In his debut collection of candid, shocking and just plain hilarious essays, comedic artist and musician, Greg Scarnici recounts the period in his life when he was just starting to understand his sexuality and the city of New York that he calls home. From getting high with the 'midget' from Twin Peaks to giving a trucker a lap dance to the tune of Pebbles' "Mercedes Boy," I HOPE MY MOTHER DOESN'T READ THIS offers a snapshot of an artist coming to grips with his comedic artistry at a time when gay comedians were not as accepted as they are today. There are tales of sordid hook-ups, riotous soirees, narcotic mishaps, and an unforgettable encounter with Gina Gershon at a Saturday Night Live after-party, where Greg currently works as an Associate Producer. No emotional stone is left unturned as Scarnici gives readers an uncensored and uproariously funny look into every step of becoming, as legendary nightlife columnist Michael Musto calls him: "One of the funniest people in NYC - as well as one of its biggest freaks."

A Revealing and Intimate Story of What a Mother Will—and Will Not—Do for Her Daughters What kind of women do daughters become when their fathers are missing and their mothers can’t love them? How do they find love and ways to love themselves? Nearly three decades of secrets lie between Lola Ashby and the two girls she reluctantly raised. Now, prompted by the one father figure she respects, older daughter Frankie agrees to drive from Portland to visit her ailing mother, who abandoned the girls when they were in high school. When younger daughter Callie announces to Frankie that she’s moving her fashion model career to Los Angeles from the East Coast, Frankie badgers her sister into meeting up in the Idaho panhandle for a family reunion to dilute the impact of their mother’s indifference. However, on Frankie’s first night on the road, the trip gets more complicated when a well-dressed elderly woman at a rest stop dumps a young boy in her lap with a request to take him on to Montana. And Callie’s exit from Pittsburgh is fraught with its own shady and violent difficulties. Meanwhile, Lola strengthens her resolve to keep the past and its secrets where they belong. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Coping With Loss The grieving process: Ty Alexander of Gorgeous in Grey is one of the top bloggers today. She has a tremendous personal connection with her readers. This is never more apparent than when she speaks about her mother. The pain of loss is universal. Yet, we all grieve differently. For Alexander, the grieving process is one that she lives with day-to-day. Learning from her pain, Alexander connects with her readers on a deeply emotional level in her debut book, Things I Wish I Knew before My Mom Died: Coping with Loss Every Day. From grief counseling to sharing insightful true stories, Alexander offers comfort, reassurance, and hope in the face of sorrow. Coping with loss: In her early 20’s reality smacked Ty in the face. She was ill equipped to deal with the emotional and intellectual rollercoaster of dealing with her mom’s illness. Through her own trial and error, she found a way to be a caregiver, patient advocate, researcher, and a grieving daughter. She wrote Things I Wish I Knew before My Mom Died: Coping with Loss Every Day to help others find the “best” way to cope and move on, however one personally decides what that means. Mourning and remembrance: In the chapters of this soul-touching book, mourners will find meaning and wisdom in grieving and the love that will always remain. Each chapter is a study and lesson in coping with loss: • Chapter 1: We’ve been duped, everyone dies! • Chapter 2: The truth about my moderately dysfunctional family • Chapter 3: The Art Of Losing • Chapter 4: The how of grieving • Chapter 5: How to be obsessively grateful • Chapter 6: Dear Mama

A memoir by American former actress and singer Jennette McCurdy about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013

Every human is born with multifarious potential. Why, then, do parents, schools and employers insist that we restrict our many talents and interests; that we 'specialise' in just one? We've been sold a myth, that to 'specialise' is the only way to pursue truth, identity, or even a livelihood. Yet specialisation is nothing but an outdated system that fosters ignorance, exploitation and disillusionment and thwarts creativity, opportunity and progress. Following a series of exchanges with the world’s greatest historians, futurists, philosophers and scientists, Waqas Ahmed has weaved together a narrative of history and a vision for the future that seeks to disrupt this prevailing system of unwarranted ‘hyper-specialisation.’ In The Polymath, Waqas shows us that there is another way of thinking and being. Through an approach that is both philosophical and practical, he sets out a cognitive journey towards reclaiming your innate polymathic state. Going further, he proposes nothing less than a cultural revolution in our education and professional structures, whereby everyone is encouraged to express themselves in multiple ways and fulfil their many-sided potential. Not only does this enhance individual fulfilment, but in doing so, facilitates a conscious and creative society that is both highly motivated and well equipped to address the complexity of 21st century challenges.

“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.

The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner’s remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a “year in Provence” with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie’s teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old woman set in her ways. Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories of her parents’ painful divorce, of her mother’s drinking, of dislocating moves back and forth across the country, and of Katie’s own widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding difficult issues at bay. How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny—and always insightful—Katie Hafner’s brave and loving book answers questions about the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many. Praise for Mother Daughter Me “The most raw, honest and engaging memoir I’ve read in a long time.”—KJ Dell’Antonia, The New York Times “A brilliant, funny, poignant, and wrenching story of three generations under one roof, unlike anything I have ever read.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone “Weaving past with present, anecdote with analysis, [Katie] Hafner’s riveting account of multigenerational living and mother-daughter frictions, of love and forgiveness, is devoid of self-pity and unafraid of self-blame. . . . [Hafner is] a bright—and appealing—heroine.”—Cathi Hanauer, Elle “[A] frank and searching account . . . Currents of grief, guilt, longing and forgiveness flow through the compelling narrative.”—Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle “A touching saga that shines . . . We see how years-old unresolved emotions manifest.”—Lindsay Deutsch, USA Today “[Hafner’s] memoir shines a light on nurturing deficits repeated through generations and will lead many readers to relive their own struggles with forgiveness.”—Erica Jong, People “An unusually graceful story, one that balances honesty and tact . . . Hafner narrates the events so adeptly that they feel enlightening.”—Harper’s “Heartbreakingly honest, yet not without hope and flashes of wry humor.”—Kirkus Reviews “[An] emotionally raw memoir examining the delicate, inevitable shift from dependence to independence and back again.”—O: The Oprah Magazine (Ten Titles to Pick Up Now) “Scrap any romantic ideas about what goes on when a 40-something woman invites her mother to live with her and her teenage daughter for a year. As Hafner hilariously and touchingly tells it, being the center of a family sandwich is, well, complicated.”—Parade

The royal physician’s daughter leads a dangerous double life with a young William Shakespeare in this “tour de force” historical thriller (Publishers Weekly). Rebecca Lopez enjoys a life of privilege in Elizabeth's England, yet she guards secrets that would be anyone’s undoing. The beautiful, tempestuous daughter of the queen's own physician, Rebecca is also a converso -- a Jew who practices her banned religion clandestinely. And to court danger further, she helps others of her faith escape persecution and death. Rebecca’s risky endeavors often take her to the bustling streets of London disguised in male garb. But one such outing is leading her into a dangerous viper's nest built of intrigue and foul murder. Accompanying her every step of the way is a dashing young actor who inflames her romantic passions—a charming and fearless would-be playwright who calls himself Will Shakespeare.

*Winner of the American Book Award* *Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography* An Honor Book for the 2023 Stonewall Book Award—Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award This witty memoir traces a touching and often hilarious spiralic path to embracing a gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo—from a cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to cities across the U.S.—and the bath houses, night clubs, and drag queens who help redefine pride I’ve always found the definition of machismo to be ironic, considering that pride is a word almost unanimously associated with queer people, the enemy of machistas . . . In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival, but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others. A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez’s uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor’s office where he was diagnosed a “high-risk homosexual.” With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself he was taught to keep hidden. His story is a scintillating, beautiful reminder of the importance of leaving space for joy.