“Howerton writes unflinchingly about what it means to be raising children in today’s world and how to liberate ourselves from the myth of perfect motherhood.”—Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed and Love Warrior, founder of Together Rising In this smart and subversively funny memoir, Kristen Howerton navigates the emotional and sometimes messy waters of motherhood and challenges the idea that there’s a “right” way to raise kids. Recounting her successes, trials, mishaps, and hard-won wisdom, this mother of four advocates for letting go of the expectations, the guilt, and the endless race to be the perfect parent to the perfect child in the perfect family. This book is for ● the parent who loves their kids like crazy but feels like parenting is making them crazy, too ● the parent who said “I will never . . .” and now they have ● the parent who looks like they have it all together but feels like a hot mess on the inside ● the parent who looks like a hot mess on the outside, too ● the parent who asks Am I good enough? Doing enough? Doing it right? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with these children? Are they eighteen yet? With her signature blend of vulnerability, sarcasm, and insight, Howerton shares her unexpected journey from infertility to adoption to pregnancy to divorce to dealing with the shock and awe of raising teens. As a mom of a multiracial family and as a marriage and family therapist, she tackles the thorny issues parents face today, like hard conversations about racism, disciplining other people’s kids, the reality of Dad Privilege, and (never) attaining that elusive work/life balance. Rage Against the Minivan is a permission slip to let it go and allow yourself to be a “good enough” parent, focused on raising happy, kind, loving humans.

Natalie Gwyn uses humor to brilliantly capture how God led and helped this mother of two to adopt four children from Ethiopia and successfully bond her blended family. A happy, working wife, already birth mother of two healthy young children -- a boy and a girl -- doubled the size of her family by adopting four Ethiopian children. Why? Her answer: "God." Popular blogger Natalie Gwyn has been cited widely for her candid, insightful, often humorous writing on cross-cultural adoptive Christian families (which number more than 4 million). HuffPo has linked to her controversial posts and celebrities like Kathie Lee Gifford have quoted and pictured her on social media. Here Natalie tells her whole mom story, including the only-God-could-do-this backstory. Her lighthearted narrative begins with the nudge of God toward the uncomfortable. She and her husband are almost certain they have misunderstood what the Almighty is asking of them, and with self-deprecating humor Natalie allows readers a glimpse into the process by which this already imperfect mom agreed to transnational, transracial adoption of more children than she already has. Natalie then takes the reader on her family's adventure to Ethiopia to legally adopt the three siblings God has chosen to add to their family. With the skill of a detective novelist, she reveals their discovery of a fourth sibling, their critical decision not to leave this child behind, and their harrowing quest to find, woo and legally adopt her, too. Similar to the laugh-out-loud humor of books on blended step-families, Natalie shares the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen scenes of this adoptive family's huge adjustments. She brilliantly captures each child's and each parent's perspective and, in doing so, reveals God in their midst.

Cribsheet meets The Sh!t No One Tells You in this no-holds-barred, judgment-free parenting guide that sets the record straight on every hot-button parenting topic by longtime journalist and founder of the viral #NoShameParenting movement. What if you could do more for your kids, by doing a whole lot less? Parenting today has become a competitive sport, and it seems that everyone is losing. From the very moment that little line turns blue, parents-to-be find themselves in a brave new world where every decision they make is fraught, every action they take is judged, and everything they do seems to be the wrong thing. Formula feed? Breast is best. Breastfeed in public? That’s indecent. Cry it out? You’re causing permanent harm to your child. Don’t sleep train? Your child will never learn to sleep on his or her own. Stay home? You’re setting a bad example for your kids. Go back to work? Don’t you love your kids more than your job? Lindsay Powers—former editor-in-chief of Yahoo! Parenting, creator of the #NoShameParenting movement, and mom of two—is here to help parents everywhere breathe a collective sigh of relief. This laugh-out-loud funny, accessible, and reassuring book sets the record straight on all of the insane conflicts that parents face—from having a glass of wine while pregnant to sleep training, childcare, feeding, and even sex after baby. Drawing on the latest research and delivered in a relatable, comforting voice, You Can’t F*ck Up Your Kids demonstrates that it is possible to take the stress out of parenting and sit back and enjoy the ride.

What hope is, what hope isn’t, and how to find it in hopeless times. Hope is not optimism. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not a promise of future success or progress. And it’s definitely not something that can be reduced to a scripty-font platitude on an Instagram post. So what is it? One thing is certain: real hope demands that we do something with it. That we live it out. That we use hope to participate in a bigger story playing out behind the bleak world we see on the news or in our social media feeds every day. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a person of faith, or someone disillusioned with faith, or someone who hardly ever thinks about faith: if you’re a human being who longs for a spiritual counternarrative to live by, this book points to one resilient enough to endure crises and crushing defeats. If you’re tired of hearing about some heavenly hereafter amid the pressing need for justice here and now, this is a book about hope for this world—not the next. After exploring what hope isn’t and then what it is, MaryAnn McKibben Dana reflects on the surprising place where hope is often found—in the messiness of our imperfect, flawed, beautiful human bodies. In the second half of the book, she talks about making hope real: sharing hope through stories, cultivating hope through simple practices, and nurturing hope in hopeless times—when only real hope can persevere.

What would it feel like to know you are going blind? Thirteen-year-old Finn loves bike riding — the more dangerous the trail, the better. But he had a spectacular crash a few months ago, and he’s just received a diagnosis that will change his life. He is slowly going blind. In a few years his vision will be gone. Desperate to salvage something of his “last” summer, Finn invites a friend to the cottage and is drawn to a strange island that seems to glimmer — but no one else can see it. When he gets close, he’s sucked into something he could never have anticipated. Can Finn’s friend Cheese help him come to terms with “lights out” . . . or will it take something much more extraordinary?

While preparing to give birth to her first daughter, actress Jenna von Oy, well-known for her roles as Six on Blossom and Stevie on The Parkers, discovered that the market was filled with clinical guides to pregnancy and beyond. Though they had their merits, she craved a best friend’s guide . . . one that didn’t sugarcoat reality but still offered relatable and heartfelt reassurance. Thus, Situation Momedy: A First-Time Mom’s Guide to Laughing Your Way through Pregnancy & Year One was born. Jenna brings readers a lighthearted and comedic look at pregnancy and the first year of motherhood, highlighting major mommy milestones with chapters like “Houston, We Have a Pregnancy,” “This Is Your Brain on Baby,” “Bringing Sexy Back,” and “All’s Fair in Love and Mommy Wars.”

Laura Huang, an award-winning Harvard Business School professor, shows that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. Some people seem to naturally have it. Now, Huang teaches the rest of us how to create our own from the challenges and biases we think hold us back, and turning them to work in our favor. How do you find a competitive edge when the obstacles feel insurmountable? How do you get people to take you seriously when they're predisposed not to, and perhaps have already written you off? Laura Huang has come up against that problem many times--and so has anyone who's ever felt out of place or underestimated. Many of us sit back quietly, hoping that our hard work and effort will speak for itself. Or we try to force ourselves into the mold of who we think is "successful," stifling the creativity and charm that makes us unique and memorable. In Edge, Huang offers a different approach. She argues that success is rarely just about the quality of our ideas, credentials, and skills, or our effort. Instead, achieving success hinges on how well we shape others' perceptions--of our strengths, certainly, but also our flaws. It's about creating our own edge by confronting the factors that seem like shortcomings and turning them into assets that make others take notice. Huang draws from her groundbreaking research on entrepreneurial intuition, persuasion, and implicit decision-making, to impart her profound findings and share stories of previously-overlooked Olympians, assistants-turned-executives, and flailing companies that made momentous turnarounds. Through her deeply-researched framework, Huang shows how we can turn weaknesses into strengths and create an edge in any situation. She explains how an entrepreneur scored a massive investment despite initially being disparaged for his foreign accent, and how a first-time political candidate overcame voters' doubts about his physical disabilities. Edge shows that success is about knowing who you are and using that knowledge unapologetically and strategically. This book will teach you how to find your unique edge and keep it sharp.