Part mystery, part love story, part report from the medical front in the United States today, Riptides relates the fast-onset brain cancer that ripped through a strong, healthy man and led to his death four months later at the age of fifty-six. The book is a searing chronology of the effects of devastating illness, of being caught in the maw of hospitals, of unthinkable decision-making and small, unexpected solaces. Tightly written, fact-based, it is never maudlin, and it offers an element of hope without sentimentality. Riptides is a harrowing read. The writing is honest and intimate, the language spare and precise. Encounters with the health care system--doctors, nurses, aides--repeatedly fail to provide reassurance, honesty, or reliable information, and often end in promises that are not kept. These are human failings, but they are devastating when two is becoming one. Our hospitals and hospices can do better than that. --Nancy H. Smith Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Psychology Antoin Boisen, the father of clinical pastoral education, wrote that every patient and family member is a "living, human document"--a story waiting to be heard. As a health-care chaplain I recommend this story, Riptides, to anyone working with patients. --Keith F. Patterson Chaplain, Episcopal Diocese of Vermont In four months an active, intelligent, forceful man becomes an invalid, incapable of speech or voluntary movement. Friends and family barely have time to adjust to one set of symptoms before the decline advances. The impact of these terrible events is heightened by the writer's understated, matter-of-fact prose until the reader feels almost a participant in this tragic story. No one who reads it will ever forget this book. --Molly Laird RN, PhD, Emergency Room Psychiatric Nurse Debby Mayer's blog, 2becomes1: widowhood for the rest of us, can be found at debbymayer.blogspot.com or through debbymayer.com. An excerpt from Riptides was awarded a grant in creative nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Debby Mayer is also the author of Sisters: A Novel (Putnam's, Berkley). Her short fiction and journalism have been widely published. She lives in Hudson, New York.

Becoming a widow is one of the most traumatic life events that a woman can experience. Yet, as this remarkable new collection reveals, each woman responds to that trauma differently. Here, forty-three widows tell their stories, in their own words. Some were widowed young, while others were married for decades. Some cared for their late partners through long terminal illnesses, while others lost their partners suddenly. Some had male partners, while others had female partners. Yet each of these women faced the same basic dilemma: how to go on living when a part of you is gone. Widows’ Words is arranged chronologically, starting with stories of women preparing for their partners’ deaths, followed by the experiences of recent widows still reeling from their fresh loss, and culminating in the accounts of women who lost their partners many years ago but still experience waves of grief. Their accounts deal honestly with feelings of pain, sorrow, and despair, and yet there are also powerful expressions of strength, hope, and even joy. Whether you are a widow yourself or have simply experienced loss, you will be sure to find something moving and profound in these diverse tales of mourning, remembrance, and resilience.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the Alex Award and the Massachusetts Book Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Grantland Booklist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, School Library Journal, Bustle, and Time Our New York The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine “Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Light Lifting is a suite of darkly urban, unflinching elegies. The seven stories each encompass a keenly observed, immersive world, rooted firmly in the real life of work and family. They are elemental stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of beauty and love and moments of pure transcendence.

One woman's search for the truth after scandal rocks her family, and the explosive family secrets she uncovers, in this complex, moving fourth novel from bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Haigh.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Memoir of the year' - Vogue 'A wondrous, sensuous memoir of salt-stung survival . . . clear-eyed and poetic prose' Sunday Times 'A fascinating memoir' - Daily Mail When Tamsin Calidas first arrives on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, it feels like coming home. Disenchanted by London, she and her husband left the city and high-flying careers to move the 500 miles north, despite having absolutely no experience of crofting, or of island life. It was idyllic, for a while. But as the months wear on, the children she'd longed for fail to materialise, and her marriage breaks down, Tamsin finds herself in ever-increasing isolation. Injured, ill, without money or friend she is pared right back, stripped to becoming simply a raw element of the often harsh landscape. But with that immersion in her surroundings comes the possibility of rebirth and renewal. Tamsin begins the slow journey back from the brink. Startling, raw and extremely moving, I Am An Island is a story about the incredible ability of the natural world to provide when everything else has fallen away - a stunning book about solitude, friendship, resilience and self-discovery.

From evil vampires to a mysterious pack of wolves, new threats of danger and vengeance test Bella and Edward's romance in the second book of the irresistible Twilight saga. For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning. Bella and Edward face a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality. It's here! #1 bestselling author Stephenie Meyer makes a triumphant return to the world of Twilight with the highly anticipated companion, Midnight Sun: the iconic love story of Bella and Edward told from the vampire's point of view. "People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there." -- Time "A literary phenomenon." -- The New York Times

A professor in Denmark and a grandmother in England begin a correspondence, and a friendship, that develops into something extraordinary.

WINNER of the 2017 EPIC Award for Contemporary RomanceIn 2003, journalist Connor Regan marched through London to add his voice to a million others, decrying the imminent invasion of Iraq. Eight months later, his brother, James, was killed in action in Mosul.Three years on, Connor finds himself bound for Iraq to embed with an elite SAS team. He sets his boots on the ground looking for closure and solace—anything to ease the pain of his brother’s death. Instead he finds Sergeant Nathan Thompson.Nat Thompson is a veteran commander, hardened by years of combat and haunted by the loss of his best friend. Being lumbered with a civilian is a hassle Nat doesn’t need, and he vows to do nothing more than keep the hapless hack from harm’s way.But Connor proves far from hapless, and too compelling to ignore for long. He walks straight through the steel wall Nat’s built around his heart, and when their mission puts him in mortal danger, Nat must lay old ghosts to rest and fight to the death for the only man he’s ever truly loved.

Can love really conquer all?—Book Six in Katy Evans’s breakout New York Times bestselling series that began with REAL. Maverick “The Avenger” Cage wants to rise to the top and become a legend in the ring. Though he keeps his identity well guarded, he’s known on the fighting circuit as the new kid with a chip on his shoulder and a tattoo on his back that marks him as trouble. He’s got a personal score to settle with the Underground’s one and only Remington “Riptide” Tate. As Mav trains, he meets a young girl—the only other new person in the town—and sparks fly. When things get heated between them, he finds out she’s none other than Reese Dumas, the cousin of Remington Tate’s wife. A girl who’s supposed to root against him and a girl he’s supposed to stay away from. But Mav fights for the woman in his heart and the monsters in his blood. The world’s eyes are on them, and the victor will go down in history as the ultimate fighting champion—the ultimate LEGEND.