"Natalie, marry me." Being proposed to by Pierce, son of the most distinguished family in town, should have been a dream come true for Natalie. She's been deeply in love with him since she was a teenager. She had given up on him before because she's the daughter of a servant, but her feelings only intensified as she got older. One month before his proposal, Pierce came to her house after breaking off his engagement with the daughter of a wealthy family, and they slept together. She intended it to happen only once, just to comfort him. But she finds herself pregnant, and now the man she loves most has come to her with a proposal born out of obligation. Is this the end of her dream?

CLAIMING HIS CHILD...AT ANY COST A shocking fertility clinic mix-up has resulted in Luca Moretti fathering a child with a woman he's never met. There's no way the CEO will walk away from his baby girl. But he has thirty days to convince her distractingly beautiful mother to do exactly what he wants. Widow Claire Douglas is still reeling from the loss of her husband when she discovers a stranger has fathered her child. And the rich bachelor will stop at nothing to gain joint custody. How can she possibly fight a man with such money and power...and a charm she can't resist?

Three people's lives intersect in a tumultuous yet redeeming way that none of them could have ever predicted. Jenny is a young professional from the South with an upbringing she wants to forget. She meets Roshan, an Indian immigrant who has moved to the United States with his mother, Esha, to escape family ghosts. With strong cultural tradition, Esha has devoted her entire life to her only child, both for his own good and for her personal protection from a painful past. Roshan understands his role as his mother's refuge, and from an early age, he commits himself to caring for her. But when Jenny and Roshan embark on a forbidden, intercultural relationship, all three get tangled into an inseparable web-betrayal, violence, and shame-leaving them forced to make choices about love and family they never wanted to make while finding peace where they never expected to look.

Unplanned pregnancies happen to women in every season of life: the newly married, the never-married, the empty-nester, the teenager, the overworked mother, the career woman. Yet we rarely talk about how lonely and confusing this experience can be. In Surprise Child, Leslie Leyland Fields, who experienced two unplanned pregnancies in her forties, lyrically weaves her own story with the stories of other women who understand the isolation you face as expectations and plans are turned upside down to make room for a child. “Each year, more than three million women discover themselves pregnant–at a hard time, the wrong time, at a difficult place in their lives. I am one of those women.…” Together, these women walk with you month-by-month through the physical and emotional stages of pregnancy, voicing with startling honesty their own anxieties and struggles. Here you will find the companionship and hope you need to journey toward new life.

What to Expect When You're No Longer Expecting When your baby dies, you find yourself in a life you never expected. And even though pregnancy and infant loss are common, they're not common to you. Instead, you feel like a stranger in your own body, surrounded by well-meaning people who often don't know how to support you. What you need during this time is not a book offering easy answers. You need a safe place to help you navigate what comes next, such as: · Coping with a postpartum body without a baby in your arms. · Facing social isolation and grief invalidation. · Wrestling with faith when you feel let down by God. · Dealing with the overwhelming process of making everyday decisions. · Learning to move forward after loss. · Creating a legacy for your child. In Unexpecting, bereaved mom Rachel Lewis is the friend you never knew you'd need, walking you through the unique grief of baby loss. When nothing about life after loss makes sense . . . this book will. "The guide that all parents experiencing pregnancy loss need when leaving the hospital grief-stricken, without a baby in their arms."--LINDSEY M. HENKE, founder of Pregnancy After Loss Support

Priscilla Gilman had the greatest expectations for the birth of her first child. Growing up in New York City amongst writers, artists, and actors, Gilman experienced childhood as a whirlwind of imagination, creativity, and spontaneity. As a Wordsworth scholar, she celebrated and embraced the poet's romantic view of children—and eagerly anticipated her son's birth, certain that he, too, would come "trailing clouds of glory." But her romantic vision would not be fulfilled in the ways she dreamed. Though Benjamin was an extraordinary child, the signs of his precocity—dazzling displays of memory and intelligence—were also manifestations of a developmental disorder that would require intensive therapies and special schooling, and would dramatically alter the course Priscilla had imagined for her family. In The Anti-Romantic Child, a memoir full of lyricism and light, Gilman explores the complexity of our hopes for our children, our families, and ourselves, and the way in which experience can alter and lead us to reimagine those hopes and expectations. Using Wordsworth's poetry as a touchstone, she speaks intimately of her poignant journey through crisis and disenchantment to a place of peace and resilience. Through her courageous account, we discover how events and situations often perceived as setbacks can actually inspire and enrich us. Developing a supple and open mind is important, this book reminds us, not only with respect to our children but also with respect to our relationship with any person whose otherness is at first disorienting. As she goes beyond her family's trials and ultimate triumphs, Gilman illuminates the flourishing of life that occurs when we embrace the unexpected. The Anti-Romantic Child is an incredible synthesis of memoir and literature, one that resonates long after you finish the last page.

"Natalie, marry me." Being proposed to by Pierce, son of the most distinguished family in town, should have been a dream come true for Natalie. She's been deeply in love with him since she was a teenager. She had given up on him before because she's the daughter of a servant, but her feelings only intensified as she got older. One month before his proposal, Pierce came to her house after breaking off his engagement with the daughter of a wealthy family, and they slept together. She intended it to happen only once, just to comfort him. But she finds herself pregnant, and now the man she loves most has come to her with a proposal born out of obligation. Is this the end of her dream?