Brave the sour to taste the sweet.Morgan is devastated by her mother's sudden death. Before, Mom's amazing organizational skills kept the family on track, and her bowl of lemon drops was always on hand to make difficult conversations easy, turning life's sour into sweet. After, there's no one to help Morgan navigate her new role caring for her younger siblings, her worries about starting junior high, and her increasingly confusing friendships. All she can do is try to fulfill her mother's final request: Keep them safe, Morgan. Be brave for them. Help them be happy. When Dad insists on taking the family on their regular summer camping trip, and Morgan's efforts to keep her promise to Mom seem doomed to fail, Morgan's anxiety spirals into a panic attack, and Dad treats her like she's impossibly broken. Unable to share her fears and needs with Dad, and desperate to prove she's got the strength to hold the family together, Morgan sets off alone to hike a flooding canyon trail. But...

"Finally, the biography that Sylvia Plath deserves . . . A spectacular achievement." —Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted LifeThe highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials—including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews—Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, Massachusetts who had poetic ambition from a very young age and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories even before she became a star English student at Smith College in the early 1950s. Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition, in the shadow of the atom...

With a rewarding career as a teacher, a near flawless husband, and the perfect house in the suburbs, 33-year-old Nicky Fowler thought her whole life was mapped out. When she and her husband experience fertility issues that lead to a devastating tragedy, their marriage crumbles and Nicky is left with the inability to cope with her ever-changed life. Desperate to flee from her current situation, she accepts a volunteer teaching position at an orphanage in Kenya, but finds that her new life is more difficult than she was expecting; drought has forced the country into famine and violence is everywhere. When she learns that the orphanage director takes her hatred for the world out on the orphans, Nicky seeks the aid of her host mother, Mama Bu. Over cups of chai tea, Mama Bu offers perspective and Nicky realizes she must not only teach the orphans, she needs to save them. This is a journey that explores the resilience of the heart, and the determination for finding good in the world.

The stigma of mental illness and the power of a mother's love come together in this achingly honest novelWidely acclaimed for her ability to tell emotionally powerful stories that capture the real lives of women, bestselling novelist Heather A. Clark tackles the subject of childhood mental disorders. Elephant in the Sky is told from both nine-year-old Nate's point of view and that of his mother, Ashley, an overworked ad executive who struggles with a demanding workload and the worry that she's not spending enough time with her family — especially as her son's battle with mental unbalance and paranoid delusions escalates. The two narratives converge in a deeply moving tale of a family dealing with mental illness.Elephant in the Sky is a story about unconditional love, and it articulates a complicated, real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity. It looks at what it means to be different in our society and beautifully explores the...