Mental Health Awareness Month
Browse our recommended reads to learn more about mental health, including cutting-edge science and little-known history, fiction that shines a light on mental health struggles, and practical ways to prioritize your own self-care.
“Tia Williams is one of the very best romance writers we have. A forever auto-buy for me.” – Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author
A New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Bookriot, and Parade Most Anticipated Book of the Summer!
New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams returns with an intensely romantic, deliciously sexy tale about a woman searching for her handsome seatmate on a European flight—and the unexpected places her hunt for love leads her.
Sasha Cruz knows types. As a booked-and-busy casting agent, she’s always casting—at happy hour, the grocery store, everywhere. She’s all about finding the perfect person to slot into the perfect role. What she doesn’t do, however, is relationships. Too much energy, not enough time.
On a flight to Paris for work, a chance encounter with her type changes everything. Sasha’s seated next to a broodingly attractive mystery man, and sparks fly—but they never exchange contact information. Convinced she’s lost out on her soulmate, Sasha emails her work friend for help, but accidentally writes to the entire company worldwide! The international manhunt to find Seat F begins.
Meanwhile Sasha takes matters into her own hands. She hires a smoldering detective she knew in another lifetime—who complicates matters in unforeseen (and irresistible) ways.
With a worldwide search underway, will love take flight for Sasha?
“An optimistic, feel-good novel.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A gorgeous, charming novel … sweet, moving, funny, and hopeful.” —Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Ariadne
Meredith has a full-time remote job and her rescue cat Fred. Her best friend Sadie visits with her two children. There’s her online support group, her jigsaw puzzles and favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson poems. Also keeping her company are treacherous memories of an unstable childhood and a traumatic event that had sent her reeling.
But something’s about to change. First, two new friends burst into her life. Then her long-estranged sister gets in touch.
Suddenly her carefully curated home is no longer a space to hide. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door …
A “sexy, swoon-worthy” romance about a woman with a rare neurological condition who agrees to fake-date the hot guy in her chronic pain support group—only to discover he’s an Olympic snowboarder whose career-ending injury is as infamous as his dating history (Nisha J. Tuli, USA Today bestselling author of Not Safe for Work)
Your fake relationship shouldn’t come with chronic feelings.
Skylar is done with offline relationships—especially romantic ones. Living with chronic illness means she’s heard it all before: unreliable, high-maintenance, too much. She’d rather spend her free time in her online chronic pain support group, and lately, she can’t help but notice Pike, the hot new guy with a penchant for broody poetry. When a chaotic night in the group forces her to pose as his girlfriend, she reluctantly agrees to keep up the charade in real life. Surprisingly, he’s thoughtful, sweet, and—most importantly—doesn’t flinch at the things that have scared others away.
Fake dating gets a lot more complicated when she discovers Pike isn’t just some guy. He’s a professional snowboarder whose career-ending injury is as infamous as his playboy past. He won’t talk about that, though. He’s fine. Really. But pretending to be in love with Skylar turns out to be the least depressing thing he’s done in months. As they spend more time together, she starts to notice the cracks in his carefully crafted image, and for once, he doesn’t mind being seen.
After all the bed-sharing and late-night talks, it becomes harder for both of them to pretend. But just as things start turning real, the paparazzi catch on, wanting the scoop on how everyone’s favorite Olympic medalist is doing post-accident. Dating while disabled comes with challenges of its own, but public speculation and invasive questions are something else entirely. If their newfound feelings can’t survive the spotlight, their not-so-fake relationship may be over before it ever truly begins.
“[An] extremely slow burn that pays off exponentially. The sex is super hot.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This debut romance gives members of the disability community the HEAs they deserve.” ―Book Riot
Most Anticipated by CrimeReads · Good Housekeeping · BookRiot · Goodreads · Bookish · OverDrive
Aardvark Book Club pick · Good Housekeeping Must-Read Book of 2023
Katrina Kim may be broke, the black sheep of her family, and slightly unhinged, but she isn’t a stalker. Her obsession with her co-worker, Kurt, is just one of many coping mechanisms—like her constant shape and number rituals, or the way scenes from her favorite children’s book bleed into her vision whenever she feels anxious or stressed.
But when Katrina finds a cryptic message from Kurt that implies he’s aware of her surveillance, her tenuous hold on a normal life crumbles. Driven by compulsion, she enacts the most powerful ritual she has to reclaim control—a midnight visit to the Cayatoga Bridge—and arrives just in time to witness Kurt’s suicide. Before he jumps, he slams her with a devastating accusation: his death is all her fault.
Horrified, Katrina combs through the clues she’s collected about Kurt over the last three years, but each revelation uncovers a menacing truth: for every moment she was watching him, he was watching her. And the past she thought she’d left behind? It’s been following her more closely than she ever could have imagined.
A gripping page-turner, as well as a sensitive exploration of mental health, Liar, Dreamer, Thief is an intimate portrayal of life in all its complexities—and the dangers inherent in unveiling people’s most closely guarded secrets.
Includes a Reading Group Guide.
“Smart, sexy. I absolutely loved it.” —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of My Sister’s Keeper
“Gutting, arousing, and sparklingly witty … a love story with depth.” —Vogue
Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer. Shane Hall is a reclusive, award-winning novelist. When the two meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that when they were teenager, Eva and Shane spent one crazy week madly in love. They can pretend they’ve never met, but they can’t deny their chemistry—or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years.
With its keen observations of creative life in America today, as well as the joys and complications of being a mother and a daughter, Seven Days in June is a hilarious starcrossed romance.
A Best Book of the Year: NPR • Kirkus Review • Marie Claire • PopSugar • New York Public Library • Bustle • Reader’s Digest • Literary Hub
A Best Book of the Summer: Harper’s Bazaar • Oprah Daily • Shondaland • The Los Angeles Times • CBS News • PureWow • Good Housekeeping • BuzzFeed • theSkimm
A Best Romance of 2021: The Washington Post • USA Today • Vulture • Goodreads • BookPage • BuzzFeed • Happy Mag
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER * AN AMAZON BEST MEMOIR OF 2026
In New York Times bestselling author Lindy West’s ambitious memoir, she brings readers along on an uproarious cross-country road trip as she unpacks her last few tumultuous years, rediscovers herself, and reinvents her marriage in the process.
Through Shrill—the book and then the Hulu series—Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and hailed as a beacon of empowerment by women who felt badly for not conforming to a narrow set of societal norms—thin, straight, compliant. But behind the scenes, Lindy never felt like she was the self-actualized woman fans made her out to be. When she found herself in the throes of a deep depression, with her marriage and sense of self-worth hanging in the balance, she knew she needed to make a change.
In Adult Braces, Lindy shares the story of her rock bottom, and of the journey she took to claw her way out of it. With her trademark candor and sense of humor, she examines her post-Shrill emotional implosion, her shifting feelings about traditional marriage, and her search for her long-lost self. She also tracks the highs and lows of her journey, from eye-opening natural wonders and kitschy roadside attractions to lackluster tourist traps and campground epiphanies.
The result is an engaging and laugh-out-loud narrative of becoming as Lindy transforms from a passenger into the active navigator of her own life.
A moving and provocative exploration of male friendship and loneliness, from New York Times bestselling author, filmmaker, and actor Andrew McCarthy as he crisscrosses the country to reconnect with his friends.
“[A] soulful book, filled with the kind of bighearted, amiable characters who one hopes will populate any road trip.” – New York Times
“You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?”
A seemingly innocuous, if direct, question from Andrew McCarthy’s son left him reeling. McCarthy did have friends, but like so many other men, the necessities of modern adult life had forced his friendships to the background. At one point his friends had been instrumental in broadening his horizons, bolstering his courage, providing safe harbor. Now, McCarthy found himself questioning what had happened to those friendships, whether he needed them, what he valued, and what he had to offer. A simple question had become a moment that demanded a reckoning.
Who Needs Friends charts McCarthy’s journey over nearly ten thousand miles behind the wheel, following him on often-unexpected travels through Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Rocky Mountains with one driving purpose: to reconnect. Along the way he talks to countless men about their male friendships, from cowboys and blues musicians to preachers and rootless teens. What began as a simple desire to catch up with a few friends turned into a deep exploration of the challenges and rewards that men experience in forming bonds with each other.
In McCarthy’s own words, “It turns out that guys have a difficult time with friendship.” But that’s not the way it needs to be.
Men wield outsized power across all major institutions. But they are falling behind across all measures of well-being and success. They include loving husbands and absent fathers, corporate strivers and displaced workers, the objects and instruments of incredible violence. They are half the population. And yet when mentioned as a bloc, it’s often to ask the question: What’s wrong with them?
American Men is a book that burrows deep into the lives of four men, exploring how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time. They include Ryan, an amateur MMA fighter from the Akwesasne Mohawk territory, struggling to come to terms with both his sexuality as a closeted gay man and his draw toward bar room violence; Gideon, an itinerant, tall and handsome West Point graduate and former baseball star who unravels when he encounters challenges to his status as the white masculine ideal; Joseph, a Seattle law student whose marriage teeters on the brink of turmoil as he tries on his own to contend with the effects of childhood sexual trauma; and Nate, a young Ohio man still living at home and trying to establish security for himself in a rural pocket of a red state, where he’s under threat as someone who is Black, trans, and poor. Written with searing intimacy after five years of reporting, American Men interweaves their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.
Crystal Harris’ life changed forever when she was just twenty-one and attended a party at the notorious Playboy mansion. Picked out of the crowd by Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris became one of his infamous “girlfriends,” attending glamorous Hollywood parties and traveling the world. But being Hef’s number one girlfriend came at the cost of Crystal’s identity outside her role in the Playboy universe, and she grew increasingly restless to understand who she truly was away from what she saw as Playboy’s toxic culture. Hef controlled his girlfriends with strict rules regarding everything from their hair and makeup to their curfews, forcing them to compete with one another as part of a highly hierarchal system.
Only Say Good Things provides a fascinating look behind the scenes at a powerful cultural icon and brand, and an empowering perspective on hard-won lessons about who we allow to determine our value.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A JANUARY 2024 APPLE BOOKS STAFF PICK AND AUDIBLE EDITORS SELECT
NAMED A BEST BOOK TO READ THIS JANUARY BY THE GLOSS
Roderick Sewell II was born without the tibia in both of his legs. Before he turned two years old, his mother, Marian, made the tough choice to have his legs amputated so that he could continue wrestling with his cousins and climbing his grandmother’s good furniture. But when Marian’s modest income couldn’t cover the prosthetics Roderick needed to attend school, she made another impossible decision: to leave her job so that California Children’s Services would pay for Roderick’s prosthetic legs.
Roderick and his mother were left homeless, keeping their long stays in shelters a secret while he learned to swim at the YMCA. All the while, Marian instilled in Roderick the lessons of gratitude, love, and patience to build his confidence in his disability, his identity as a Black boy, and his true passion, sports.
Roderick was still homeless when he met coaches from the Challenged Athletes Foundation. They gave him his running legs, and his life quickly changed for the better. He learned how to challenge his body to become a fierce competitor and athlete—with his mom cheering from the sidelines all the while.
Iron Will is the story of an athlete with an indomitable spirit and proof that a winner’s mindset is about more than physical and mental endurance. It’s about the unique places you can find love, and the rewards of conquering your fears.
We are not defined by our origin stories. We choose who we become.
Daria Burke’s childhood growing up under the shadow of an absent father and a mother debilitated by drug addiction was marked by neglect and poverty. Despite these fractured beginnings, she forges a triumphant path out of Detroit and into fashion’s C-Suite. After ten years of therapy, she believes her healing journey is complete.
When she discovers a photograph of the car accident that she believes altered the course of her early life, Burke is forced to confront the parts of her childhood she had avoided. This discovery sparks a four-year immersion into neuroplasticity, epigenetics, the impact of adverse childhood experiences on early brain development, and ultimately, why some of us remain stuck in past trauma while others experience post-traumatic growth. She dives headfirst into an exploration of her trauma, grappling with the enduring grip of the past on the present and the mind’s influence over the body.
More than a story of personal triumph, Of My Own Making is a soulful and scientific exploration of the power to shape one’s destiny. In facing the stark reality of her past, Burke reminds us that every moment demands a choice, and that we owe it to ourselves to reparent our inner child and reclaim the lives we deserve.
Burke’s lyrical account of a life lived with courage and intention offers an empathetic and hard-won perspective on the nature versus nurture debate and the power of acceptance. Part memoir, part methodology, it is a fearless rallying cry inspiring us to excavate and examine the stories that define our lives. Ultimately, the narratives that we craft with our own hands are the only ones that matter.
This affirming book from world-renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Conti, offers a paradigm-shifting approach to optimizing mental health, offering readers a proven way towards a joyful life—based on the popular series on Andrew Huberman’s podcast.
More than one in five US adults are living with a mental illness. Since 2010, adults ages eighteen to twenty-five have experienced a 139 percent increase in anxiety. For all of the increasing and well-intended mental health resources at our immediate disposal, we could easily ask where we are going wrong. Yet, Dr. Paul Conti wants to know, “what’s going right?”
Backed by celebrities and esteemed colleagues such as Lady Gaga, Mel Robbins, and Kim Kardashian, Dr. Conti poses that the key to embracing this new narrative is tapping into our often ignored and long over-looked generative drive, the primary factor that’s already going right in each of us. The generative drive helps you get things done, solve problems creatively, help others and feel connected to something larger than yourself. When activated, it brings you peace, contentment, and delight.
With Dr. Conti’s notorious straightforward sincerity, he shares the exact method he uses on his patients and celebrity clients to help them tap into their generative drives including:
- The 5 Part Function of Self: When you alter your function you alter your life trajectory
- Cultivating a daily self-inquiry practice
- Learning compassionate curiosity
- Progressive muscle relaxation
- Rewiring Life Narratives
What’s Going Right offers readers a proven offramp from the toxic pursuits that keep them stuck and an onramp towards happiness.
Every one of us will experience pain, be it back pain, the pain of childbirth, or living in an aging body. Not a single one of us will escape. But what if everything you thought you knew about pain was … wrong?
We’ve been told that pain is purely physical, something to do just with bones and body parts. The truth is that pain is constructed by the brain—influenced not just by injuries, but also by emotions, expectations, and environment. This means you have infinitely more control over pain than you ever imagined: because if the brain can change, pain can change.
Rooted in cutting-edge neuroscience and rich patient stories, Dr. Rachel Zoffness completely upends the myths we’ve been sold—finally reconnecting physical and emotional pain, and providing a roadmap for healing. The fact is that chronic pain is treatable. But to do that, we must target the whole person—not just a body part.
A groundbreaking, revolutionary book that finally offers access to the world’s most powerful painkiller: YOU.
“This book is a must read for anyone struggling with chronic pain. Filled with moving stories and the latest science, Zoffness explains how pain works and why so many treatments fall short. Her message is ultimately a hopeful one: By changing our brains we can lessen our pain. I highly recommend.” ―Anna Lembke, MD, Professor and Medical Director, Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, Stanford University, New York Times bestselling author of Dopamine Nation
“In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Zoffness dismantles outdated myths about pain and brilliantly reveals new ways to overcome it. Filled with the latest science, this is a must read for both doctors and patients, and frankly anyone grappling with chronic pain.” ―William W. Li, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Eat To Beat Disease, former faculty at Harvard Medical School
Discover the transformative New York Times bestseller—a step-by-step manual for mastering your inner mind for peak performance and living your life to the fullest.
As a professional baseball player, Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around results. He was focused on achievement but also afraid of failure. When he started coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he often encountered the same mindset. He became obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with poise under pressure.
After years of research, Murphy had a revelatory insight: the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of an exceptional life are the same path.
Filled with exercises, techniques, and tools, Inner Excellence trains your heart and mind, showing you how to:
· Develop self-mastery—and let go of what you can’t control.
· Overcome anxiety—and build powerful mental habits.
· Remove mental blocks—and get out of your own way.
· Train your subconscious mind—and release limiting beliefs.
Merging two decades of research and interviews with top athletes and leaders with this training system, Inner Excellence will put you on a path towards a more satisfactory and joyful life.
Friendship can be hard for many Neurodivergent adults. There is an assumption that good, worthwhile friendships “should” come easy. However, for Neurodivergent adults, there are brain-based reasons why friendship can feel less intuitive. From differences in the parts of the brain that are vital to managing the logistics of a fulfilling social life to difficulty with self-regulation, the way neurodiverse individuals experience social bonding and connection can feel unintuitive.
Friendship Skills For Neurodivergent Adults is a guide to navigate these differences, broken into three parts:
1. How friendship works
2. How to find your people
3. How connecting will get you in motion
With the guidance of Friendship Skills For Neurodivergent Adults, readers will feel less alone, and have the tools to understand the unique way neurodiverse individuals can approach friendship.
Lee guides you through the hard times that arise unexpectedly and disrupt your life for indeterminate periods. Uncertainty and fear impact how you interact with the world and understand your place in it. You manage the loneliness and isolation by convincing others that you are fine. Lee debunks the idea that you must force positivity and, instead, helps you learn how to hold compassion for yourself in hard times.
Through rich, revelatory prose, Lee assists you in navigating life’s unstable and overwhelming moments. Using research and her personal experiences, she argues that self-preservation is necessary when life is at its worst. If you are experiencing pain, chronic stress, or loneliness or are burdened with self-doubt, Waiting for Dawn brings you from a place of instability to hope. Lee shares her two-year journey battling loss and illness—the death of her mother-in-law, ongoing sickness, and the emotional challenges she endured—that taught her that healing is about finding your own unique way through the darkness.
Waiting for Dawn provides a compass to help you rediscover your worth and identify how to live well. These dark periods are necessary for things to grow and transform, but it never stays dark forever.
“Waiting for Dawn is nothing short of a miracle and just what we need right now in our current moment. When times seem to drag us into a grey mist that we don’t know how to navigate out of, her words push us to find our own paths forward into a clear understanding of what we need to feel better and more at ease.” ―Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Emotional pain, of all kinds and magnitudes, is part of life. We’ll never be able to find ourselves free of it; no meditation or amount of therapy will cure us of the harder parts of being alive. The practice of turning toward the ache with care—reverence, even—might be one of the most meaningful gifts we can give ourselves. It might even save us.
Lisa Olivera has confronted this reality for years as a therapist, weaving her exploration of it throughout her popular newsletter, Human Stuff. She asks questions like, how do we confront and tend to the painful parts of being human without letting that pain entirely overtake us? How do we find joy even when depression visits, even when we lose someone we love, even when the hurt of the world is ever-present? How do we cultivate aliveness in the midst?
When the Ache Remains explores these questions for readers in a tender and wise exploration of how ache shapes life, how we can alchemize our pain into medicine, and how presence is accessible even in the midst of difficulty. Blending deeply personal narrative, humanistic psychology, lessons from nature, words of nourishment, and her naturally poetic undertone, Lisa invites readers on a journey alongside her as she explores the impact of depression and the process of learning to tend to it, and all of our aches, in more open, integrative, and loving ways.
In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes—including diagnoses of depression and anxiety, reliance on prescription drugs, and suicide—have skyrocketed in the past decade. In this book, actor Courtney B. Vance seeks to change this trajectory.
Along with professional expertise from famed psychologist Dr. Robin L. Smith (popularly known as “Dr. Robin”), Courtney B. Vance explores issues of grief, relationships, identity, and race through the telling of his own most formative experiences. Together, they provide a guide for Black men navigating life’s ups and downs, reclaiming mental well-being, and examining broken pieces to find whole, full-hearted living.
Self-care is an act of revolution. It’s time to revolutionize mental health in the Black community.
“A thoughtful, wise, empathetic book that has the capacity to save lives.” —Kirkus Reviews
“… an inspiring story of what [Black men] can achieve personally and professionally when they have the tools and support necessary to examine their pain and find their joy.” —New York Journal of Books
—Richard Schwartz, PhD, creator of Internal Family Systems and author of No Bad Parts
In a first-of-its-kind practical guide rooted in the groundbreaking IFS therapeutic model, two maternal mental health experts help moms untangle complicated feelings like anger, guilt, shame, and failure, offering empathy and support.
Moms have it hard; whether due to ingrained beliefs, the pressures of everything from social expectations to social media, or our own childhood wounds, even the best moms can feel like they are failing. With empathy, compassion, and deep wisdom, maternal health experts Jessica Tomich Sorci and Rebecca Geshuri address difficult and often suppressed feelings such as anxiety, anger, shame and guilt, as well as disappointment, ambivalence about being a mom, and yearning for your “old” life.
Tomich Sorci and Geshuri help any mom anywhere to identify these pain points, make sense of her distress, and begin to find relief. Their revelatory approach validates the unique suffering moms experience and offers reinterpretations that bring hope and empowerment. Filled with exercises, strategies, and step-by-step guidance, When Good Moms Feel Bad shows you empowering ways to access your abundant inner resources begin building self-trust. You’re already a good mom. Start discovering how your harshest internal voices are trying to help you—and befriend the parts of yourself that you’ve been fighting.
A must-read action plan to reclaim your focus, direct your attention, and save your mind in an era of endless distraction.
“An essential read for our distracted times.” -Mark Hyman, MD, author of #1 New York Times bestseller, Young Forever
Our brains are wired for focus. We are designed for it, we crave it, and yet in our current age of overload, we often feel like our minds are bolting from one distraction to the next, with sustained focus always just out of reach.
Finding Focus is an empowering guide to reclaiming your most precious resource: your attention. Leading behavioral scientist Dr. Zelana Montminy unveils the science behind focus and distraction, revealing how our hyperconnected reality and the endless flux between digital and physical life fragments our thoughts and diminishes our well-being. Finding Focus equips you with powerful strategies to:
- Silence the noise
- Rewire your brain
- Unleash your potential
- Rediscover yourself
If we can control our attention and be present, if we choose when and how we engage, we have a greater sense of wellbeing, deeper fulfillment, and a clear purpose. Finding Focus invites you to ask the question “Where do I want to direct my focus today?” It is a call to arms for anyone yearning to break free from the grip of distraction and live a life brimming with purpose and connection.
Doctor by day and Bravo’s Real Housewife by night, Tiffany Moon has a prescription for releasing perfectionism and finding joy!
“A must-read for anyone seeking more balance, purpose, and joy at home and at work.” —Barbara Corcoran, Shark Tank real estate mogul and business expert
As a self-proclaimed “good girl,” Tiffany was a people pleaser and an A-student, fitting into the roles that were prescribed by her Chinese American family. As a lifelong overachiever, she accomplished a thriving career as an anesthesiologist. Yet Tiffany felt unfulfilled. She spent more time at work than at home with her family, didn’t know how to say “no” to anyone, and was governed by perfectionist standards.
In Joy Prescriptions, Tiffany shares her journey to reconnect with herself. In order to feel whole, she had to drop the perfectionist trope and focus on rediscovering who she was. Tiffany abandoned other people’s expectations and ultimately discovered how to live for her true self. She put herself first and embraced more creativity and laughter. Taking surprising chances on herself, she started a candle business, starred on a reality TV series, tried her hand at stand-up comedy, and became a social media influencer.
Joy Prescriptions is a must-read if you want to add more spark and joy to your life. Tiffany offers a healthy dose of introspection and healing that will release you from the constrained expectations of others and inspire you to design a joyful life that is more authentically you!
“Tiffany’s hard-earned wisdom and heartfelt stories remind us that true wealth is all about creating a life that feels rich in every way.” —Vivian Tu, New York Times bestselling author of Rich AF
FRIENDSHIP IS THE GREAT LOVE STORY WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR.
Friendship is good for your health.
Studies show that loneliness is as deadly as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Still, we are not taught how to be good friends to one another. We cancel plans, lose touch, blame technology, and neglect our non-romantic loved ones. In Good Friends, author Priya Vulchi explores friendships across history, continents, and identities to show how friendship can open up new levels of joy and community in your life.
What is the meaning of friendship, these miraculous bonds with once-strangers? How do you begin friendships? End them? Keep them vibrant? For answers, Vulchi weaves through Western classical thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and uncovers the private moments between good friends like James Baldwin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Yuri Kochiyama, Toni Morrison, and June Jordan. Friendship, she shows, has ripple effects beyond just any two friends; it awakens solidarity and changes in the world.
Through her inspiring and impassioned prose, Vulchi entirely reimagines our platonic ties, revealing that friendship, in the right hands, is a brilliant act of love and resistance.
Intimate and engaging, Good Friends offers a resounding cry that friendship is not only vital for our own individual well-being, but for humanity itself. It invites you to be inspired not just by what people do but how people love. It invites you to look at your friends differently and enter a dazzlingly fresh philosophy of human connection.
“A book that left me breathless.” —Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author of How The Word Is Passed
“Fascinating.” —The New York Times
For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers through the ninety-three-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
Antonia Hylton blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade’s worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
USA Today Bestseller
National Indie Bestseller
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of the Year
ELLE Magazine‘s Best (and Most Anticipated) Nonfiction Books of 2024
Entertainment Weekly’s Best Books to Read 2024
An Amazon “Best Book of the Year”
“You can trust him.” –Tabitha Brown
IT AIN’T EASY GETTING YOUR SHIT TOGETHER
THIS BOOK IS THE SOLUTION
If any of this sounds like you, it’s best you start reading this book now!
- You seek more fulfilling relationships and dating experiences
- You’re ready to shake off shame about past mistakes and step into your power
- You want to say “see ya” to the toxic people and emotional gut-punchers
- Your “people pleaser” days are over and it’s time to learn how to effectively say no
He knows you need help—whether financial, spiritual, or in a relationship—because you never learned how to properly handle the hurt and anger you’ve experienced in the past, it has become the emotional trash in the way of being your best self. Don’t nobody want that!
Whether it’s fixing your family issues, situationships, money, or frenemies, MJ offers sage advice about how to stop blocking yourself from bigger and better things.
This isn’t your gentle guide on breathing or journaling. MJ serves up no holds barred advice on how to navigate your emotions that will help you disrupt cycles of trauma, create boundaries, and transform into a goddess of emotional wholeness. Get the F*ck Out Your Own Way will help you learn how to make better choices and decisions. It will set you on the right path for a happier emotional life once and for all.
What if the mental health symptoms we face aren’t the actual problem? What if they’re signals that help us see and solve the real problem—the imbalances in our wider systems that are making us all sick?
As our world clashes and collapses around us, it’s no surprise that one in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of 40, with one in five people affected each year. It’s hard to view all our mental health symptoms as disordered if so many of us are experiencing them. Perhaps it’s not that something’s gone wrong in our bodies and minds, but that something’s gone right: These symptoms are brilliant alarms and adaptions to survive a disordered world. Having sensitive protective functions that sound alarms or short-circuit when we’re threatened isn’t a design flaw. It’s a design success.
As a psychiatrist, professor, and mental health speaker, Joanna Cheek argues that we’re not broken or doing it wrong when we’re stressed or struggling. As our systems are pushed to the brink of collapse, self-improvement alone neglects the source of our suffering. Instead, to care for ourselves, we must heal the imbalances in our wider systems that keep making us all sick. In It’s Not You. It’s the World, Dr. Cheek offers a survival guide of mental health tools to care for both ourselves and our collectives, helping us understand and befriend our alarms so we can come together to solve the shared problems they’re signaling.
With a foreword by Gabor Maté, chapter-by-chapter guidance, and practical action to empower, connect, and instill hope in the reader, It’s Not You. It’s The World is the go‑to guide for anyone feeling depressed, anxious, enraged, despairing, numb, or sick from adapting to a world on fire.
Leadership coach Erin Weed shares her radical system for bringing your life, career, relationships, and communication into crystal-clear alignment.
Erin Weed is a coach and founder who has helped over 1,000 CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, activists, truthseekers, and changemakers find clarity of purpose and chart a path forward—all with a simple method called The Dig. The Dig is a process of mining your life experiences to uncover your human operating system, a network of ideas and values that drive you. And in that system you’ll find your Dig Word: the one word that captures your essence and serves as a north star in every part of your life. This isn’t another complicated self-help system. It’s a way to distill your life purpose down to one word that guides you to your best life. In Just One Word, you’ll learn how to find your own Dig Word—and hear how a single word has changed the lives of dozens of Erin Weed’s clients.
You’ll also learn how your Dig Word
reveals your life purpose and how to pursue it,
explains how you operate,
defines your personal brand;
helps you engage more authentically in any situation;
focuses and sharpens your message (even if you don’t think you have one),
makes sense of conflict and strife in your life, and
removes obstacles between where you are and where you want to be.
Can a single word really do all this? Yes, it can—and over 1,000 people have experienced newfound clarity and purpose through their Dig Words. And now, for the first time, you can experience the power of The Dig in your own home, at your own pace, with Just One Word.
After tragedy upended the contours of her life, Lauren Kessler, an unflinching immersion journalist, felt compelled to move—to do something, to be somewhere else. So she set out alone on the famed Camino de Santiago, walking across Spain to create space between the life she’d lived and the life she hadn’t chosen but now inhabited.
Raw and luminous, Everything Changes Everything is a story about facing what we’d rather avoid, about the wounds we carry, hide, and—sometimes—heal. It’s about the privilege of choosing hardship, the grace of temporary friendship, the solace of kindred spirits, and the power of movement to unstick what’s stuck. It’s also about unfounded optimism, unlikely laughter, and the way grief and beauty can coexist in a single step.
Amanda Stuckey Dodson prided herself on her ability to maintain a peaceful, clean home: there wasn’t any mess that couldn’t be fixed by plastic organizing bins, spreadsheets, and a can-do attitude. When her life was upended by chronic illness, leaving her unable to maintain her elaborate cleaning systems, she learned that the hardest part wasn’t becoming organized, it was staying organized. Facing an unusually messy home, she knew she needed a different approach.
Tidying the Abyss is a gentle, step-by-step guide to keeping house when everything around you is falling apart. Dodson, a clinical social worker turned professional organizer, advocates for the abandoning of perfection to make room for creative, livable solutions. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of being chronically ill, neurodivergent, or hopeless at home maintenance, you need more than just organizational tips- you need a practice. Within these pages you’ll find guidance for:
- Managing motivation and overwhelm;
- Addressing your basic needs with systems for trash, kitchen & dishes, and laundry;
- Creating order in your most-used spaces (think bedroom and bathroom); and
- Common life complications like pet-related chaos or managing housework as a caregiver or as a parent
We live in a world where we’re told we need weekly therapy, a stack of expensive daily supplements, and a two-hour morning routine before we can expect to feel better about ourselves. Let alone handle the daily struggle of living in a modern world where everything seems to be falling apart. And while there are so many ways to “feel better” and “do more,” -our biggest issue today is that we have forgotten that we already have everything we need inside of us.
It’s All Within You shifts the focus from chasing external quick fixes to recognizing and trusting your innate wholeness. Global wellness expert, Millana Snow, reminds us of our inherent power to heal and transform ourselves by coming home to ourselves. Drawing on her thirty years of exploration in meditation, healing and spirituality, Millana shares the seven essential principles that serve as starting points to begin personal transformation from the inside out—awareness, presence, cultivation, integration, grieving, faith, and rest. Backed by real-life examples and practices that she’s taught to thousands of people, these principles will foster a deeper awareness of the effects of personal and collective trauma so you can tackle the stress and daily struggles of your life head on, rather than just managing the symptoms.
It’s All Within You is a manifesto that considers us all healers. When we recognize our power and choose to make healing a way of life, we shift from being passively formed by our circumstances to forming our life as we choose.