29 Best Relationships Audiobooks

“Her writing is both vividly descriptive and surprisingly insightful.”
—Boston Globe

“It’s the three-dimensional men, women, and children who populate her fiction that I’ll remember for a very long time.”
—Nancy Pearl’s Picks

Following the phenomenal success of her novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me, New York Times bestselling author Marisa de los Santos returns with Falling Together, an emotionally resonant, powerfully moving, and pitch perfect novel about friends, family, and love. Truly modern women’s fiction at its finest, this is the unforgettable tale of a remarkable friendship that ended abruptly, only to be resurrected in great need years later at a college reunion, launching three formerly devoted companions and reluctant family members alike on a sobering, enlightening journey across the world and through the past. Brimming with the author’s trademark wit, vivid prose, and captivating characterizations, Falling Together brilliantly explores our deepest human connections and confirms Marisa de los Santos as one of America’s most exciting contemporary novelists.

With Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of the smash #1 bestseller Toxic Parents, offers a powerful look at the devastating impact unloving mothers have on their daughters–and provides clear, effective techniques for overcoming that painful legacy.

In more than 35 years as a therapist, Forward has worked with large numbers of women struggling to escape the emotional damage inflicted by the women who raised them. Subjected to years of criticism, competition, role-reversal, smothering control, emotional neglect and abuse, these women are plagued by anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence, and difficulties with trust. They doubt their worth, and even their ability to love.

Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse.

Filled with compelling case histories, Mothers Who Can’t Love outlines the self-help techniques Forward has developed to transform the lives of her clients, showing women how to overcome the pain of childhood and how to act in their own best interests.

Warm and compassionate, Mothers Who Can’t Love offers daughters the emotional support and tools they need to heal themselves and rebuild their confidence and self-respect.

Now a major NBC primetime drama

The uplifting story that touched the world and inspired families everywhere to rethink what matters most in their lives

As a young dad, Bruce Feiler, New York Times bestselling author and television host, received shattering news. A rare form of cancer was threatening not only his life but his family’s future as well. A singular question emerged: Who would be there for his wife and daughters if he were gone?

Feiler reached out to six extraordinary men who helped shape him and asked them to be present in the lives of his daughters. The Council of Dads is the unforgettable portrait of these men, who offer wisdom, humor, and guidance on how to live, how to love, how to question, how to dream.

The source for NBC’s blockbuster series, here is a singular story that offers lessons for us all–helping us draw closer to the ones we love, appreciate what’s most precious, and celebrate the power of community.

This audiobook includes an episode of the Book Club Girl Podcast, featuring an interview with Bruce Feiler about The Council of Dads.

Peggy Orenstein, acclaimed author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex and Schoolgirls, offers a radical, timely wake-up call for parents, revealing the dark side of a pretty and pink culture confronting girls at every turn as they grow into adults.

Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?

In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable–yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters’ lives.

A riveting family drama evocative of Angela’s Ashes and The Glass Castle, about a woman who discovers the shocking secret at the center of her mother’s life.

Justine had always been told that her mother came from royal blood. The proof could be found in her mother’s elegance, her uppercrust London accent–and in a cryptic letter hinting at her claim to a country estate. But beneath the polished veneer lay a fearsome, unpredictable temper that drove Justine from home the moment she was old enough to escape. Years later, when her mother sent her an envelope filled with secrets from the past, Justine buried it in the back of an old filing cabinet.

Overcome with grief after her mother’s death, Justine found herself drawn back to that envelope. Its contents revealed a mystery that stretched back to the early years of World War II and beyond, into the dark corridors of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. Established in the eighteenth century to raise “bastard” children to clean chamber pots for England’s ruling class, the institution was tied to some of history’s most influential figures and events. From its role in the development of solitary confinement and human medical experimentation to the creation of the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, its impact on Western culture continues to reverberate. It was also the environment that shaped a young girl known as Dorothy Soames, who bravely withstood years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of a sadistic headmistress–a resilient child who dreamed of escape as German bombers rained death from the skies.

Heartbreaking, surprising, and unforgettable, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is the true story of one woman’s quest to understand the secrets that had poisoned her mother’s mind, and her startling discovery that her family’s fate had been sealed centuries before.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel–and certainly our anger is no exception.

“Anger is a signal and one worth listening to,” writes Dr. Harriet Lerner in her renowned classic that has transformed the lives of millions of readers. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches both women and men to identify the true sources of anger and to use it as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.

For decades, this book has helped millions of readers learn how to turn their anger into a constructive force for reshaping their lives. With a new introduction by the author, The Dance of Anger is ready to lead the next generation.

The Phenomenal #1 New York Times Bestseller

In his classic guide to understanding the opposite sex, Dr. John Gray, provides a practical and proven way for men and women to improve their communication and relationships by acknowledging the differences between them.

Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.

Based on years of successful counseling of couples and individuals, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has helped millions of couples transform their relationships. Now viewed as a modern classic, this timeless book has helped men and women realize how different they can be in their communication styles, their emotional needs, and their modes of behavior, and offers the secrets of communicating without conflicts, allowing couples to give intimacy every chance to grow.

#1 International Bestseller

Regina’s Calcaterra memoir, Etched in Sand, is an inspiring and triumphant coming-of-age story of tenacity and hope.

Regina Calcaterra is a successful lawyer, former New York State official, and foster youth activist. Her painful early life, however, was quite different. Regina and her four siblings survived an abusive and painful childhood only to find themselves faced with the challenges of the foster-care system and intermittent homelessness in the shadows of Manhattan and the Hamptons.

A true-life rags-to-riches story, Etched in Sand chronicles Regina’s rising above her past, while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together through it all.

Beautifully written, with heartbreaking honesty, Etched in Sand is an unforgettable reminder that regardless of social status, the American Dream is still within reach for those who have the desire and the determination to succeed.

Harville Hendrix has illuminated the paths to loving, long-lasting relationships in his New York Times bestsellers Getting the Love You Want and Keeping the Love You Find. Now, with coauthor and wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, he brings us to a new understanding about one of the most complicated issues facing couples today:
Receiving Love
Many men and women know how to give love, but many more undermine their relationships by never having learned how to accept it. We don’t always realize the ways in which we reject appreciation and affection, help and guidance from our romantic partners. And, according to Hendrix and Hunt, until we are able to understand the meaning behind our behavior, our relationships stand to suffer. Ask yourself:
Are you reluctant to tell your partner what you really want or need?
When you do get what you’ve asked for, do you still feel dissatisfied?
Is it difficult for you to accept kind gestures, gifts, or compliments from your partner?
If you answered yes to any of the above, this book is for you. With Receiving Love, you can learn how to break the shackles of self-rejection — which likely began in childhood, when our caretakers unintentionally failed to nurture us — and embrace real intimacy. Drawing on their renowned expertise, the wide clinical experience of Imago therapists, and their own personal experience as a married couple, the authors offer detailed, sensitive advice on how to turn a relationship between two well-meaning yet misunderstood individuals into a true, everlasting partnership.

Bestselling author and New York Times family columnist Bruce Feiler found himself squeezed between caring for aging parents and raising his children. So he set out on a three-year journey to find the smartest solutions and the most cutting-edge research about families. Instead of the usual family ‘experts,’ he sought out the most creative minds – from Silicon Valley to the set of Modern Family, from the country’s top negotiators to the Green Berets – and asked them what team-building exercises and problem-solving techniques they use with their families. Feiler then tested these ideas with his wife and kids. The result is a fun, original look at how families can draw closer together, complete with two hundred never-before-seen best practices. Feiler’s life-changing discoveries include a radical plan to reshape your family in twenty minutes a week, Warren Buffett’s guide for setting an allowance, and the Harvard handbook for resolving conflict. The Secrets of Happy Families is a timely, counterintuitive book th

In the highly anticipated sequel to her New York Times bestseller Etched in Sand, Regina Calcaterra pairs with her youngest sister Rosie to tell Rosie’s harrowing, yet ultimately triumphant, story of childhood abuse and survival.

They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives “like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path.”

But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated. And as Rosie discovers after Cookie kidnaps her from foster care, the one thing worse than being abandoned by her mother is living in Cookie’s presence. Beaten physically, abused emotionally, and forced to labor at the farm where Cookie settles in Idaho, Rosie refuses to give in. Like her sister Regina, Rosie has an unfathomable strength in the face of unimaginable hardship–enough to propel her out of Idaho and out of a nightmare.

Filled with maturity and grace, Rosie’s memoir continues the compelling story begun in Etched in Sand–a shocking yet profoundly moving testament to sisterhood and indomitable courage.

Once upon a time, Martians and Venusians functioned in separate worlds. But in today’s hectic and career-oriented environment, relationships have become a lot more complicated, and men and women are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. To add to the increasing tension, most men and women are also completely unaware that they are actually hardwired to react differently to the stress. It’s a common scenario: a husband returns home from work stressed out and eager to kick back on the couch and watch television. A wife returns home from work stressed out and wants to talk about it with her husband. What happens? Neither is on the same page, anger and resentment set in, and Mars and Venus collide.

Using his signature insight that has helped millions of couples transform their relationships, John Gray once again arms the inhabitants of Mars and Venus with information that will help them live harmoniously ever after. In Why Mars and Venus Collide, Gray focuses on the ways that men and women misinterpret and mismanage the stress in their daily lives, and how these reactions ultimately affect their relationships. “It’s not that he’s just not into you; he needs to fulfill a biological need,” Gray explains. “And it’s not that she wants to henpeck you; she also has a biological drive.” He shows, for instance, how a husband’s withdrawal is actually a natural way for him to replenish his depleted testosterone levels and restore his well-being, and how a woman’s need for conversation and support helps her build her own stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin.

Backed up by groundbreaking scientific research, Gray offers a clear, easy-to-understand program to bridge the gap between the two planets, providing effective communication strategies that will actually lower stress levels. Whether in a relationship or single, this book will help both men and women understand their new roles in a modern, work-oriented society, and allow them to discover a variety of new and practical ways to create a lifetime of love and harmony.

Warning! New parents are likely to experience:

Scorekeeping–An exceedingly complex, often relentless, tit-for-tat war waged by husbands and wives over the division of parenting responsibilities and domestic chores.

The Ten O’Clock Shoulder Tap–Considered by many men to be a form of foreplay. A paw on a wife’s shoulder is how some men indicate their desire for sex. The Tap is rarely accompanied by a term of endearment or any other verbal form of communication and is seldom well received by the often-sleeping/almost-always-exhausted wife. The frustrated husband, meanwhile, wonders if his wife has pulled a Bait and Switch in the bedroom.

Clash of the Grannies–A high stakes “who will have the greatest influence on the grandkids” tournament played by each set of grandparents. Competitive categories include: the Title Championship (who gets to be called “Grandma”), the Battle for Floor and Wall Space, the Battle for Face Time, and Gratuitous Grandparental Gift-Giving.

The Babyproofers are three women who wouldn’t trade their roles as mothers for anything, and they love their husbands deeply. But after living through it and hearing the stories of hundreds of other couples, they know that with young children in the house, you need to block the stairs with baby gates, put plastic covers over the outlets, AND take the necessary steps to safeguard your marriage.

Babyproofing Your Marriage is the warts-and-all truth about how having children can affect your relationship. The authors explore the transition to parenthood in light of their own experiences, with input from their husbands and commentary from men and women across the country. Their evenhanded approach to both sides of the marital equation allows spouses to understand each other in a whole new way.

With loads of humor and practical advice, the Babyproofers will guide first-time parents and veterans alike around the rocky shores of the early parenting years. Don’t fall prey to common relationship pitfalls: Babyproof Your Marriage!

The Dance of Intimacy takes a careful look at relationships where intimacy is most challenged by too much emotional distance, too much intensity, or simply too much pain. In clear, direct and dramatic terms, Dr. Lerner illustrates how we can move differently in these relationships — be they with a distant or unfaithful spouse, a depressed sister, a difficult mother, an alcoholic father, an uncommitted lover, a dying parent, or an estranged family member.And she teaches us about “the differences that make a difference” — the changes we can make in one or two significant relationships that will affect our capacity for intimacy and selfhood for a lifetime.

The Dance of Intimacy offers no “quick fix” for the human dilemma that we all confront. Instead, Dr. Lerner offers us the most solid, respectful, and helpful insights on intimate relationships that both men and women may ever encounter. Picking up where the best-selling The Dance of Anger left off, Dr. Lerner redefines the meaning of intimacy for today, and shows how good relationships can be strengthened and difficult ones healed.

Peppernell understands that healing is a process, and Pillow Thoughts II eloquently captures the time and experience that one goes through on their journey to peace through restoration.

A collection of inspirational and comforting poems for anyone who is mending from a broken heart, read by the author herself.

Dwyane Wade, the eight-time All-Star for the Miami Heat, has miraculously defied the odds throughout his career and his life. In 2006, in just his third season in the NBA, Dwyane was named the Finals’ MVP, after leading the Miami Heat to the Championship title, basketball’s ultimate prize. Two years later, after possible career-ending injuries, he again rose from the ashes of doubt to help win a gold medal for the United States at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As co-captain, he helped lead the Heat to triumph in the 2012 NBA Championship. Little wonder that legendary coach Pat Riley has called Dwyane “B.I.W.”–Best In the World.

As incredible as those achievements have been, it’s off the court where Dwyane has sought his most cherished goal: being a good dad to his sons, Zaire and Zion, by playing a meaningful role in their lives. Recounting his fatherhood journey, Dwyane begins his story in March 2011 with the news that after a long, bitter custody battle, he has been awarded sole custody of his sons in a virtually unprecedented court decision. A Father First chronicles the lessons Dwyane has learned as a single dad from the moment of the judge’s ruling that instantly changed his life and the lives of his boys, and then back to the events in the past that shaped his dreams, prayers, and promises.

As the son of divorced parents determined to get along so that he and his sister Tragil could have loving relationships with both of them, Dwyane’s early years were spent on Chicago’s South Side. With poverty, violence, and drugs consuming the streets and their mom descending into addiction, Tragil made the heroic decision to take her younger brother to live with their father. After moving his household to suburban Robbins, Illinois, Dwyane Wade Sr. became Dwyane’s first basketball coach. While this period laid the groundwork for Dwyane’s later mission for fathers to take greater responsibility for their kids, he was also inspired by his mother’s miraculous victory over addiction and her gift for healing others. Both his mother and his father showed him that the unconditional love between parents and children is a powerful guiding force.

In A Father First, we meet the coaches, mentors, and teammates who played pivotal roles in Dwyane’s stunning basketball career–from his early days shooting hoops on the neighborhood courts in Chicago, to his rising stardom at Marquette University in Milwaukee, to his emergence as an unheralded draft pick by the Miami Heat. This book is a revealing, personal story of one of America’s top athletes, but it is also a call to action–from a man who had to fight to be in his children’s lives–that will show mothers and fathers how to step up and be parents themselves.

An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life.

No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society.

Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story–and that of Afghan women–Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

Best-selling author Mitch Albom returns to nonfiction for the first time in more than a decade in this poignant memoir that celebrates Chika, a young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Performed by Mitch Albom with Chika’s voice featured throughout.

Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince.

With no children of their own, the 40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says “no one in Haiti can help you with.”

Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost.

Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed – a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.

“What happened to the passion we started with?
Why aren’t we as close as we used to be?”

PROBLEM: If you are a woman who is unfulfilled in your marriage…if you feel unheard or overburdened…if you quietly live in a state of slow-burn resentment…
PROBLEM: If you are a man unhappy that your partner seems so unhappy with you…if you feel bewildered, unappreciated, or betrayed…

This book offers a solution

Bestselling author and nationally renowned therapist Terrence Real unearths the causes of communication blocks between men and women in this groundbreaking work. Relationships are in trouble; the demand for intimacy today must be met with new skills, and Real — drawing on his pioneering work on male depression — gives both men and women those skills, empowering women and connecting men, radically reversing the attitudes and emotional stumbling blocks of the patriarchal culture in which we were raised. Filled with powerful stories of the couples Real treats, no other relationship book is as straight talking or compelling in its innovative approach to healing wounds and reconnecting partners with a new strength and understanding.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S BREAKOUT AUTHOR TO WATCH IN 2020

“Brilliant and stunning . . . an absolute must read.” – GILLIAN FLYNN

“A well-constructed package of dynamite.” – STEPHEN KING

A most anticipated book by The New York Times * USA Today * Entertainment Weekly * Marie Claire * Elle * Harper’s Bazaar * Bustle * Newsweek * New York Post * Esquire * Real Simple * The Sunday Times * The Guardian

ONE OF THE MOST BUZZED ABOUT DEBUTS IN YEARS

AN INTERNATIONAL SENSATION SOLD IN 24 TERRITORIES AND COUNTING

Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naive teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager–and who professed to worship only her–may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Includes a bonus conversation with Kate Elizabeth Russell, Grace Gummer, and Jessica Williams (editor of My Dark Vanessa).

This audiobook includes an episode of the Book Club Girl Podcast, featuring an interview with Kate Elizabeth Russell about My Dark Vanessa.

Bestselling Author Harriet Lerner leads you in the most magnificent dance of all: The Mother Dance!

Her phenomenally successful audio books have profoundly changed the way we think about anger and intimacy. Now psychologist and mother Harriet Lerner tackles the most emotionally charged, issue of all time: motherhood.

In her own candid, and compassionate voice, Dr. Lerner discusses this extraordinary, life-altering experience as no one before her has done. Listen as she explores:

• his new life versus your new life
• worry guilt, self-blame and other unavoidables of motherhood
• how your own childhood influences your parenting
• the unexpected feelings motherhood awakens in you — good and bad
• how children change your marriage
• how to talk to kids you can’t talk to
• mothers and daughters — mothers and sons
• and much much more — from labor pains to empty nest pangs

Lerner shares personal stories and vivid case examples that are both hilarious and heart-wrenching. Lerner will guide you on this lifelong journey, whether you’re considering having children, currently raising little ones, or are the mother of grown-up children.

Read by the author on two cassettes.

This powerful, moving story–which has already touched more than seven million through a viral video created by the Whittington family–is a mother’s first-hand account of her emotional choice to embrace her transgender child.

When Hillary and Jeff Whittington posted a YouTube video chronicling their five-year-old son Ryland’s transition from girl to boy, they didn’t expect it to be greeted with such fervor. Beautiful and moving, the video documenting Hillary’s and Jeff’s love for their child instantly went viral and has been seen by more than seven million viewers since its posting in May 2014.

Now for the first time, they tell their story in full, offering an emotional and moving account of their journey alongside their exceptional child. After they discovered their daughter Ryland was deaf at age one and needed cochlear implants, the Whittingtons spent nearly four years successfully teaching Ryland to speak. But once Ryland gained the power of speech, it was time for them to listen as Ryland insisted, “I am a boy!” And listen they did. After learning that forty-one percent of people who identify as transgender attempt to take their own lives, Hillary and her husband Jeff made it their mission to support their child–no matter what.

From the earliest stages of deciphering Ryland through clothing choices to examining the difficult conversations that have marked every stage of Ryland’s transition, Hillary Whittington shares her experiences as a mother through it all, demonstrating both the resistance and support that their family has encountered as they try to erase the stigma surrounding the word “transgender.” In telling her family’s story, she hopes she can assist the world in accepting that even children as young as five, can have profound and impactful things to say and share. What emerges is a powerful story of unconditional love, accepting others for who they are, and doing what’s right, regardless of whether those around you understand it.

Is it really possible to be in love forever?

New York Times bestselling author John Gray will show you how in Mars and Venus Together Forever.

This resource guide contains relationship skills that will help you and your mate sustain a lasting relationship that only grows richer with time. Mars and Venus Together Forever educates the different sexes on:

• What your mother couldn’t tell you and your father didn’t know
• What women need most and men really want
• How men and women think and feel differently
• The language barrier — men speak “male” and women speak “female”
• The seven secrets of lasting passion
• And much more

Filled with lively anecdotes, revealing exercises, and profound common sense, Mars and Venus Together Forever will help men and women explore new frontiers in their relationships, communicate effectively with each other, and discover the secret of “happily ever after.”

From a bright new talent, a witty, moving, and inspirational coming-of-age debut novel set in 1970s Brooklyn about a teenager and his abusive father whose obsession with broken down vintage cars careens wildly out of control.

“Such a pleasure to read…. This is a coming of age story, but it is also so much more than that.”–Dominic Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Nicky Flynn is coming-of-age in 1970s Brooklyn, riding into his sophomore year at St. Michaels, the last hurrah of the Diocesan school system. A budding young actor, Nicky is at once sensitive, resilient, exasperated, and keenly observant–especially when it comes to his father, Patrick. Undeniably enigmatic, and coasting on vanity, charm, and desperation, “Himself” as Nicky calls his father, is given to picking up old car junkers, for cheap at NYPD auctions–each sputtering, tail-finned treasure subsidized by poker games.

To Patrick, these chrome glamour tanks are his obsessions, repairable reminders of the past when he was young, and everything seemed new and gleaming and possible–before he had a family. For Nicky, each one is a milestone. Whether it’s a harrowing joy ride or a driving lesson, they’re unforgettable markers on his path toward an unpredictable future. But as Patrick’s compulsions slide into alcoholism and abuse, Nicky, his mother, and sisters brace themselves for an inevitable sharp turn in their addled lives.

Narrated with humor and a rueful awareness, Car Trouble is an exhilarating novel about acceptance, regret, compassion, and finding your authentic adult self amid the rubble and rumble of growing up.

Following one of the biggest busts in Atlanta’s history, DEA Agent Orlando “Trip” Spencer is called back to his hometown to help manage the fallout. The investigation becomes complicated when drug kingpins start turning up dead and weapons are being funneled into the county jail. It’s up to Trip to figure out the “who, what, and why” and put a stop to the slaughters taking place on the streets of the Dirty South. Unfortunately, what he uncovers hits a little too close to home.

Idalis Arrington was once one of Trip’s closest friends, until she met Lincoln Briscoe. Her new relationship drove a wedge between the two best friends, but Trip’s return to Atlanta and her grandmother’s illness cause Idalis to reconnect with her old friend. Her perfect world soon becomes messy, and she finds herself praying that Trip’s visit is a short one.

Lincoln “Linc” Briscoe, a lieutenant with the Atlanta Police Department, knows he has a lot at stake with Special Agent Spencer in town. He refuses to let anyone jeopardize what he’s worked so hard to gain, including his relationship with Idalis. Linc is ready to do whatever it takes to keep control of everything he has, no matter what the cost.

Will Trip and Linc be able to avoid the collision course they’ve been on since college, or will they collide and explode, taking down everyone in their wake? Can Idalis handle the pressure brought on by Trip and Lincoln’s hatred, or will she crack, revealing her own shortcomings? There is no telling what can happen when truths are revealed between friends.

The acclaimed, bestselling author–winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize–tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families’ lives.

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly–thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.

When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.

A remarkable memoir by a mother and her autistic daughter who’d long been unable to communicate–until a miraculous breakthrough revealed a young woman with a rich and creative interior life, a poet, who’d been trapped inside for more than two decades.

“I have been buried under years of dust and now I have so much to say.”

These were the first words twenty-five-year-old Emily Grodin ever wrote. Born with nonverbal autism, Emily’s only means of communicating for a quarter of a century had been only one-word responses or physical gestures.

That Emily was intelligent had never been in question–from an early age she’d shown clear signs that she understood what was going on though she could not express herself. Her parents, Valerie and Tom, sought every therapy possible in the hope that Emily would one day be able to reveal herself. When this miraculous breakthrough occurred, Emily was finally able to give insight into the life, frustrations, and joys of a person with autism. She could tell her parents what her younger years had been like and reveal all the emotions and intelligence residing within her; she became their guide into the autistic experience.

Told by Valerie, with insights and stories and poetry from Emily, I Have Been Buried Under Years of Dust highlights key moments of Emily’s childhood that led to her communication awakening–and how her ability rapidly accelerated after she wrote that first sentence. As Valerie tells her family’s story, she shares the knowledge she’s gained from working as a legal advocate for families affected by autism and other neurological disorders.

A story of unconditional love, faith in the face of difficulty, and the grace of perseverance and acceptance, I Have Been Buried Under Years of Dust is an evocative and affecting mother-daughter memoir of learning to see each other for who they are.

“Morgan’s gently humorous aesthetic will leave readers feeling optimistic and satisfied.” —Publishers Weekly on A Wedding in December

In the snowy perfection of Aspen, the White family gathers for youngest daughter Rosie’s whirlwind Christmas wedding. First to arrive are the bride’s parents, Maggie and Nick. Their daughter’s marriage is a milestone they are determined to celebrate wholeheartedly, but they are hiding a huge secret of their own: they are on the brink of divorce. After living apart for the last six months, the last thing they need is to be trapped together in an irresistibly romantic winter wonderland.

Rosie’s older sister, Katie, is also dreading the wedding. Worried that impulsive, sweet-hearted Rosie is making a mistake, Katie is determined to save her sister from herself! If only the irritatingly good-looking best man, Jordan, would stop interfering with her plans…

Bride-to-be Rosie loves her fiance but is having serious second thoughts. Except everyone has arrived–how can she tell them she’s not sure? As the big day gets closer, and emotions run even higher, this is one White family Christmas none of them will ever forget!

What happens if the only Christmas celebration you want to attend is one you haven’t been invited to? Find out in Snowed in for Christmas, a hilarious and heartwarming Christmas romance by USA Today bestselling author Sarah Morgan!