Meet My Daughter

Ramshackle Glam creator Jordan Reid was a little nervous about becoming a mother. "In my experience," she writes, "you know what happens when you hold babies? They cry. And it immediately becomes clear to all present that you have terrible parental instincts and should never be allowed to come into contact with children -- ever." But in October 2011 Reid became a mother herself, and over the first year of her son's life the writer and media personality not only figured out a thing or two about parenting, but also learned how to navigate an entirely new lifestyle while still maintaining a sense of self. Part memoir, part commiseration, and part how-to guide on fashion, beauty, home dér and entertaining for the new mom, Ramshackle Glam offers something fresh for the "mommy" bookshelf: concrete advice on how to care for yourself in the post-partum days, weeks, and months. A deeply personal exploration of the realities of modern-day parenthood (Reid covers topics ranging from post-partum depression and marital struggles to pets who immediately transform from your beloved best friends into Those Things That Wake Up Your Child), Ramshackle Glamis also filled with straightforward, fun, and easy lifestyle tips, including how to dress for your post-partum shape, tricks for rearranging your home so it works with an infant as well as your tastes, and strategies for getting your makeup done in five minutes flat with one hand while keeping that bouncy chair going with the other. Reid's spot-on advice combined with her trademark intimacy, wit, and (often aching) honesty make Ramshackle Glam a must-read for any woman in search of a candid account of how to handle enormous life changes with humor, grace . . . and a little bit of glam.

Women who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true—that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds, sociologist Orna Donath treats regret as a feminist issue: as regret marks the road not taken, we need to consider whether alternative paths for women currently are blocked off. She asks that we pay attention to what is forbidden by rules governing motherhood, time, and emotion, including the cultural assumption that motherhood is a “natural” role for women—for the sake of all women, not just those who regret becoming mothers. If we are disturbed by the idea that a woman might regret becoming a mother, Donath says, our response should not be to silence and shame these women; rather, we need to ask honest and difficult questions about how society pushes women into motherhood and why those who reconsider it are still seen as a danger to the status quo. Groundbreaking, thoughtful, and provocative, this is an especially needed book in our current political climate, as women's reproductive rights continue to be at the forefront of national debates.

Seventy now-adult children of divorce give their candid and often heart-wrenching answers to eight questions (arranged in eight chapters, by question), including: What were the main effects of your parents' divorce on your life? What do you say to those who claim that "children are resilient" and "children are happy when their parents are happy"? What would you like to tell your parents then and now? What do you want adults in our culture to know about divorce? What role has your faith played in your healing? Their simple and poignant responses are difficult to read and yet not without hope. Most of the contributors--women and men, young and old, single and married--have never spoken of the pain and consequences of their parents' divorce until now. They have often never been asked, and they believe that no one really wants to know. Despite vastly different circumstances and details, the similarities in their testimonies are striking; as the reader will discover, the death of a child's family impacts the human heart in universal ways.

Lighthearted, yet brutally honest and often hilarious, Blissfully Blended Bullshit is a unique memoir chronicling the life of Rebecca Eckler’s family as they try to navigate their roles in their chaotic new world.

*INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER* *Finalist for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction* *A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year* Named a Most Anticipated Book at The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Elle Magazine, Literary Hub, The Millions, and the CBC. “[A] darkly glittering tale. We are inside a howl.” —The New York Times Book Review A searing and hypnotic tour de force about a woman, long caught in her charismatic father's web, who strives to make a life—and art—of her own. To be loved by your father is to be loved by God. So says Mona Dean--playwright, actress and daughter to a man famous for one great novel, and in fruitless pursuit of the next, whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half-sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona's childhood, setting her in opposition to a cold, cruel stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and fledgling artist, he begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delights--painfully, parasitically--in his attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father's crimes and ejected from the family. Mona’s tenuous stability is thrown into chaos. Only when she suffers an incalculable loss—one far deeper and more defining than family entanglements—can she begin supplanting absent love with real love. Pushed to the precipice, she must decide how she wants to live, what she most needs to say, and the risks she will take to say it. Claudia Dey chronicles our most intimate lives with penetrating insight and devilish humour. A novel as volatile and far-reaching as its title, Daughter is an obsessive, blazing examination of the forces that drive us to become, to create and to break free.