In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.

In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store". That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches.

When Karen O’Reilly’s 28-year-old friend and roommate dies by suicide on a bright New Year’s Day, Karen, also suffering from severe depression, decides that she needs to do something drastic to avoid following a similar path. Six months later she leaves her comfortable western existence behind to work with refugees in Uganda. In this candid and irreverent memoir, Karen tells the story of working with people seeking refuge - from war, and torture, and genocide - as a young woman seeking refuge from herself.

In 1990, Robert K. Brown was an ordinary college student studying abroad in England when a series of unexpected and extraordinary events would change the trajectory of his life forever. Choosing to ignore ominous early symptoms, he was still troubled enough to write in his journal "just for the record...I am frightened because things are happening to me that I can’t explain away." What follows is a race against time to return home to Seattle for months of chemotherapy, countless complications, and a search for as much normalcy as possible when forced to face mortality at 20.

In Uncovered, Leah Lax tells her story - beginning as a young teen who left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew and ending as a 40-something woman who has to abandon the only world she's known for 30 years in order to achieve personal freedom.

Upon her death, the New York Times hailed Madeleine L'Engle as "an author whose childhood fables, religious meditations and fanciful science fiction transcended both genre and generation." L'Engle has long captivated and provoked listeners by exploring the intersection of science and religion in her work. In this intimate memoir, the award-winning author uncovers how her spiritual convictions inform and enrich the everyday.

This tale of a 60-year love affair examines the age-old question of why we love the people we do. A beautiful, charismatic, and wildly successful man is adored by a woman. Even as children, he held the power. Though bound by tragedy and friendship, he defined the terms of their relationship, until finally, in old age, the power shifts. Looking at the roles of beauty, insanity, magic, deceit, consolation, sensory fulfillment and, finally, being seen, Judith explores why she loved Elliot — a relationship that impinged on every other in her life.

For All the Obvious Reasons is Lynn Stegner's superb collection of nine remarkably distinct tales of passion, clear-eyed wisdom, and honesty honed to a cutting edge. These are stories the listener can't shake: A woman living a marital shadow life realizes that her long compensating heart has begun to ominously decompensate. An affluent New Yorker becomes a hoarder to escape a future he cannot bear to take up. A baby dies in a miasma of sibling resentments, and from that the secrets of culpability unravel.

"You will be a son, my daughter." With these stunning words Ukmina learned that she was to spend her childhood as a boy. In Afghanistan there is a widespread practice of girls dressing as boys to play the role of a son. These children are called bacha posh: literally "girls dressed as boys." This practice offers families the freedom to allow their child to shop and work - and in some cases, it saves them from the disgrace of not having a male heir. But in adolescence, religion restores the natural law.

In the second memoir of her Crosswicks Journals, Madeleine L'Engle chronicles a season of extremes. Four generations of family have gathered at Crosswicks, her Connecticut farmhouse, to care for L'Engle's ninety-year-old mother. As summer days fade to sleepless nights, her mother's health rapidly declines and her once astute mind slips into senility. With poignant honesty, L'Engle describes the gifts and graces, as well as the painful emotional cost, of caring for the one who once cared for you.

As she races along Canada's Douglas Channel in her speedboat - heading toward the place where her younger brother Jimmy, presumed drowned, was last seen - 20-year-old Lisamarie Hill recalls her younger days. A volatile and precocious Native girl growing up in Kitamaat, the Haisla Indian reservation located 500 miles north of Vancouver, Lisa came of age standing with her feet firmly planted in two different worlds.

Erin Reardon gets her first kiss from Jim Morrison and loses her virginity to David Bowie. When she flunks out of college, Bruce Springsteen comforts her, and Elvis Costello breaks her heart in Europe. So what happens when she finally meets a rock star in the flesh? Erin’s a lonely misfit with an eating disorder and a wild imagination. She believes she was born to save - and love - at least one tortured musician, and is willing to risk almost everything to fulfill that destiny.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

Nikki Gemmell's world changed forever in October 2015 when the body of her elderly mother was found and it became clear she had decided to end her own life. After the immediate shock and devastation came the guilt and the horror, for Nikki, her family, relatives, and friends. No note was left, so the questions that Elayn's death raised were endless. Was the decision an act of independence or the very opposite? Was it a desperate act driven by hopelessness and anger, or was her euthanasia a reasoned act of empowerment?

In the backyard of a Southern California home, a group of family, friends, and strangers come together to celebrate the wedding of two people in love, but each brings with them conflicts they can’t leave behind. The bride’s brother Ian brings upheaval as he shakes off responsibility. Kristy, the photographer, is overwhelmed by her anxiety. The whole foundation of Leah’s life has been destroyed, distracting her from her critical job as wedding coordinator. Amber, the maid of honor, fights to keep a smile on her face as her loneliness crushes her.