Motherhood Life

The First Breath is the first popular science book about the pioneering fetal and neonatal medicine bringing a new generation into the world - a generation of babies without precedent, who would not have lived if they had been born only a few decades ago. Olivia Gordon explores the female experience of medicine through her own personal story and sensitive, intimate case histories of other mothers’ high-risk births. She details the relationship mothers develop with doctors who hold not only life and death in their hands but also the very possibility of birth.

In the wake of her grandmother's passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister, or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six local North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. With her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt and the sinister silence surrounding her.

All of Gemma's dreams come true when she's asked to step into the role of Puddleducks Playgroup leader. She knows the place better than anyone and is determined to prove she's the right person for the job. Nothing is going to spoil this opportunity for her... Until she meets Joe Balls, the newly appointed head of reception at the neighbouring infant school. An ex-banker more comfortable with numbers than nursery rhymes, Joe has this annoying habit of interfering with Gemma and her plans for the playgroup.

When her husband dies, Charlotte can’t face the things she’s done that could tear her family apart. Especially when her mama leaves her to grieve alone. So she drops a goodbye letter in the cookie jar and flees south to escape everything—her life, her three daughters, the mistakes she’s made, and the secrets eating her alive.

Three generations. One summer that will change everything. Jenna has returned to the sunny shores of Lake Summers, tucked under the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, with her daughter Sophie to care for her aging mother, Sweet. Recently divorced, Jenna finds comfort in lazy afternoons along the water and long nights watching Sweet tell Sophie stories about her long-lost loves. When she meets Sweet’s new next-door neighbor, Troy, she recognizes him instantly as the boy with whom she shared her first kiss.

Saddled with student loans, medical debt, and the sudden news of her infertility after a major car accident, Shannon, an African American woman, follows her boyfriend to Morocco in search of relief. There, in the cobblestoned medina of Marrakech, she finds a toddler in a pink jacket whose face mirrors her own. With the help of her boyfriend and a bribed official, Shannon makes the fateful decision to adopt and raise the girl in Louisville, Kentucky. But the girl already has a mother.

Laurel and her son Simon are planning on a quiet Christmas at home in New York, when she gets a call from her father saying he needs her in Lake Summers in the heart of the Adirondacks. As twinkling lights go up and snowflakes begin to fall, Laurel can’t wait to leave New York behind to help her father run the family business and make snow angels with her son, even if it’s just for Christmas. But when she walks through the door, she’s shocked to find the inn in disrepair, and a letter saying her father will be gone until Christmas Eve.

What if the villain of your childhood turned out to be someone really rather extraordinary? A disgraced politician, Sir James Hastings is living out his retirement in a secluded Surrey village. He is unmoved by his centenarian mother's death - a woman he emotionally buried upon her abandonment. Raised by his father, a charismatic war-hero turned racing driver, the young James, torn between self-blame and longing, eventually dismissed her.

Pregnant. Single. Dating. It's going to be... a bumpy year! Trish Kirkpatrick never expected to find herself unmarried, pregnant... and not entirely sure who the baby's father is. With her ex, Pete, and her colleague, Elliot, in line for daddy duty while waiting on the DNA results, Trish finds her complicated world getting even more chaotic when a meet-cute on a plane to Tokyo with gorgeous architect Scott sparks a new flame. Now, as her bump grows so do Trish's troubles.

A family secret. A new romance. And a summer she will never forget. When Caroline left Lake Summers thirty years ago, she thought she’d never return to the place where she lost her parents. But when she finds out that the town’s lily garden lovingly built by her mother is going to be destroyed, she knows fate is calling. Dropping everything at her office in Chicago, she knows she is the only person who can save the garden. Caroline and her daughter Lee are welcomed home by the warm smile of her mother’s best friend Maxine, and piles of pancakes at her cozy little restaurant in town.

On the same day Bells Walker learns that her IUD has failed, her husband Harry is denied tenure at his Manhattan university. So Bells, Harry, their two adolescent children, and her baby bump move to New York’s Hudson Valley, where Harry has landed a job at Dutchess College in the town of Pigkill. When the farm-to-table utopia Bells envisioned is anything but, she turns to the blogosphere. Under the pen name the County Dutchess, she anonymously dishes about life in Pigkill, detailing the activities of hypercompetitive parents and kombucha-drinking hipsters.

Jenny Newberg, Queen of Bad Decisions, is about to make another one. In a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, down-on-her-luck single mother Jenny is on a first-name basis with the debt collector at the bank, who is moving toward foreclosure. She is constantly apologizing to her precocious young daughter, Billie Starr, who is filling a book with her mother’s sorries, and it seems to Jenny that no apology will ever be enough. Then a pair of strangers in black suits offers her a hefty check to seduce someone known as the Candidate. Finally, something will go her way.

For people who happen to be parents (or might be soon). Because for every turdy nappy you sadly deposit into a gag-reflex-inducing bin, there's a moment that's less sh*t around the corner. This is not a audiobook that will help you grow (or raise) a human successfully. But this is a book that might, if you're not too emotionally battered - and can see through the permanent eye twitch - help you laugh a little more than you cry. But that's not guaranteed.

Grace and Ted Chapman are widely regarded as the perfect couple. Ted is a successful novelist and Grace, his wife of twenty years, is beautiful, carefree, and a wonderful homemaker. But what no one sees are Ted’s rages, his mood swings, and the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted’s longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, his world begins to crumble, and Grace, with dark secrets in her past, is most vulnerable. She finds herself in need of help but with no one to turn to…until Ted’s new assistant, Beth, comes to the rescue.

When Charlotte McKay wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to go back to the perfect London flat she shares with her husband, and the impressive career she’s worked so hard to build. But something’s not right. Her husband David is at her bedside - but so is a three-year-old girl, and she’s calling Charlotte "Mummy"....

Ten years ago, Claire Hines lost her unborn child - and her short-term memory - following a heartrending tragedy. With notebooks, calendars, to-do lists, fractured pieces of the past, and her father’s support, Claire makes it through each day, hour by hour, with relative confidence. She also has a close-knit community of friends in the remote Alaskan town where she teaches guitar to the local children. It’s there, in the reminders. As determined as Claire is to regain all that’s disappeared, she’d prefer to live without some memories of her before life.

Erin Marinelli has her work cut out for her when she arrives at her late grandmother's Wisconsin home to prepare for an estate sale. But sifting through the overwhelming collection of figurines, outdated appliances, and dusty books, she finds something that captures her attention: a yellowed envelope of old photographs. In one, taken almost a century ago, a beautiful woman is seated with a young boy who looks uncannily like Erin's five-year-old autistic son, Will. Intrigued, Erin looks further into her family's history, and discovers parallels to her present-day life.

Nina Restieri was a wife, a mom of four young kids, and a successful entrepreneur. Despite having what most people would consider “it all”, happiness eluded her. She beat herself up daily for not being grateful. But as she looked around, she realized most of the moms she knew shared that same sense of sadness, stress, and feeling of being overwhelmed, all while working hard to keep up the “perfect mom” appearance.

Joni Ackerman’s decision to raise children, 25 years ago, came with a steep cost. She was then a pioneering filmmaker, one of the few women to break into the all-male Hollywood club of feature film directors. But she and her husband Paul had always wanted a family, and his ascending career at a premier television network provided a safety net. Now they’ve recently transplanted to Brooklyn so that Paul can launch a major East Coast production studio, when a scandal rocks the film industry and forces Joni to revisit a secret from long ago involving her friend Val.

A novel about three women at turning points in their lives, and the one night that changes everything.