A story of fertility, feminism, and family Jenn Berney was one of those people who knew she was destined for motherhood—it wasn't a question of if, but when. So when she and her wife Kelly decided to start building their family, they took the next logical step: they went to a fertility clinic. But they soon found themselves entrenched in a medical establishment that didn't know what to do with people like them. With no man factoring into their relationship, doctors were at best embarrassed and at worst disparaging of the couple. Soon Jenn found herself stepping outside of the system determined to disregard her. Looking into the history of fertility and the LGBTQ+ community, she saw echoes of her own struggle. For decades queer people have defied the patriarchy and redefined the nuclear family—and Jenn was walking in their footsteps. Through the ups-and-downs of her own journey, Jenn reflects on a turbulent past that has led her to this point and a bright future worth fighting for. With clarity, determination, and hope, The Other Mothers gives us a wonderful glimpse into the many ways we can become family.

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution. Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not. From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

“I was 100% hooked right from the start… A non-stop, heart-pounding suspenseful read!… Captivated me from page one all the way through… WOW!!” Misty’s Corner Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It’s a crisp spring morning when the small-town community around Briar Ridge Elementary School is shattered by devastating news. Bright and shy five-year-old Nicole has disappeared at recess. When the phone call comes, Gia Marchand is suddenly living every parent’s worst nightmare. She feels like time has stopped and she struggles to truly understand it: she dropped her daughter at the school gate this morning and now Nicole is gone. In her big house all alone, she breaks down. Her best friend was in the playground at recess but when Gia begs desperately for any details, the woman won’t look her in the eye. Surely her closest friend wouldn’t betray her? Then Detective Jo Fournier says her husband was in the school building this morning but now she can’t reach him. Gia is left completely alone with her grief. As time slips away and Nicole hasn’t been found, Gia becomes utterly terrified: is she finally paying the price for a secret that she has been hiding for years? Or is someone she thought she could trust committing the ultimate betrayal? From USA Today bestseller M.M. Chouinard, The Other Mothers is a completely addictive psychological thriller that will not let you go until you turn the last heart-thumping page! Perfect for fans of Gone Girl, The Stepdaughter and The Girl on the Train. Readers are utterly addicted to The Other Mothers! “Wow, wow, wow!!!!! I’m speechless. Did I really just read that????… I truly would’ve never guessed it in a million years.” Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Holy buckets… Grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. There are not enough stars to accurately label how genuinely excellent this book is.” Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Right off the bat you are pulled in and are immediately hooked… Took me a while to get my racing heart back under control again.” Once Upon A Time Book Blog ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Addictive… Had me gripped from page one… I couldn’t stop reading… I can wholeheartedly recommend it.” Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Totally blew me away… I especially loved the ending. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it.” Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “A complete shocker… An absolute page-turner I could not put down.” Goodreads Reviewer “Absolutely thrilling from start to finish. A rollercoaster of a read. Heart thumpingly, stay-up-all-night-reading good. Loved this brilliant book.” Renita D’Silva, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Believe me you'll be stunned… Awesome.” Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Follows the life of a liberated Jewish woman who refuses to follow society's rules, lives life to the fullest, and has a child with each of the three men she loves, all as World War I, the Roaring Twenties, and Nazism take over Europe.

How far will a mother go to save her child? Ten years ago, Ruby Leander was a drifting nineteen-year-old who made a split-second decision at an Oklahoma rest stop. Fast forward nine years: Ruby and her daughter Lark live in New Mexico. Lark is a precocious, animal loving imp, and Ruby has built a family for them with a wonderful community of friends and her boyfriend of three years. Life is good. Until the day Ruby reads a magazine article about parents searching for an infant kidnapped by car-jackers. Then Ruby faces a choice no mother should have to make. A choice that will change both her and Lark's lives forever.

"My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man’s child, she accepted." Thus begins this riveting story of a woman's quest to understand her recently deceased mother, a glamorous, cruel narcissist who left her only child an inheritance of debts, threats, and mysteries.

"Other Mothers, edited by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman and Claudia C. Klaver, offers a range of essays that open a conversation about Victorian motherhood as a wide-ranging, distinctive experience and idea. In spite of its importance, however, it is one of the least-studied aspects of the Victorian era, subsumed under discussions of femininity and domesticity." "Other Mothers joins revisionist approaches to femininity that now characterize Victorian studies. Its contents trace intersections among gender, race, and class; question the power of separate spheres ideology; and insist on the context-specific nature of social roles. The fifteen essays in this volume contribute to the fields of literary criticism, history, cultural studies, and history."--BOOK JACKET.

The eleven stories and one novella of Mother Box, and Other Tales bring together everyday reality and something that is dramatically not in compelling narratives of new possibilities. In language that is both barb and bauble, bitter and unbearably sweet, Sarah Blackman spins the threads of stories where everything is probable and nothing is constant. The stories in Mother Box, and Other Tales occur in an in-between world of outlandish possibility that has become irrefutable reality: a woman gives birth to seven babies and realizes at one of their weddings that they were foxes all along; a girl with irritating social quirks has been raised literally by cardboard boxes; a young woman throws a dinner party only to have her elaborate dessert upstaged by one of the guests who, as it turns out, is the moon. Love between mothers and children is a puzzling thrum that sounds at the very edge of hearing; a muted pulse that, nevertheless, beats and beats and beats. In these tales, the prosaic details of everyday life—a half-eaten sandwich, an unopened pack of letters on a table—take on fevered significance as the characters blunder into revelations that occlude even as they unfold.

One hospital. Two missing infants. Three decades apart. When a newborn is snatched from the Maternity Unit at St Catherine’s Hospital, a desperate police hunt ensues. Only a small window of opportunity exists in which to identify a suspect and bring the baby back safely. Detective Sergeant Meg Wiley, close to retirement and panicking about what she’ll do with her empty days, reluctantly joins the search, but she’s haunted by her memories. Feeling estranged from her partner Emma, she struggles to concentrate on the job. She soon discovers, however, that the past is a key. Her history will unlock the mystery that surrounds the disappearance of not one, but two babies. ★★★★★ - 'Beautifully written, a page-turner to the very end.' - Bethan White, author of Fade

"Gorgeously crafted stories." —Nancy Pearl (Book Lust) on Morning Edition, "Books for a Rainy Day" "My favorite thing about her is the wry, uncanny tenderness of her stories. She has the astonishing ability to put her finger on the sweet spot right between comedy and tragedy, that pinpoint that makes you catch your breath. You're not sure whether to laugh out loud or cry, and you end up doing both at once." —Dan Chaon "When I first read China Mountain Zhang many years ago, Maureen McHugh instantly became, as she has remained, one of my favorite writers. This collection is a welcome reminder of her power—they are resonant, wise, generous, sharp, transporting, and deeply, deeply moving. McHugh is enormously gifted; each of these stories is a gift." —Karen Joy Fowler "Wonderfully unpredictable stories, from the very funny to the very grim, by one of our best and bravest imaginative writers." —Ursula K. Le Guin "Enchanting, funny and fierce by turns —a wonderful collection!" —Mary Doria Russell * Story Prize finalist. * A Book Sense Notable Book. In her luminous, long-awaited debut collection, award-winning novelist Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations. — A woman introduces her new lover to her late brother. — A teenager is interviewed about her peer group's attitudes toward sex and baby boomers. — A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge. — Anthropologists visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by nomadic raiders. McHugh's characters—her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious teenagers—are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and heartbreakingly real. This new trade paperback edition has added material for book clubs and reading groups, including an interview with the author, book club questions and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen's fabulous essay, "The Evil Stepmother." Maureen F. McHugh has spent most of her life in Ohio, but has lived in New York City and, for a year, in Shijiazhuang, China. She is the author of four novels. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang, won the Tiptree Award, and Nekropolis, was a Book Sense 76 pick and New York Times Editor's Choice.