The award-winning memoir, When I Was Her Daughter is a raw, honest account of one girl’s journey through madness, loss, and a broken child welfare system, where only the most resilient survive. Seven-year-old Leslie has a serious problem. Someone is trying to kill her. Leslie’s mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. She writes rambling manifestos and forces her children to live on the run to evade capture by the Russian spies she believes are after them. Her mother’s ultimate goal is to protect her children from capture, but who will step in when she is convinced that killing them herself will save them from a worse fate? Each time the authorities repeatedly intervene, the children are again and again returned to their mother’s custody before becoming wards of the state. Once separated from her family and thrust into foster care for the foreseeable future, Leslie learns to navigate a new kind of fear and loneliness. Her ultimate goal is to be loved, but how can her mother ever love her now that she is so far away? Will she ever see her again? Will she ever find a safe place to land? In this unbelievable story of grit and grief, of hope and heart, Leslie must discover her own strength to ask for what she needs. Since it seems nobody will talk about her mother’s mental illness and nothing will bring the family peace, Leslie pretends she is—and always has been—her teacher’s daughter. This true story about the redemptive power of patience and courage reminds us that unconditional love is possible, even for a lost and angry child struggling to understand where she belongs.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PopSugar – The Summer’s Hottest Books * Refinery 29 - Best Summer Thrillers * US Weekly - Summer's Best Send-Offs * Parade - 20 Chilling Thrillers by Women to Read This Year * Brit + Co - 15 New Thrillers by Women That Will Give You Chills This Summer * The Zoe Report – 20 Books to Read this Summer * She Reads - New Summer Thrillers to Get Your Heart Racing * Working Mother - 15 Hot New Summer Beach Reads * Culturalist - Top Ten Domestic Thrillers That Will Make You Question Everything * Crime Reads - 5 Debut Crime Novels to Read This August "Brings to mind Jodi Picoult...thought-provoking domestic drama." - Booklist “Will make you miss your bedtime, guaranteed.” – Bestselling author Kimberly Belle Gripping, emotional, and wire-taut, Not Her Daughter raises the question of what it means to be a mother—and how far someone will go to keep a child safe. Emma Townsend. Five years old. Gray eyes, brown hair. Missing since June. Emma is lonely. Living with her cruel mother and clueless father, Emma retreats into her own world of quiet and solitude. Sarah Walker. Successful entrepreneur. Broken-hearted. Kidnapper. Sarah has never seen a girl so precious as the gray-eyed child in a crowded airport terminal. When a second-chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah takes her—far away from home. But if it’s to rescue a little girl from her damaging mother, is kidnapping wrong? Amy Townsend. Unhappy wife. Unfit mother. Unsure whether she wants her daughter back. Amy’s life is a string of disappointments, but her biggest issue is her inability to connect with her daughter. And now Emma is gone without a trace. As Sarah and Emma avoid the nationwide hunt, they form an unshakeable bond. But what about Emma’s real mother, back at home? Praise for Not Her Daughter “The plot twists here are brave, the themes are both poignant and unsettling, and the resolution is deeply resonant. A page-turner with heart!" - New York Times bestselling author Kate Moretti "A cleverly constructed novel that will have you questioning everything you believe about right or wrong." - New York Times bestselling author Chevy Stevens "Engrossing and suspenseful, Frey writes her characters with depth and compassion, challenging readers to question their own code of ethics.” - Zoje Stage, author of Baby Teeth “An emotional ride where the line between right and wrong begins to fade...pulls you in from the very first page, and unlike most in its genre, you won't know how you want it to end until it does.” – Wendy Walker, author of Emma in the Night

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A phenomenal, human story. . . . I could not put this book down." —CLARA HUGHES An instant national bestseller, this raw and affecting memoir is the story of a mother and daughter who beat the odds together. Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes—she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance. They ask her to come to Canada to be their nanny—and she accepts. This was the beginning of Catherine's new life: a life of opportunity, but also suffering. Within a few years, she would find herself pregnant a third time—this time in her new country with no family to support her, and this time, with Perdita. Together, in the years to come, mother and daughter would experience racism, domestic abuse, and even homelessness, but Catherine's will would always pull them through. As Perdita grew and began to discover her preternatural athletic gifts, she was edged onward by her mother's love, grit, and faith. Facing literal and figurative hurdles, she learned to leap and pick herself back up when she stumbled. This book is a daughter's memoir—a book about the power of a parent's love to transform their child's life.

"An inspiring and revelatory memoir of juggling marriage, motherhood and politics as she worked to become a successful writer and self-fulfilled woman"--Provided by publisher.

She befriended the one woman she was never supposed to meet. Now she's the key suspect in her disappearance. For fans of The Perfect Mother and The Wife Between Us comes a gripping psychological suspense debut about two strangers, one incredible connection, and the steep price of obsession. Lana Stone has never considered herself a stalker--until the night she impulsively follows a familiar face through the streets of New York's Upper West Side. Her target? The "anonymous" egg donor she'd selected through an agency, the one who's making motherhood possible for her. Hungry to learn more about her, Lana plans only to watch her from a distance. But when circumstances bring them face-to-face, an unexpected friendship is born. Katya, a student at Columbia, is the yin to Lana's yang, an impulsive free spirit who lives life at the edge. And for pragmatic Lana, she's a breath of fresh air and a welcome distraction from her painful breakup with her baby's father. Then, just as suddenly as Katya entered Lana's life, she disappears--and Lana might have been the last person to see her before she went missing. Determined to find out what became of the woman to whom she owes so much, Lana digs into Katya's past, even as the police grow suspicious of her motives. But she's unprepared for the secrets she unearths, and their power to change everything she thought she knew about those she loves best...

The New York Times bestselling memoir from legendary comedienne Carol Burnett is a “loving, poignant” (People) tribute to her eldest daughter, Carrie Hamilton. The daughter of one of television’s most recognizable and beloved stars, Carol Burnett, Carrie Hamilton won the hearts of everyone she met with her kindness, her quirky humor, and her unconventional approach to life. After overcoming her painful and public teenage struggle with drug addiction in a time when personal troubles were kept private, Carrie lived her adult life of sobriety to the fullest, achieving happiness and success as an actress, writer, musician, and director before losing a hard-fought battle with cancer at age thirty-eight. Now Carol Burnett shares her personal diary entries, photographs, and correspondence as she traces the journey she and Carrie took through some of life’s toughest challenges and sweetest miracles. Authentic, intimate, and full of love, Carrie and Me is a funny and moving memoir about mothering an extraordinary young woman through the struggles and triumphs of her life.

Featured on Oprah’s Summer Reading List For readers of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, this extraordinary historical debut novel follows three fierce Southern women in an unforgettable story of motherhood and womanhood. It’s 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude’s aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home. These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together. Told in the pitch-perfect voices of Gertrude, Retta, and Annie, Call Your Daughter Home is an emotional, timeless story about the power of family, community, and ferocity of motherhood. “Like Jill McCorkle and Sue Monk Kidd, Spera probes the comfort and strength women find in their own company.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “A mesmerizing Southern tale…Authentic, gripping, a page-turner, yet also a novel filled with language that begs to be savored.” — Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours