Three women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived. In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie--a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine's idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life. In 1997, Katherine's daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother's house. Hidden away in an old suitcase, she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth-a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now she just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she's always wanted to live.

For more than twenty-five years, Ruth has traveled to over 45 countries sharing what she has learned while 'listening to life' about the often paradoxical nature of growing up globally. Here she shares some of her lessons.

Sometimes the best possible future starts with goodbye... Evoking a sense of intimate nostalgia, this collection of letters - never sent and never read - offers a window into the lives of strangers at once immediately familiar and yet also out of reach. Like a gift of secrets, this memorable collection explores romances, friendships, and family relationships with truth, humor, and authenticity, ultimately coming together into a celebration of the self. From the enthusiasm of first love to the cynicism of first regret, The Letters We Never Sent is a haunting confession of passion, fear, hope, and possibility...

From the popular Tumblr of the same name comes a collection of heart-warming, tear-jerking, and gut-wrenching anonymous letters that people never intended—or didn’t have the courage—to send. The Tumblr Dear My Blank—created by 16-year-old Emily Trunko and followed by over 35,000 people—is now a carefully curated gift book with more than 160 anonymous letters covering a range of topics from heartbreak, unrequited love, and loss, to inspiration, self-awareness, and gratitude. Featuring exclusive content not available on Tumblr, these unsent letters are addressed to secret crushes, lost loved ones, boyfriends, siblings, parents, grandparents, and many more. Art and design by Lisa Congdon enhance these messages, making the book a beautiful keepsake for all readers. "A visceral and voyeuristic offering that covers the spectrum from fleeting angst to gut-wrenching grief." —Kirkus Reviews "Stirring and soulful." —Booklist Praise for the Tumblr Dear My Blank “An addictive site full of strangers’ secrets.” —Cosmopolitan “A safe haven for hundreds of letters that will never be sent.” —Distractify “Tumblr’s newest obsession.” —Hello Giggles

Harry S. Truman made plain speaking his trademark, and it was a common belief that "Give 'em hell" Harry spared few with his words. However, this fascinating collection of 140 amusing, angry, sarcastic, and controversial letters President Truman wrote but never mailed proves that conception wrong. Addressed to admirers and enemies alike, including Adlai Stevenson, Justice William Douglas, Dwight Eisenhower, Joe McCarthy, and Truman's wife, Bess, these intriguing letters cover such diverse subjects as the atomic bomb, running the country, and human greed.

Letters Written and Not Sent is the lifetime work of poet William Louis-Dreyfus, written over decades, culminating a passion for poetry, art and social justice. He passed away just days after the book was completed. Like paperweights, his lyrics are both small and hefty. His subjects range from race relations to trees, from secrets to parenthood, from ideas of god to kissing, from sons and mothers to fate, and of course, to poetry itself. Never afraid of the big questions of why human beings are alive, and what hope and justice are for, Louis-Dreyfus could take decades to finish a poem. A perfectionist, a thinker, and always inspired by visual art, he fought with himself over how to say what he wanted to say best. Like the French-Uruguayan businessman poet Jules Supervielle, whom Louis-Dreyfus translated, he felt the tug of the financial world against the pull of the lyricism of poetry, and the division marked his life and sparked ideas for his finest poems. As the heart condition that seized him made it absolutely imperative, finishing Letters Written and Not Sent literally became a life-or-death matter. This is the book that he wished to send into the world.

“You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy,” writes the unnamed narrator of Dear Thief. The thief is Nina, or Butterfly, who disappeared eighteen years earlier and who is being summoned by this letter, this bomb, these recollections, revisions, accusations, and confessions. “Sometimes I imagine, out of sheer playfulness, that I am writing this as a kind of defence for having murdered and buried you under the patio.” Dear Thief is a letter to an old friend, a song, a jewel, and a continuously surprising triangular love story. Samantha Harvey writes with a dazzling blend of fury and beauty about the need for human connection and the brutal vulnerability that need exposes. “While I write my spare hand might be doing anything for all you know; it might be driving a pin into your voodoo stomach.” Here is a rare novel that traverses the human heart in original and indelible ways.

Critically acclaimed master of the short story Amy Hempel’s Tumble Home is narrated by people with skewed visions of home. Not exactly crazy, they become obsessed and irrational as their inner logic leads them astray. In the title novella, a woman living in a psychiatric halfway house writes to a man she has met only once. Proceeding in brief vignettes that link and illuminate, she recounts her peculiar life with the other patients. The accretions of anecdote lead deeper and deeper into the psyche and history of the narrator, gradually revealing the reason for her urgent letter.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with fourteen riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher. From Virginia Woolf's heart-breaking suicide letter to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter, Letters of Note is a celebration of the power of written correspondence which captures the humour, seriousness, sadness and brilliance that make up all of our lives.