“Illuminates with cutting truth the layers of longing and grief which underlie a transracial adoption . . . sharply written, intense, and page-turning.” —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Waisted Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones—they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long Island is surely better than the alternative. But as she matures, she realizes that she’ll never know if she has her mother’s eyes, or if she’d be in America at all had her adoptive parents been able to conceive. Rowan sets out to prove that she can be someone’s first choice. After running away from home—and her parents’ rules—and ending up beaten, barefoot, and topless on a Pennsylvania street courtesy of Bad Boy Number One, Rowan attaches herself to Never-Going-to-Commit. When that doesn’t work out, she fully abandons self-respect and begins browsing Craigslist personals. But as Rowan dives deeper into the world of casual encounters with strangers, she discovers what she’s really looking for. With a fresh voice and a quick wit, Lauren J. Sharkey dispels the myths surrounding transracial adoption, the ties that bind, and what it means to belong. A Finalist for Foreword Review’s 2020 INDIES Book of the Year Award in Adult Fiction—Multicultural “Stirring . . . a moving account of Rowan’s difficult reckoning with her identity. This is an adept portrayal of the long shadow of abuse and the difficulty of being an adoptee.” —Publishers Weekly

“dee mcquesten brings to life the phrase ‘It takes a village…’ From dee’s early childhood on, the villagers in her life instilled in her the capacity for resilience. The concept of resiliency, attributed to early 20th Century thinker Walter Lippmann, is the capacity for personal growth, for recalibration, and for principled improvisation in the face of new circumstances. dee’s story is this definition expressed in her own life of obstacles overcome, and in a life dedicated to making our village a better place, from the Elwha River Dam Project, to our historic market; but most importantly for the children abused, traumatized and abandoned by the rest of our society.” ~ Christopher Staeheli, M.D., Child Psychiatrist “I’ve always known that dee was a tremendously strong person with unrelenting empathy for children enduring trauma and toxic stress. Now I understand where that came from. She is a model of how to turn childhood trauma into lasting resilience. dee’s experience will bring hope to others and inspire them to give back to their communities. Read this book to be inspired by an amazing woman.” ~ Kaaren Andrews: Washington Director, Center for High School Success; Principal for 9 years of the Academy for traumatized and marginalized teens in Seattle’s Columbia City. “dee’s life exemplifies the saying “ Do not hide one’s light under a bushel.” She was born with a light that years of abuse could not diminish. dee’s story, with her vivid memory of details, including her ‘Norman Rockwell style’ formative years, years of abuse mentally and physically and final happiness, gives us courage to use our talents and become the persons we were meant to be. Her intelligence and creativity, boosted by her sense of spiritual need, have helped her to find many ways to care for others. For the past 38 years, dee has worked and struggled to provide for her son and done so with humility and humor. The amount of personal and communal good work she has done at the same time is truly astounding. We cheer for her when she finds happiness with a man who is equally kind and generous. ~ Pam Schell, Co-founder of two successful theater companies, Seattle’s Intiman Theatre and Whidbey Island’s WICA (Whidbey Island Center for the Arts); formerly Seattle’s “First Lady”, as wife of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell)

Childhood abuse, abandonment, maternal rejection, scandalous treatment under the guise of care in notorious juvenile institutions and life on the streets of Kings Cross are just part of the extraordinary tapestry that is the life of Australian singer and entertainer, Sharyn Crystal. The Inconvenient Child is a gritty account of Sharyn's life, beginning as an abandoned child of mixed race, and her struggle to survive in an often hostile white society, her journey to success as a singer and her remarkable quest to find her African-American father on the other side of the world.

A medical scandal is currently unfolding across Western liberal societies. As Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans reveals, the primary victims are vulnerable, socially awkward kids with normally developing bodies who fall for the Internet-fueled promise that they can solve their emotional, psychological, or physical discomfort by adopting an opposite-sex identity. With deep reservations about the new gender orthodoxy that informs this promise and the irreversible one-size-fits-all medical prescription that comes with it, the parent contributors to this anthology share deeply personal stories about transition and desistance that won't be told at the gender clinic. They also offer practical advice based on hard-earned experience that won't be found in mainstream media. Whether progressive or conservative, gay or straight, secular or religious, they all share the aim of protecting children from the physical and emotional harms of the gender industry and seek to empower and encourage other parents and individuals to combat gender ideology at home, in schools, in clinics, and beyond.

The phenomenon of false allegations of mental illness is as old as our first interactions as human beings. Every one of us has described some other person as crazy or insane, and most all of us have had periods, moments at least, of madness. But it took the confluence of the law and medical science, mad–doctors, alienists, priests and barristers, to raise the matter to a level of "science," capable of being used by conniving relatives, "designing families" and scheming neighbors to destroy people who found themselves in the way, people whose removal could provide their survivors with money or property or other less frivolous benefits. Girl Interrupted in only a recent example. And reversing this sort of diagnosis and incarceration became increasingly more difficult, as even the most temperate attempt to leave these "homes" or "hospitals" was deemed "crazy." Kept in a madhouse, one became a little mad, as Jack Nicholson and Ken Kesey explain in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In this sadly terrifying, emotionally moving, and occasionally hilarious book, twelve cases of contested lunacy are offered as examples of the shifting arguments regarding what constituted sanity and insanity. They offer unique insight into the fears of sexuality, inherited madness, greed and fraud, until public feeling shifted and turned against the rising alienists who would challenge liberty and freedom of people who were perhaps simply "difficult," but were turned into victims of this unscrupulous trade. This fascinating book is filled with stories almost impossible to believe but wildly engaging, a book one will not soon forget.

They were three generations of magnificent red-haired beauties born to scandal, bred to success, bound to a single extraordinary man—Julien Mistral, the painter, the genius, the lover whose passions had seared them all. Maggy: Flamboyant mistress of Mistral’s youth, the toast of Paris in the‘20s. Her luminous flesh was immortalized in the paintings that made Mistral legendary. Teddy: Maggy’s daughter, the incomparable cover girl who lived fast and left as her legacy Mistral’s dazzling love child. Fauve: Mistral's daughter, the headstrong, fearless glory girl whose one dark secret drove her to rule the world of high fashion and to risk everything in a feverish search for love. From the ‘20s Paris of Chanel, Colette, Picasso and Matisse to New York’s sizzling new modeling agencies of the ‘50s, to the model ward of the‘70s, Mistral's Daughter captures the explosive glamour of life at the top of the worlds of art and high fashion. Judith Krantz has given us a glittering international tale as spellbinding as her other celebrated bestsellers, Scruples, Princess Daisy, I'll Take Manhattan, Till We Meet Again, Scruples Two, Dazzle, and Lovers.

From the author of An Inconvenient Kiss: A prim Englishwoman needs to escape the Caribbean—and a seductive smuggler is her only hope . . . Jamaica, 1820: Isabelle North needs a hero, and if an arrogant mercenary is all she can find . . . he’ll just have to do. She must get back to England before her past catches up with her, even if that means booking passage on a vessel captained by a man she cannot abide. Phillip Ashford, notorious smuggler and captain of the privateer Intrepid, knows Miss North is trouble. She’s stubborn, for starters, and it’s painfully clear she’s conning him—she looks more like a schoolmarm than the rich man’s mistress she claims to be. But beneath her prim exterior is a sharp wit and courageous spirit that draws him in despite himself. They both know they should keep their distance. But passion flares as they defend themselves on the high seas—until Phillip begins asking questions Isabelle would rather not answer. After all, how much can she really share with a man she’ll never trust?