A humorous view of what really happened after you dropped mom off at the nursing home. "If you can't find the humor working in a skilled nursing facility you'll go home every night wishing vodka came out of your shower." Ned Russo thought he had it all. Lovely home in Pasadena, a beautiful ex-wife who didn't hate him, a charming daughter at UCLA that adored him and a cushy job with a fat salary he earned as the administrator of one of the premier nursing homes in Los Angeles. He even had a giant office that overlooked the pacific ocean. But, as a wise man once said, "things change." Ned got fired. It took ten minutes for reality to suddenly hit him squarely in the face. There was the mortgage and tuition for his daughter, the car payment and of course his alimony. So Ned took the first job he could find. It would just be temporary. It would also be a far cry from breezy Santa Monica. It was situated in the bowels of LA's Koreatown. But his job at the Central City Convalescent wasn't just a step down for Ned, it was more like falling off Mount Everest and landing on the roof of a Sherpa's hut. Ned's journey and re-education in how the other half lives is a funny look at life in that nursing home down the block or that place where Grandma now resides or perhaps where you might end up. Be kind to your children, they're going to pick out your nursing home!

The Language of Mothers is a hybrid memoir grounded in the power of prose and poetry. It is an imaginative tapestry of women' s storytelling that punctures narrative craft to illuminate the inheritance of domestic trauma and the voicing of familial stories that are healing spaces that carry through time. The Language of Mothers is about two mothers caught in abusive relationships, impoverished with children, with few avenues of escape. These stories shed light on the culture of American motherhood as a failure for women, perpetuating a system of patriarchal ideals that only values the nuclear family as whole spaces of abundance, love, and worth. At nineteen, Rain Wright' s mother left Dronfield, England, traveling through Europe before landing in New York in the turbulent 1960s. Swept up in the changing societal wave, Elizabeth, her mother travels to California, where she meets her future abuser, Rain' s father. This memoir is the story of Elizabeth' s courageous escape with three young children, and it is the story of Rain' s escape decades later. The Language of Mothers navigates the inheritance of trauma, finding that storytelling and art, for both women, become the impetus for healing. Elizabeth packs her children' s belongings in black plastic bags and hides them in the brush along Elk Ridge Road, in California, making her daring escape with the help of friends and an ex-lover. She flies with her children across an ocean to the safety of Hawai?i, where she finds art, lomi lomi, music, and security. After Elizabeth' s passing from breast cancer in 1996, her stories, inherited from years of car rides around Hawai?i Island, are the language of mythmaking. The Language of Mothers is an intimate look at why women stay too long in abusive relationships and an act of defiance and regenerative love. Rain' s story is a tapestry of early childhood trauma as witness to her mother' s abuse, domestic terror at the hands of her children' s father, and her own escape narrative. The Language of Mothers deeply sees the aftereffects of domestic abuse, including her eldest daughter' s suicide attempts, her middle daughter' s strive for perfection, and her youngest daughter' s need for control through anorexia. Women' s stories can heal. Rain interweaves traumatic parts of her past but recounts acts of love, telling her daughters stories and becoming their storyteller.

“The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the most complicated and meaningful there is. Kimberly Williams-Paisley writes about her own with grace, truth, and beauty as she shares her journey back to her mother in the wake of a devastating illness.” —Brooke Shields Many know Kimberly Williams-Paisley as the bride in the popular Steve Martin remakes of the Father of the Bride movies, the calculating Peggy Kenter on Nashville, or the wife of country music artist, Brad Paisley. But behind the scenes, Kim was dealing with a tragic secret: her mother, Linda, was suffering from a rare form of dementia that slowly crippled her ability to talk, write and eventually recognize people in her own family. Where the Light Gets In tells the full story of Linda’s illness—called primary progressive aphasia—from her early-onset diagnosis at the age of 62 through the present day. Kim draws a candid picture of the ways her family reacted for better and worse, and how she, her father and two siblings educated themselves, tried to let go of shame and secrecy, made mistakes, and found unexpected humor and grace in the midst of suffering. Ultimately the bonds of family were strengthened, and Kim learned ways to love and accept the woman her mother became. With a moving foreword by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox, Where the Light Gets In is a heartwarming tribute to the often fragile yet unbreakable relationships we have with our mothers.

Sid Mason, Captain in the United States Air Force, F-4 pilot destined for Vietnam. His radar intercept operator is interested in the background of the man he is going to war with. Captain Mason engages in remembrance of his childhood and the influence of World War II on his early life and his professional life after graduation from the Air Force Academy. His expertise at combat maneuvers exceeds his experience and is a mystery to his contemporaries. This all ties together as Sid Mason tells the influence of his early life on his professional attitude and expertise as a combat pilot.

Elizabeth Arnold's first book of poems documents her struggle with cancer. A book-length sequence of poems, The Reef rockets the reader through a Heraclitean chute of accelerated life experience by way of anecdote, satire, facts from medical science, and lyrical sweep. This multilayered work explores the depths of illness, investigating the way one's attitude toward it changes over time and how one gathers and processes information in order to make sense of it. "Arnold's poetry, much more mature than most writers' first book, links lyrics, slight narratives, and a bit of satire into a work of glorious affirmation. The book is a splendid read."—Mary Sue Koeppel, Florida Times-Union "For this commitment to both the autobiographical honesty and aesthetic risk, The Reef should be valuable to anyone who has been waiting for where contemporary American poetry is going."—Agni

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult One of Rolling Stone’s 40 Best YA Novels A 2014 ALA Rainbow List Top 10 Title A Booklist Top 10 First Novels for Youth 2013 A Chicago Public Library “Best of the Best” 2013 This Forbidden Romance Could Cost Them Their Lives Seventeen-year-old Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared stolen kisses and romantic promises. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love--Sahar and Nasrin could be beaten, imprisoned, even executed. So they carry on in secret until Nasrin’s parents suddenly announce that they’ve arranged for her marriage. Then Sahar discovers what seems like the perfect solution: homosexuality may be a crime, but to be a man trapped in a woman’s body is seen as nature’s mistake, and sex reassignment is legal and accessible. Sahar will never be able to love Nasrin in the body she wants to be loved in without risking their lives, but is saving their love worth sacrificing her true self?