What Mother Never Told Me

Through a series of letters from his parents' passionate World War II courtship, Morrison uncovers a startling, touching story. This follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1993 memoir paints the unforgettable picture of a quietly determined heroine and of a son's search to learn the truth about her.

Parris McKay goes to France in search of her mother, but the meeting opens old wounds for both. Parris finds solace in two new friends who, like her, are coming to terms with a legacy of long-buried secrets.

Advice on feeding and exercises to assist the development of babies' mouth and facial muscles to ensure language development, good mouth structure and movement.

Her mother was a brainy knockout with the sultry beauty of Marilyn Monroe, a raconteur whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was a distinguished figure in American letters, the National Book Award–winning author of four of the greatest novels of World War II ever written. A daughter of privilege with a seemingly fairy-tale-like life, Kaylie Jones was raised in the Hamptons via France in the 1960s and '70s, surrounded by the glitterati who orbited her famous father, James Jones. Legendary for their hospitality, her handsome, celebrated parents held court in their home around an antique bar—an eighteenth-century wooden pulpit taken from a French village church—playing host to writers, actors, movie stars, film directors, socialites, diplomats, an emperor, and even the occasional spy. Kaylie grew up amid such family friends as William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, and Willie Morris, and socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, and Kurt Vonnegut. Her beloved father showed young Kaylie the value of humility, hard work, and education, with its power to overcome ignorance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness, and instilled in her a love of books and knowledge. From her mother, Gloria, she learned perfect posture, the twist, the fear of abandonment, and soul-shattering cruelty. Two constants defined Kaylie's childhood: literature and alcohol. "Only one word was whispered in the house, as if it were the worst insult you could call someone," she writes, "alcoholic was a word my parents reserved for the most appalling and shameful cases—drunks who made public scenes or tried to kill themselves or ended up in the street or in an institution. If you could hold your liquor and go to work, you were definitely not an alcoholic." When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was broken and lost. For solace she turned to his work, looking beyond the man she worshipped to discover the artist and his craft, determined that she too would write. Her loss also left her powerless to withstand her mother's withering barbs and shattering criticism, or halt Gloria's further descent into a bottle—one of the few things mother and daughter shared. From adolescence, Kaylie too used drink as a refuge, a way to anesthetize her sadness, anger, and terror. For years after her father's death, she denied the blackouts, the hangovers, the lost days, the rage, the depression. Broken and bereft, she began reading her father's novels and those writers who came before and after him—and also pursued her own writing. With this, she found the courage to open the door on the truth of her own addiction. Lies My Mother Never Told Me is the mesmerizing and luminously told story of Kaylie's battle with alcoholism and her struggle to flourish despite the looming shadow of a famous father and an emotionally abusive and damaged mother. Deeply intimate, brutally honest, yet limned by humor and grace, it is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman's journey to find her own voice—and the courage to embrace a life filled with possibility, strength, and love.

Find someone in their 20s who knows what they are doing. You won't. Because they are all lost... but lost together. In her candid-yet-comforting debut poetry collection, Daniella Deutsch reaches out her hand to her fellow 20-somethings, holding them through the shocking and freeing realizations of a grueling decade. There is no escaping the magical and unsettling moments that fill up the 20s, yet Deutsch presents them with a raw, sensual, and nostalgic energy. Whether weeping from heartbreak on the bathroom floor or wandering the streets alone at night, searching for a sign, Deutsch guides her readers through this decade of deep loneliness by coupling it with inexplicable and beautiful transformation. More so, she acknowledges how the process of exploration and growth is never truly finished. all the things my mother never told me has a purposeful, natural, and breathtaking arc, reminding readers to be gentle to their bodies and to trust their minds, all while powerfully confessing that we all know very little. Alongside Lisa Jean Moran's simple yet spiritual artwork, Deutsch tackles the unanswerable questions by embracing them, proving that chaos has no better friend than patience.

Why aren't Christian women talking about sex? In this frank exploration of all aspects of what it means to be a sexual being created by God, Kim Gaines Eckert explores myths about female sexuality that we have absorbed from both popular culture and distorted religious teaching.

Talk to women under forty today, and you will hear that in spite of the fact that they have achieved goals previous generations of women could only dream of, they nonetheless feel more confused and insecure than ever. What has gone wrong? What can be done to set it right? These are the questions Danielle Crittenden answers in What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us. She examines the foremost issues in women's lives -- sex, marriage, motherhood, work, aging, and politics -- and argues that a generation of women has been misled: taught to blame men and pursue independence at all costs. Happiness is obtainable, Crittenden says, but only if women will free their minds from outdated feminist attitudes. By drawing on her own experience and a decade of research and analysis of modern female life, Crittenden passionately and engagingly tackles the myths that keep women from realizing the happiness they deserve. And she introduces a new way of thinking about society's problems that may, at long last, help women achieve the lives they desire.

We all know that girls love boys who love girls, and then they turn into women who love men who love women. And no matter how much one would like to clutter their life with work or distract themselves with friends or treks or travels, at the end of the day it is the matters of the heart that take control of our deeper senses. Forget algebra. Love can be the hardest, most complicated thing on earth. This is a book about growing up, of learning and un-learning, losing and receiving, crying and smiling, but most of all—loving. From the first awkward teenage days to discovering boys to falling in love and getting your heart broken, Juhi Pande tells you the Things Your Mother Never Told You About Love. Guaranteed to lift the spirit and add a spring in your step, this book tells us everything us girls need to know to get us through the rough seas.