Bookmark the Blog


THE UPTOWN LOCAL

A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer—struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction—and his life-changing decade working for Joan Didion

As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion.

In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan’s rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but by her generous friendship and mentorship.

read more

IT’S NOT HYSTERIA

Did you know that up to 90% of women experience menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues in their lifetime? Yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed. The root causes for these issues, such as PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, PMDD, or pelvic floor dysfunction, don’t receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite affecting up to half the population.

Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how we engage with our bodies and our healthcare. It’s Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options,

read more

THE FALL OF ROE

From acclaimed New York Times journalists Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer comes a narrative that is a political cliffhanger and an intimate look at what it means to be a woman in America today. The Fall of Roe is a powerful book that will have everyone talking.

In June 2022, Americans watched in shock as the Supreme Court reversed one of the nation’s landmark rulings. For nearly a half century, Roe was synonymous with women’s rights and freedoms. Then, suddenly, it was gone.

With stunning scope, journalistic rigor, and unprecedented access to the highest echelons of conservative and liberal power,

read more

PERMISSION TO COME HOME

Strengthen your sense of well-being and embrace empowering new approaches with this invaluable investigation into mental health in the Asian American community.

Asian Americans are experiencing a racial reckoning regarding their identity, inspiring them to radically reconsider the cultural frameworks that enabled their assimilation into American culture. As Asian Americans investigate the personal and societal effects of longstanding cultural narratives suggesting they take up as little space as possible, their mental health becomes critically important. Yet despite the fact that over 18 million people of Asian descent live in the United States today—they are the racial group least likely to seek out mental health services.

read more

RABBIT HEART

One of our recommended books is Rabbit Heart by Kristine S. Ervin

For readers of My Dark Places and The Fact of a Body, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family’s decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother.

Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.

read more

PERSONAL SCORE

A vital and deeply personal testament to self, family, community, culture, and sport.

Award-winning writer Ellen van Neerven plays soccer from a young age, learning early on that while sport can lead to exhilarating experiences and community-building, it can also be a painful and exclusive world. The more they play, the more they realize about sport’s troubled relationship with race, gender, and sexuality – and question what it means to play sport on stolen, sovereign land, especially in the midst of multiple environmental crises.

Formidable, poetic, and impassioned, Personal Score is improbably many things at once,

read more