m single, but some of my friends’ husbands certainly make me happy with that choice.” 
  In this series of essays, Sarah Amy Jennifer Jones (not her real name), a self-described hot mess masquerading as a normal human being discusses love, relationships, and the often confusing life of a true, modern-day spinster. 
  Join her for the laughs, misery, and insights that only someone with too much time on their hands can deliver.

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  Another Word for Love - A Memoir

  Carvell Wallace

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  This program is read by the author.“Carvell Wallace narrates his beautiful memoir with poignant urgency-- and a whole lot of love…His voice, like his prose, has a poetic cadence. At times, his narration seems to fly, reaching higher and higher before culminating in an emotional crescendo.”—AudioFileA transformative memoir that reimagines the conventions of love and posits a radical vision for healing.  In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America.Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.With courage, vulnerability, and a remarkable expansiveness of spirit—not to mention a thrilling, and unrivaled, storytelling verve—Another Word for Love makes an irresistible case for life, healing, the fullness of our humanity, and, of course, love. It could be called a theory of life itself—a theory of being that will leave you open to the wonder of the world.A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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  The Struggle of Struggles

  Vera Pigee

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  From 1955 to 1975, Vera Pigee (1924–2007) put her life and livelihood on the line with grassroots efforts for social change in Mississippi, principally through her years of leadership in Coahoma County's NAACP. Known as the "Lady of Hats," coined by NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, Pigee was a businesswoman, mother, and leader. Her book, The Struggle of Struggles, offers a detailed view of the daily grind of organizing for years to open the state's closed society. Fearless, forthright, and fashionable, Pigee also suffered for her efforts at the hands of white supremacists and those unwilling to accept strong women in leadership. She wrote herself into the histories, confronted misinformation, and self-published one of the first autobiographies from the era. Women like her worked, often without accolade or recognition, in their communities all over the country, but did not document their efforts in this way. 
   
   
   
  The Struggle of Struggles, originally published in 1975, spotlights the gendered and generational tensions within the civil rights movement. It outlines the complexity, frustrations, and snubs, as well as the joy and triumphs that Pigee experienced and witnessed in the quest for a fairer and more equitable nation.

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