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MAD WIFE

One of our recommended books is Mad Wife by Kate Hamilton

In this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslit victim to furious feminist with an urgent goal: to expose how women are pressured to uphold the institutions of marriage and family, no matter the cost.

In the tradition of Know My Name and The Argonauts, Hamilton braids her own story with cultural criticism to argue that we must face the misogyny lurking in the shadows of marriage in the 21st century. She examines the beliefs and conditioning that held her in an increasingly destructive marriage and unflinchingly documents what she did to keep her family together—therapy,

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WANTED: TODDLER’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT

One of our recommended books is Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant by Stephanie Kiser

What are the lives of America’s richest families really like? Their nannies see it all…

When Stephanie Kiser moves to New York City after college to pursue a career in writing, she quickly learns that her entry-level salary won’t cover the high cost of living—never mind her crushing student loan debt. But there is one in-demand job that pays more than enough to allow Stephanie to stay in the city: nannying for the 1%. Desperate to escape the poverty of her own childhood and jump social classes, Stephanie falls into a job that hijacks her life for the next seven years: a personal assistant to toddlers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

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THAT LIBRARIAN

One of our recommended books is That Librarian by Amanda Jones

Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.

One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person’s sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups.

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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.

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RECKONING

Publishers Weekly Top 10 Memoir of the Season. The work of a lifetime from the Tony Award-winning, bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues-political, personal, profound, and more than forty years in the making.

The newest book from V (formerly Eve Ensler), Reckoning invites you to travel the journey of a writer’s and activist’s life and process over forty years, representing both the core of ideas that have become global movements and the methods through which V survived abuse and self-hatred. Seamlessly moving from the internal to the external, the personal to the political, 

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THE EXVANGELICALS

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ’80s and ’90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and–most of the time–a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she’d been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

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