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An intimate collection of meaningful, smart, funny, sad, emotional, and inspiring essays from today’s authors and advocates about what it means to be Jewish, how things have changed since the attacks on October 7th, 2023, and the unique culture that brings this group together. 

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On October 7th, 2023, Jews in Israel were attacked in the largest pogrom since the Holocaust. But Jews everywhere felt it and came together to process and to speak out in ways they never had before, like the contributors to this collection. More than sixty notable Jewish authors speak to their lifetimes of Jewish joy, celebration, laughter, food, trauma, loss, love, family, neuroses, and fun, and the common threads that course through the Jewish people: resilience and humor. Contributors include Mark Feuerstein, Jill Zarin, Rabbi Steve Leder, Amy Ephron, Lisa Barr, Rebecca Minkoff, Annabelle Gurwitch, Jenny Mollen, Nicola Kraus, Caroline Leavitt, and many more. On Being Jewish Now is edited by bestselling author, podcaster, bookstore owner, and media company CEO Zibby Owens.

Never again.

All profits from the sale of the e-book, audiobook, and paperback will be donated to Artists Against Antisemitism, a group founded by Jewish authors in the aftermath of October 7th, dedicated to fighting the spread of antisemitism.

Published November 12, 2024

A PEOPLE Magazine's Best Book of November 2024

A November 2024 Book of the Month Selection 

From the author of the global breakout bestseller The Last Love Note comes the story of a young woman struggling to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident, and the man who gives up everything to help her. 

If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choices? Imagine having a second chance with the one you never forgot. 

When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she’s fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn’t around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver—whom she can't remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory,  she’s left to connect the dots. But how?

Enter: Drew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband’s death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds.

This tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she’s seeing all the things she missed–and the life she gets to choose . . . again.

Published October 8, 2024

“The Undercurrent is a mystery of remarkable scope, bristling with intelligence, beauty, and humanity. It is, quite simply: stunning.” —Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

Now featured in E! Fall Books of 2024

An overwhelmed new mother becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown—and unearths her own family’s dark secret.  

It’s 2011 and Deecie Jeffries’s missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin–and those memories–far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’s best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past. 

Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another—Gus, Leo, and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.

Published September 10, 2024

Exposure forces readers to reckon with both sides of a story that’s not easily reduced to right or wrong.  

One night. Two sides of a story.  In multi-perspective storytelling filled with humanity and empathy, Exposure forces readers to reckon with conflicting truths that are not easily reduced to right or wrong.  

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and go home together after a night out.

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade, and makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.

Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative novel delves into one fateful night and the people affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.

Published July 30, 2024

A USA Today Bestseller! 

What happens when you are forced to let go of the things you love the most? What are you left with?  

In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.

The stories—which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny—will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’s characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.

Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.

Published April 2, 2024 

"Bride Wars meets Bravo’s Southern Charm as a young lawyer tries to get her best friend a coveted magazine cover—until her devious aunt gets in the way. Evans’ debut novel is a charming contemporary novel that fans of Sarah Adams will enjoy." —Booklist

Competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. A hilarious, smart coming-of-age story.

Olivia “Liv” Fitzgerald’s life is on ambition autopilot. The soon-to-be-lawyer has her life plan set and can talk anyone into anything. Well, almost anything. When her scheming aunt throws her cousin, Kali, into a competition for Southern Charm’s cover alongside Liv’s best friend, Leighton, all hell breaks loose. To save the day, Liv only has to:

a) Secure the Southern Charm cover for Leighton
b) Keep Aunt Charlotte happy—and keep Kali’s wedding running smoothly
c) Finish her final year of law school and nab a coveted NYC big law job
d) Win over the guy of her dreams

Easy, right? From engagement parties to rehearsal dinners, readers will root for Liv as she balances her schemes, dreams, and double maid-of-honor duties.

Read the first chapter!

Published June 25, 2024

A divided family. A devastated community. And the disaster that brings them all together.

Pearce Oysters, a family drama set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearces, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.

This is eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best—a story that highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South. Diving deep into the bonds of family, culture, class, and industry, the novel elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters: Jordan, the reluctant head of his family’s storied oyster company; May, his distressed, widowed mother; and Benny, his beatnik musician brother, who returns from New Orleans in their time of crisis.

Published May 21, 2024

A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story. 

Kirkus Reviews says, “Like cinnamon Red Hots, this of-the-moment domestic thriller keeps you sweetly sucking away till it delivers the punch."

Reeling from the death of her father, Zara Pines accepts a ghostwriting gig for celebrity chef Jane Bailey. Jane, star of the wildly popular cooking show 30 Bucks Tops, invites Zara to live in her East Hampton home for the summer. Zara doesn’t want to go, but Jane insists. 

As the two women create Jane’s book, their attachment grows stronger. Zara, who’s lost and in search of an identity, finds one in the shadow of Jane. She wears Jane’s clothes, adopts Jane’s mannerisms, and speaks like Jane. Eventually, the line between them blurs and Zara starts to see the side Jane keeps hidden from the cameras.

This dark and twisty novel about fame, lies, and obsession will make even the most open-hearted reader question how safe it is to trust the people they love.

Read an excerpt! 

Published March 5, 2024

Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a stunning, taut memoir from debut author Amy Lin so finely etched and powerful that it will alter readers' hearts.

“When he dies, I fall out of time.”

Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But on a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive.

Ten days after this seismic loss, Amy is in the hospital, navigating her own shocking medical crisis and making life-or-death decisions about her treatment.

What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest accounting of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held “truths” about what the grieving process looks like. 

Here After is a love story and a meditation on the ways in which Kurtis’ death shatters any set ideas Amy ever held about grief, strength, and memory. Its power will last with you long after the final page.

Published April 04, 2023  

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards, Silver Medal - Literary Fiction

Featured on PBS NewsHour 

Named by Good Morning America, New York Post, and Los Angeles Daily News as one of the Best Books of Spring 2023

A deeply moving debut novel from the award-winning author of Yes, Yes, Cherries (“Funny, brave, and amazing”—Lorrie Moore) that explores the relationship complexities between mothers and daughters, the desire to escape, and the longing to connect. Viva has always found ways to manage her mother’s impulsive, eccentric and addictive personality. She’s had to—for her entire life, it has always been Viva and Charlotte against the world. After accidentally discovering an innate ability for dance, Viva chases her new passion with the same fervor with which her mother chases the bottle.

Over the years, Viva’s talent becomes a ticket to a life of her own, and as she moves further away from home to pursue her dream, Charlotte struggles to make peace with her own past as a failed artist and the effects of her addiction. When tragedy strikes, Viva begins a downward spiral and must decide whether she will repeat her mother’s mistakes or finally take control of her life. Told from interwoven perspectives with lyrical prose as deft as a choreographed dance.

Published August 29, 2023

A candid and revealing look at life in television, Hollywood, and work in the writer's room, from an insider who wrote for some of the most popular television shows in history: Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad.

Ever since Patty Lin retired from television writing at the ripe age of thirty-eight, people have asked her: “Why would you quit such a cool career?” Especially when they find out she worked on some of the most successful shows in television history. But what if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That’s what Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers’ rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time. While writing for Friends, Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.

Funny, eye-opening, and sobering, this inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone who has struggled with their work and on their life journey. And it will inspire others to listen to their inner voices and know when it’s time to get out.

Published November 14, 2023

What happens when a trauma therapist is traumatized by loss?

Esteemed trauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis knew how to help her patients process grief. For nearly twenty years, Meghan expected that this clinical training would inoculate her against the effects of personal trauma. But when her father died after a year-long battle with cancer, followed by her mother’s unexpected passing while on their family vacation, she came undone.

Thrown into a maelstrom of grief, with long-buried childhood tragedy rising to the surface, Meghan knew what she had to do―check herself into the same trauma facility to which she often sent her clients. In treatment, trading the therapist’s chair for the patient’s couch, Meghan took her first steps toward healing. 

A brave story of confronting life’s hardest moments with emotional honesty, End of the Hour is for anyone who has experienced the unpredictable, lasting power of grief―and wondered how they’d ever get through it.

Published January 9, 2024

A USA TODAY Bestseller

Funny, honest, and inspiring for readers feeling overwhelmed by life, Everyone But Myself is like a best friend’s story of how she returned to solid ground while embracing chaos along the way.

Featured in The Washington Post, She Reads Most Anticipated, and The New York Post

For Julie, an elementary school librarian and mother of two boys, there was no time for debilitating anxiety. Yet the terrifying aftershocks of her first panic attack left her grappling with questions about the causes of her mental health crisis and where it would lead next.

What follows is a hopeful, honest account of love and loss, a husband who can’t read minds, disastrous family outings, and finding a path (with help from loved ones and a few key new friends) to the joy of a well-lived life.

Sure to resonate with mothers spread thin by the demands of modern family life, Everyone But Myself offers an intimate portrait of how one woman found her way back to herself.

Published June 06, 2023

A summer away. One troubled marriage. Two daughters. And the love interest that threatens to ruin it all.

Maud is a talented garden historian and devoted mother to daughters Ella and Louise. Motivated to reinvigorate her career and escape her troubled marriage, she accepts a summer job restoring the garden of a lush, 19th-century Hudson Valley estate.

While waiting for her daughters to join her at the end of their school year, Maud meets coworker, archeologist Gabriel Crews, whose passion for landscape history matches her own. When their immediate and intense friendship ignites, it sets in motion a seismic shock that will profoundly change Maud's life, as well as the lives of everyone she cares about. Hedge is a deeply moving portrait of a woman’s longing to be a good mother while still answering the call of her soul and mind.

Published October 3, 2023

Now in paperback!

An ode to the power of the human spirit and the written word to combat the most harrowing of childhood memories.  

Brittany Means’s childhood was a blur of highways and traumas that collapsed any effort to track time. Riding shotgun as her mother struggled to escape abusive relationships, Brittany didn’t care where they were going—to a roadside midwestern motel, a shelter, or The Barn in Indiana, the cluttered mansion her Pentecostal grandparents called home—as long as they were together. But every so often, her mom would surprise her—and leave.

As Brittany grew older and questioned her own complicated relationships and the poverty, abuse, and instability that enveloped her, she began to recognize that hell wasn’t only the place she read about in the Bible; it was the cycle of violence that entrapped her family. Through footholds such as horror movies, neuropsychology, and strong bonds, Brittany makes sense of this cycle and finds a way to leave it.

While untangling the web of her most painful memories, Brittany crafts a tale of self-preservation, resilience, and hope with a unique narrative style—a sparkling example of the human ability to withstand the most horrific experiences and still thrive.

Published February 07, 2023

An exuberant, hilarious memoir about a woman who pauses her successful career for a year and explores the “What If” jobs of her dreams.

On the cusp of turning forty, Alisha Fernandez Miranda has climbed to the peak of personal and professional success, but at a price; she’s overworked and exhausted.

Bravely, Miranda decides to give herself a break, temporarily pausing her stressful career as the CEO of her own consulting firm. With the tentative blessing of her husband and eight-year-old twins, she leaves her home in London to spend one year exploring the dream jobs of her youth, seeking answers to the question, “What If?”

What follows is a spirited and hilarious journey for Alisha - and the reader. Alisha’s “What If” year reveals that she can achieve success on her own terms by embodying the spirit of the intern: never stop learning, be flexible, and understand that failure is a prerequisite for growth.

For anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a rut, My What If Year proves that it’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.

Published May 02, 2023

Massage therapist Joan Johnston may work at an iconic Vermont spa, but her life feels anything but serene. She’s deep in debt, burnt out, and still grieving the death of her boyfriend.

Enter spa guest Carmen Bronze, a hotheaded bestselling romance author, who offers Joan a chance to get back in her boss’s good graces. All Joan needs to do is slip Carmen spa secrets for her next book, but what if she wants to write it herself?

A heartfelt, hope-filled debut, Super Bloom will have readers rooting for Joan on every page—and laughing out loud at her one-of-a-kind wit.

Published January 30, 2024

"Hemans’ thoughtful family tale is a balm for readers." —Kirkus Reviews 

A lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home.

With news of her father’s passing, Pearline abruptly leaves her daughter and grandchildren behind in Brooklyn to return to her childhood home in Jamaica. But Pearline isn’t prepared for her father’s puzzling deathbed wish that she find her siblings—whom she hasn’t seen in 60 years—and discover the secret that tore her family apart. 

Moving through time and place, from Cuba to Montego Bay and from Brooklyn to Havana, The House of Plain Truth traces Pearline’s reconciliation of what she thought she knew about her family and the truth of their origin.

Inspired by the author's own family story, this delicate, incisive novel explores the divided loyalties within a family, the true meaning of home, and what one woman must sacrifice to finally get what she wants.

Published November 28, 2023

A December Indie Next Pick
The Target December Book Club Pick
A Book of the Month Selection
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book

You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again. 

Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the balls—and yet clinging to her sense of humor.

Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor.

When an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her boss, Hugh, stranded for a weekend on the east coast of Australia, she finally has a chance, away from her son, to really process her grief and see what’s right in front of her. Can she let go of the love of her life and risk her heart a second time?

When it becomes clear that Hugh is hiding a secret, Kate turns to the trail of scribbled notes she once used to hold her life together. The first note captured her heart. Will the last note set it free?

The Last Love Note will make readers laugh, cry, and renew their faith in the resilience of the human heart—and in love itself.

If you don't confront your past . . . It might confront you first. 

Dr. Gregory Weber appears to have an enviable life. He's a renowned clinical psychologist residing in an elegant home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Liv, and their two kids. But Gregory feels increasingly disconnected. His marriage is strained, his children are distant, and he can’t stop fixating on an unforgivable mistake he made when he was seventeen. Something no one else knows about.

So when an unscheduled client named Mira starts to appear in his office each week with knowledge about his past, Gregory quickly grows obsessed with her. Is she a new patient? A secret referral from a colleague? Someone connected to his teenage transgression? 

As his attraction for Mira grows more intense with each session, so does her probing scrutiny of him. Soon Gregory’s professional boundaries begin to dissolve, and he becomes the patient, desperate to uncover his connection to this mysterious woman and find out what she wants from him.

In searching for the answers, Gregory risks losing everything that matters: his career, his family, and his mind.