Growing up in the Delta town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Teresa Nicholas believed that she and her country-born and -bred mother weren’t close. She knew little of her mother’s early life as a sharecropper during the Great Depression, but whenever she brought up the subject, her taciturn mother would snap, “You ask too many questions, young’un.” Nicholas left Mississippi to attend college, then settled in New York to work in the hard-driving world of commercial book publishing. Twenty-five years later, eager for a change, she and her husband decided to shift careers to writing, trading their home in the New York suburbs for a casita in the Mexican Highlands. But as her mother’s health deteriorated, Nicholas found herself spending more time in the small town she thought she had left behind. Over long afternoons in front of Turner Classic Movies, she grew closer to her mother, coaxing stories from her about her hardscrabble past—until a major stroke threatened to silence her mother's newfound voice. Torn between her new home in Mexico and her old home in Mississippi, Nicholas struggled to find her place in the world. She discovered that the past isn’t always the way we remember it, and as the years ticked by, that she and her mother could grow closer still. The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir is a funny and poignant account of a mother-daughter relationship and, ultimately, a meditation on acceptance and what it means to call a place home.

Winner of the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Life Writing Growing up in the Delta town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Teresa Nicholas believed that she and her country-born and -bred mother weren’t close. She knew little of her mother’s early life as a sharecropper during the Great Depression, but whenever she brought up the subject, her taciturn mother would snap, “You ask too many questions, young’un.” Nicholas left Mississippi to attend college, then settled in New York to work in the hard-driving world of commercial book publishing. Twenty-five years later, eager for a change, she and her husband decided to shift careers to writing, trading their home in the New York suburbs for a casita in the Mexican Highlands. But as her mother’s health deteriorated, Nicholas found herself spending more time in the small town she thought she had left behind. Over long afternoons in front of Turner Classic Movies, she grew closer to her mother, coaxing stories from her about her hardscrabble past—until a major stroke threatened to silence her mother's newfound voice. Torn between her new home in Mexico and her old home in Mississippi, Nicholas struggled to find her place in the world. She discovered that the past isn’t always the way we remember it, and as the years ticked by, that she and her mother could grow closer still. The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir is a funny and poignant account of a mother-daughter relationship and, ultimately, a meditation on acceptance and what it means to call a place home.

A mama cow’s devotion to her calf provides lessons in motherhood to a poor Southern woman in this novel of family, survival, and human-animal bonds. South Carolina, 1950s. Homemaker Sarah Creamer has been left to care for young Emerson Bridge, the product of an affair between Sarah’s husband and her best friend. But beyond the deep wound of their betrayal, Sarah is daunted by the prophecy of her mother’s words, seared in her memory since childhood: “You ain’t got you one good mama bone in you, girl.” When Sarah finds Emerson a steer to compete at an upcoming cattle show, the young calf cries in distress on her farm. Miles away, his mother breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to find him. When Sarah finds the young steer contently nursing a large cow, her education in motherhood begins. But Luther Dobbins is desperate to regain his championship cattle dynasty, and he will stop at nothing to win. Emboldened by her budding mama bone, Sarah is committed to victory even after she learns the winning steer’s ultimate fate. Will she too stop at nothing, even if it means betraying her teacher? One Good Mama Bone explores the strengths and limitations of parental love and the ethical dilemmas of raising animals for food.

Can white moms and Black moms ever truly be friends? Not just mom friends, but like really real friends? And does it matter? “Utterly addictive . . . Through her sharp wit and dynamic anecdotal storytelling, Helena Andrews-Dyer shines a light on the cultural differences that separate Black and white mothers.”—Tia Williams, New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June Helena Andrews-Dyer lives in a “hot” Washington, D.C., neighborhood, which means picturesque row houses and plenty of gentrification. After having her first child, she joined the local mom group—“the Mamas”—and quickly realized that being one of the only Black mothers in the mix was a mixed bag. The racial, cultural, and socioeconomic differences were made clear almost immediately. But spending time in what she calls “the Polly Pocket world of postracial parenting” was a welcome reprieve. Then George Floyd happened. A man was murdered, a man who called out for his mama. And suddenly, the Mamas hit different. Though they were alike in some ways—they want their kids to be safe; they think their husbands are lazy; they work too much and feel guilty about it—Andrews-Dyer realized she had an entirely different set of problems that her neighborhood mom friends could never truly understand. In The Mamas, Andrews-Dyer chronicles the particular challenges she faces in a group where systemic racism can be solved with an Excel spreadsheet and where she, a Black, professional, Ivy League–educated mom, is overcompensating with every move. Andrews-Dyer grapples with her own inner tensions, like “Why do I never leave the house with the baby and without my wedding ring?” and “Why did every name we considered for our kids have to pass the résumé test?” Throw in a global pandemic and a nationwide movement for social justice, and Andrews-Dyer ultimately tries to find out if moms from different backgrounds can truly understand one another. With sharp wit and refreshing honesty, The Mamas explores the contradictions and community of motherhood—white and Black and everything—against the backdrop of the rapidly changing world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother. Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick! The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. Praise for Mom & Me & Mom “Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”—The Washington Post “Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”—People “[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”—Elle “Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”—Essence

The first step into the thrilling middlegrade fantasy world of The Shamer Chronicles Dina has unwillingly inherited her mother's gift: the ability to elicit shamed confessions simply by looking into someone's eyes. To Dina, however, these powers are not a gift but a curse. Surrounded by fear and hostility, she longs for simple friendship. But when her mother is called to Dunark Castle to uncover the truth about a bloody triple murder, Dina must come to terms with her power - or let her mother fall prey to the vicious and revolting dragons of Dunark.

As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride). In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts." A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.